Almost the majority of Wall Street refused the bailout money. Paulson almost force them. The bailout money eventually made a profit ($15B). One could argue that the return rate was low (0.6% annualized), but still, this is far different from what most people have believed till this day: i.e., US gov just gave taxpayer's money away to the banks to cover their ass.

Paulson also almost managed to save Lehman Brothers until British Gov said no to Barclay's role in the plan. (Wall Street banks would acquire LB's "good assets" while Barclay would buy their toxic ones as its gateway to become a more influential player in US market.). But even Lehman didn't reach out to Pualson to get itself saved. It's the other way around: Paulson was trying many ways to save Lehman because he knew when Lehman went down, market would panic and then even those banks in good shape would be affected.

So this pretty much means, if you are not in tech, most likely you won't be affected, as your employer most likely won't have 15% H1 employees.

If you are in tech, and is in one of thoes legit tech companies, most likely you are also covered, as you will make 130K. Your employers may need to be a bit smart when it comes to meeting the cut, e.g., it may need to reduce some of your RSUs/EFTTs and put them into your salary. But you should make it.

The new proposal doesn't say much about H4s. But I didn't really read much details of the new proposal. As of today, H4s can have EAD if their H1 spouses apply green card and get i-140 approved.

At the root, we have this new proposal today exactly because Indian companies try to abuse the current H1 system. I know stories of both Chinese and Indians got effed up by the H1 system, real stories from real friends in my life, including my wife. I blame Indian outsourcing companies as much as I blame the system, to be honest.

As a student, on F1 visa, if your intention is to stay, honestly you shouldn't get the F1 visa in the first place. If you have to lie about this intention to DHS, that's your own problem. H1, on the other hand, is a dual-intention visa. So you don't need to lie about stay or return. That's why H1s are allowed to apply green card.

I see more and more companies doing this small projects type of initial screening. I like it. But time is actually an expensive cost. Suppose your candidate makes $130,000 per year, which isn't even a high salary in bay area. Then if he/she spends 15 hours on this project, then we are talking about 1000 bucks. Now that is quite a cost, isn't it?

Honestly compared to a white board programming puzzle, such projects always make more sense to me. But most companies will still do white-boards during on-site after the initial project. And although I like most of those projects, even in my case, if I happen to be busy, then I do feel like they are annoying. I'd rather spend my time doing what I was busy doing, or learning new stuff, or working on my pet projects, rather than working on a project that may or may not make sense to me, just to show to other people that I can code, and I can write clean code. Let alone I happen to know some friends who just hate those projects and will never do them unless it's from their dream company. Plus, there are people who are better communicator when they talk face-to-face. Then it's really hard to say if such project is really better than white-boarding for that type of candidates. But it's still way better than those 30-minutes online coding over a phone interview. That's the one I hate most.. Even Skype interview is better than phone interview.

Remote: OK

Willing to relocate: I have to relocate to NYC

Technologies: I code in C in my day job. But I used C++ for a few years during PhD. I can also code in Python, Java and Go. I know computer networks inside out. And have limited backend web app experience.

Résumé/CV: resume.yangchi.me

Email: yang@yangchi.me

Visa: I'm currently on OPT. Will need H1B next year.