Zoom is interesting. They don't really seem to have done anything particularly novel, they just made a product that works better than the competition. We use Zoom heavily on our fully remote team because it works better than free alternatives like Skype and paid alternatives that we're already paying for like Slack.
It's quite refreshing to see a tech company succeed by just making a better product and expecting that people will be willing to pay for it. They were able to grow so quickly in part because it was relatively easy for people to switch from other video conferencing solutions however. I'm not sure they will be able to build much competitive advantage other than just continuing to be a better product though. If Slack worked just as well we'd happily use it and stop paying for an additional service.
MBA ideas of an economic moat - lock-in, stickiness, etc - are "dark patterns".
But there are "light patterns": you can stay ahead in a technological race if you keep running; sales are easier if you are known as better; you get more informative feedback if you have more users, etc.
> MBA ideas of an economic moat - lock-in, stickiness, etc - are "dark patterns".
Dramatic statement. I am an SWE and an MBA. There are merits to thinking about every aspect of the business. Tech/Product is just one - an important one in a Saas company, but still just one.
> But there are "light patterns": you can stay ahead in a technological race if you keep running;
This is another way of saying "build it and they will come". You have to combine good business/economic sense with great products.
Apple didn't just get to be Apple by staying ahead in a technological race. Arguably, they are behind a lot of other phone makers in specs. But they have a lot of people thinking about ecosystems, lock-in, marketing and other "MBA" concepts.
> There are merits to thinking about every aspect of the business.
This isn't a refutation of the parent - all you've said is that sometimes those dark patterns are worth exploiting. I'm rarely one for defending an absolute, so I think it would be far more interesting to say why it is worth using a 'dark pattern'. So far, it just feels like you're deflecting through masking the issue.
I always thought the economic moat was supposed to be some feat of R&D that is hard to replicate.
Like figuring out how to make an AI that functions as a human-quality call center representative. It's not that there's a network effect or something, just that noone else can figure out how to do it without a tremendous investment.
A 'moat' simply refers to the ability of certain firms (over the long-term) to sustain or increase profitability and/or market share within a given industry. For most firms, profit and market share erode over the long-term.
The discussion of light vs dark patterns in this thread is more confusing than clarifying. Moats come in all shapes and sizes because a moat can pretty much be anything that satisfies the definition above; which doesn't preclude moats from frequently being of a certain kind(s).
What about delivering a product in a way that makes it impossible for anyone else to attempt to deliver a better product than you?
For example, there might be a smart search algorithm researcher who could make a better search engine than Google, if given access to their data. But without the data, it doesn’t matter how good their algorithms are, the search will be worse.
Googles moat is so good that it precludes the very existence of viable competing services. Is this a dark moat or a light moat?
> Googles moat is so good that it precludes the very existence of viable competing services.
So how do you explain the existence of viable competing services? Plenty of people have switched to DuckDuckGo and while it still has a tiny fraction of Google's market share it appears to be viable and growing. Microsoft still operates Bing. Again its market share is tiny but at this point I imagine they continue to operate it because it is somewhat viable and not just for strategic reasons.
I agree with the general sentiment of your statement. Isn’t it ironic that the strongest defenders of capitalism are the ones which are trying the hardest (and often succeeding) to monopolize (a niche of) the market?
While I would not argue that there are never arrangements in which centralization and support of monopolies may make some sense (e.g., to speed up coordination or make it easier to enforce regulations), there should probably be more consideration about the societal down sides of “economic moats”.
One interesting example for the economic and societal benefits of this “collaborative” kind of thinking could probabaly be the dutch health care provider buurtzog, which has been scaling like crazy but also seems to have been engaging with a variety of partners to actually help other people understand and replicate what makes buurtzog work. I bet that exchange was fruitful and interesting to both sides (there is always more to learn) but also premised on the idea that the primary goal of any business should be to help solve a problem and not to (primarily) defend its own existance. Encouragingly, both things generally correlate if done in the “right” order but it’s also hard work.
P.S. I know I am somewhat simplyfing here as there are certainly different phases in a businesses lifecycle where different trade-offs may be applicable. I am just commenting on a general mindset which seems to be pretty prevalent.
Or to paraphrase while the “dark patterns” require moment of inspiration creativeness, being better most of the times rehires diligence and discipline which are much lower hanging fruits.
But it’s also a real danger to just thinking in absolutes like “the best product always wins” are also supremely context dependant. For every example there is always a counter example
There's nothing nonsensical or shallow about it. MBAs have a well-earned reputation for focusing on profit at the expense of quality and are responsible for the death of many of the products we once loved. Rather than insult people, why not be the MBA who changes things for the better?
But it's not--MBA is groupthink. The biz schools turn out cookie-cutter professionals who are of average intelligence and just aren't very dynamic people and the further down the school rating you go, the more cookie-cutter and awful it is.
That some MBAs go on to innovate is only because they buck the indoctrination.
Once you install Zoom into all your workplace conference rooms (aka Zoom rooms), you're pretty much locked in. It's also pretty great from a work angle. We have remote workers who can Zoom into any meeting and it's seamless.
We had all Cisco/Tandberg rooms for years, then evaluated BlueJeans and HighFive, then trialed Zoom and Zoom won on the merits, even displacing existing deployed rooms with other tech.
So, sure, we’re not about to rip out our Zoom Rooms, but that’s because of the “Zoom” part not the “Room” part of that phrase.
I’ve seen multiple large companies swap out their video conferencing system to whatever was the vc system du jour. (Vidyo, Highfive, Bluejeans, WebEx, Zoom) I can’t comment on how expensive it is, but it is a thing that happens fairly regularly.
It's general purpose hardware; our rooms use an Intel NUC with USB camera/mic, and an iPad to control it. There's no lock in as long as you're switching to something else that uses standard stuff.
We used appear.in for a few months, and paid for a premium "room". It was nice to just give someone a URL (no client or extension required). It could be better now, but we had a lot of problems with call quality.
Used Appear.in at my current employer for a while. IIRC it was P2P, like Skype used to be, with really easy onboarding though a single URL. (No sign up required.)
But it didn't scale to more that 3 users. That may have changed since.
> They don't really seem to have done anything particularly novel
This just shows a lack understanding. They did something extremely novel: actually make the software work the way humans need it to. HN trivializing anything it doesn't understand gets tiring.
Eric Yuan was the founding engineer of WebEx where he stayed for 14 years, even after the acquisition by Cisco.
He left Cisco to finish what he started at WebEx because he knew Cisco wasn't doing what needed to be done and it was clear that every other piece of video conferencing software out there was terrible too.
Talk to people who've evaluated the software in the market today and anyone who's tried all of the conferencing solutions will tell you that Zoom is head and shoulder above the rest, including Google Hangouts.
Here's a choice quote from an interview he gave:
"I got to this point in life by never giving up on my inspiration — which has always been to build a video communications solution that people will love. This has been a long-time passion of mine. I was born in mainland China. I first envisioned Zoom while I was a college student in China in the late ‘80s, and would take over 10-hour (each way) train rides to visit my girlfriend (now my wife). My desire for an easier way to see her face-to-face without the arduous travel became the impetus for my long path from student to entrepreneur. In 1997 I immigrated to San Jose, CA and secured a position as one of the founding engineers at a small start-up called Webex. I stayed with Webex for the next 14 years, and proudly grew the team I managed from 10 engineers to more than 800 worldwide, and contributed to revenue growth from $0 to more than $800M. In speaking with Webex customers, I realized that the solution suffered from some deep flaws due to its older architecture, particularly a lack of usability, reliability, and video quality. Simply put, it was hard to use and it didn’t work. I knew that Cisco needed to rebuild Webex from the ground up – from the back-end architecture to the user interface to the sales model. I told Cisco leadership, but they didn’t listen. I struck out on my own in 2011, and, fortunately, dozens of Webex’s most talented and visionary engineers soon joined me. Together we spent the next two years building Zoom 1.0, a unified video and web conferencing software that ran seamlessly across mobile, desktop devices, and conference room systems. Since then we’ve developed the product into the best video communications software in the world and built a global team of over 1,100 passionate people."
I didn't mean to understate the value of "just" executing better. That's exactly why I think Zoom is interesting. In tech I think people often overestimate the value of a novel idea and underestimate the value of consistently good execution. I don't think Zoom has succeeded through feature innovation but by implementing features better than the competition and making something that "just works". That doesn't mean I think their achievement is somehow less impressive or that they don't have a great product. Quite the opposite in fact.
I understood your meaning. Although I'm not sure what their tech looks like. It could very well be that they have invented many novel ways to maintain the level of quality that they do. If it was just UI that was better, I would say ya, nothing novel. But they also seem to serve up better and cleared streams than other software I have tried.
I'm interesting in the claim regarding Zoom being head-and-shoulders above Google's product. Hangouts is certainly well past it's EOL but the Google Meet product (focused on the enterprise product) works very well and seamlessly integrates into the gsuite set of applications while also providing a great in-room experience.
I haven't personally used Zoom rooms (have connected to some via a laptop though). I have deployed and used Google Meet's in-room experience for a number of years... I suspect the combination of in-room and mobile workers is the key selling point around these products. Zoom have managed to tap that market very successfully while Google still struggle with selling their solution (despite it being very effective) - they seem to fail at making people aware it even exists.
Anyone deployed both? What has the experience been? Pain points of deploying / operating sizeable fleets of either product?
Hangouts suffers from the same thing that plagues every google product except for search: complicated interfaces made by warring teams of designers battling each other for a promotion. Nothing is ever fixed or improved, new UI flows are stapled in when someone needs to prove themselves to move up the corporate ladder. Vestiges of old flows remain to trip up unsuspecting users.
Always get anmoyed to see the crappy stock background image being so distracting, while using most of the screen real estate.
Same thing for the ambient mode on chromecast, doesnt even support suspend, so you either have to stare at a blindingly bright screen at night, or manually turn it off when your done with the tv.
I run on Linux currently and Macbooks previously. I've run into problems almost every time I tried a meeting in Google hangouts (which to be fair has not been often).
Zoom just works across Windows, Mac, and Linux. Problems with meetings are very rare. My previous employer VMware moved from Webex and GotoMeeting to Zoom. It added up to 5 minutes of productive times to calls for engineering teams due the fact that things actually worked and people weren't futzing around with audio, etc.
So he was founding engineer of WebEx, build the team, build the product, but the product was not good enough because "of its older architecture, particularly a lack of usability, reliability, and video quality" !?! Wasn't that his responsibility as VP of WebEx ?
Once Cisco bought, it sounds like a lot of control was removed from his hands? New company (Cisco) didn't want to invest in what they thought was a mature product that serviced the market well enough?
I'm sorry you were downvoted for an interesting remark. It resonates with me that sometimes you are stuck within a structure that was created by you and need to completely change environment to be able to achieve new goals. Quite interesting point here.
I wonder how many other products in the enterprise space could be built by startups, by simply doing a much, much better job than incumbents, despite incumbent moats and lock-in. On the other hand, there are also examples of poor products that attempted to "solve" things like word processing better than MS Word or Google Docs and yet are simply much worse products than the incumbents.
I think in the video conferencing space, all existing solutions were simply bad. Video conferencing has been bad everywhere I have worked and we just shrug our shoulders and joke that someone first needs to build strong AI, and only then will video conferencing be solved. Zoom decided to do something about it top-to-bottom, end-to-end. Very inspiring founder and company.
Technically true that Meet works in Firefox, but in Firefox Developer Edition at least, the participants sidebar and controls on top of the video layer flicker incessantly during a call making for an unusable experience. I switch to Chrome for Meets daily because of this.
> Zoom is interesting. They don't really seem to have done anything particularly novel, they just made a product that works better than the competition.
Isn't https://dialpad.com in the same category? I find their products to be on-par with zoom. There cannot be no competent players in the market, surely?
Why pay for zoom and slack? Is something lacking from https://zoom.us/feature/messaging vis-à-vis slack ? Easy 'bot integration perhaps (slack certainly have a lot of integrations out of the box)?
Slack has the stickiness / lock-in that I think Zoom may lack (at least for the video part). We have years of history in Slack that we wouldn't really want to lose moving to an alternative. We do also make fairly heavy use of integrations. Trialling and switching to an alternative would be a much bigger investment and less incremental than starting to use Zoom for video calls was, even for a relatively small startup like us.
They may also have a bit of a marketing problem. I was vaguely aware they had some chat functionality but didn't realize it was as feature competitive with Slack as it appears on that page.
Thanks for the replies;I guess there aren't any obvious reasons to use both (unless one really likes slack;I'm not sure that I do, although slack is bearable through wee-slack / weechat plugin).
I am a little confused about the pricing model for zoom;it looks like it's roughly one "host" pr team lead + extra money for "rooms"? And/or one host pr team member if you want full flexibility?
I think most people start with Slack and it becomes ingrained, then they outgrow Hangouts / Meet or try Zoom and realize it's less laggy and a better experience for video overall. I've never heard of their chat app before now.
You think they don’t have a dedicated team just to try to build moat? That’s the whole challenge of a highly visible company like this, build moat, high switching costs etc
Agreed- we recently switched from WebEx to Zoom at work and we also use Slack as well. Zoom is forsure the superior product when it comes to virtual meetings.
I'm on a remote team as well that primarily uses Webex. It has kinda been the gold standard for me. Lately the audio has been declining and we started to use the Slack calls more often, which have been fantastic especially with the drawing tool. Other than drawing, voice, or screenshare is there something Zoom does that has made remote work easier? Or are you referring to better in terms of reliability and usability?
90% of Webex calls I've been on for some reason didn't allow using computer audio. I couldn't even tell if it's disabled or somehow broken. That makes it hard to use good headphones. I usually ended up calling the webex phone number via hangouts, so that I can use a real headset. However, in a way it doesn't really matter because it's hard for other participants to use good audio equipment as well and so everyone else is using some echoey conference room speakerphone or worse put their phones on speakerphone. Zoom treats computer audio like a first class citizen and I've typically found that 80-100% of participants call in via that and end up using a good Sennheiser headset or similar. That makes for a so much better experience.
Everytime I am on some damn webex with people yelling into their conference room speakerphones, I just want to hang up.
By "works better" I mean that it largely implements all the same features of other competing video conferencing products but does them better / more reliably / with better usability. "It just works."
Compared to Slack we have fewer problems with people dropping out of calls or losing audio or video and audio and video quality are generally better. Screen sharing is better quality and less buggy and let's you share individual windows. For calls with people outside the team we have fewer problems connecting than with Skype or Google Hangouts. It handles people calling in by phone or from mobile devices with poor connections more robustly. Overall no real revolutionary features, just consistently good execution.
In addition to everything already mentioned, Zoom has great screen sharing quality and very, very importantly, is the only solution that supports Linux with a native client, which means proper screen sharing and much more.
Linux desktop adoption may not be great, but many good software engineers use it for work. In our team it's hard to find a windows laptop. Zoom is the only software that works for us.
My company pays for Slack and despite have 1Gbps fiber I constantly have issues hearing via Slack. It was so bad the entire company switched to Zoom just so the remote people could participate properly.
Webex.... I’d rather use Skype. We replaced webex at work with Google Meet. No longer have the issues we had with webex like people not being able to join or not hear audio.
Besides finding it more reliable in general than alternatives I've tried, Zoom is the only conference software I've found that allows me to share my screen on Linux.
Can echo this... Have been running a linux desktop for 10+ years and google meet is one of the few systems I don't have issues with.
The drawback is that Chrome is a requirement for some functionality which kind of sucks. But I think that's particularly because they have been in the driving seat with webrtc for years and have implemented things in Chrome to test the water before proposing it as part of the standards.
Check out Serge Lachapelle who has been leading Google's engineering efforts for years...
Slack is browser based, even the "native" client option. This means your colleague cannot choose which screen to share in Linux, so if he has two screens he has to go at great lengths to make it work properly (either share both or share a specific app instead of a screen).
Also Slack's screen sharing quality is terrible and ofter you cannot read letters in the remote end's screen. Zoom's codec is much more crisp with text and graphics, almost like a native app running in your computer instead of video.
The Slack screen sharing is so laggy it's painful. Which is weird because pre-acquisition Screenhero was incredible. It was the best screen sharing software I'd ever used.
I've used many different screensharing / video conferencing solutions.
I especially miss the one called Screen Hero - purchased and killed by Slack.
I must admit though Zoom has been great, and everyone on the team loves it. They also give you a great try-before-you-buy setup (unlimited 40 minute meetings)
> Zoom is interesting. They don't really seem to have done anything particularly novel, they just made a product that works better than the competition
I'm VERY convinced that listening to your customers and doing it WELL is a massive competitive advantage.
I've been building an app for the last six months and have been listening to our customers pretty aggressively:
Part of it has been to build in tools that allow me to manage all the information and to collect as much as possible.
Analytics on everything the user does (but respect their privacy). We're interested in exceptions and things like that...
One our big wins has been to integrate net promoter score and to build out a few tools to analyze the data.
Cohort analysis is also key.
I've been really focused on this and we're gaining about 1% additional retention per week over the last 2 months so this has been great to see it slowly climbing.
I'm nobody compared to the person on the story, but I was refused a US visa that I needed to speak at a tech conference.
The US visa system needs to get out there and see what people are doing. I'm a full-time freelancer and I am 27. The officer said that I don't have ties to my home country and that I'm still young...
Damn right I am! I traveled to over 30coubtries so far and had spoken at various tech conferences. There is a lot of travel history on the passport. Unless you got to this outdated image of a person that's risk-free, you won't make it to US. It doesn't matter if your talk is selected among 700 others, you just won't make it. Bye.
About US B1/B2 visas. A startup I knew was selected into Blackbox connect. 3 people appeared for an interview, only 1 was selected. The rejected ones reappeared, 1 was selected from them. The final one decided not to go.
Recently had something similar happen to me with an Australian visa. I've been to the US before, and a few other countries too.
Applied for a short-stay specialist visa because a client of mine wanted services in-person after I'd built their product. That's exactly what the visa was designed for. I provided evidence of funds, a letter from the client, travel history, everything. I was given BS reasons about:
- Not having ties to my home country. My entire family lives here.
- Not owning property in my home country. I do, they never asked on the application for proof, and so none was provided.
- The economic disparity between my own country and Australia being too high. I showed my current employment letters, and proof that I run a successful company, in total making significantly more money than the average Australian in my position.
My point is: the decision to grant or deny your visa is made by a single person. A cog in a great bureaucratic system that is empowered by their sovereign national law to judge your application and make an informed decision. But ultimately, the system is designed and operated by primates that learnt to strike two rocks together and make fire a few millenniums ago. They're highly flawed, there's no need to take it to heart. Just optimize your application in accordance with their laws, and reapply if you really want to go. You'll get in eventually. It took this dude 8 freaking tries, but even he managed.
Don't be discouraged. Re-apply. The process depends on the interview guy. He'll get to decide your fate. His decision will depend on whether he likes you or not. Probably based on appearance.
This right here, I applied two times, first time I just knew the interviewer wont approve my visa when I saw the way he looked at me, I had a feeling I was bothering him, he straight out said no without even checking my papers, he only checked them when I told him I've plenty of "evidence" and supporting documents and he just took a glance, ignoring everything.
Second time I got a really nice interviewer but I applied at a out of country consulate (you've to apply to a US consulate from your home country) which I didn't knew at a time, he said he would've approved my application and seemed visibly sad that he couldn't help me.
I stopped trying. I've been a co-founder of a US company for more than 10 years, 50+ employees, I never been to US.
> I stopped trying. I've been a co-founder of a US company for more than 10 years, 50+ employees, I never been to US.
That's completely unacceptable. You can still look at the bright side (you were allowed to run a company which allowed you to access US wealth, many countries restrict that to their own citizens).
I'd advise to socialize within the consulate/embassy. Here, they have lots of events. Try to make friends with the people working there and you'll make a reputation. Don't give up.
> That's completely unacceptable. You can still look at the bright side (you were allowed to run a company which allowed you to access US wealth, many countries restrict that to their own citizens).
Indeed, that's a positive way to look at it. I'll probably try again soon, now beside the US company I've a company in my own country, along side multiple properties (car/house) that should be undoubtable ties to the country.
> I'd advise to socialize within the consulate/embassy. Here, they have lots of events. Try to make friends with the people working there and you'll make a reputation. Don't give up.
> Indeed, that's a positive way to look at it. I'll probably try again soon, now beside the US company I've a company in my own country, along side multiple properties (car/house) that should be undoubtable ties to the country.
The embassy where I applied, they don't ask for any papers. It seems the same for the guys in here. So I'll just give it another shot.
Sorry that my home country is doing this kind of thing too. I'm familiar with the US Visa system because i've gone through the process a few times. But it makes me sad that Australia is playing silly games too.
Refused visas for conference presentations is kind of an old story; I can recall incidents from back in the Bush II era. My guess (uninformed) is that the concerns are about the distinction between visiting for tourism and coming here to perform work, especially since the advice I've seen given at some events is to avoid any mention of the conference when entering the country.
It's also common in the world of dance workshops, where international teachers tour several countries, teaching every weekend in another town. They usually just claim to be tourists, even though they're clearly travelling for business.
I'm still waiting for the big splash when one or two get investigated. It must happen at some point, their teaching is heavily advertised on workshop web sites. Their presence is the main feature of those workshops, after all.
That's not smart. As a non-citizen you don't have much rights. If you get caught lying, you'll be barred from entering the US and you'll probably need to resolve to court.
How they can find out:
- Booking of where you are staying.
- Going through your phone/laptop.
- Paper/Flyers for your company or the event.
- A big event is happening and you are kinda fitting the bill for it.
It also the advice that I have heard but it is still a bad advice. Another advice: don’t tell them you have food so that you avoid going through a baggage search.
Here is the downside: if a dog catches you, you’ll get a fine. You could avoid that just by declaring any food you have.
I'm confident you're right. My point was just to reinforce the argument that CBP has a longstanding concern about whether visitors to the US are here to conduct business.
The US visa system is very arbitrary. I got a 10 year B1/B2 just by showing up and handing my passport. No questions (a part from why are you going and where did you travel) and no documents asked. The whole interview was probably 30 seconds. The process didn't take much time but there are not many applicants in my city. I got my passport back in a couple days.
At the airport, I helped translating for a French national. He was sent to secondary. Then the agent just stamped my passport and waved me in.
Yes, it sometimes depends on the agent that's interviewing you. I've heard so many stories of this kind. Try again but try not to get interviewed by the the same person.
Yeah, US visa is so damn weird and backwards. I had a presentation and poster at a conference in the US.
I get that many Indians get settled in the US, but in my case the interviewer said he needed concrete proof that I would be returning back, despite having my employer's letter, bank documents, my Tax returns etc.
It essentially boils down to your willingness to return back to the home country and apparently I didn't demonstrate that. I just told him that I'd be rather homeless in my home country than be in a foreign land, while showing my return tickets.
He laughed and then he granted the visa.
It seems that the interviewer's mood matters the most tbh.
Did you have a return ticket scheduled and could prove you had the necessary funds to sustain yourself? From what I have read/watched those in combination with the "ties to home country" check are the biggest red flags for CBP.
Not the OP but it's likely the question he is referring to happened at the consulate not at the port of entry. Buying a ticket without a visa (as I did once) was pretentious and therefore my visa was denied
Unfortunately buying a ticket and booking a hotel is necessary in most cases. At the embassy for your first short-term visa and for border control.
I'm a nobody from a 3rd-world country and have always done that with 100% success rate over a decade. I keep visiting the US regularly and I always have a way to somehow ensure I intend to leave the country. The questions at the border keep getting shorter and quicker every time.
Unfortunately, that's how it works, in my experience.
All countries require some confirmation you can pay for the stay and will get out.
Some countries ask for a return ticket and hotel stay - it indicates that the traveller has some means of paying those amounts.
US does not need those before visa issue.
In many cases, people cancel the flight ticket after visa issue; and definitely book a more suitable hotel.
Anecdote time: Interpretation of the guidance is upto the visa issuing officer. Normally they want a ticket getting out of the destination country. But in one case the officer wanted me to 'return' back to the country where I was starting the travel from.
So I had to show him the ticket for the third leg of the flight: A -> B -> C -> A
Sometimes it's even required. I traveled to Nigeria from the US (on a British passport) and needed to turn up to the visa appointment with proof of flights and accommodation.
Every student who comes to F1 needs to lie that they have no intention of staying back in USA. They can't say I will try to get a job and H1B. But that is what they do.
We don't know if it is similar. Zoom CEO was probably applying for an investor immigrant visa which are complicated and could be rejected for many reasons until the proper documents have been provided.
Shamir sent in a visa request and never heard back from USCIS.
Are you using chrome and also have either uBO-Extra or Nano Defender installed? If not it's most likely the ads are being served by Instart Logic. [1] [2]
> What is the trade-off for not being included by default in the main extension, CPU?
gorhill's (developer of uBO) explanation from[1] below:
> uBO-Extra is needed to deal with IL stuff because the IL inline script appears at the top of the served HTML page -- before any other secondary resource-pulling tag.
uBO-Extra injects its content script declaratively, i.e. on every page, hence it will always run before IL stuff.
The root cause of why it is needed is because of a bug with web socket implementation in chrome.[2]
Additional info on why both are needed (& why for chrome but not firefox) in some reddit threads.[3][4][5]
Yes, probably, however, an O Visa requires the recipient to be working in the USA upon receipt, it's not meant for tourism for business or pleasure (including tech conferences).
Good for him. However, the wind has already turned eastward. Given the insanity in US immigration policy and xenophobia among the public, talents are going back to their original countries in flocks. Check out top 20 most valuable startups in the world - used to be 100% American and now half[ref] are foreign owned.
Looking at the listing you provided, the wide majority of the non-American unicorn startups are from China, with some scattered startups in other eastern countries. So I think the shift in startup-location speaks more about China's success in bringing back talent (especially compared to India) versus America's lack of a grip on talent.
The trend is more important. US has only 32% of the world's unicorns. Even if you remove all the Chinese companies, US is 58% of the total, far less than the number a few years back. India and Southeast Asia are especially doing well if you put the size of their economies into consideration. In five years, these unicorns could grow into nowadays Amazon and Facebook, and the same holds true for the shift in the job market.
The reason half of them are foreign owned is because all of them are Chinese whom are later in their tech development cycle. Almost all those companies in the US have already went public.
Agreed on the master's degree bit. A lot of them are just for generating money for the uni. A bit anecdotal, but most east and south asians use it as a platform to get a job in the US.
Hm - do you have a master's degree yourself? I've seen lots of people (here and elsewhere) who suggest that a bachelor's degree also doesn't indicate skill and is also therefore useless. It seems as if everybody assumes that whatever level of education they themselves have attained is the cutoff for "usefulness" and any level beyond that is just a waste of time.
I'd agree that bachelor's are also basically useless - all it tells you is that the candidate can put up with four years of bullshit and still jump through hoops at the end.
A masters degree tells you they're willing to put up with six.
I might have just had a bad experience - at my uni the CS Masters program was a pretty blatant cash grab, taking advantage of the visa requirements to pull in Indian students. That would have been fine, but the standards were super low, the students couldn't code at all (by year 5, at least a bachelor's CS student should know how to write a for loop), and we had a major cheating scandal every year.
I'm not saying I don't want those Indian students here - I absolutely do - I just wish we weren't creating these nonsense processes and making people contort their lives to fit them.
The story of being denied a visa appears to be from years/decades ago. He attended Stanford Business School around 2006. He also worked at Cisco and WebEx for 10+ years. Heck, Zoom headquarters are in California. Way to spin an article about a great achievement, Bloomberg.
Google's constant shifting finally lead us to abandon it in favor of Zoom. We used Google Hangouts, then Meet for 3 years. Finally switched to Zoom and happy. It always seems to be 5% better (our marketing guy always used it for external meetings).
Regardless of the selection criteria, any screening will deter "desirable" people. It will not deter those who choose to circumvent that process, especially those who immigrate "illegaly" or "irregularly", like refugees in Europe, who are not eligible for asylum, but can't be deported for all sorts of perfectly valid reasons.
In the end, and we see this all over the world, such screening leads to adverse effects even considering the intended screening criteria.
At the very least immigrants would need to fill out a ton of paperwork and endure multiple bureaucratic round trips, assuming the destination country even has the capacity to deal with all applications.
Then the message behind a detailed screening is: "We consider you as an extreme risk, which is only worth taking if we can exploit you enough."
You can't bring your spouse or family, at least not without significant hurdles, and if that process is too easy, screening for the original criteria is undermined.
Considering restrictive immigration policies against your people, you won't be able to find a supportive immigrant community and are totally dependent on fitting in with the locals, and the locals letting you fit in. Just ask Westerners in Japan.
For any kind of screening to work, you also need a ruthless border control and immigration enforcement, including mass deportations if neccessary. An effective enforcement has to - at the least - "inconvenience" anybody looking remotely like an immigrant, before being shown any paperwork.
Many of these factors don't play out in many countries, but mostly with the result that the screening doesn't really work that well. The US and Canada have rather big populations of undocumented immigrants, despite having detailed and sophisticated "screening" processes.
Australia has an order of magnitude fewer people, has a different regulatory environment (e.g. their counter-terrorism bill that lets them coerce engineers into cooperation, and in the wake of the NZ shooting they're proposing to imprison website operates that don't take down content quickly enough - and apparently 90 minutes isn't quick enough) and is located in completely different region of the world. There are plenty of reasons why one would want to move to the US but not Australia.
[0], [1],[2], etc. could be reasonably see as part of the Australian government's relative unfriendliness to tech companies and privacy laws at least compared to other countries. Whether the australian government is in fact friendly or not is immaterial if capital investment and companies do not want to put a large amount of money/effort into the Australian tech scene.
Australia has little tech industry to speak of and software engineers aren't terribly respected or well-compensated. The US is a much better bet for technologists.
He was probably going for an investors visa which is a permanent immigrant visa not a short term visa. Gotta get the paperwork right. And for such visas there is a lot of paperwork.
Eh, some people will be tempted, knowing that their children will get a decent education that doesn't cost the world, healthcare, gun violence, etc. But you're right, we'll likely never convince the people who have never experienced another culture and who value money over everything. Edit: Even if we did pay more, the language barrier is still pretty high.
The cost of college I'll give you that. Pretty much very tech company gives employees and their family healthcare coverage as part of the benefits. As for gun violence, while the US definitely has higher rates of mass shootings, the vast majority of Americans will never experience any of that first hand, especially in high income tech cities like SF and NYC.
Even with (overpriced) health insurance in the US, health costs are ridiculously expensive when compared to Europe or other countries with functioning public healthcare.
Even people in the richer end of the middle-class bracket have issues. It's just that healthcare isn't a pressing concern for most people's decision making, until it's an emergency.
The above list makes sense for people outside of tech. People in tech have most of the above in US. Some countries in Europe have pretty competitive comp like Switzerland (Denmark, Norway have decent comp too but its getting destroyed by high taxes)
Curious about the comment on Norway taxes. They are high but the benefits offered are very good for citizens. Education and healthcare being top benefits. Also the culture contributes a lot to viewing it more positively from what I understand.
I don't work in Norway but I've been researching it as a possible location to migrate to in the future. Curious if there are any citizens from Norway who'd be interested in adding information to this though.
I think the situation is very skewed when comparing tech sector because of how competitive things are in US the comp packages can be far beyond of what you get as "free" gov. services in a place like Norway.
I look at remote job ads and I find the US, Canada at times the UK willing to hire internationally. Where Denmark, Norway, Germany seem hostile to non-locals.
To me those are key signals of a competitive market. It doesn't feel like Europe has a shortage of talent at the moment.
> we'll likely never convince the people who have never experienced another culture and who value money over everything
You certainly won't convince many people currently living the USA by throwing veiled insults at them for not considering moving somewhere else, that's for sure.
With Article 13, GDPR, VATMOSS and other things I heard complained about from small businesses, I wouldn't want to start a company in the EU. At most I would hire employees there to work remotely.
I see you haven't actually tried to do VATMOSS or GDPR compliance. It might be easy to register a corp, but you're walking into a liability minefield unless you do it right, which will be a few staff worth of people, or hope you're ignored & small enough to never be enforced upon.
And in the USA, you only pay sales tax for customers inside your state, unless you have something called a 'nexus' within the other states, which is simpler to avoid by staying put in a single state.
I don't even understand where it came from. At work we've cycled through various audio/video conference providers over the last 10 years. All of a sudden in the last 6 months we're fully in bed with zoom, IT has zoom-ified 5 of the conference rooms and it seems most/all of our customers and contractors are hosting zoom meetings as well.
I don't quite understand where the previous software we've tried fell short (I hardly host web conference meetings) but it does seem pretty painless to fumble through.
Ha - I had the same thought recently... We agreed about a year ago to all just use Zoom in our mostly remote organization to get off of the ~5 other free solutions we were using. I saw the latest invoice and it stopped my breath a bit, "We're spending how much on Zoom now?" But every one of our vendors uses it, all of our contractors do, it's just everywhere. (Granted this is all in SV so whatever that's worth)
There are lot of good options and even open source solutions for video conferencing. The one thing I like about Zoom is that they have a Linux package, but their hardware acceleration support on Linux is crap.
I second this. My Linux laptop drops to seconds-per-frame when I share my screen on zoom. It's gotten to the point where I have other co-workers pull up my presentations on their Macs.
They have some weird tiers where the max length of a web meeting is something silly like 40 mins. Ok laugh, why do people need more than 40 mins, but this makes that tier useless because any serious company is going to have people who need to meet over 40 mins. So it’s a tier of service which exists for the sole purpose of upsell.
I'm curious, why would a Chinese citizen feel compelled to apply for a Visa 8 times, to start a business? Surely it is far easier and faster for a Chinese citizen to start a company in China? I would imagine that capital would be almost as easily available, as would labor. As for market access, surely just opening branch office in Silicon Valley would have served the purpose? If high quality American engineers, were needed, that too could be achieved by opening a branch office. Why go to all the trouble of emigrating from China? Am I missing significant context here, was the visa granted the 8th time an investor visa?
I have a sense (perhaps unfounded) that it's difficult for Chinese tech companies to make inroads outside of China. This is because of the Chinese government's role as a kingmaker within its own tech industry, and because of concerns of IP theft, surveillance, and state-backed hacking from the Chinese government. Big firms outside of China do not trust Chinese software firms with their data. As a big time software company in China, you can only really sell to Chinese buyers, with a few rare exceptions.
On the other hand, a US company can operate essentially anywhere but China. Maybe he thought he had a better shot on his own merits outside China. Maybe he didn't want to get in bed with the party, or maybe he was just a guy who was enamored of the dream that was Silicon Valley in the 80s through the 00s.
That was in the 90s. He was rejected visa b/c he didn't speak any English. Almost all VC and Internet businesses located in the US at that time. Things are dramatically different now.
You're not the only one who was confused... Apparently there is yet another Zoom company -- the one whose ticker symbol happens to be "ZOOM" -- who has seen an increase of 54,000% in share price since March, purely on news of Zoom Video's IPO.
Zoom deserves the huge pop for adding the "touch up face" feature to the desktop app. I can look fresh for meetings even if I'm running haggard from taking care of an infant. :)
Seriously though, that's one of those small features that shows real love and care was put in the product. I was skeptical of Zoom when I switched to it but it quickly became my favorite video conferencing software by a mile.
the problem with proprietary tools like Zoom (and Skype, hell even Slack) is that people are forced to use them when working for remote companies. At least if they want to keep that job. But ofc you're still using your own hardware to run this shit on to do your job. I suppose this is better than the atrocious idea of using WhatsApp as team collaboration tool on your personal phone.
appear.in, does what it says on the tin, no fucking about. Played about with zoom but it was a multi-minute ballache of signup steps and a screen sharing plugin the doesn't work properly on i3wm, I can't even begin to imagine the others if Zoom was mean't to be straight forward.
Alternate opinion, I work at Microsoft as an Engineer. We (obviously) use Teams for meetings. For one thing, it integrates well with the MS/Office ecosystem (sharing videos is easier etc). But the video conferencing system is really poor. Meetings sometime start with one party not able to hear properly, the other one. Usually, we spend the first 5 minutes saying "Am I audible?", "Can you hear me?" and their variants with that a feeling of deja-vu hits me. Usually, there aren't issues once the meeting starts (not with the software at-least). But the starting a meeting is certainly painful. SfB is a whole different ball of wax.
I have never used Zoom but I understand why someone would be willing to pay for a video-conferencing solution that works. Think about your hundreds of thousands of employees losing 5-10 meetings of all their meetings, everyday. That is the problem Zoom must be solving.
Best zoom feature is the magic screen share. Just being in the physical room I can hit share screen and it will find the right meeting. I think it uses inaudible sound to identify them right room.
A bit offtopic: what happened to gotomeeting? I recall that 10 years it was a go-to software for conference calls / distributed meetings / etc. Now it's mostly zoom.
Maybe its just the tone of the headline but it seems antiquated. Are we implying billionaires can only come from america? Or if america blesses their presence?
I could not participate in an internship at Google a few years ago because my US Visa was refused, seemingly because the consulate clerk was having a bad day.
what about polycom? the one used to have more markshare before Cisco purchases its major competitor Tanderberg, it seems zoom does not build its own hardware, the legacy players like polycom/tanderberg(cisco) still do, maybe it's the time to use off-the-shelf hardware with zoom software these days.
POTUS is FOR high-skilled immigration, despite the "xenophobia" claims in this thread. Republicans in general support visas for high-skilled immigration while Democrats support more broad-based immigration.
"Yuan, Zoom’s chief executive officer, joins Alphabet Inc.’s Sergey Brin, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang and Tesla Inc.’s Elon Musk as immigrants who became billionaires after helping create Silicon Valley companies.
"
Above, are all legal immigrants that applied (themselves, or their parents) -- for visa via a US embassy (sometimes the US embassy is not in their native country, happened to many immigrants from former USSR)
They did not cross the US border illegally, and then demanded a refugee status, while avoiding the court system to prove their claim.
> They did not cross the US border illegally, and then demanded a refugee status, while avoiding the court system to prove their claim.
The reason refugee applicants are recently crossing illegally is because the Administration has actively prevented lawful refugee application at ports of entry, going so far as to close ports of entry to prevent it.
And they aren't avoiding the application process, they are actively seeking it out and being prevented from pursuing it and punished for doing so.
No new tactics there. Australia has been doing that for a long time. Then when you are so frustrated with being stonewalled and come by boat (our version of crossing the desert from Mexico) and claim asylum you get locked up on an island for 10 years whilst they try to come up with any excuse to not let you in.
However, if you have a million+ dollars you can waltz straight in no questions asked. "Here's a passport, why not buy a house whilst you're here? We don't ask questions about your criminal or corrupt past in your country of origin."
Not recent at all. The United States has received waves of refugees for centuries. French from Haiti. Basques re-settled in Idaho. Hmong that were re-settled in Wisconsin. Somalis resettled in Minneapolis. There are dozens and dozens of other examples.
What sets a lot of those refugee groups apart is that they were fleeing war and persecution. They weren't economic refugees.
The illegal crossings by refugee applicants are recent.
> The United States has received waves of refugees for centuries.
Yes, but under the modern legal asylum regime, there has been no reason for those seeking refugee status to make border crossings other than at regular ports of entry, because there is a legal process for them to apply for asylum at such ports and it's in their interest to follow it. Until, that is, the government actively prevented them from doing so, which is a recent phenomenon.
> What sets a lot of those refugee groups apart is that they were fleeing war and persecution
The recent waves are also fleeing war and persecution (as in many of the previous waves, war that the US is directly involved in, this time, I signficant part, the Central American drug wars, which—unlike the largely metaphorical war on drugs in the US—are actual wars.)
> the Administration has actively prevented lawful refugee application at ports of entry, going so far as to close ports of entry to prevent it.
and there's a valid reason for doing so. sorry, but there is no given right to enter any country at any time because you so choose. there is demonstrated problem at the southern border and ports of entry so the government is taking steps to manage the situation.
I find this emphasis strange. "Illegal" immigration is a relatively recent invention as far as US policy is concerned with several notable lapses for racist policies. Who knows how many potential Eric Yuans we are turning away or discouraging from coming to the United States?
Being contrarian, I would say, that he should be thankful to US immigration authorities. If they issues a visa first time he applied he might have become just an SDE at Amazon.
Hmmm, I think you're into something aside from the shitty jab. Tenacity definitely plays an important role in success. This person had to deal with a system that judged him unfairly and that probably helped him to built resilience for other situations where his ventures received the same scrutiny and rejections.
Zoom is interesting. They don't really seem to have done anything particularly novel, they just made a product that works better than the competition. We use Zoom heavily on our fully remote team because it works better than free alternatives like Skype and paid alternatives that we're already paying for like Slack.
It's quite refreshing to see a tech company succeed by just making a better product and expecting that people will be willing to pay for it. They were able to grow so quickly in part because it was relatively easy for people to switch from other video conferencing solutions however. I'm not sure they will be able to build much competitive advantage other than just continuing to be a better product though. If Slack worked just as well we'd happily use it and stop paying for an additional service.
MBA ideas of an economic moat - lock-in, stickiness, etc - are "dark patterns".
But there are "light patterns": you can stay ahead in a technological race if you keep running; sales are easier if you are known as better; you get more informative feedback if you have more users, etc.
> MBA ideas of an economic moat - lock-in, stickiness, etc - are "dark patterns".
Dramatic statement. I am an SWE and an MBA. There are merits to thinking about every aspect of the business. Tech/Product is just one - an important one in a Saas company, but still just one.
> But there are "light patterns": you can stay ahead in a technological race if you keep running;
This is another way of saying "build it and they will come". You have to combine good business/economic sense with great products.
Apple didn't just get to be Apple by staying ahead in a technological race. Arguably, they are behind a lot of other phone makers in specs. But they have a lot of people thinking about ecosystems, lock-in, marketing and other "MBA" concepts.
> There are merits to thinking about every aspect of the business.
This isn't a refutation of the parent - all you've said is that sometimes those dark patterns are worth exploiting. I'm rarely one for defending an absolute, so I think it would be far more interesting to say why it is worth using a 'dark pattern'. So far, it just feels like you're deflecting through masking the issue.
"Dark pattern" has a more specific meaning than it seems like you're using here - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_pattern
"dark pattern" was a phrase in use before that neologism.
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q="...
" all you've said is that sometimes those dark patterns are worth exploiting"
Those are not 'dark patterns', moreover, the notion of building a quality experience is not beyond MBA's either.
Apple's core strength has been product design sensibility.
Their ability to exploit lock-in, to market well, to build an ecosystem have all derived from that original strength.
> But they have a lot of people thinking about ecosystems, lock-in, marketing and other "MBA" concepts.
People need to think about creating something of value that people want to use before they worry about locking them into an ecosystem.
Corollary is that lock in based only on inertia does not last top long. You have to be at least good enough for your core.
As in, nothing vastly better has to be present.
I always thought the economic moat was supposed to be some feat of R&D that is hard to replicate.
Like figuring out how to make an AI that functions as a human-quality call center representative. It's not that there's a network effect or something, just that noone else can figure out how to do it without a tremendous investment.
That's more light than dark, right?
A 'moat' simply refers to the ability of certain firms (over the long-term) to sustain or increase profitability and/or market share within a given industry. For most firms, profit and market share erode over the long-term.
The discussion of light vs dark patterns in this thread is more confusing than clarifying. Moats come in all shapes and sizes because a moat can pretty much be anything that satisfies the definition above; which doesn't preclude moats from frequently being of a certain kind(s).
Yes, delivering a better product is light. Delivering an equal or worse product but forcing your customers to pay you anyways is dark.
What about delivering a product in a way that makes it impossible for anyone else to attempt to deliver a better product than you?
For example, there might be a smart search algorithm researcher who could make a better search engine than Google, if given access to their data. But without the data, it doesn’t matter how good their algorithms are, the search will be worse.
Googles moat is so good that it precludes the very existence of viable competing services. Is this a dark moat or a light moat?
> Googles moat is so good that it precludes the very existence of viable competing services.
So how do you explain the existence of viable competing services? Plenty of people have switched to DuckDuckGo and while it still has a tiny fraction of Google's market share it appears to be viable and growing. Microsoft still operates Bing. Again its market share is tiny but at this point I imagine they continue to operate it because it is somewhat viable and not just for strategic reasons.
I agree with the general sentiment of your statement. Isn’t it ironic that the strongest defenders of capitalism are the ones which are trying the hardest (and often succeeding) to monopolize (a niche of) the market?
While I would not argue that there are never arrangements in which centralization and support of monopolies may make some sense (e.g., to speed up coordination or make it easier to enforce regulations), there should probably be more consideration about the societal down sides of “economic moats”.
One interesting example for the economic and societal benefits of this “collaborative” kind of thinking could probabaly be the dutch health care provider buurtzog, which has been scaling like crazy but also seems to have been engaging with a variety of partners to actually help other people understand and replicate what makes buurtzog work. I bet that exchange was fruitful and interesting to both sides (there is always more to learn) but also premised on the idea that the primary goal of any business should be to help solve a problem and not to (primarily) defend its own existance. Encouragingly, both things generally correlate if done in the “right” order but it’s also hard work.
https://www.buurtzorg.com/collaboration/our-partners/
P.S. I know I am somewhat simplyfing here as there are certainly different phases in a businesses lifecycle where different trade-offs may be applicable. I am just commenting on a general mindset which seems to be pretty prevalent.
Or to paraphrase while the “dark patterns” require moment of inspiration creativeness, being better most of the times rehires diligence and discipline which are much lower hanging fruits.
But it’s also a real danger to just thinking in absolutes like “the best product always wins” are also supremely context dependant. For every example there is always a counter example
This nonsensical hate on MBAs has to got to stop. It's just so shallow.
There's nothing nonsensical or shallow about it. MBAs have a well-earned reputation for focusing on profit at the expense of quality and are responsible for the death of many of the products we once loved. Rather than insult people, why not be the MBA who changes things for the better?
I already am.
But it's not--MBA is groupthink. The biz schools turn out cookie-cutter professionals who are of average intelligence and just aren't very dynamic people and the further down the school rating you go, the more cookie-cutter and awful it is.
That some MBAs go on to innovate is only because they buck the indoctrination.
Am so tired of factory-farm management!
Dark pattern is just a tools, it is especially useful when the product is not that good.
Sometime as a sales or marketing person you are not really in control of the product, in these case these "dark" pattern are useful.
Once you install Zoom into all your workplace conference rooms (aka Zoom rooms), you're pretty much locked in. It's also pretty great from a work angle. We have remote workers who can Zoom into any meeting and it's seamless.
We had all Cisco/Tandberg rooms for years, then evaluated BlueJeans and HighFive, then trialed Zoom and Zoom won on the merits, even displacing existing deployed rooms with other tech.
So, sure, we’re not about to rip out our Zoom Rooms, but that’s because of the “Zoom” part not the “Room” part of that phrase.
We're a fully remote team so I haven't used Zoom rooms, that does seem like something of a moat if widely deployed in a company.
On the bright side, room based deployments can also happen with open standards like H.323 and SIP.
https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/categories/200110033-H-323-...
I’ve seen multiple large companies swap out their video conferencing system to whatever was the vc system du jour. (Vidyo, Highfive, Bluejeans, WebEx, Zoom) I can’t comment on how expensive it is, but it is a thing that happens fairly regularly.
Hmm, how does it work?
If you have general-purpose hardware (e.g. a raspberry pi hooked up to a TV camera and microphone) then it seems you shouldn't be locked in...
It's general purpose hardware; our rooms use an Intel NUC with USB camera/mic, and an iPad to control it. There's no lock in as long as you're switching to something else that uses standard stuff.
Many years ago I used a Telenor-connected Norwegian service which worked very, very well. I think the service was appear.in.
When I used Zoom for the first time recently I got a déja vù (hope the accents are right).
Silicon Valley indeed has the biggest drum, word about Zoom is spreading fast. But how many have heard of or used appear.in?
We used appear.in for a few months, and paid for a premium "room". It was nice to just give someone a URL (no client or extension required). It could be better now, but we had a lot of problems with call quality.
Used Appear.in at my current employer for a while. IIRC it was P2P, like Skype used to be, with really easy onboarding though a single URL. (No sign up required.)
But it didn't scale to more that 3 users. That may have changed since.
https://appearin.helpscoutdocs.com/article/225-about-appear-...
"The Freeplan can support up to 4 participants in a room, while the Pro plan supports up to 12 participants in a room at a time."
Déjà vu
> They don't really seem to have done anything particularly novel
This just shows a lack understanding. They did something extremely novel: actually make the software work the way humans need it to. HN trivializing anything it doesn't understand gets tiring.
Eric Yuan was the founding engineer of WebEx where he stayed for 14 years, even after the acquisition by Cisco.
He left Cisco to finish what he started at WebEx because he knew Cisco wasn't doing what needed to be done and it was clear that every other piece of video conferencing software out there was terrible too.
Talk to people who've evaluated the software in the market today and anyone who's tried all of the conferencing solutions will tell you that Zoom is head and shoulder above the rest, including Google Hangouts.
Here's a choice quote from an interview he gave:
"I got to this point in life by never giving up on my inspiration — which has always been to build a video communications solution that people will love. This has been a long-time passion of mine. I was born in mainland China. I first envisioned Zoom while I was a college student in China in the late ‘80s, and would take over 10-hour (each way) train rides to visit my girlfriend (now my wife). My desire for an easier way to see her face-to-face without the arduous travel became the impetus for my long path from student to entrepreneur. In 1997 I immigrated to San Jose, CA and secured a position as one of the founding engineers at a small start-up called Webex. I stayed with Webex for the next 14 years, and proudly grew the team I managed from 10 engineers to more than 800 worldwide, and contributed to revenue growth from $0 to more than $800M. In speaking with Webex customers, I realized that the solution suffered from some deep flaws due to its older architecture, particularly a lack of usability, reliability, and video quality. Simply put, it was hard to use and it didn’t work. I knew that Cisco needed to rebuild Webex from the ground up – from the back-end architecture to the user interface to the sales model. I told Cisco leadership, but they didn’t listen. I struck out on my own in 2011, and, fortunately, dozens of Webex’s most talented and visionary engineers soon joined me. Together we spent the next two years building Zoom 1.0, a unified video and web conferencing software that ran seamlessly across mobile, desktop devices, and conference room systems. Since then we’ve developed the product into the best video communications software in the world and built a global team of over 1,100 passionate people."
Full interview here: https://thriveglobal.com/stories/tips-from-the-top-one-on-on...
I didn't mean to understate the value of "just" executing better. That's exactly why I think Zoom is interesting. In tech I think people often overestimate the value of a novel idea and underestimate the value of consistently good execution. I don't think Zoom has succeeded through feature innovation but by implementing features better than the competition and making something that "just works". That doesn't mean I think their achievement is somehow less impressive or that they don't have a great product. Quite the opposite in fact.
I understood your meaning. Although I'm not sure what their tech looks like. It could very well be that they have invented many novel ways to maintain the level of quality that they do. If it was just UI that was better, I would say ya, nothing novel. But they also seem to serve up better and cleared streams than other software I have tried.
Fair! I mis-interpreted the spirit of your original comment.
I'm interesting in the claim regarding Zoom being head-and-shoulders above Google's product. Hangouts is certainly well past it's EOL but the Google Meet product (focused on the enterprise product) works very well and seamlessly integrates into the gsuite set of applications while also providing a great in-room experience.
I haven't personally used Zoom rooms (have connected to some via a laptop though). I have deployed and used Google Meet's in-room experience for a number of years... I suspect the combination of in-room and mobile workers is the key selling point around these products. Zoom have managed to tap that market very successfully while Google still struggle with selling their solution (despite it being very effective) - they seem to fail at making people aware it even exists.
Anyone deployed both? What has the experience been? Pain points of deploying / operating sizeable fleets of either product?
Hangouts suffers from the same thing that plagues every google product except for search: complicated interfaces made by warring teams of designers battling each other for a promotion. Nothing is ever fixed or improved, new UI flows are stapled in when someone needs to prove themselves to move up the corporate ladder. Vestiges of old flows remain to trip up unsuspecting users.
Always get anmoyed to see the crappy stock background image being so distracting, while using most of the screen real estate.
Same thing for the ambient mode on chromecast, doesnt even support suspend, so you either have to stare at a blindingly bright screen at night, or manually turn it off when your done with the tv.
I run on Linux currently and Macbooks previously. I've run into problems almost every time I tried a meeting in Google hangouts (which to be fair has not been often).
Zoom just works across Windows, Mac, and Linux. Problems with meetings are very rare. My previous employer VMware moved from Webex and GotoMeeting to Zoom. It added up to 5 minutes of productive times to calls for engineering teams due the fact that things actually worked and people weren't futzing around with audio, etc.
Try a Zoom call and a Meet for 5 minutes back-to-back. The difference in latency and quality is night and day.
I haven't used Zoom rooms but have used the Hangouts / Meet boxes a lot, and it's easy to see how the Zoom experience would translate.
Why invest in a product that might be “well past it’s EOL” in six months and which has a support model of: go read this FAQ?
So he was founding engineer of WebEx, build the team, build the product, but the product was not good enough because "of its older architecture, particularly a lack of usability, reliability, and video quality" !?! Wasn't that his responsibility as VP of WebEx ?
The hint is in his complaints: he probably lobbied Cisco for budget to have a Big Rewrite and they said no. So he upped sticks and did it elsewhere.
Are you proud of your code from 20 years ago? He probably wasn’t either.
Once Cisco bought, it sounds like a lot of control was removed from his hands? New company (Cisco) didn't want to invest in what they thought was a mature product that serviced the market well enough?
How many enterprise web tech products from 1997 do you think survive today with a healthy architecture and usable design?
Plus that whole "I told Cisco leadership, but they didn't listen" surely was not the first time it ever happened.
I'm sorry you were downvoted for an interesting remark. It resonates with me that sometimes you are stuck within a structure that was created by you and need to completely change environment to be able to achieve new goals. Quite interesting point here.
> Eric Yuan was the founding engineer of WebEx
The article and wikipedia don't say he was a founder of Webex; just a early and lead engineer.
Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that he was a founder with founder-level equity.
I see "founder" and "founding engineer" as distinct from each other.
"Founding engineer" in my mind just means key early engineer who played a part in building v0 of the product.
I’m just hearing all these nice things about Zoom today - after the fact.
What other companies have dedicated, hard working founders, who are focused on the customer?
AirTable.
I wonder how many other products in the enterprise space could be built by startups, by simply doing a much, much better job than incumbents, despite incumbent moats and lock-in. On the other hand, there are also examples of poor products that attempted to "solve" things like word processing better than MS Word or Google Docs and yet are simply much worse products than the incumbents.
I think in the video conferencing space, all existing solutions were simply bad. Video conferencing has been bad everywhere I have worked and we just shrug our shoulders and joke that someone first needs to build strong AI, and only then will video conferencing be solved. Zoom decided to do something about it top-to-bottom, end-to-end. Very inspiring founder and company.
Notion is amazing so far. So easy to use. Similar to airtable I think
The top comment on the Zoom S-1 discussion said the same:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19465860
Google Meet and their conference room solution work fine where I am across thousand+ conference rooms.
My experience with Meet has been nothing but nightmarish.
It’s not surprising but Meet is Chrome only. Tat was a dealbreaker for me.
It works with the latest Firefox.
Technically true that Meet works in Firefox, but in Firefox Developer Edition at least, the participants sidebar and controls on top of the video layer flicker incessantly during a call making for an unusable experience. I switch to Chrome for Meets daily because of this.
Zoom requires installing a separate app. Why isn't that a dealbreaker but installing/using Chrome is?
I would prefer a separate app if the only alternative was something that required Chrome.
That seems petty.
Has something changed since May 2018?
https://blog.mozilla.org/webrtc/firefox-is-now-supported-by-...
> Zoom is interesting. They don't really seem to have done anything particularly novel, they just made a product that works better than the competition.
Isn't https://dialpad.com in the same category? I find their products to be on-par with zoom. There cannot be no competent players in the market, surely?
Why pay for zoom and slack? Is something lacking from https://zoom.us/feature/messaging vis-à-vis slack ? Easy 'bot integration perhaps (slack certainly have a lot of integrations out of the box)?
Slack has the stickiness / lock-in that I think Zoom may lack (at least for the video part). We have years of history in Slack that we wouldn't really want to lose moving to an alternative. We do also make fairly heavy use of integrations. Trialling and switching to an alternative would be a much bigger investment and less incremental than starting to use Zoom for video calls was, even for a relatively small startup like us.
They may also have a bit of a marketing problem. I was vaguely aware they had some chat functionality but didn't realize it was as feature competitive with Slack as it appears on that page.
Thanks for the replies;I guess there aren't any obvious reasons to use both (unless one really likes slack;I'm not sure that I do, although slack is bearable through wee-slack / weechat plugin).
I am a little confused about the pricing model for zoom;it looks like it's roughly one "host" pr team lead + extra money for "rooms"? And/or one host pr team member if you want full flexibility?
I think most people start with Slack and it becomes ingrained, then they outgrow Hangouts / Meet or try Zoom and realize it's less laggy and a better experience for video overall. I've never heard of their chat app before now.
I am a heavy Zoom video conference user but I had no idea about Slack-like chat features. Thank you!
You think they don’t have a dedicated team just to try to build moat? That’s the whole challenge of a highly visible company like this, build moat, high switching costs etc
I'm sure they do, I just don't see what it is yet.
Agreed- we recently switched from WebEx to Zoom at work and we also use Slack as well. Zoom is forsure the superior product when it comes to virtual meetings.
I'm on a remote team as well that primarily uses Webex. It has kinda been the gold standard for me. Lately the audio has been declining and we started to use the Slack calls more often, which have been fantastic especially with the drawing tool. Other than drawing, voice, or screenshare is there something Zoom does that has made remote work easier? Or are you referring to better in terms of reliability and usability?
90% of Webex calls I've been on for some reason didn't allow using computer audio. I couldn't even tell if it's disabled or somehow broken. That makes it hard to use good headphones. I usually ended up calling the webex phone number via hangouts, so that I can use a real headset. However, in a way it doesn't really matter because it's hard for other participants to use good audio equipment as well and so everyone else is using some echoey conference room speakerphone or worse put their phones on speakerphone. Zoom treats computer audio like a first class citizen and I've typically found that 80-100% of participants call in via that and end up using a good Sennheiser headset or similar. That makes for a so much better experience.
Everytime I am on some damn webex with people yelling into their conference room speakerphones, I just want to hang up.
By "works better" I mean that it largely implements all the same features of other competing video conferencing products but does them better / more reliably / with better usability. "It just works."
Compared to Slack we have fewer problems with people dropping out of calls or losing audio or video and audio and video quality are generally better. Screen sharing is better quality and less buggy and let's you share individual windows. For calls with people outside the team we have fewer problems connecting than with Skype or Google Hangouts. It handles people calling in by phone or from mobile devices with poor connections more robustly. Overall no real revolutionary features, just consistently good execution.
In addition to everything already mentioned, Zoom has great screen sharing quality and very, very importantly, is the only solution that supports Linux with a native client, which means proper screen sharing and much more.
Linux desktop adoption may not be great, but many good software engineers use it for work. In our team it's hard to find a windows laptop. Zoom is the only software that works for us.
My company pays for Slack and despite have 1Gbps fiber I constantly have issues hearing via Slack. It was so bad the entire company switched to Zoom just so the remote people could participate properly.
Webex.... I’d rather use Skype. We replaced webex at work with Google Meet. No longer have the issues we had with webex like people not being able to join or not hear audio.
They also offer better user experience (good features, intuitive UI) compared to some alternatives.
Besides finding it more reliable in general than alternatives I've tried, Zoom is the only conference software I've found that allows me to share my screen on Linux.
Google meet works for me on Chrome, also, appear.in works great on Firefox.
Can echo this... Have been running a linux desktop for 10+ years and google meet is one of the few systems I don't have issues with.
The drawback is that Chrome is a requirement for some functionality which kind of sucks. But I think that's particularly because they have been in the driving seat with webrtc for years and have implemented things in Chrome to test the water before proposing it as part of the standards.
Check out Serge Lachapelle who has been leading Google's engineering efforts for years...
Works for me on Uber Conference, Gentoo/Xfce
Slack? At least my colleague shares his screen with me weekly and he uses Linux mint
Slack is browser based, even the "native" client option. This means your colleague cannot choose which screen to share in Linux, so if he has two screens he has to go at great lengths to make it work properly (either share both or share a specific app instead of a screen).
Also Slack's screen sharing quality is terrible and ofter you cannot read letters in the remote end's screen. Zoom's codec is much more crisp with text and graphics, almost like a native app running in your computer instead of video.
Are you paying for slack? Since we started paying the quality vastly improved.
We do pay, for us, it doesn't make any difference in the quality.
The Slack screen sharing is so laggy it's painful. Which is weird because pre-acquisition Screenhero was incredible. It was the best screen sharing software I'd ever used.
We use zoom and slack. Slack video is just terrible. It is so bad that I frequently change to zoom. So yes, I think they have deserved their place
Agreed. Between slack, skype and zoom. Zoom for video conferencing and sharing screens is so much better.
Never used zoom. I use Uberconference. What's the difference?
Zoom is like what WebEx would have been in an alternate universe without Cisco acquiring them.
Zoom requires native install and has better resolution.
I've used many different screensharing / video conferencing solutions.
I especially miss the one called Screen Hero - purchased and killed by Slack.
I must admit though Zoom has been great, and everyone on the team loves it. They also give you a great try-before-you-buy setup (unlimited 40 minute meetings)
Screenhero was the greatest for screen sharing with low latency. Still searching for a replacement.
There just isn't one. :(
> Zoom is interesting. They don't really seem to have done anything particularly novel, they just made a product that works better than the competition
I'm VERY convinced that listening to your customers and doing it WELL is a massive competitive advantage.
I've been building an app for the last six months and have been listening to our customers pretty aggressively:
https://getpolarized.io/
Lots of HN users use Polar so smart crowd.
Part of it has been to build in tools that allow me to manage all the information and to collect as much as possible.
Analytics on everything the user does (but respect their privacy). We're interested in exceptions and things like that...
One our big wins has been to integrate net promoter score and to build out a few tools to analyze the data.
Cohort analysis is also key.
I've been really focused on this and we're gaining about 1% additional retention per week over the last 2 months so this has been great to see it slowly climbing.
I remember reading about this and liked what I saw, so believe me when I say this is coming from a supporter, but...
Why? Why here? Stop that! You could have made your point without the plug and humblebrag.
This. It feels like spam
It's a constant pattern with this user.
I'm nobody compared to the person on the story, but I was refused a US visa that I needed to speak at a tech conference.
The US visa system needs to get out there and see what people are doing. I'm a full-time freelancer and I am 27. The officer said that I don't have ties to my home country and that I'm still young...
Damn right I am! I traveled to over 30coubtries so far and had spoken at various tech conferences. There is a lot of travel history on the passport. Unless you got to this outdated image of a person that's risk-free, you won't make it to US. It doesn't matter if your talk is selected among 700 others, you just won't make it. Bye.
About US B1/B2 visas. A startup I knew was selected into Blackbox connect. 3 people appeared for an interview, only 1 was selected. The rejected ones reappeared, 1 was selected from them. The final one decided not to go.
Recently had something similar happen to me with an Australian visa. I've been to the US before, and a few other countries too.
Applied for a short-stay specialist visa because a client of mine wanted services in-person after I'd built their product. That's exactly what the visa was designed for. I provided evidence of funds, a letter from the client, travel history, everything. I was given BS reasons about:
- Not having ties to my home country. My entire family lives here.
- Not owning property in my home country. I do, they never asked on the application for proof, and so none was provided.
- The economic disparity between my own country and Australia being too high. I showed my current employment letters, and proof that I run a successful company, in total making significantly more money than the average Australian in my position.
My point is: the decision to grant or deny your visa is made by a single person. A cog in a great bureaucratic system that is empowered by their sovereign national law to judge your application and make an informed decision. But ultimately, the system is designed and operated by primates that learnt to strike two rocks together and make fire a few millenniums ago. They're highly flawed, there's no need to take it to heart. Just optimize your application in accordance with their laws, and reapply if you really want to go. You'll get in eventually. It took this dude 8 freaking tries, but even he managed.
See my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19697430
Don't be discouraged. Re-apply. The process depends on the interview guy. He'll get to decide your fate. His decision will depend on whether he likes you or not. Probably based on appearance.
This right here, I applied two times, first time I just knew the interviewer wont approve my visa when I saw the way he looked at me, I had a feeling I was bothering him, he straight out said no without even checking my papers, he only checked them when I told him I've plenty of "evidence" and supporting documents and he just took a glance, ignoring everything.
Second time I got a really nice interviewer but I applied at a out of country consulate (you've to apply to a US consulate from your home country) which I didn't knew at a time, he said he would've approved my application and seemed visibly sad that he couldn't help me.
I stopped trying. I've been a co-founder of a US company for more than 10 years, 50+ employees, I never been to US.
> I stopped trying. I've been a co-founder of a US company for more than 10 years, 50+ employees, I never been to US.
That's completely unacceptable. You can still look at the bright side (you were allowed to run a company which allowed you to access US wealth, many countries restrict that to their own citizens).
I'd advise to socialize within the consulate/embassy. Here, they have lots of events. Try to make friends with the people working there and you'll make a reputation. Don't give up.
> That's completely unacceptable. You can still look at the bright side (you were allowed to run a company which allowed you to access US wealth, many countries restrict that to their own citizens).
Indeed, that's a positive way to look at it. I'll probably try again soon, now beside the US company I've a company in my own country, along side multiple properties (car/house) that should be undoubtable ties to the country.
> I'd advise to socialize within the consulate/embassy. Here, they have lots of events. Try to make friends with the people working there and you'll make a reputation. Don't give up.
Interesting, I'll have to look into it. Thanks!
> Indeed, that's a positive way to look at it. I'll probably try again soon, now beside the US company I've a company in my own country, along side multiple properties (car/house) that should be undoubtable ties to the country.
The embassy where I applied, they don't ask for any papers. It seems the same for the guys in here. So I'll just give it another shot.
Sorry that my home country is doing this kind of thing too. I'm familiar with the US Visa system because i've gone through the process a few times. But it makes me sad that Australia is playing silly games too.
It's fine. Honestly, my home country is a lot worse. I'm not discouraged, it's the cost of travel for me.
Refused visas for conference presentations is kind of an old story; I can recall incidents from back in the Bush II era. My guess (uninformed) is that the concerns are about the distinction between visiting for tourism and coming here to perform work, especially since the advice I've seen given at some events is to avoid any mention of the conference when entering the country.
It's also common in the world of dance workshops, where international teachers tour several countries, teaching every weekend in another town. They usually just claim to be tourists, even though they're clearly travelling for business.
I'm still waiting for the big splash when one or two get investigated. It must happen at some point, their teaching is heavily advertised on workshop web sites. Their presence is the main feature of those workshops, after all.
That's not smart. As a non-citizen you don't have much rights. If you get caught lying, you'll be barred from entering the US and you'll probably need to resolve to court.
How they can find out:
- Booking of where you are staying.
- Going through your phone/laptop.
- Paper/Flyers for your company or the event.
- A big event is happening and you are kinda fitting the bill for it.
I'm not saying it's smart, I'm saying it's the advice I've heard given.
It also the advice that I have heard but it is still a bad advice. Another advice: don’t tell them you have food so that you avoid going through a baggage search.
Here is the downside: if a dog catches you, you’ll get a fine. You could avoid that just by declaring any food you have.
I'm confident you're right. My point was just to reinforce the argument that CBP has a longstanding concern about whether visitors to the US are here to conduct business.
Heh, I remember crossing into the US by land for a conference.
Their first question was whether I was presenting or attending. I just said "attending", without getting into the specifics of an un-conference.
The US visa system is very arbitrary. I got a 10 year B1/B2 just by showing up and handing my passport. No questions (a part from why are you going and where did you travel) and no documents asked. The whole interview was probably 30 seconds. The process didn't take much time but there are not many applicants in my city. I got my passport back in a couple days.
At the airport, I helped translating for a French national. He was sent to secondary. Then the agent just stamped my passport and waved me in.
Or maybe they already had plenty of info about you that you didn't know about?
Yes, it sometimes depends on the agent that's interviewing you. I've heard so many stories of this kind. Try again but try not to get interviewed by the the same person.
Yeah, US visa is so damn weird and backwards. I had a presentation and poster at a conference in the US.
I get that many Indians get settled in the US, but in my case the interviewer said he needed concrete proof that I would be returning back, despite having my employer's letter, bank documents, my Tax returns etc.
It essentially boils down to your willingness to return back to the home country and apparently I didn't demonstrate that. I just told him that I'd be rather homeless in my home country than be in a foreign land, while showing my return tickets.
He laughed and then he granted the visa.
It seems that the interviewer's mood matters the most tbh.
If only you were a soft porn model, then you could request the Einstein Visa.
Did you have a return ticket scheduled and could prove you had the necessary funds to sustain yourself? From what I have read/watched those in combination with the "ties to home country" check are the biggest red flags for CBP.
Not the OP but it's likely the question he is referring to happened at the consulate not at the port of entry. Buying a ticket without a visa (as I did once) was pretentious and therefore my visa was denied
Unfortunately buying a ticket and booking a hotel is necessary in most cases. At the embassy for your first short-term visa and for border control.
I'm a nobody from a 3rd-world country and have always done that with 100% success rate over a decade. I keep visiting the US regularly and I always have a way to somehow ensure I intend to leave the country. The questions at the border keep getting shorter and quicker every time.
Unfortunately, that's how it works, in my experience.
Why would you buy a ticket before you get a visa?
All countries require some confirmation you can pay for the stay and will get out. Some countries ask for a return ticket and hotel stay - it indicates that the traveller has some means of paying those amounts. US does not need those before visa issue. In many cases, people cancel the flight ticket after visa issue; and definitely book a more suitable hotel.
Anecdote time: Interpretation of the guidance is upto the visa issuing officer. Normally they want a ticket getting out of the destination country. But in one case the officer wanted me to 'return' back to the country where I was starting the travel from. So I had to show him the ticket for the third leg of the flight: A -> B -> C -> A
To increase your chances of getting the visa.
Sometimes it's even required. I traveled to Nigeria from the US (on a British passport) and needed to turn up to the visa appointment with proof of flights and accommodation.
In some cases interviews are so short that you cannot even show any of these evidence
US via system rewards fraud and promotes lying.
Every student who comes to F1 needs to lie that they have no intention of staying back in USA. They can't say I will try to get a job and H1B. But that is what they do.
Similarly, Adi Shamir, bazillionaire founder of RSA (he’s the “S”), couldn’t get a visa this year to attend the RSA conference.
https://www.cnet.com/news/adi-shamir-couldnt-get-us-visa-to-...
We don't know if it is similar. Zoom CEO was probably applying for an investor immigrant visa which are complicated and could be rejected for many reasons until the proper documents have been provided.
Shamir sent in a visa request and never heard back from USCIS.
Similarly, his US visa was delayed in 2013 also: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/10/17/crypto_guru_shamir_...
Visas are issued by the Department of State, not USCIS. USCIS can adjust the status of foreigners already within the US but that's not the same thing.
Good information. But be warned that CNET has popup auto playing video Ad which doesn't get caught by uBlock Origin.
Are you using chrome and also have either uBO-Extra or Nano Defender installed? If not it's most likely the ads are being served by Instart Logic. [1] [2]
[1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBO-Extra/wiki/Sites-on-which-uBO...
[2] https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uAssets/issues/227
Thanks, I didn't use uBO-Extra. What is the trade-off for not being included by default in the main extension, CPU?
BTW, I manually blocked the Ad column in CNET & seems to work.
> What is the trade-off for not being included by default in the main extension, CPU?
gorhill's (developer of uBO) explanation from[1] below:
> uBO-Extra is needed to deal with IL stuff because the IL inline script appears at the top of the served HTML page -- before any other secondary resource-pulling tag. uBO-Extra injects its content script declaratively, i.e. on every page, hence it will always run before IL stuff.
The root cause of why it is needed is because of a bug with web socket implementation in chrome.[2]
Additional info on why both are needed (& why for chrome but not firefox) in some reddit threads.[3][4][5]
[1] https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uAssets/issues/227#issuecomm...
[2] https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=487422
[3] https://old.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/83quub/ublock...
[4] https://old.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/7mfkv1/ublock...
[5] https://old.reddit.com/r/chrome/comments/a9trz2/ublock_origi...
I would call it more of a missing feature than a bug in Chrome.
Surely he could have gotten an O Visa by now if he applied previously?
Yes, probably, however, an O Visa requires the recipient to be working in the USA upon receipt, it's not meant for tourism for business or pleasure (including tech conferences).
Oh, ok, I had no idea. Thanks.
Good for him. However, the wind has already turned eastward. Given the insanity in US immigration policy and xenophobia among the public, talents are going back to their original countries in flocks. Check out top 20 most valuable startups in the world - used to be 100% American and now half[ref] are foreign owned.
edit ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unicorn_startup_compan...
Looking at the listing you provided, the wide majority of the non-American unicorn startups are from China, with some scattered startups in other eastern countries. So I think the shift in startup-location speaks more about China's success in bringing back talent (especially compared to India) versus America's lack of a grip on talent.
The trend is more important. US has only 32% of the world's unicorns. Even if you remove all the Chinese companies, US is 58% of the total, far less than the number a few years back. India and Southeast Asia are especially doing well if you put the size of their economies into consideration. In five years, these unicorns could grow into nowadays Amazon and Facebook, and the same holds true for the shift in the job market.
Can't reply to 'highlyskilledimm's' comment below, hence adding here.
Not sure if level 4* h1b's fall under highly skilled, here are a few wondering why they get RFE for their visa extensions:
https://www.reddit.com/r/h1b/comments/bdt5o8
[*Level 4 is the highest wage category for h1b.]
The reason half of them are foreign owned is because all of them are Chinese whom are later in their tech development cycle. Almost all those companies in the US have already went public.
This is highly misleading. High-skilled immigrants are now more prioritized than they were in the past administration.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-changes-visa-process-for-hi...
That's nonsense. Masters degree is not high skill. Or really, I've seen basically zero evidence that it indicates any more skill than a bachelor's.
Agreed on the master's degree bit. A lot of them are just for generating money for the uni. A bit anecdotal, but most east and south asians use it as a platform to get a job in the US.
Hm - do you have a master's degree yourself? I've seen lots of people (here and elsewhere) who suggest that a bachelor's degree also doesn't indicate skill and is also therefore useless. It seems as if everybody assumes that whatever level of education they themselves have attained is the cutoff for "usefulness" and any level beyond that is just a waste of time.
I'd agree that bachelor's are also basically useless - all it tells you is that the candidate can put up with four years of bullshit and still jump through hoops at the end.
A masters degree tells you they're willing to put up with six.
I might have just had a bad experience - at my uni the CS Masters program was a pretty blatant cash grab, taking advantage of the visa requirements to pull in Indian students. That would have been fine, but the standards were super low, the students couldn't code at all (by year 5, at least a bachelor's CS student should know how to write a for loop), and we had a major cheating scandal every year.
I'm not saying I don't want those Indian students here - I absolutely do - I just wish we weren't creating these nonsense processes and making people contort their lives to fit them.
The story of being denied a visa appears to be from years/decades ago. He attended Stanford Business School around 2006. He also worked at Cisco and WebEx for 10+ years. Heck, Zoom headquarters are in California. Way to spin an article about a great achievement, Bloomberg.
Good for him. Nice to hear about success stories. Zoom is excellent. Markedly better than WebEx, in my experience.
To be fair anything is better than WebEx. Glad it finally has Linux support in the browser though, but it was way too late to the game.
Google's constant shifting finally lead us to abandon it in favor of Zoom. We used Google Hangouts, then Meet for 3 years. Finally switched to Zoom and happy. It always seems to be 5% better (our marketing guy always used it for external meetings).
Selecting immigrants doesn't work, in my opinion.
Regardless of the selection criteria, any screening will deter "desirable" people. It will not deter those who choose to circumvent that process, especially those who immigrate "illegaly" or "irregularly", like refugees in Europe, who are not eligible for asylum, but can't be deported for all sorts of perfectly valid reasons.
In the end, and we see this all over the world, such screening leads to adverse effects even considering the intended screening criteria.
>Regardless of the selection criteria, any screening will deter "desirable" people.
Is there any evidence this is true?
At the very least immigrants would need to fill out a ton of paperwork and endure multiple bureaucratic round trips, assuming the destination country even has the capacity to deal with all applications.
Then the message behind a detailed screening is: "We consider you as an extreme risk, which is only worth taking if we can exploit you enough."
You can't bring your spouse or family, at least not without significant hurdles, and if that process is too easy, screening for the original criteria is undermined.
Considering restrictive immigration policies against your people, you won't be able to find a supportive immigrant community and are totally dependent on fitting in with the locals, and the locals letting you fit in. Just ask Westerners in Japan.
For any kind of screening to work, you also need a ruthless border control and immigration enforcement, including mass deportations if neccessary. An effective enforcement has to - at the least - "inconvenience" anybody looking remotely like an immigrant, before being shown any paperwork.
Many of these factors don't play out in many countries, but mostly with the result that the screening doesn't really work that well. The US and Canada have rather big populations of undocumented immigrants, despite having detailed and sophisticated "screening" processes.
"an American billionaire".
Would be interesting to learn why he was denied eight times, or granted one on the ninth try.
Money buys powerful friends. America has been for sale for a long time.
More curious why he even tried 9 times. Australia is very accepting of Chinese migrants, and there's plenty of talent to hire.
Australia has an order of magnitude fewer people, has a different regulatory environment (e.g. their counter-terrorism bill that lets them coerce engineers into cooperation, and in the wake of the NZ shooting they're proposing to imprison website operates that don't take down content quickly enough - and apparently 90 minutes isn't quick enough) and is located in completely different region of the world. There are plenty of reasons why one would want to move to the US but not Australia.
[0], [1],[2], etc. could be reasonably see as part of the Australian government's relative unfriendliness to tech companies and privacy laws at least compared to other countries. Whether the australian government is in fact friendly or not is immaterial if capital investment and companies do not want to put a large amount of money/effort into the Australian tech scene.
[0]: https://kvoa.com/news/national-news/2019/04/14/foreign-gover...
[1]: https://hothardware.com/news/australia-controversial-encrypt...
[2]: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/22/technology/australia-cell...
Australia has little tech industry to speak of and software engineers aren't terribly respected or well-compensated. The US is a much better bet for technologists.
He was probably going for an investors visa which is a permanent immigrant visa not a short term visa. Gotta get the paperwork right. And for such visas there is a lot of paperwork.
He could have just bought entry on H-5 with a $500K investment in "Harlem".
I know of someone who went on to interview at Google a total of sixteen times.
I just failed mine and they said I can only try once a year though?
Well Google was founded 20 years ago so... ;)
This is complete hearsay, but I know some real anti-censorship folks that believe zoom is unsafe and has been compromised by the Chinese government.
It’s a great product, no idea on how safe it is from intercepts but the ease of use, quality and experience put it in a class of its own.
> The U.S. is the favored country
EU needs to up its game on this. It's a travesty we haven't managed to lure these people to the EU reliably yet.
Until you improve on the pitiful salaries offered in Europe's tech industry, that's not going to change.
Eh, some people will be tempted, knowing that their children will get a decent education that doesn't cost the world, healthcare, gun violence, etc. But you're right, we'll likely never convince the people who have never experienced another culture and who value money over everything. Edit: Even if we did pay more, the language barrier is still pretty high.
The cost of college I'll give you that. Pretty much very tech company gives employees and their family healthcare coverage as part of the benefits. As for gun violence, while the US definitely has higher rates of mass shootings, the vast majority of Americans will never experience any of that first hand, especially in high income tech cities like SF and NYC.
Even with (overpriced) health insurance in the US, health costs are ridiculously expensive when compared to Europe or other countries with functioning public healthcare.
Even people in the richer end of the middle-class bracket have issues. It's just that healthcare isn't a pressing concern for most people's decision making, until it's an emergency.
The above list makes sense for people outside of tech. People in tech have most of the above in US. Some countries in Europe have pretty competitive comp like Switzerland (Denmark, Norway have decent comp too but its getting destroyed by high taxes)
Curious about the comment on Norway taxes. They are high but the benefits offered are very good for citizens. Education and healthcare being top benefits. Also the culture contributes a lot to viewing it more positively from what I understand.
I don't work in Norway but I've been researching it as a possible location to migrate to in the future. Curious if there are any citizens from Norway who'd be interested in adding information to this though.
I think the situation is very skewed when comparing tech sector because of how competitive things are in US the comp packages can be far beyond of what you get as "free" gov. services in a place like Norway.
I look at remote job ads and I find the US, Canada at times the UK willing to hire internationally. Where Denmark, Norway, Germany seem hostile to non-locals.
To me those are key signals of a competitive market. It doesn't feel like Europe has a shortage of talent at the moment.
It sure does work culture is different though plus cost savings US vs Remote can be 2X vs for Germany more like 30%
sure, it's a complex situation, and IT is booming, so the "high salary + throw money at it" approach works great for individuals
> we'll likely never convince the people who have never experienced another culture and who value money over everything
You certainly won't convince many people currently living the USA by throwing veiled insults at them for not considering moving somewhere else, that's for sure.
With Article 13, GDPR, VATMOSS and other things I heard complained about from small businesses, I wouldn't want to start a company in the EU. At most I would hire employees there to work remotely.
Meh. GDPR involves not being a dick with other people’s data, and don’t Americans have to deal with inter-state tax as well?
In the UK I can setup a new legal company in an hour online, and have access to top notch banking from across Europe almost immediately.
I see you haven't actually tried to do VATMOSS or GDPR compliance. It might be easy to register a corp, but you're walking into a liability minefield unless you do it right, which will be a few staff worth of people, or hope you're ignored & small enough to never be enforced upon.
And in the USA, you only pay sales tax for customers inside your state, unless you have something called a 'nexus' within the other states, which is simpler to avoid by staying put in a single state.
VATMOSS has a threshold before it kicks in now, as of 2019, so it should be a lot less of a hassle for the just-starting business.
These people tend to be young and without children - the demographic that is ok living (temporarily) without free healthcare, childcare and education.
"America succeeded in spite of Americans" - Immigrants
Well done. Zoom's the only video conferencing app I've come across that has been reliably pleasant to use.
I don't even understand where it came from. At work we've cycled through various audio/video conference providers over the last 10 years. All of a sudden in the last 6 months we're fully in bed with zoom, IT has zoom-ified 5 of the conference rooms and it seems most/all of our customers and contractors are hosting zoom meetings as well.
I don't quite understand where the previous software we've tried fell short (I hardly host web conference meetings) but it does seem pretty painless to fumble through.
Ha - I had the same thought recently... We agreed about a year ago to all just use Zoom in our mostly remote organization to get off of the ~5 other free solutions we were using. I saw the latest invoice and it stopped my breath a bit, "We're spending how much on Zoom now?" But every one of our vendors uses it, all of our contractors do, it's just everywhere. (Granted this is all in SV so whatever that's worth)
There are lot of good options and even open source solutions for video conferencing. The one thing I like about Zoom is that they have a Linux package, but their hardware acceleration support on Linux is crap.
I second this. My Linux laptop drops to seconds-per-frame when I share my screen on zoom. It's gotten to the point where I have other co-workers pull up my presentations on their Macs.
Do you not use Zoom through chrome browser. You have to enable this in settings. Works pretty well (although the join link is deliberately small)
I didn't know about using zoom in browser. I've only used the desktop client.
They have some weird tiers where the max length of a web meeting is something silly like 40 mins. Ok laugh, why do people need more than 40 mins, but this makes that tier useless because any serious company is going to have people who need to meet over 40 mins. So it’s a tier of service which exists for the sole purpose of upsell.
You mean, like, a profitable business model?
If you’re a “serious company” then surely you can pay for a great service like this.
Yes the free tier is 40 min for meetings with more than 2 people.
I switched to the first paid tier and am a happy customer. The best quality of service and software in the space I’ve seen so far.
Good - they should make money. If you enjoy the service, you should be paying for it right?
I'm curious, why would a Chinese citizen feel compelled to apply for a Visa 8 times, to start a business? Surely it is far easier and faster for a Chinese citizen to start a company in China? I would imagine that capital would be almost as easily available, as would labor. As for market access, surely just opening branch office in Silicon Valley would have served the purpose? If high quality American engineers, were needed, that too could be achieved by opening a branch office. Why go to all the trouble of emigrating from China? Am I missing significant context here, was the visa granted the 8th time an investor visa?
I have a sense (perhaps unfounded) that it's difficult for Chinese tech companies to make inroads outside of China. This is because of the Chinese government's role as a kingmaker within its own tech industry, and because of concerns of IP theft, surveillance, and state-backed hacking from the Chinese government. Big firms outside of China do not trust Chinese software firms with their data. As a big time software company in China, you can only really sell to Chinese buyers, with a few rare exceptions.
On the other hand, a US company can operate essentially anywhere but China. Maybe he thought he had a better shot on his own merits outside China. Maybe he didn't want to get in bed with the party, or maybe he was just a guy who was enamored of the dream that was Silicon Valley in the 80s through the 00s.
That was in the 90s. He was rejected visa b/c he didn't speak any English. Almost all VC and Internet businesses located in the US at that time. Things are dramatically different now.
As someone who owns a Zoom H2 recorder this thread was initially confusing. Apparently there are two major companies called Zoom.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoom_Video_Communications
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoom_Corporation
You're not the only one who was confused... Apparently there is yet another Zoom company -- the one whose ticker symbol happens to be "ZOOM" -- who has seen an increase of 54,000% in share price since March, purely on news of Zoom Video's IPO.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/zoom-ipo-stock-soared-54000-per...
Zoom deserves the huge pop for adding the "touch up face" feature to the desktop app. I can look fresh for meetings even if I'm running haggard from taking care of an infant. :)
Seriously though, that's one of those small features that shows real love and care was put in the product. I was skeptical of Zoom when I switched to it but it quickly became my favorite video conferencing software by a mile.
>Zoom deserves the huge pop for adding the "touch up face" feature to the desktop app.
Heh, I remember that from 'The Jetsons' - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0idWiHiasKg
They should have labelled it 'Morning Mask'.
the problem with proprietary tools like Zoom (and Skype, hell even Slack) is that people are forced to use them when working for remote companies. At least if they want to keep that job. But ofc you're still using your own hardware to run this shit on to do your job. I suppose this is better than the atrocious idea of using WhatsApp as team collaboration tool on your personal phone.
Everyone I know who has worked remote has had their tools supplied by the company or has been reimbursed for purchasing them on behalf of the company.
appear.in, does what it says on the tin, no fucking about. Played about with zoom but it was a multi-minute ballache of signup steps and a screen sharing plugin the doesn't work properly on i3wm, I can't even begin to imagine the others if Zoom was mean't to be straight forward.
Alternate opinion, I work at Microsoft as an Engineer. We (obviously) use Teams for meetings. For one thing, it integrates well with the MS/Office ecosystem (sharing videos is easier etc). But the video conferencing system is really poor. Meetings sometime start with one party not able to hear properly, the other one. Usually, we spend the first 5 minutes saying "Am I audible?", "Can you hear me?" and their variants with that a feeling of deja-vu hits me. Usually, there aren't issues once the meeting starts (not with the software at-least). But the starting a meeting is certainly painful. SfB is a whole different ball of wax.
I have never used Zoom but I understand why someone would be willing to pay for a video-conferencing solution that works. Think about your hundreds of thousands of employees losing 5-10 meetings of all their meetings, everyday. That is the problem Zoom must be solving.
Best zoom feature is the magic screen share. Just being in the physical room I can hit share screen and it will find the right meeting. I think it uses inaudible sound to identify them right room.
A bit offtopic: what happened to gotomeeting? I recall that 10 years it was a go-to software for conference calls / distributed meetings / etc. Now it's mostly zoom.
Maybe its just the tone of the headline but it seems antiquated. Are we implying billionaires can only come from america? Or if america blesses their presence?
I could not participate in an internship at Google a few years ago because my US Visa was refused, seemingly because the consulate clerk was having a bad day.
I always though Zoom came standard on Macs, and that is was made by Apple. It works that well.
Turns out my wife had installed it before she gave me her MacBook.
what about polycom? the one used to have more markshare before Cisco purchases its major competitor Tanderberg, it seems zoom does not build its own hardware, the legacy players like polycom/tanderberg(cisco) still do, maybe it's the time to use off-the-shelf hardware with zoom software these days.
Ay we got enough billionaires here already
Zoom's stock jumped around 81% on debut. They seem to have left a lot of money on the table.
God forbid we let freeloaders like this into our country!
/s
it's ironic that 8 is the chinese number for luck
Anyone knows an open source alternative to zoom that is good.
Respects !
Is the point that everyone who might become rich should be able to get a US visa?
POTUS is FOR high-skilled immigration, despite the "xenophobia" claims in this thread. Republicans in general support visas for high-skilled immigration while Democrats support more broad-based immigration.
"Yuan, Zoom’s chief executive officer, joins Alphabet Inc.’s Sergey Brin, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang and Tesla Inc.’s Elon Musk as immigrants who became billionaires after helping create Silicon Valley companies.
"
Above, are all legal immigrants that applied (themselves, or their parents) -- for visa via a US embassy (sometimes the US embassy is not in their native country, happened to many immigrants from former USSR)
They did not cross the US border illegally, and then demanded a refugee status, while avoiding the court system to prove their claim.
> They did not cross the US border illegally, and then demanded a refugee status, while avoiding the court system to prove their claim.
The reason refugee applicants are recently crossing illegally is because the Administration has actively prevented lawful refugee application at ports of entry, going so far as to close ports of entry to prevent it.
And they aren't avoiding the application process, they are actively seeking it out and being prevented from pursuing it and punished for doing so.
No new tactics there. Australia has been doing that for a long time. Then when you are so frustrated with being stonewalled and come by boat (our version of crossing the desert from Mexico) and claim asylum you get locked up on an island for 10 years whilst they try to come up with any excuse to not let you in.
However, if you have a million+ dollars you can waltz straight in no questions asked. "Here's a passport, why not buy a house whilst you're here? We don't ask questions about your criminal or corrupt past in your country of origin."
Who's in genuine need there?
The reason refugee applicants are recently
Not recent at all. The United States has received waves of refugees for centuries. French from Haiti. Basques re-settled in Idaho. Hmong that were re-settled in Wisconsin. Somalis resettled in Minneapolis. There are dozens and dozens of other examples.
What sets a lot of those refugee groups apart is that they were fleeing war and persecution. They weren't economic refugees.
> Not recent at all.
The illegal crossings by refugee applicants are recent.
> The United States has received waves of refugees for centuries.
Yes, but under the modern legal asylum regime, there has been no reason for those seeking refugee status to make border crossings other than at regular ports of entry, because there is a legal process for them to apply for asylum at such ports and it's in their interest to follow it. Until, that is, the government actively prevented them from doing so, which is a recent phenomenon.
> What sets a lot of those refugee groups apart is that they were fleeing war and persecution
The recent waves are also fleeing war and persecution (as in many of the previous waves, war that the US is directly involved in, this time, I signficant part, the Central American drug wars, which—unlike the largely metaphorical war on drugs in the US—are actual wars.)
> the Administration has actively prevented lawful refugee application at ports of entry, going so far as to close ports of entry to prevent it.
and there's a valid reason for doing so. sorry, but there is no given right to enter any country at any time because you so choose. there is demonstrated problem at the southern border and ports of entry so the government is taking steps to manage the situation.
> and there's a valid reason for doing so. sorry, but there is no given right to enter any country at any time because you so choose.
There is, in fact, a legal right to apply for asylum at US ports of entry.
> there is demonstrated problem at the southern border
As consequence, not cause, of this Administration’s policy.
> the government is taking steps to manage the situation.
No, it is actively, and deliberately creating the problem, not managing it, except in the sense of stage managing.
I find this emphasis strange. "Illegal" immigration is a relatively recent invention as far as US policy is concerned with several notable lapses for racist policies. Who knows how many potential Eric Yuans we are turning away or discouraging from coming to the United States?
There have been plenty of restrictions throughout history, and those who didn't meet the requirements were deported.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2301603
a relatively recent invention as far as US policy is concerned
Define "recent." Immigration restrictions in America go back to at least the 1880's.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_the_United_Stat...
Thanks for coming to hackernews to push your anti asylum narrative. Great and relevant contribution to the discussion.
That was back when US immigration and state departments were sane.
Imagine applying and going through those hassles today.
My co-worker just got an H1B in the lottery. They took 60,000 this year. I don't feel like that's a small number, so wtf is the problem?
Evidence please.
Being contrarian, I would say, that he should be thankful to US immigration authorities. If they issues a visa first time he applied he might have become just an SDE at Amazon.
Hmmm, I think you're into something aside from the shitty jab. Tenacity definitely plays an important role in success. This person had to deal with a system that judged him unfairly and that probably helped him to built resilience for other situations where his ventures received the same scrutiny and rejections.
It does illustrate his tenacity and resourcefulness (nice traits to have as an entrepreneur).