Readings

The readings for this week are:

Immigration

1. Understanding H-1B Requirements

   • H1B Visa Salary Database

   • Top 100 H1B Visa Sponsors

   • How Google, Facebook And Others Pay Their H-1B Employees

2. America's Mixed Feelings About Immigrant Labor: Disney-Layoffs Edition

   • Ex-Disney IT workers sue after being asked to train their own H-1B replacements

   • Facing Layoff, An IT Employee Makes A Bold Counteroffer

   • How the University of California exploited a visa loophole to move tech jobs to India

3. The Myth of America's Tech-Talent Shortage

   • The Frenzy About High-Tech Talent

   • The Bogus High-Tech Worker Shortage: How Guest Workers Lower US Wages

   • Large Companies Game H-1B Visa Program, Costing the U.S. Jobs

   • There Is In Fact A Tech-Talent Shortage And There Always Will Be

4. Lets talk about the H1-B Visa

   • How To Fix Tech's H-1B Problem

   • Don't Give Silicon Valley More H1B Visas

   • Increasingly, U.S. IT workers are alleging discrimination

   • Silicon Valley's "Body Shop" Secret: Highly Educated Foreign Workers Treated Like Indentured Servants

5. How Immigration Uncertainty Threatens America’s Tech Dominance

   • Study: Immigrants Founded 51% of U.S. Billion-Dollar Startups

   • Google Recalls Staff to U.S. After Trump Immigration Order

   • Microsoft joins Amazon in lawsuit over Trump's immigration ban

   • Apple CEO Tim Cook on Trump’s Muslim ban: ‘Apple would not exist without immigration ... It is not a policy we support.’

6. Trump’s Next Immigration Move to Hit Closer to Home for Tech

   • H-1B Visas: U.S. Lawmaker Re-Introduces Bill to Tighten Rules

   • H-1B visa reform bill introduced in US House of Representatives

   • New Senate bill seeks sweeping H-1B changes

   • Indian IT firms have been preparing for changes in H-1B visa laws for nearly a decade

Work-Life Balance

1. Why Women Still Can't Have It All

   • Why I Put My Wife's Career First

   • Can modern women "have it all"?

   • The Work-Family Imbalance

2. The Revolt of Working Parents

   • Silicon Valley: Perks for Some Workers, Struggles for Parents

   • Why Tech Is the Leading Industry on Parental Leave

   • Silicon Valley's Best and Worst Jobs for New Moms (and Dads)

3. Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace

   • I Had a Baby and Cancer When I Worked at Amazon. This Is My Story

   • Full memo: Jeff Bezos responds to brutal NYT story, says it doesn't represent the Amazon he leads

   • Amazon is piloting teams with a 30-hour workweek

4. "Eat, sleep, code, repeat" is such bullshit

   • Work/Life Balance Will Make You a Better Software Engineer

   • I Came to San Francisco to Change My Life: I Found a Tribe of Depressed Workaholics Living on Top of One Another

   • Why vacation at tech companies should be mandatory: better code, happier people

Burnout

1. The Reality of Developer Burnout

   • The other side of paradise

   • Burnout and Recovery at a Tech Internship

   • Regretting the Golden Handcuffs

2. Why are Adults so busy?

   • Americans Work 25% More Than Europeans, Study Finds

   • The Research Is Clear: Long Hours Backfire for People and for Companies

3. Avoiding Burnout

   • Marissa Mayer: Why Work Burnout Is About Resentment

   • The Strange Psychology of Stress and Burnout

Bonus

Maybe relevant. Maybe not.

• On Parenthood

Questions

Please write a response to one of the following questions:

1. From the readings, what is the controversy surrounding the H-1B Visa program? What are the arguments for and against the expansion of the program? After examining the topic, where do you stand on the issues surrounding the program?

   • If you are in favor of expanding the use of H-1B Visa guest workers, explain why it is beneficial for the United States. How would you respond to concerns about lowering of wages or loss of jobs for US citizens?

   • If you are against the use of H-1B Visa guest workers, explain why it is is not necessary or potentially harmful to the United States. How would you respond to the idea that America is a nation of immigrants and that these guest workers are an effective means of tackling the problem of a tech talent shortage?

   • In either case, discuss whether or not you are concerned with competition due to foreign workers or possibly outsourcing. If you are non-US citizen, discuss how these issues impact you and your future plans as it relates to residency and employment in America.

2. From the readings and from your experience, can men and women have it all? That is, can parents have successful and fulfilling careers while also raising a family and meeting other non-work related goals? What can companies do to support their workers to find this balance and are they ethically obliged to do so? Is this balance important to you and if so, how do you hope to maintain it?

3. From the readings and from your experience, what are the causes of burnout? Have you ever experienced burnout? How did you overcome it or mitigate its effects? As you enter the workforce, how do you plan on preventing burnout or becoming overly stressed and burdened by work and responsibilities?

Feedback

If you have any questions, comments, or concerns regarding the course, please provide your feedback at the end of your response.