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ahussain
Joined 513 karma
Building software for US immigration

awais@post.harvard.edu

  1. ahussain parent
    Agentic AI companies are doing millions in revenue. Just because agents haven’t spread to the entire economy yet doesn’t mean they are not useful for relatively complex tasks.
  2. ahussain parent
    A philosophy of software design by John Ousterhout is the best software book I have read.

    But, from your post it’s not clear specifically what you are looking for. If you think you will level up by learning how to apply numerical modelling techniques, then it’s probably best to focus on that.

  3. ahussain parent
    I think this is a huge use case for vibe coding, and something I’m excited to do more in 2026.

    There are so many apps I want, that companies are not incentivised to build for me.

  4. ahussain parent
    I'd bet a lot of people are trying to optimize their codebases for LLMs. I'd be interested to see some examples of your ASI-unlocking codebase in action!
  5. ahussain parent
    I predict people will want an ultra-thin phone, even if it’s just for weight reasons.

    We’ll see what the sales numbers are like.

  6. ahussain parent
    Yeah it's not clear to me how many of his shares he sold but it seemed to be a substantial chunk.

    The board seemed to be pretty anti-Amelio already so it wasn't clear to my why Steve _needed_ to sell these shares.

  8. ahussain parent
    It seems like agentic browsers will develop aa new set of core primitives (e.g. always ask for manual approval when spending money), and this flavor of security vulnerability will go away.

    Web browsers didn't begin with the same levels of security they have now.

  9. ahussain parent
    I fully agree. I for one am excited about a future in which we can take on bigger challenges. With (good) LLMs, we won't need to spend as much time thinking about "how" to get things done, and can spend more time lucidly deciding "what" we want done.
  10. ahussain parent
    If anything, with the right tooling LLMs should improve the quality of our thinking. For example, how much better would your thinking be if you could ask the LLM to reliably figure out all the 2nd and 3rd effects of your ideas, or to identify hidden assumptions.
  11. ahussain parent
    I'm pretty sure the job offer requirement is still in effect, and will remain in effect, since the O is an employment-based visa. What made you think it had changed?
  12. ahussain parent
    I have lots of examples:

    * By law, the US can only issue 140,000 employment-based green cards per year, and no more than 7% to one country. This means people from India or China can face a 100+ year backlog, even after they have proved they qualify for a green card. There's no cap on marriage-based green cards.

    * Processing times for many green cards (i.e. for people who have already qualified, but just need the physical green card), are 12-24 months.

    * USCIS still expects many applications to be sent by mail. Some applications (like O-1s, EB-1s) require hundreds of pages of evidence, and it all needs to be printed out on 8.5x11" paper, for USCIS to scan it in on B+W scanners. This means that there is no error checking (e.g. on fee amounts), and if you have made a mistake, you might not know about it for weeks. Also, it means your petition cannot include working hyperlinks, webpages, or videos - the USCIS officer judges the petition by scrolling through a 400+ page PDF.

    * The 'standard' post-graduate work visa is the H-1B. It's entirely lottery-based, not merit-based, and typically there are 400,000+ people competing for 85,000 visas. Many qualified people are forced to leave the US each year because they didn't get selected in the lottery.

  13. ahussain parent
    Wouldn't this person be put on a PIP and then fired if their performance didn't improve?

    Even at companies with non-uniform salaries, it's difficult to down-level someone. Their morale will drop, the team's anxiety will go up, and (if they were genuinely bad for a long time), the team will wonder why they weren't fired.

  14. ahussain parent
    It seems like it's worth taking some time to steel-man the AI argument, even if your CEO hasn't made it very well.

    E.g. If you don't work on AI now, and AI models keep improving, how likely is it that a competitor who integrates AI well will eat your lunch? If it's >50%, it seems worth it to shift some focus to AI regardless of the series C round.

    This post from a few days ago has some great tips on how to integrate AI _well_: https://koomen.dev/essays/horseless-carriages/

  15. ahussain parent
    This is excellent! One of the benefits of the live-demos in the post was that they demonstrated just how big of a difference a good system prompt makes.

    In my own experience, I have avoided tweaking system prompts because I'm not convinced that it will make a big difference.

  16. ahussain parent
    This is awesome! I love the game.

    My one piece of feedback is to improve the keyboard (if that’s at all possible). I regularly miss points because of typos even if I had the correct answer.

  17. ahussain parent
    IANAL but I don't think there's a need for O-1 evidence to be from a specific country. The evidence just needs to credibly show that you're extraordinary.

    You can try https://o1pathways.com/ to evaluate your profile.

  18. ahussain parent
    OP here: I got my O-1 in 2022 and my post about it led to some interesting discussion on HN: https://www.hackerneue.com/item?id=39143958

    Now, I built a free tool to help others figure out if they could qualify for an O-1A "extraordinary ability" visa.

    The O-1 has 8 different evidentiary criteria and you only need to meet 3 of them to qualify. But there are many, often nuanced, ways to satisfy each of the criteria. I found that AI micro-workers are pretty good at handling these nuances to generate an accurate assessment. Would love to know what you think!

  20. ahussain parent
    You can definitely apply for an O-1 based on a successful career in tech: https://blog.awais.io/o1-visa
  21. ahussain parent
    If your kid is using a balance bike, be sure to take them somewhere flat like a playground. If the ground is even slightly inclined, the kid cannot coast, and they spend their energy inefficiently pushing themselves and their bike forward.
  22. ahussain parent
    The number of tailwind classes is so large now that copy/pasting the whole set into your project would mean a huge bundle size.

    Part of that the tailwind package is doing is making sure that only the relevant tailwind classes are included.

  23. ahussain parent
    One advantage of published books is that they have been through an editorial process, and so are guaranteed to be good (on some dimensions).

    Once publishing dies, who will set the quality bar? University presses? Stripe press?

  24. ahussain parent
    OP here: Sorry that you had a bad experience, but glad that you made it through in the end! I would love to talk more about your experience if you're up for it. My email is in my bio.
  25. ahussain parent
    The high salary is benchmarked against other people doing the same job, in the same geographic area. So you would have to by at a high-tier tech/banking job.
  26. ahussain parent
    Most lawyers I've spoken to disagree with this. The O-1 and EB-1 have similar criteria as written, but the EB-1 is adjudicated to a much higher standard than the O-1.
  28. ahussain parent
    SEEKING WORK | NYC | Remote

    Product-minded full-stack software engineer with experience working on pre-PMF -> Series A startups. Previously an early engineer at a YC-backed fintech company.

    Stack: Python (Flask, SQLAlchemy), Javascript / Typescript (React / Relay), GraphQL, Postgres, Kotlin for Android

    Email: awais@post.harvard.edu

  29. ahussain parent
    This 'focus on problems' attitude is interesting to me given that the founders of companies like Facebook, Apple and Amazon never set out to solve specific problems, but rather found cool new applications for maturing technologies.

    I think an equally valid approach is to start building something that you think should exist in the world, and bypass the "solution in search of a problem" issue by making sure your product has plenty of contact with reality. E.g. if no one is interested in an early version of the product, then you're probably going down the wrong path.

  30. ahussain parent
    Why do you think neural nets will be bad at making UIs, data models, cruds, gameplay, audio, graphic engines, etc? There are already some compelling examples of AIs making progress on those kinds of tasks.

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