3 ms·

Access to Startup Skills Threatened by U.K. Visa Review

10 points by emre 11y ago

fiatmoney 11y ago
What a shame; apparently they're planning on deporting them to countries without working Internet connections, webcams, or telephones.
madaxe_again 11y ago
We employ 30 something people. About 50% are UK nationals, 30% EU, 20% rest of world on tier 2 visas. Historically, they've been fairly easy to get - we've never had an application refused, and when the home office do their surprise inspections, they're pretty laissez-faire. We had such an inspection a few weeks back - the assessor mentioned that we should go hell for leather on tier 2 hires now if we need them, as we're unlikely to be an eligible sponsor next year - it's being regeared to only be applicable for large (£10m+ turnover) businesses. The tories are not pro business. They are pro lining their and their chums pockets, and blindsiding the masses into electing them. The most pro-small-business initiatives have come from Brussels over the last decade, from R&D tax credits to a plethora of grants - and they want out of the EU because regulation hurts energy profiteering.
- cromulent 11y ago
  Often politicians say they are pro-business. They don't say: pro free market. They really mean specific businesses - their donors / lobbyists / chums / future employers.
matthewmacleod 11y ago
Yeah, this is a really stupid, cack-handed approach to immigration by the UK government. I've worked with some people that had to just through preposterous hoops to come and work in the UK – we're not talking unskilled labour, but skilled engineers, paying a whole lot of tax on their generous salaries. And it's a field in which is increasingly difficult to recruit talented individuals, too. Their positions are constantly in limbo and require IMO far too much paperwork in order to remain resident. Meanwhile, there is essentially no control over immigration from EU member states. There's a populist objection to immigration from the EU, because those flows are perceived to be primarily unskilled workers displacing domestic workers from low-paid jobs. It's not clear how much of a problem that actually is, but it's a common perception nonetheless. So we've a government elected after lots of loud promises to reduce net immigration. Since there's essentially nothing that they can do about immigration from within the EU, there is pressure to reduce net immigration from outside it, to 'make up the numbers'. I haven't looked at the statistics on this, but I'd wager that this disproportionately affects exactly the sort of immigration we want to see into the UK – highly-skilled foreign workers. One of the UK's strengths as a business base has traditionally been the ease of hiring internationally. Now we have an ass-backwards immigration policy which achieves exactly the opposite of what we want, primarily due to populist pandering. It's going to do nothing other than harm the UK's competitiveness in the short and long term.
blackbeard 11y ago
FFS. I think they have no idea how few people we can get locally in London who don't need a visa...
- ownagefool 11y ago
  What are you trying to recruit for and how much are you willing to pay?
  - blackbeard 11y ago
    .Net 50-60k. We have a billion applicants but they're all shit.
    - chrisseaton 11y ago
      Are they so bad that they can't implement fizz-buzz, or are they ok programmers but not good enough in your specific field, or something between those two?
      - blackbeard 11y ago
        Mostly that bad or worse at the moment. I think we've got around a 1-2% hit rate through agents and job sites. Despite being finance sector, we don't expect any qualifications or finance experience, just people who know their shit. We do a "pin the data structure on the problem" thing. Even people with fair amounts of experience rarely know the difference between a list, a set and a dictionary. Some guy, supposedly a technical architect, just sat there and smiled awkwardly through the questions and didn't answer them. It's actually quite depressing until you realise you could probably walk out and can another £30k because you can actually do this stuff.
        chrisseaton 11y ago
        This amazes me. £60k in London is not too bad - I would have thought you could have attracted someone who can program with that.
ViF5Z3AD5b8XP 11y ago
I am about to finish my MSc, and my thesis is on a very specific area of research which got an attention of start-up which wanted to hire me. I passed the interview, but they can't sponsor my visa at this stage of their development. Which makes you feel powerless, since the problem is not something I can fix, and it is not a first job offer which had to pass on me because of my visa issue.
slgeorge 11y ago
The Home Office has been tightening up skilled visa's for about three years now. It used to be easy to do, but is becoming very difficult. But, I can see the other side of the coin - there's no way you can claim that skills are in shortage when you consider that you're hiring pool is the whole of the EU. All too often people claim they can't get "skilled workers" and what they mean is that they only want the fully finished article and won't invest in training or development for existing employees. Putting in career paths and development for employees is good for retention and doesn't have to be that costly.

10 points by emre 11y ago

What a shame; apparently they're planning on deporting them to countries without working Internet connections, webcams, or telephones.

madaxe_again 11y ago

We employ 30 something people. About 50% are UK nationals, 30% EU, 20% rest of world on tier 2 visas. Historically, they've been fairly easy to get - we've never had an application refused, and when the home office do their surprise inspections, they're pretty laissez-faire. We had such an inspection a few weeks back - the assessor mentioned that we should go hell for leather on tier 2 hires now if we need them, as we're unlikely to be an eligible sponsor next year - it's being regeared to only be applicable for large (£10m+ turnover) businesses. The tories are not pro business. They are pro lining their and their chums pockets, and blindsiding the masses into electing them. The most pro-small-business initiatives have come from Brussels over the last decade, from R&D tax credits to a plethora of grants - and they want out of the EU because regulation hurts energy profiteering.

cromulent 11y ago
Often politicians say they are pro-business. They don't say: pro free market. They really mean specific businesses - their donors / lobbyists / chums / future employers.

matthewmacleod 11y ago

Yeah, this is a really stupid, cack-handed approach to immigration by the UK government. I've worked with some people that had to just through preposterous hoops to come and work in the UK – we're not talking unskilled labour, but skilled engineers, paying a whole lot of tax on their generous salaries. And it's a field in which is increasingly difficult to recruit talented individuals, too. Their positions are constantly in limbo and require IMO far too much paperwork in order to remain resident. Meanwhile, there is essentially no control over immigration from EU member states. There's a populist objection to immigration from the EU, because those flows are perceived to be primarily unskilled workers displacing domestic workers from low-paid jobs. It's not clear how much of a problem that actually is, but it's a common perception nonetheless. So we've a government elected after lots of loud promises to reduce net immigration. Since there's essentially nothing that they can do about immigration from within the EU, there is pressure to reduce net immigration from outside it, to 'make up the numbers'. I haven't looked at the statistics on this, but I'd wager that this disproportionately affects exactly the sort of immigration we want to see into the UK – highly-skilled foreign workers. One of the UK's strengths as a business base has traditionally been the ease of hiring internationally. Now we have an ass-backwards immigration policy which achieves exactly the opposite of what we want, primarily due to populist pandering. It's going to do nothing other than harm the UK's competitiveness in the short and long term.

blackbeard 11y ago

FFS. I think they have no idea how few people we can get locally in London who don't need a visa...

ownagefool 11y ago
What are you trying to recruit for and how much are you willing to pay?
- blackbeard 11y ago
  .Net 50-60k. We have a billion applicants but they're all shit.
  - chrisseaton 11y ago
    Are they so bad that they can't implement fizz-buzz, or are they ok programmers but not good enough in your specific field, or something between those two?
    - blackbeard 11y ago
      Mostly that bad or worse at the moment. I think we've got around a 1-2% hit rate through agents and job sites. Despite being finance sector, we don't expect any qualifications or finance experience, just people who know their shit. We do a "pin the data structure on the problem" thing. Even people with fair amounts of experience rarely know the difference between a list, a set and a dictionary. Some guy, supposedly a technical architect, just sat there and smiled awkwardly through the questions and didn't answer them. It's actually quite depressing until you realise you could probably walk out and can another £30k because you can actually do this stuff.
      - chrisseaton 11y ago
        This amazes me. £60k in London is not too bad - I would have thought you could have attracted someone who can program with that.

ViF5Z3AD5b8XP 11y ago

I am about to finish my MSc, and my thesis is on a very specific area of research which got an attention of start-up which wanted to hire me. I passed the interview, but they can't sponsor my visa at this stage of their development. Which makes you feel powerless, since the problem is not something I can fix, and it is not a first job offer which had to pass on me because of my visa issue.

slgeorge 11y ago

The Home Office has been tightening up skilled visa's for about three years now. It used to be easy to do, but is becoming very difficult. But, I can see the other side of the coin - there's no way you can claim that skills are in shortage when you consider that you're hiring pool is the whole of the EU. All too often people claim they can't get "skilled workers" and what they mean is that they only want the fully finished article and won't invest in training or development for existing employees. Putting in career paths and development for employees is good for retention and doesn't have to be that costly.