(I am not a lawyer, and I am not your lawyer, but during previous and current jobs I've helped people through this process.) Approximately 25% of engineers I k

(I am not a lawyer, and I am not your lawyer, but during previous and current jobs I've helped people through this process.) Approximately 25% of engineers I know would qualify for O-1 (counterfactually, for Americans) given 1 to 3 months of worksmanlike effort towards checking off boxes that they don't already have. People think I'm joking when I say: "Participation on a panel, or individually, as a judge of the work of others in the same or in a field of specialization allied to that field for which classification is sought" can be satisfied by judging a hackathon. I really am not joking when I say that. The engineers I know who actually hold O-1s in their hand generally sound much closer to "Bright guy; founded a YC-backed company; clearly an asset to a development team" than "Nobel prize winner" in terms of career accomplishments.