Many comments here assume that going to law school == becoming a lawyer. This is not always true. Many go to law school since it a degree that you can use in many other business fields even without practicing law.
This is very strange. In Israel all citizens are required to issue a tourist visa before traveling to the US. The process is super quick. The embassy have a website that updates you on each step in the process and from applying until you get the actual visa it can take only 3 weeks. The only busy times are usually in summer months where many tourists want to issue visas, so waiting for the in person interview can be up to a month. But again, from the interview to getting the actual the visa is a matter of days.
Is sorry for your story and hope you can get well soon.
In Israel we have a complete social coverage system and while not perfect at times, still provides much necessary help for those in need. Everytime I hear those stories about the US and medical system, I find it so hard to believe that a country with so much wealth and talent, still hadn't solved it.
In Israel you can get unlimited minutes + text + 30GB data for $10 a month. If you want to include around 200-300 minutes to call out of the country you can get to $13 dollar. The premium packages cost $30 and include calls + data when abroad. All that on an LTE network.
Hire for attitude, Train for skills - If you've good dedicated people that you can trust, I'm sure they can be trained for other positions.
Good people are always hard to come by, and they will be even more loyal if they will see that the company doesn't ditch them.
It's quite simple: a young and single engineer will cost less and work more. An older and married (or with kids) engineer will cost more and work less.
Looks nice. The problem with M$ is that over the years they've always offered simple tools for creating software, and then abandoning it somewhere along the way. Access is a great example.
Another option you may want to consider is to create 2 different brands. One for large customers and one for smaller ones. It could be 2 different websites but with the same backend system.
Usually large customers don't like to use the same tools as smaller ones, and smaller ones may feel your system is too "high end" if they'll see an option with a 10K pricing tag.
You can create a smaller brand with only email support and charge less.
I appreciate the hard work. Nevertheless, IMHO it would be better if open source projects will bring original ideas to the market, instead of copying an existing product.
Your request is 100% legitimate. People put a lot of time and effort into applying to jobs. Not answering for a month is just not acceptable. Even a reply that says "We're still reviewing your application" is good enough.
I hear from friends this happens in companies which have the resources and people and that's just shows the real company culture, the one not mentioned in the careers pages.
I think the main problem with it's leadership is that Microsoft lost it's innovative spirit. I think the main reason for that is that Ballmer is a business and marketing guy, and not a tech guy.
All the giants today are led by tech people and that's effect the entire culture of all the company.