I think a lot of those talking about cheap labour really don't understand how the current US immigration system works. Maybe large companies have other options but as a startup founder I've been through the H1-B process and it is anything but cheap and easy. Legal costs are in excess of $5k and the you must pay the employee a prevailing wage. For my cofounder this was in excess of $180k and thus as a series seed startup we simply can't afford to exercise the visa.
I absolutely understand the need to protect US jobs but the situation isn't very good when two cofounders can't stay in the country after raising almost $1m in seed capital and employing US citizens.
I think that's a little harsh. Let me give you some context to help make things clear. The creator of the game has been learning to program over the past year and this is one of his first projects. He's been working with Accredible and we've gotten to know him well over this time. We wanted to show our support for one of his first public projects. Yes we do work with Accredible but it's hardly a marketing endeavour to include a text link of those paying for hosting.
We've been working on that as it's something that affects lots of people. A very common case (which applies to me) is that you want advances courses in one topic and then introductory in others. The infrastructure for levelling is already there but we're having to manually assess the level of courses for most providers which takes some time.
For me that depends on how you define MOOC. I think that there is great scope for teaching the rote learning parts of the curriculum using online resources. Khan Academy have been doing some really interesting trials with schools along these lines.
In the next few years I think we will see more schools move towards a model where they have content primarily delivered through digital media and a teacher's role becomes more like that of a surgeon; fixing individual student's mistakes in their conceptual models.
To me it's about showing what you can actually do. I can list anything on my resume but how can you tell if I actually have the skills? To me things like this, github, the make festival etc are the resume of the future.
I absolutely understand the need to protect US jobs but the situation isn't very good when two cofounders can't stay in the country after raising almost $1m in seed capital and employing US citizens.