Category: big five tech

From Amazon to Zoom: What Happens in an Internet Minute In 2021?


This post is by Aran Ali from Visual Capitalist


internet minute 2021

From Amazon to Zoom: An Internet Minute In 2021

In our everyday lives, not much may happen in a minute. But when gauging the depth of internet activity occurring all at once, it can be extraordinary. Today, around five billion internet users exist across the globe.

This annual infographic from Domo captures just how much activity is going on in any given minute, and the amount of data being generated by users. To put it mildly, there’s a lot.

The Internet Minute

At the heart of the world’s digital activity are the everyday services and applications that have become staples in our lives. Collectively, these produce unimaginable quantities of user activity and associated data.

Here are just some of the key figures of what happens in a minute:

  • Amazon customers spend $283,000
  • 12 million people send an iMessage
  • 6 million people shop online
  • Instacart users spend $67,000
  • Slack users send 148,000 messages
  • Microsoft Teams connects 100,000 users
  • YouTube users stream 694,000 videos
  • Facebook Live receives 44 million views
  • Instagram users share 65,000 photos
  • Tiktok users watch 167 million videos

As these facts show, Big Tech companies have quite the influence over our lives. That influence is becoming difficult to ignore, and draws increasing media and political attention. And some see this attention as a plausible explanation for why Facebook changed their name—to dissociate from their old one in the process.

One tangible measure of this influence is the massive amount of revenue Big Tech companies bring in. To get (Read more...)

The Data Behind America’s H-1B Visa Program


This post is by Aran Ali from Visual Capitalist


The H-1B Visa in Charts

The Briefing

  • The H-1B visa is extremely tech focused, with total software developers making up 38% of all applications
  • More than 275,000 applications were filed in fiscal 2021, but only 85,000 will be accepted

H-1B Visa Origins

The H-1B Visa is an immigration program that brings highly skilled workers into America when a shortage of those skills exists in the domestic labor market. The program came to life as part of the Immigration Act of 1990, under the George H.W. Bush administration. Although the program was temporarily suspended for 10 months under the Trump administration, this stoppage has since been lifted by Biden.

Though regulations permit specialized knowledge workers from various fields, it is primarily tech jobs that crowd these occupations. For instance, software developers and computer systems engineers/architects collectively cover almost 50% of all roles.

Competition Intensifies

The H-1B visa is highly competitive. In fiscal 2021, program applications hit 275,000, a 15-year high. The program follows a lottery system where 85,000 applicants are selected at random. Today, that means a given applicant has about a 30% chance of getting in.

YearNumber of Applicants
2021275,000
2020200,000
2019187,500
2018200,000
2017237,500
2016225,000
2015175,000
2014125,000

Although the system is a lottery, the first 20,000 spots are reserved for those with a master’s degree or higher, so those holding a higher education tend to have improved odds.

Roughly two-thirds of applicants come from India. The large Indian presence exists in the sponsor companies list (Read more...)