I’m strongly confused about the definition of “product-led digital technology companies” provided in the guide. Is there any formal definition of the digital technical service/product?
For example, should a hedge-fund providing investment services be considered a product-led digital company, if it develops investment strategies with the help of data science?
Why agencies are excluded? Agencies can provide digital technical services, aren’t they?
Also I’ve found a few words on investors in the guide:
“Junior investors/analysts. Such specialisms must be supported by an investment track record made at a senior level and are not suitable for Global Promise.”
So I conclude that If I work as an analyst/data scientist in a hedge fund and I’m able to provide evidence that I was successful, it can be accepted?
The guide also states that " technical applicants (i.e. programmers) from non-technical organisations are eligible.". Does it mean that the only optional criteria I can choose are work outside of my occupation and academic contributions because the other two include “a product-led digital technology company”?
Product-led digital companies are companies with a specific product they are building and selling to the outside world. If it’s an agency, its products are workforce and expertise that is being let to companies without a dedicated team of developers. A hedge fund’s product is money management expertise. Now if a hedge fund created a digital product that could be purchased by the outside world, that could qualify but it’s a very strong “could”.
I think the best way to go about this is to not overthink it. Uber developed their app and puts it out there in the world. It’s their main point of contact with the customer. Looker build data analytics software and sells this interface to the users. Starbucks sells coffee and experience to customers while their loyalty app is a sub-product. If someone was building this loyalty app for Starbucks, then maybe they could qualify… but then again as far as I know, Starbucks built that app via an agency, which does not qualify…
You should look into a technical track. The acceptance criteria for technical people is way lower than for business product people. So if you are a data analyst at a hedge fund who writes on Python or C#, then it could work. Depends how you sell it.
Thank you, that sounds much more optimistic.
The applicant is my husband, and the problem is that he doesn’t have enough evidence on two criteria about academic contribution and work beyond occupation, so he must select the other two which are about product-led digital companies.
@Evgeniia_Grigoreva A “product-led digital technology company” is a company who has developed a digital technology product for their client based and not just services such as advise or consulting. Many hedge funds today use data-science/machine learning to develop financial advisory product to their clients and in my opinion that is still a digital product served to clients.
So, when you arrange your evidence focus on talking about the digital product that you have helped create/contribute to and also, focus on your contributions to the product(s). You could provide such evidence in the form of endorsement letters from your superiors in the company/hedge fund, code contributions in the form of git commits and lines of code contributed, news clippings, etc.
But do consider other’s point of view and suggestion here as well.
@Evgeniia_Grigoreva I would give a hypothetical example. Let’s say I worked as a developer or ML engineer at Blackrock and I helped to code/develop the Aladdin platform, which is a combination of risk analytics, portfolio management, trading and operations tools provided by Blackrock to their clients; then I would show the evidence of my contributions to that product because this would still be considered as a digital product served to clients. This could definitely qualify as an evidence for the TN Global Talent visa endorsement.
Disclaimer: This is just my suggestion based on what I have read or learned as an applicant but please do consult with others here to get their point of view on this as well.
Thank you.
Your hypothetical case is more straightforward than my husband’s one. Alladin is clealry a digital product. But what if his role was to produce trading strategies, and he built a system which does it automatically and effectively?
I’ll appriciate if you share your thoughts on that.
@Evgeniia_Grigoreva I am not quite sure what you mean by producing trading strategy as it could mean a lot of things. But for example, your husband’s role was to build a system using programming/ML models that is capable of automatically trade and he has developed the algorithm behind this system (the trading strategy is the algorithm that builds the system) then this could still be evidenced as a digital technology product. In this case, I would provide evidence that I am the developer of the algorithm and also helped develop the digital product (system in this case) that does the automatic and effective trading. The evidence can be provided via reference letters, code contribution through git commits/history, patent application/peer-reviewed scholarly publication and news clippings mentioning your husband’s work among many other evidences that could be provided for the same.
Disclaimer: This is how I would go about it if I was in the same situation.