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Laid Off, Now What?

bharathpbhat.github.io

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Re: Laid Off, Now What?

#61

Post by jdxcode »

kinkrtyavimoodh wrote: post #19
mancerayder wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Typically it's the Democrats who are pro-immigration, but in reality they don't care much about H1B style immigration and are in fact likely against it due to American tech unions hating H1Bs, Wait, what? Tech unions? I've never seen a single union in my entire 20 year career. I was sympathetic up until you complained about that. What unions? The H1B stuff goes back and forth politically. If you ask me, if the econ…

https://ustechworkers.com/ for example. I don't know what makes something 'officially' a labor union but at least they call themselves that. There was also Washington state Tech Workers Union.

do they hold any significant influence? I've never heard of either one. I lived in WA state too.

Re: Laid Off, Now What?

#62

Post by TrackerFF »

lowiqengineer wrote: post #37
titanomachy wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe that. Even within the elite, there are different grades of jobs and achievement. Preparation can be the difference.

Perhaps, but no amount of preparation has been able to vault me to even close to the elite, mostly because I guess I don’t have the genes for it.

Most interview questions around data structures, algorithms, etc. follow the same patterns. In the end, it's just a pattern recognition problem (IMO).

Once you recognize the different variations, you solve a bunch of those problems to become more efficient at 'em.

Really, it's no different than solving certain calculus problems. If you've solved enough integrals that require certain substitutions and identities, you'll notice them right away - but of course, if you've never seen 'em before, the problems can become next to impossible - given a very limited time fame to solve them.

Sure - some candidates will be highly intelligent, notice intricate patterns right away, and solve them on the spot (in the same way they'd perform on IQ tests), but for the majority it's just discipline and preparation.

There's a reason people are following these ridiculous study guides, which involve hundreds to thousands of Leetcode/hackerrank/etc. questions. If you actually study the problems, and do them over and over again, you'll get there.

And by "just" doing that, you can indeed outclass the so-called elite candidates.

Re: Laid Off, Now What?

#64

Post by the_arun »

mancerayder wrote: post #18
kinkrtyavimoodh wrote: post #10

H1B rules are quite ridiculous (or more accurately, cruel). Do people here know that even this 60-day grace window was only put into place relatively recently by the Obama administration? Before that, you technically had to leave the country the day you were laid off. Never mind that you might have a house a family and might have been living here for more than a decade. You would officially be staying illegally if yo…

> Typically it's the Democrats who are pro-immigration, but in reality they don't care much about H1B style immigration and are in fact likely against it due to American tech unions hating H1Bs, Wait, what? Tech unions? I've never seen a single union in my entire 20 year career. I was sympathetic up until you complained about that. What unions? The H1B stuff goes back and forth politically. If you ask me, if the econ…

If economy is down or unemployment is high, is it proprtional to number of umemployment rate in highly skilled workers or other categories? Cause I always understood unemployment numbers include all categories with a majority in low skilled workers. Which means that, it may not be related to H1 visas.

Re: Laid Off, Now What?

#65

Post by ozim »

kinkrtyavimoodh wrote: post #10

H1B rules are quite ridiculous (or more accurately, cruel). Do people here know that even this 60-day grace window was only put into place relatively recently by the Obama administration? Before that, you technically had to leave the country the day you were laid off. Never mind that you might have a house a family and might have been living here for more than a decade. You would officially be staying illegally if yo…

What one can expect from going to foreign country? People in mine (or yours) country will try to get as much as possible for free from others.

If someone thinks that some country is composed only from good will and good people, it will be disappointing. There is price to pay for moving, it is not always obvious. I moved to another country and I earn more money than if I would not move, but opportunities that I left back in my country are somewhat biting me back after all those years.

Re: Laid Off, Now What?

#66

Post by User23 »

kinkrtyavimoodh wrote: post #55
mathattack wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t intend to seem callous, so please help educate me. If you marry a citizen, that accelerated the Green Card. If you marry a non-citizen, your situation is precarious, so why not rent rather than buy? I’m not arguing that the rules are right. (They are clearly wrong) Just that if you’re ina precarious situation, avoid doing things that make it worse. When I lived abroad, the expats were all aware of being on bo…

I am not offended and you have been polite, so please don't remove your posts. Renting vs buying is fine. We can choose to rent all our lives and frankly in the Bay Area buying isn't even that slam dunk of a decision anyway. My point was a bit more general. It's very common for people to argue 'technically' about how others should live their lives while missing their ground reality. For instance, it's easy to say "We…

As a guest worker you are not supposed to put down deep roots here. If you want to immigrate you should follow the law and get an immigrant visa. This isn't hard at all. It's just like being a guest anywhere else, you have to follow the host's rules even if you don't like them.

Re: Laid Off, Now What?

#67

Post by karpierz »

confidantlake wrote: post #57
paxys wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've highlighted the problem with public discourse in the country. "I'm going to choose to ignore all scientific evidence because my brother can't get a job and it feels like H-1B is the cause" - sadly applicable to any policy topic where politicians & media are taking advantage of people's emotions.

I am not ignoring scientific evidence. I read the paper, it is not convincing. This is not a double blind experiment, it simply looks at data and asserts causes. Take this paragraph: "An increase in the share of workers with an H-1B visa within an occupation, on average, reduces the unemployment rate in that occupation. The results indicate that a 1 percentage point increase in the share of workers with an H-1B visa…

You didn't read the methodology. They segmented the data by occupation, and then examined the data per occupation by year.

Do you have a study that shows the adverse impact of H1-B visas on American workers?

Re: Laid Off, Now What?

#68

Post by ab_testing »

The problem is that, as an Indian, you will be doing this dance routine for the rest of your life. Sure it is easy to do it when you are in your late twenties, early thirties but once you reach late thirties and early forties, you will not even get any interest from the recruiters.

Ageism is very real in the tech industry and your only options are to either get a green card or move to another country. Recessions and layoffs are a way of life in this country. Sure you survived this one - but may be not the next one or the one after that. Also with each passing decade, it will be harder for you to immigrate somewhere else - partially due to countries like Canada, Australia reducing points past a certain age and partly due to having kids who are used to a specific way of life in the US.

So while your status is safe for you, it is a good time to define the course of your career, because no matter how good of an engineer you are, at the end of the day, you are just a number on a spreadsheet who will be laid off at another recession.

Re: Laid Off, Now What?

#70

Post by lowiqengineer »

TrackerFF wrote: post #52
oDot wrote: post #7

The current state of job interviews is terrible. Just the fact that studying for a few weeks affects their outcome should raise eyebrows everywhere. And don't get me started on lack of job-related questions, false negatives and having to guess what interviewers want to hear

It seems to be a mostly US-centric thing. I live in Scandinavia, and I have yet to encounter the levels of rigor I see in the US (tech) interviewing process - which is kind of weird, as we have much, much more stringent workers rights/laws, making it more difficult to get rid of a bad hire. Sure, US companies, especially in tech hubs, operate on a completely different scale than companies over here - at least in term…

> Over here, there seems to be much more emphasis (and trust) on your resume, and the hiring process is more focused on fit. If you have the basics down, most can be thought - but it's pretty difficult to teach culture.

That's probably because OP makes triple to quadruple your total compensation at minimum as an L5 ML Engineer at Google.

https://www.levels.fyi/

Total: $356,119

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