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Laid Off, Now What?

bharathpbhat.github.io

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Re: Laid Off, Now What?

#121

Post by robocat »

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…

> There is nothing scientific about this

Soft sciences are harder than hard sciences to do.

> No experiment was performed. > This is not a double blind experiment

Do you really think experiments are a reasonable approach to political questions?

I too dislike wish-washy science, but there really isn’t much other choice for many real world situations.

Re: Laid Off, Now What?

#122

Post by lowiqengineer »

TrackerFF wrote: post #102
lowiqengineer wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

Obviously the salaries are quite different, but at the same time - you're pretty much walking around in golden shackles, no? I can't imagine those salaries being relevant, other than a handful of places in the US. And for the price of a small 2-bedroom apartment in the SF-area, you can pretty much buy a mansion where I live. Then you have things like healthcare, school costs, daycare / cost of raising a child, etc. e…

Cost of healthcare is minimal at Google. And yeah, you can easily afford a mansion if you want to commute long enough. 300k to 500k is enough for nice housing - unfortunately, as someone making $150k at 24 I’ll never have this American dream.

Re: Laid Off, Now What?

#123

Post by lowiqengineer »

marcinzm wrote: post #118
TrackerFF wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously the salaries are quite different, but at the same time - you're pretty much walking around in golden shackles, no? I can't imagine those salaries being relevant, other than a handful of places in the US. And for the price of a small 2-bedroom apartment in the SF-area, you can pretty much buy a mansion where I live. Then you have things like healthcare, school costs, daycare / cost of raising a child, etc. e…

The US is a large place, you can save money for a decade in one location and then use that $1-2 million you built up to move somewhere cheap, buy a mansion and not give much a shit for the next 40 years. Taxes are also generally lower so you keep more. Healthcare costs don't matter since your employer pays for that and gives you good health insurance. School/child only matters later, and you can either move away by t…

I grew up with a dad working for 70-120k and a mom at home. I can’t even imagine how nice the lifestyles of Bay Area kids are.

Re: Laid Off, Now What?

#124

Post by simonkafan »

This sounds horrible to me. I mean, do you really want to spend your life having to deal with leetcode for several months every 2-3 years? Maybe some people find coding interviews and leetcode problems exciting, I find them tedious and want to avoid them. Not talking about the pressure to find a new job in 60 days.

So no FAANG? Indeed. You only live once and can spend your time better.

Re: Laid Off, Now What?

#125

Post by wiz21c »

ignoramous wrote: post #74

> Is the work that I am going to be doing in this team critical to the product/business? Note that in the case of larger companies, you should try to understand if the product or business that the team supports is large enough. Highly recommend reading this classic: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-pr...

Definitely a good read.

But too few optimistic notes under too many cynical notes.

But he's damn right on many accounts...

Re: Laid Off, Now What?

#126

Post by [deleted] »

firebaze wrote: post #97
jdsully wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its not an act of omission, this is a result of compromise with factions that don’t want immigration at all. The fact it discourages people is a feature not a bug.

If you immigrate, you emigrate. If you successfully immigrate (let's say in the U.S.), you have skills sought there. Those skills are probably also in demand in your origin country. You'd stand even more of a chance to be one of a few in your home country, gaining status, gaining visibility, turning the tide. I know I'll probably be flagged for this question, but still: why do this? Why not help your origin country w…

[deleted]

Re: Laid Off, Now What?

#127

Post by User23 »

fishywang wrote: post #89
User23 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What immigrant visa, exactly? H1b is the pathway to immigrant visa for tech workers in the US. For H1b holders born in certain countries, they have to be on H1b visa to be on the 5-10 year long queue to get the green card.

The appropriate E visa[1].

[1] https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/immigrat...

Re: Laid Off, Now What?

#128

Post by akiselev »

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…

Even when you have a supportive (non-exploitative) employer it's an unbelievably precarious position (personal story time!).

In order to renew an H1b visa [1], immigrants have to go to a US consulate, which do not exist within the borders of the United States so leaving the country is required. For the vast majority, this is a day trip to Canada or Mexico or a small vacation to visit family in their home country so it's not really an issue. However, sometimes, the consulate will pull shit like a "State Department Security Check" because the subjects worked in an institute that happens to have a research nuclear reactor - nevermind that it's one of the largest scientific institutes in the world or that their fields of expertise have nothing to do with nuclear.

The immigrants, if they chose to go to Canada or Mexico (as most do due to cost), are likely at this point stuck for months as undocumented immigrants in their new host country - unable to work with existing mortgages/apartments/cars/obligations to pay for in their old life, hotels and living expenses to pay for in their new life, and barely a month worth of sick time and vacation. Bonus: most of the things they could do to mitigate the disaster could jeopardize their permanent residency application. As far as I know, these standoffs usually end when the employers sue over the renewal or dump the employee completely in which case their entire lives have to be packed up and moved but they can't enter the United States to do so. Bonus #2: if both parents are working, they likely have separate H1b visas that won't clear together - family separation time!

As you can imagine, going through this series of events is devastating, especially for children who have zero insight or control into the process. Cruel is an understatement.

Edit: [1] See comment below, this applies to applications going through consular processing, which is a crucial detail

Re: Laid Off, Now What?

#129

Post by barrkel »

tiziniano wrote: post #92
confidantlake wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The study is unconvincing. They mention that fields with more h1bs have lower unemployment. Well no kidding, in demand fields attract more h1bs, it isn't the h1bs making it more attractive. Another problem with the study. "...the program enables employers to hire foreign workers when they cannot hire U.S. workers" This is such a lie. My brother has looking for around a year and cannot get his first position. Past few…

I mean it is economics 101 that H1B's depress wages. I'd say especially since the demand for technology is relatively more inelastic that the increases on labor supply. There is a lot of money involved in masking this fact, but let's agree on something. There is always a tension between what part of economic surplus workers get and what part capital (shareholders) get. The sky high returns on capital in tech are poss…

It's not actually obvious in "Economics 101" that wages are depressed by the best and the brightest coming to the US.

What you're not taking into account is the relative efficiencies of scale. When there's more talent in a particular geography than somewhere else, high value global companies can grow in a way they can't elsewhere. A precondition of that is lots of raw material - people - who can be repurposed by the highest bidder. Limit the raw material, and the industry might not even be located on the West Coast.

If supply was enough to depress wages, the US would have the world's lowest cost developers. In fact, it has the most expensive, because of the valuable companies that are able to grow in SV, which each bid up wages.

Economics teaches us about winner effects. The best attract outsize rewards, far larger than their proportional increment in ability or effort. SV attracts the best of the best because it's the best place for such people to be rewarded. It's a virtuous circle in multiple, compounding dimensions.

People are a fixed cost in the economics of software development. That means scale is king; it's the divisor on those costs. Scale isn't just on the sales side, though; it's on the talent side too.

Reducing skilled immigration is the kind of shortsighted approach that kills the golden goose in the long term.

Re: Laid Off, Now What?

#130

Post by bonchicbongenre »

nrmitchi wrote: post #32
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…

> Do people here know that even this 60-day grace window was only put into place relatively recently by the Obama administration? My worst situation dealing with this was a TN status rather than an H1B, where I was told at a border that I could be ineligible for admission to the US because I had no left the day that I was laid off from a previous position. I had to tell the CBP officer that there was a 60 day grace p…

Here's a fun one — my (foreign) girlfriend graduated from a US undergrad, and stayed in the country over the summer to begin her US PhD. She was legally covered as being able to stay in the country in both directions by the grace period after/before her undergrad/grad school respectively. When going to the embassy to renew her Visa, she was told she was staying in the country illegally, and the idiots there wouldn't renew the Visa on those grounds. They are literally legally incorrect, but there's nothing you can do with these absolute buffoons, these insipid recipients of a national work plan who are too unpleasant and immovably stupid to contribute to a real workforce.
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