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Laid Off, Now What?

bharathpbhat.github.io

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Re: Laid Off, Now What?

#211

Post by marcinzm »

gcheong wrote: post #192
marcinzm wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Sure but do people want to actually want to live in those places? My wife and I both live in SF and we were able to buy a house which would be impossible now, but I don’t think we’ve ever cleared more then 250K max combined in actual salary. Now with only one of us working which could drop to zero at any moment it seems a move to cash out our equity in the house and move to Europe is a more feasible option than stayi…

>Sure but do people want to actually want to live in those places?

I don't see why not. It's not like the Bay Area is particularly great culturally, culinarily or in most other ways. It's a giant suburb sandwiched between a medium sized city and a place that is only technically dense enough to be a city. There's plenty of mid-sized cities and suburbs in the US with reasonable costs of living.

Re: Laid Off, Now What?

#212

Post by david-gpu »

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…

My priority is providing for myself and my family, not some abstract entity to which I'm linked only through an accident of birth.

If a country offers better work conditions, a better salary, less risk of economic turmoil, better health care, etc. then I'll take the opportunity if it presents itself. I've done it twice and would do it again.

It's not any different to taking a better job offer, whatever that means to you.

Re: Laid Off, Now What?

#213

Post by mancerayder »

robocat wrote: post #121
confidantlake wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Someone above accused him/her being unscientific and they responded accordingly.

Re: Laid Off, Now What?

#214

Post by scarface74 »

jen20 wrote: post #197
scarface74 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever tried being a landlord if you are in another part of the same metro area that is only an hour away? I can’t imagine being a landlord dealing with rentals in another country.

This is what management companies are for.

And they take 10%-20% of your monthly rent and at least half of the first months rent of a new lease.

When I was in real estate, the banks would only credit your income at a 75% occupancy rate. It’s hard to break even on an income basis with rental real estate.

When your property is vacant, you’re still on the hook for the mortgage. More than likely, your income is going to be lower when you’re forced to leave the country.

Re: Laid Off, Now What?

#215

Post by stack_underflow »

bradlys wrote: post #140
ramraj07 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see _some_ potential acceptability to this idea though. There are a few hypotheses for this to be true: 1. If you're not a good programmer even with leetcode practice you can't get good 2. If you're a good programmer with leetcode practice you eliminate anxiety and are able to perform optimally according to your programming skills Thus, it is definitely semi annoying that you need to "prep" for interviews with leet…

Being a good programmer doesn't necessarily mean you're good at leetcode and just need to brush up. I don't meet almost anyone who uses DP in their daily life but you can bet your ass you'll run into a problem that requires DP in a FAANG interview. And you better put it on the board in under 20 minutes or you're getting passed for the next guy who did 1000+ problems as their prep. It wouldn't be so bad if being a goo…

It's interesting, when I tell people they need to be prepared for this bar I get a surprising number of people who just don't seem to want to accept that it's true or flat out claim that it's not true when I know they haven't interviewed in years.

In the past 2 years I've done about 40ish+ interviews at all the big tech co's + smaller-midsize startups and aside from 3 or 4 take home assignments I was given, _every_ interview was leetcode style, to the point where I would just start noting which exact leetcode questions I was asked when friends asked about my experience. The only exception would be 1 or 2 "system design" rounds out of the 5/6 on-site interviews if the company was calibrating me for senior level.

Re: Laid Off, Now What?

#216

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

bgorman wrote: post #149
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can we stop pretending that's true? Like there are really jobs that are sooooo unique that NO Americans have the skills and only some foreign worker unicorns can fulfill them? H1Bs are just skilled worker visas, let's stop with the charade that they're anything else.

If you want to stop that charade, you need to admit that H1Bs are frequently abused and are used to depress the salaries of American workers.

> If you want to stop that charade, you need to admit that H1Bs are frequently abused and are used to depress the salaries of American workers.

100% agree, which is why I'm saying they shouldn't be tied to a single employer, which just helps employers in general acquire a more compliant, docile work force.

Re: Laid Off, Now What?

#217

Post by sushshshsh »

moises_silva wrote: post #159
bonchicbongenre wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

As an immigrant in another country (thankfully more immigration-friendly), I completely understand the frustration. I think however we must see beyond the incompetence of some front-line workers and turn the frustration and complaints towards who's running the country and its policies, not providing training and overall setting a bad example on how to treat immigrants (legal or illegal). I've declined good offers to…

Just marry an american lol

Re: Laid Off, Now What?

#218

Post by manuelabeledo »

tus88 wrote: post #69

Strange how HN is so keen on having millions of people come here to compete for your job and put downwards pressure on wages.

This has not happened, at least not in software engineering.

Also, it is more desirable to attract talent to the US, where they will spend money and pay taxes, than just outsourcing.

Re: Laid Off, Now What?

#219

Post by kshacker »

akiselev wrote: post #210
kshacker wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In order to renew an H1b visa, immigrants have to go to a US consulate I think you may be confusing 2 things. H1 Validity and H1 Visa. You can extend your H1 from within US and most people do. No one is forced to go out and come back. However, to extend H1 Visa, what you say is true. The difference is that visa allows you to go out of US, and then come back in, and for you to come back in, you need a visa that is val…

I'm not confusing them, I just oversimplified the interaction between the petition expiration date and the I-94 expiration date. I forgot to add that my comment above applies to applications that go through consular processing though, which is a very important detail. H1b applications processed by consulates don't receive an I-94 which means that the application is "approved pending a visa stamping". The new work aut…

I am not trying to describe the happy path in any way. I have gone through a 4 year L1A green card which my colleagues got it in 10 months and I have been without advanced parole for 13 months which implied if I left the country due to any reason, I could not come back. And my experience too was in a different decade, no need for me to cover up the warts. It is quite an experience each interaction with the then INS taking over 3 months when the entire last stage should have completed in 3-4 months.

What I am describing about H1 is standard (majority) operating procedure. Yes extending H1 visa outside of the country is a pain, but extending H1 while being in US is not such a big pain, and most of my colleagues do that. Of course there does come a need for people to visit to their origin country once in a while, and yes that's when it becomes a lottery.

Re: Laid Off, Now What?

#220

Post by itronitron »

kinkrtyavimoodh wrote: post #178
nrmitchi wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

You at least were 'lucky' enough to reach the border. I know several people who weren't even allowed to board flights because the airlines run their own small 'judge jury and executioner' system whereby they will refuse to let you board if they feel you won't be allowed at the border. Sure this works for trivial cases like checking Visa stamp etc. but immigration rules are way more complex than that but try explainin…

I recommend buying a round trip ticket with a return date of two weeks later. That way airlines won't block you out of concern that they will be forced to fly you back at their expense.

You can later cancel the return ticket and apply the credit (minus a fee) to a later trip.

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