251–260 of 376 posts
> 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...
These are all great tips. It is a really well-written article with great advice. I just come away from this with a crushing sense of depression driven by the following thoughts: I can't believe this is how the country I live in treats people who bring their high-demand skills here. 60 days or get out. This absolutely effects every engineer. Even the most racist ones: that there is a bedrock of people they are allowed…
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> "My grandparents were labor leaders and I'm pretty certain they'd be ashamed I can't or haven't done more to rectify this. Unfortunately tech unions are typically the ones railing against H1Bs entirely. The mere presence of H1B workers fundamentally increases worker supply (by definition). In fact it was the "US Tech Workers Union" that championed recent actions against H1B workers. And let's be honest they were no…
The “US Tech Workers Union” doesn’t appear to be a union at all. It appears to be a subsidiary of the “Progressives For Immigration Reform” non-profit aimed fairly exclusively at the H-1b issue, and the only spokesperson I can see for it is the executive director of PFIR. So, I wouldn’t take the “US Tech Workers” as being representative of tech workers or tech workers unions without further research.
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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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As I see it, beyond a certain level money and things don't make you much happier. They just give you a different set of things to feel the same level of happiness about. edit: This is as someone who has experienced household lifestyles going from $250k/year.
I don't agree with you. I've gone from 0K to 200K in my life and more money is always better, it's more freedom and it's more happiness and there has never been any downside. Making more money has always made me happier and it's given me the ability to take care of the people I care about. I want more and if a job comes up tomorrow that will pay me more, I'm there.
Tere's diminishing returns on wealth accumulation. You need to give up something to make that extra more. Different people have different thresholds for "giving up" certain aspects of their life.
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…
I lived in the US on a temporary, non-immigrant visa similar to the H-1B for six years.
Buying a house and starting a family while on such a visa always struck me as deeply irresponsible. I was reticent to even get a pet. The US immigration process sucks, but it's sucked for a long time, and the extent to which it's going to suck for you in particular is knowable ahead of time. Simply reading the language on the forms you fill out while applying for such a visa makes it clear how the US government regards you[0]. To ignore that and live your life as though you have permanent residency already is to carelessly put yourself (and your family, if you have one) in a risky situation.
I have sympathy for people who find themselves in this position. Leaving the US as a single person with no significant assets was tough enough for me, I can't imagine what it's like for someone who's really put down roots there. That said, if you were living like a "temporary worker in a speciality occupation" you wouldn't have put down roots.
[0] I know a lot of people listen to their employers pie-in-the-sky promises of Green Cards and how layoffs "never happen" and so forth. You're an adult, though. Understand your legal situation for yourself.
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Just marry an american lol
As someone who married someone abroad - moving to them is a far simpler and cheaper process than having them move to you. You may be thinking of the loophole of getting married overseas (which does exist) but the government is pretty strict with the requirements around that. If you want to do thing legally and immigrate to the US then you'd better have a decade of your life and tens of thousands of dollars to throw a…
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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…
These "best and brightest" are unencumbered by student loans and voluntarily put themselves in a very bad position at the negotiating table for the salary. If that doesn't depress wages it's hard to say what would.
I can introduce you to someone who sells Eiffel towers and used bridges. You can trust him. He is my cousin.
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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…
What do Americans owe you? If its such a bad arrangement, why did you come to the US? > it translates to "don't buy a house, don't get too many possessions, don't marry[1], don't have kids". What percentages of Americans own a house. What percentage of Americans have kids? What percentage of Americans get married? You have some seriously entitlement derangement syndrome.