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Meta fires a software engineer two days after he relocated from India to Canada

businessinsider.com

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Re: Meta fires a software engineer two days after he relocated from India to Canada

#81

Post by hliyan »

mduggles wrote: post #66

I'm horrified by so many of the comments here that seem to lack even the most basic of human decency. Allow me to fill people in for those who have never uprooted your life and moved across the world for a job. It is a massive commitment on the part of the employee, where you sell the majority of your earthly possessions, property, cars, etc. Then you go through an immigration process which even if its handled by FAA…

I'm inclined to agree. Giving a neutral, business sounding label to something like this, and normalising it doesn't make it right. As an interaction between two individuals, this would be immediately recognised as morally wrong, even if contractually right. Isn't morality supposed to scale?

Re: Meta fires a software engineer two days after he relocated from India to Canada

#82

Post by autotune »

lm28469 wrote: post #61
autotune wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How am I "defending megacorps" right now? I am literally knocking them down because people are worshiping them and focusing only on the people affected by them instead of writing about this type of practice that has happened literally everywhere at this point. What you wrote is straight up double speak nonsense.

You said he shouldn't complained because it happened to you and you didn't complain. You should be happy people start complaining

No, because it has happened to others at companies in the past all the time to people have been complaining for years. By your logic we should only care about practices good or bad that happen at META companies, and the rest fall by the wayside. It's ridiculous that this story makes HN front page, yet the woman who recently won a lawsuit for $366 million due to racial discrimination at FedEx doesn't because "not META."

Re: Meta fires a software engineer two days after he relocated from India to Canada

#83

Post by erfgh »

mduggles wrote: post #66

I'm horrified by so many of the comments here that seem to lack even the most basic of human decency. Allow me to fill people in for those who have never uprooted your life and moved across the world for a job. It is a massive commitment on the part of the employee, where you sell the majority of your earthly possessions, property, cars, etc. Then you go through an immigration process which even if its handled by FAA…

Did they promise him three months on the books if he gets fired?

Re: Meta fires a software engineer two days after he relocated from India to Canada

#84

Post by mytailorisrich »

googlryas wrote: post #60
mytailorisrich wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having empathy has nothing to do with recognising that lay-offs happen and that the fact that someone had just relocated is not a good reason to protect them from lay-offs. There is no wrong that needs 'absolving' here. What the employer can be judged on in such situation is how they handle it and, indeed, how empathic and helpful their are, but that's a different issue.

Just relocated shouldn't protect them, but just hired should. Wouldn't it be smarter for Meta to cut one more far-below average employee, and give this unknown quantity a shot at succeeding?

> Just relocated shouldn't protect them, but just hired should.

Obviously not.

If they've just been hired it means that they are the least trained and least operational, and in any case that has no bearing on the continued existence of the role they were hired for.

Re: Meta fires a software engineer two days after he relocated from India to Canada

#85

Post by bluepizza »

Closi wrote: post #80
hooby wrote: post #58

Imho the real question here is, why is it that Meta keeps hiring right right until they do large layoff rounds? The kind of issue that requires large layoff rounds is not something that just materializes overnight, out of the blue. So why does their management - which should be able to read the writing on the wall, since that's part of their job - not issue a strict hiring freeze (in addition to other measures taken…

> So why does their management - which should be able to read the writing on the wall, since that's part of their job - not issue a strict hiring freeze [...] Why do they go from hiring to firing in the blink of an eye? They did have a hiring freeze, and didn't really go from hiring to firing in the blink of an eye: * In May they froze hiring for engineers and low-level data scientists. * In July they announced that…

Doesn't have to inevitable, though. They literally have all the data.

Re: Meta fires a software engineer two days after he relocated from India to Canada

#86

Post by autoexec »

autotune wrote: post #56
autoexec wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Was borderline close to being forced to move back in with my parents. I never got a story written up for me about that. Nobody was talking about your personal struggle so now nobody should be allowed to talk about anyone else's? I'll never understand that weird crab bucket mentality. You somehow manage to start from "These things have happened quietly in the background all the time in the industry" and instead of e…

No, I am saying things have sucked for people for years when it comes to layoffs. Many have similar stories as the person who this was written about now. Why is it only getting attention now with people who managed to get hired at a FAANG?

> Why is it only getting attention now with people who managed to get hired at a FAANG?

It's a good thing when corporations who treat their employees like shit get called out for their behavior. It's bad that they haven't always been called out for it in the past, but that doesn't mean that no one should be doing it now.

I suppose we can ask ourselves why this case managed to get the media's attention...

I suspect that this story may have gotten more people's attention because facebook/meta is a big company with lots of brand recognition, facebook/meta has a ton of money and could easily afford to treat their employees better, and because they really screwed this guy over and his situation is a worse version of what a lot of people are going through after recent layoffs so perhaps business insider thought this story would resonate with a lot of workers.

Really no matter what the reason is for this story getting media attention it's a good thing that people are talking about it now! Hopefully sharing these stories and talking about these issues will bring attention to the problems outside of FAANG as well.

Re: Meta fires a software engineer two days after he relocated from India to Canada

#87

Post by kortilla »

mduggles wrote: post #66

I'm horrified by so many of the comments here that seem to lack even the most basic of human decency. Allow me to fill people in for those who have never uprooted your life and moved across the world for a job. It is a massive commitment on the part of the employee, where you sell the majority of your earthly possessions, property, cars, etc. Then you go through an immigration process which even if its handled by FAA…

> For all you budding Elons, here's a shorthand for it

Pretty solid post barring that non sequitur. This is a post about Meta, which is not controlled by Elon.

Re: Meta fires a software engineer two days after he relocated from India to Canada

#88

Post by user_7832 »

throwaway71271 wrote: post #74
ramtatatam wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say it's fair enough to expect not to hire when you plan to lay off... Especially when you make somebody to change their life upside-down...

Its not uncommon for people to turn the company upside-down (by leaving or other ways), why should the company care? The company is a subject to the categorical imperative, but it is also a subject to the seven deadly sins (metaphorically). It does what the law allows in order to preserve itself, and rarely more. In some companies I honestly think that all decisions are made with good intentions from each individual,…

> Its not uncommon for people to turn the company upside-down (by leaving or other ways), why should the company care?

Just because a person might do something bad doesn't justify the company doing something bad to an innocent employee. And don't forget, Meta could easily sue someone if they for eg sabotaged something. An individual in this case getting fired is not likely to have the resources to sue a company the size of Meta.

Re: Meta fires a software engineer two days after he relocated from India to Canada

#89

Post by kortilla »

rullelito wrote: post #15
compsciphd wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

which if there's a 1 year cliff, means he didn't have a vesting date then....

A (vesting) cliff doesn't mean you have to wait 1 year for the vesting, it means that your vesting significantly reduces after 1 year.

No, that’s not what a cliff is. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/cliffvesting.asp

What you’re talking about is front-loading or ballooning vesting schedules.

Re: Meta fires a software engineer two days after he relocated from India to Canada

#90

Post by scott_w »

erfgh wrote: post #83
mduggles wrote: post #66

I'm horrified by so many of the comments here that seem to lack even the most basic of human decency. Allow me to fill people in for those who have never uprooted your life and moved across the world for a job. It is a massive commitment on the part of the employee, where you sell the majority of your earthly possessions, property, cars, etc. Then you go through an immigration process which even if its handled by FAA…

Did they promise him three months on the books if he gets fired?

> is beyond shitty.

Something being legal doesn't make it moral.

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