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

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

#281

Post by UncleMeat »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #240
FieryTransition wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think the trump hate is irrational? What is the main rational points and reasons you like Trump? Or at least, think that he is being unfairly treated, since that does not require liking/agreeing with him.

Fwiw I understand why people despise Don. But I don't understand the blind dedication to hate, especially when other politicians and leaders pull similar shenanigans and then there's crickets. If you're violently against X or Y that's fine. But apply the rules evenly, fairly, and rationally. When you hate so hard and so long that you lose your compass...that's irrational. The majority of Trump haters fall into this b…

I’m not aware of any other politician that attacks people from his own party for having names that “sound Chinese”.

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

#282

Post by MrDunham »

So, I have some inside knowledge on this one.

There were many people who were axed as part of the layoffs days after start.

But these layoffs were planned for months.

The thinking was either 1) we can rescind job offers and give them nothing or 2) at least give a severance package to people who expected employment.

Now, I'm not excusing that there are cases like this that fall through the cracks. It really really sucks.

I'm not sure how to process it... when you're laying off 10k+ people there are bound to be "bugs"/misses and general failures.

Should META have preemptively rescinded this employee's offer so they got nothing but at least didn't move? Maybe. Or give months of pay as an "I'm sorry our timing was awful (like they did)" in exchange for their own failure? Also a bad option given the move.

I feel for this person. They got caught in get crossfire and that really blows. I'd be pretty pissed.

In the other hand, the thought behind what happened was admirable - even though it created some awful edge cases.

META has done a lot to draw ire. In this case I was impressed by management's decision not to rescind offers and save maximum money but to acknowledge that people would have quit jobs, moved, etc and give severances.

A counterpoint could be "why give the job offer in the first place"? Given the level of secrecy and reality of a nearly 90k person company - it's highly doubtful that the people involved in the hiring process had any idea of the impending layoffs.

Still - super super crappy for anyone who relocated due to the offer.

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

#283

Post by genidoi »

rejectfinite wrote: post #276
genidoi wrote: post #219

So many commenters here (presumably US/CA citizens) don't realize that the gut-wrenching feeling of being laid off whilst your visa depends on uninterrupted employment is _nothing_ like the SHTF-but-all's-ok feeling of being laid off 'regularly'. In the USA, for most work visas, you are given a 60 day death clock pleasantly sugarcoated as a 'grace period' to find a new employer or leave the country. Cue trying weave…

And so many people are okay coming into another country and wage dump because "its their right" to move halfway across the world to work in the USA or EU. See stuff like: https://www.thelocal.se/20070523/7387/ You can't have it both ways. ---- I guess this is just CBS being racist :) https://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-h-1b-visas-have-been-abused ... "But this week on 60 Minutes, correspondent Bill Whitaker reports that…

For the USA, you can't attain an H1-B / E-3 / without your employer compensating you above the prevailing wage[0] (determined by the DoL) paid in the city you are being hired in in the field you are being hired in.

[0] https://www.dol.gov/agencies/eta/foreign-labor/wages#:~:text....

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

#284

Post by pcf »

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…

Just two things: 1) Remember that a lot of tech people score higher on the autistic spectrum than normal people do. So most likely many of the commentators just don't have the biological wiring for feeling empathy like many others do. This might ease your mind a little.

2) Also remember that Musk would probably have given someone those three months to find other employment, seeing as he gave Twitter employees up to six months. So I don't think he's a good example for this. Use instead... hm... how about Meta?

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

#285

Post by coldtea »

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 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.

I think the best time to remind those kind of people of this, is when they get fucked over themselves at some point.

Kind of telling them "Just shut up and cope doesn't feel so good when shit happens to you now does it? Nanananana"

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

#286

Post by coldtea »

imperfect_blue wrote: post #163
vintagedave wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> so many of the comments here that seem to lack even the most basic of human decency Reading them, so am I. There is no sign of empathy: that understanding of another individual, the ability to put oneself in someone else's shoes, that is fundamental to a healthy society and (IMO) personal integrity. I read a comment a few years ago that no-one thinks of themselves as a bad person. To yourself, you are always okay.…

Quoted post unavailable.

>You yourself have no empathy for those who would make those supposedly "harsh, inhuman, uncaring, comments"

That's fine. You don't have to go down infinite meta-levels of empathy.

You can just treat nazis like scum, and jerks like jerks. As long as you treat other people well and with compassion, you would still be behaving far better and more positively than how those who would make those supposedly "harsh, inhuman, uncaring, comments" are.

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

#287

Post by alxlaz »

z9znz wrote: post #260
feet wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No matter which way you try and slice it, there's always a human at the end of the decision. A human made the policies, a human made the layoff decision, a human decides to enforce policy.

While this is true, it is utterly infeasible for a company with tens of thousands of employees to consider the individual employee in their decisions. They can perhaps consider actions which will result in large impacts to large numbers of employees (such as regulating the inflow a bit more to protect against sudden needs to dump 11,000 people). Hire fewer, more slowly, and they can then slowly and with more consider…

> While this is true, it is utterly infeasible for a company with tens of thousands of employees to consider the individual employee in their decisions.

This isn't collectively decided by a company with tens of thousands of employees, it's decided by one or two people in HR and approved by groups rarely larger than five people. It's not only perfectly feasible to "consider the individual employee" in this decision, but a handful of people are literally paid to do exactly that, and miserably failed to do their job.

Lots of people here understandably focus on the part where those guys failed at just being decent human beings. But what I find truly disheartening is the part where those guys really sucked at doing their job: the people in that hiring chain made a decision that cost several departments thousands of dollars in covering relocation paperwork and legal fees, even though that turned out to be entirely unnecessary, and then literally caused an employer branding and PR dumpster fire. This is the equivalent of committing a bunch of performance fixes that turn out to be unnecessary, then attempting to revert them only to cause a massive crash in production -- tl;dr it's just incompetence. And it's really hilarious to see the same people who advocate for ruthlessly firing people for incompetence defend this gross incompetence under the guise of pseudo-philosophical talk about corporate morality.

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

#288

Post by notyourwork »

Ntrails wrote: post #280
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…

> If you ask someone to move across the world and don't need them anymore, give them three months on the books to find somewhere else that don't count against their visa. It will give them a chance to get settled and go on interviews. Or don't recruit internationally. Or, don't relocate [internationally] to a job which can fire you with zero notice or compensation? Don't get me wrong I agree with the sentiment of it…

Your comment is the “dick move” here.

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

#289

Post by oblio »

BjoernKW wrote: post #249
oblio wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with this approach is that reality is the opposite. Good/best practices are rarely followed, maybe 20% of practitioners actually follow them in any field. So that means that on a daily basis, about 80% of people need to work in those "broken" environments.

Still, it's the environment that is broken. Hence, it's the environment that needs to be fixed. Having people relocate to another country, because your organization isn't able to fix its own internal problems, means you're simply outsourcing your own costs to your employees.

That's not how reality works, though.

And except for a select few, most people can't bend reality.

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

#290

Post by ricardobeat »

IanCal wrote: post #162
kypro wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do agree, but I guess I'm not sure what the solution is here? Large layoffs in large orgs are generally done at a team level rather than an individual level. So presumably this individual's entire team no longer exists. So out of respect for them relocating do you then try to reposition them in the company somehow? And what about all the people who didn't relocate but may have recently left stable job for an opport…

> Do you keep them for 3 months just to be nice then proceed with the layoff anyway? I'm not sure that's much better... Much better than days of notice. The solutions seem pretty simple to me, contractually required notice periods. My last job I had either a two or three month notice period, I can't quite remember. For those coming over on visas, you could have an initial notice period that's longer. > I think maybe…

> required notice periods

But that’s socialism! Soon after, we’ll be eating our own dogs, who wants that?

/s

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