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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

#421

Post by Tangurena2 »

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…

> you sell the majority of your earthly possessions

When I was younger, my father worked in the oil business. Relocation to other states & countries was reasonably common.

One of the scariest stories came from their last time in Saudi Arabia (I usually save the "you & your family are being deported in 48 hours" or "oops, your moonshine still burned down your house" stories for drinking time). This family was being relocated back to the US after more than 2 decades working in Saudi Arabia. There was a storm in the Atlantic. A really bad one. The shipping company had to jettison about 100 containers to "save the ship". Everything they owned. Every thing they collected in their adult life went overboard to a watery grave. All they had left was the luggage that they carried on the airflight back to the US. Insurance covered nothing since it was an intentional act by the ship's crew.

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

#422

Post by dennis_jeeves1 »

gw98 wrote: post #248
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.…

Having worked in tech for 25 years it doesn’t surprise me. Some people I’ve worked with are barely human. A colleague a few years ago went as far as to suggest that this is how you ended up with nazis. I hope with ubiquitous communications now that we tell these people that no it’s not acceptable to behave like this! Compassion should be awarded.

>A colleague a few years ago went as far as to suggest that this is how you ended up with nazis.

Your colleague does appear to have done a lot of reflection and/or reading ( feel free to ask him to contact me if he finds the stuff on my profile of interest). Most people just think Hitler=evil as the sole contibuting factor to the holocast, but I say that it's people around him, who did not have the conscience or who ignored it, that lead to his rise. There are a fair number of potential 'hitlers' around us, but it's primarily people around those dysfunctional individuals that keep them in check.

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

#423

Post by dennis_jeeves1 »

notacoward wrote: post #368
JKCalhoun wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just ignore those comments (and perhaps some my own comments are deemed under qualified by some). I prefer that strategy rather than have an environment of "gatekeepers".

"Basic human decency" might be the only gate worth keeping. Without that, harassers and trolls have more effective freedom of speech than their targets, and I for one find that unacceptable. See also: paradox of tolerance.

>paradox of tolerance.

Great observation.

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

#424

Post by lnauta »

zelphirkalt wrote: post #170

Apparently Facebook (oh, wait, it is Meta now, how could I forget) cares about employees as human beings as little as it cares of its useds as human beings. Good to have these kind of things surface and brought to attention. Some counterweight against the rose-colored glasses, through which many people see Face...Meta. Working for FB/Meta is a questionable choice in itself, though.

Going on on the whole fb/meta thing, I was wondering why people don't do the same for Alphabet. Everyone still calls it Google. But for facebook, the name was dropped almost immediately. Isn't that strange?

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

#425

Post by luckylion »

sph wrote: post #361
luckylion wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Again a reference to the Nazis in this thread. Being empathetic (take it from someone that believes they're an hyper empath) means understanding that if I were born in the 1910s in Germany and maybe blond and blue eyed, I could have probably been a big Adolf fan, but I was not, so current me believes fascists in general should get punched in the face indiscriminately and with extreme prejudice. Having black-and-white…

> Having black-and-white thinking, of "I would never do that", like you seem to do, is proof itself of lack of empathy.

No, it's the opposite. I wouldn't treat anyone as an Untermensch because I'm convinced that the difference between me and them is a few throws of the dice. If you divide the world into "people worthy of empathy (by virtue of the dice showing X)" and "sub-humans to be treated like scum and vermin (by virtue of the dice showing Y)", you're completely sharing their worldview, you just randomly weren't born into their shoes and you don't agree with them on what the dice should show, but that's it.

That's not to say you should tolerate Nazis, but to not feel any empathy for them, and to not treat them as humans? Yeah, good luck on that road.

"Sure I tortured prisoners and waterboarded them ... but they were insurgents, and I'm a good guy, so it's all cool if I do it. Had they done the same to me though, wow, what a crime against humanity" has a super weird vibe to me. But it works, and Abu Ghraib documented neatly, how happy people can be while they torture others, if you tell them they're the good guys and that it's okay, because the others aren't really human.

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

#426

Post by ThrowawayB7 »

rejectfinite wrote: post #334
genidoi wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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... .

Is that real in practice? I have heard they can just claim "oh we cant find anyone!" and get someone for cheaper abroad. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-h-1b-visas-have-been-abused... "But this week on 60 Minutes, correspondent Bill Whitaker reports that the H-1B visa program has since been seriously abused, allowing companies to fire American workers and to bring in cheap foreign labor."

No H1-B engineer at a FAANG class company is going to tolerate getting less compensation than their peers and their managers, many of them former H1-Bs as well, would not tolerate giving them less compensation either. Pichai at Google and Nadella at Microsoft are themselves non-US born engineers who have climbed their way to the top.

The body shops are a different story but this is about Meta.

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

#427

Post by kup0 »

ranger_danger wrote: post #375
Sakos wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This place has become a joke nowadays. I wouldn't go that far. The signal to noise ratio is worse than it used to be, but there's still nothing else like HN and there are still a lot of interesting technical conversations to observe or to be had. I continue to learn more here than anywhere else. I'll cope with putting in a bit more effort mentally filtering out the unproductive conversations.

>but there's still nothing else like HN yes there is, lobste.rs is exactly HN but with a lot more selective membership and hence better comments.

i would not say it's "exactly HN". lobste.rs articles are much more programming focused. majority of posts you find on HN you would not find on lobste.rs

which is fine, if that's what you want, but, as a daily reader of both, they aren't even close to being the same thing

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

#428

Post by gw98 »

dennis_jeeves1 wrote: post #422
gw98 wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having worked in tech for 25 years it doesn’t surprise me. Some people I’ve worked with are barely human. A colleague a few years ago went as far as to suggest that this is how you ended up with nazis. I hope with ubiquitous communications now that we tell these people that no it’s not acceptable to behave like this! Compassion should be awarded.

>A colleague a few years ago went as far as to suggest that this is how you ended up with nazis. Your colleague does appear to have done a lot of reflection and/or reading ( feel free to ask him to contact me if he finds the stuff on my profile of interest). Most people just think Hitler=evil as the sole contibuting factor to the holocast, but I say that it's people around him, who did not have the conscience or who…

Oh no he has. His grandparents were tortured to death by nazis. He’s been to Auschwitz.

There are two types: the ignorant and the complicit. The complicit are who you have to worry about. It was seen as a means to an end and was without compassion or care of others just the personal gain of rank or power.

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

#429

Post by weatherlite »

brigandish wrote: post #342
weatherlite wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're saying there aren't enough good Indian engineers who will agree to work for Meta from India? I highly doubt that's accurate.

Have you been to India? I genuinely love the place but if you want to live and work somewhere then ( in general ) you're not going to choose a country with poor infrastructure over places like the US or most of Europe unless you're feeling adventurous or have some specific reason to. So it's not a case of not being willing to work remotely but preferring to move.

> you're not going to choose a country with poor infrastructure over places like the US or most of Europe unless you're feeling adventurous or have some specific reason to

Being FROM India is a good reason to work in India. Do you think uprooting your life is a piece of cake? What if you have old parents? What if you prefer your own culture and not being an immigrant for the rest of your life?

Also, you're overlooking how much a good software engineer makes in India (adjusted for cost of living). It's probably somewhere in the top 1% of Indian earners. That's living in a mansion with servants kinda rich. In Canada a software engineer, even working for Meta, is still middle to upper middle class. Some of them probably can't afford a home without taking a huge debt. They will live comfortably but won't be rich in relative terms.

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

#430

Post by sebazzz »

shepardrtc wrote: post #226
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…

> Why do they go from hiring to firing in the blink of an eye? Hiring is used as a metric for middle management.

And time spent is probably not accounted for, so in the books you don't feel the costs in time and money of hiring.
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