Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

businessinsider.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

451–460 of 496 posts

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

#451

Post by smnrchrds »

m000 wrote: post #223
murderfs wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this literally what's happening? (Except it's 4 months, not 3?)

The problem is not so much the money, but the damn Visa: The moment you become unemployed, the countdown clock to deportation starts ticking. This is a HUGE stress, and also puts you at a disadvantage against your prospect employers. IMHO, there should be legislation for covering these cases. I.e. when you sponsor a Visa as an employer, it should be mandatory to pay the employee for a minimum of 12-24 months. If you…

> The moment you become unemployed, the countdown clock to deportation starts ticking.

I am NOT 100% sure about this, but to the best of my knowledge, this is not the case in Canada. Work Permits are issues for the duration of the expected work and are usually at least one year long. If you lose your job, you can still remain in Canada until the expiry date of your work permit. You cannot simply start working elsewhere, but if you find a new job, your new employer can start the process of applying for a work permit for you while you are waiting in Canada. So this developer should be good to stay for another 11 to 12 months, if not even longer, while searching for a new job.

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

#452

Post by brigandish »

weatherlite wrote: post #429
brigandish wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 overlookin…

> Do you think uprooting your life is a piece of cake?

I'm an immigrant in a non-English speaking country, I'm well aware of how difficult it is to uproot, and I can tell you that what I'm doing (on the surface) is much harder than going from India to North America.

> That's living in a mansion with servants kinda rich.

That doesn't counter the problems with the infrastructure. If you stay in your mansion then I'm sure it's great but go outside…

Funnily enough, I used to wonder if I could set myself up in India with a VOIP number with a London area code, so I've considered it. But now I'm older and wiser and I'd choose Canada too (just).

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

#453

Post by kcplate »

FieryTransition wrote: post #372
kcplate wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I despise the man, but if you are shifting a long held position/opinion just because you don’t want to be in an opinion alignment with Donald Trump, that to me is irrational. I saw a lot of folks do this over the last six years. I found that really strange.

no that's not it, I have opinions as well, I didn't say I didn't have them. I wanted to hear a genuine opinion and tried to ask a stranger for it, is that so bad? For some people, maybe behind the hateful rhetoric some of them see and some of them do, there would be other reasons for their alignment, maybe good reasons which in actuality would have nothing to do with Trump, and could be debated as political issues on…

Perhaps I wasn’t clear, but I think you may have personalized my generalized comment. Let me illustrate my perspective differently.

A person thinks the sky is blue. Then Trump publicly says “the sky is blue”. This person now makes the point to say “the sky is NOT blue” just because Trump agreed with their original opinion. What I find irrational about some people’s reaction to Trump is that they feel compelled to change because Trump might agree with them.

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

#454

Post by pas »

robin_reala wrote: post #354
BjoernKW wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's only true if you're working entirely or mostly synchronously, which might be an indicator of inherent anti-patterns in your work culture and processes, e.g., lots of meetings instead of written documentation.

I guess you don’t have any junior engineers?

countless remote teams have faced this problem. it's a trade-off, of course, but it's not an insurmountable challenge.

for example we are using gather.town. much better than Google Meet (full HD screen sharing, ad-hoc breakout sessions, blablabla, free under team size of 25, if I remember correctly)

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

#455

Post by pas »

b800h wrote: post #230
BjoernKW wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's only true if you're working entirely or mostly synchronously, which might be an indicator of inherent anti-patterns in your work culture and processes, e.g., lots of meetings instead of written documentation.

Like pair programming?

works flawlessly remotely nowadays

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

#456

Post by pas »

robin_reala wrote: post #159
BjoernKW wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I do agree, but I guess I'm not sure what the solution is here? The solution is obvious: Stop clinging to this backward butts-in-seats culture that has people move to a new location even if the job they're going to do can easily be done from anywhere in the world.

I mean, that’s simply not true. At a most basic level, if you’re going to collaborate effectively as part of a team for a long period of time then you need to realistically be ± 3 time zones at most.

that's much easier to change than physical location.

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

#457

Post by pas »

goodpoint wrote: post #362
whatwherewhy wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

30 days (the EU standard) are not really that much more than the usual 14 days in the US.

30 days is in no way "the EU standard" and it's not even the minimum. In various countries the minimum can be longer than 30 days. More importantly, the average de-facto "standard" in many contracts is longer. Additionally, many companies go beyond the contract requirements.

hm. in Hungary there's a trial period, 6 months (used to be 3), and both parties can terminate the employment without cause immediately during this

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

#458

Post by pas »

kypro wrote: post #125
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 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…

Who sells everything instantly when moving to a new job? What if it won't work out?

I think for a few months the company should subsidize renting a place, so new hires who move are not forced to liquidate everything back home. (Relocation packages are a thing after all.)

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

#459

Post by pas »

HWR_14 wrote: post #402
pcf wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

> 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 is outdated. Assuming you are using "empathy" conversationally, it's driven by the fact that people higher on the autistic spectrum don't perceive what other people feel very well, and historically this was misinterpreted. The comments on HN aren't "I do…

People with a hard time to be empathetic (alternatively let's call it theory of mind deficiency) or who have trouble with emotional regulation tend to develop coping mechanisms, for example a typical one is that they start to simply ignore feelings of others in most situations, don't mention feelings in communications, etc.

Does this absolve them of hurting others? Of course not really, but it might help others understand why it's hard to get people with such defenses to even acknowledge that their communication can be hurtful, etc.

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

#460

Post by zinckiwi »

aww_dang wrote: post #110
zinckiwi wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not knowledgeable about Canadian work visas specifically, but many countries extend them only within the context of specific employment. In other words, he may need to take what he can get, in a rough economy, under immense stress (as someone who has lived in that situation before can attest to), lest he have to go all the way back.

If he wanted to live and work in Canada, wouldn't applying for jobs in Canada be easier than applying while living in India? As much as I dislike FB as a company, I'm not sure he is worse off?

Catch-22. You often can't legally search for a job as a tourist. Typically, like the US H1-B, a sponsoring company needs to "prove" that they tried and failed to source the employee onshore first, and therefore immigration is the interest of the domestic company.

I'm separated from my family right now -- wife and kids -- while waiting on an immigration process that has taken far longer than we were expecting. I assure you that any immigration-related worry can seem outsized.

Post reply on HN