101–110 of 190 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Showing once again that the Anti-American bias is in full swing this story has nothing to do with the US at all, and the US immigration system is not all that much different than other nations, it is just in the news more because the load on the US system is 100x more than other nations
It's my bad assuming the USA, but it's a fair assumption. USA and Canada have very similar labour systems -- as I said in my other response. The worker treatment in NA is very much different it seems. In Western Europe, if a contract has been signed, it's very hard for an employer to do what OP suffered through.
Depending on your origin country a lot of countries have visa free travel. In the EU you can stay indefinitely by going in and out of the schengen zone. Using Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria, Albania, Macedonia, Ireland and Cyprus as places to spend time. And then the rest of the 90 in 180 days inside Schengen.
This might not work for you if you don't have visa free travel, but it's worth mentioning anyway. In the mean time you can sort things out and apply for other jobs.
So long as you stay clear of the major world cities (e.g. Berlin, Munich, Paris) airbnb and equivalent can be quite affordable for monthly stays. For example Sofia is quite a nice city and has quite affordable accommodation and coworking.
I'm happy to answer more questions if you want. My contact details are on my profile (prefer telegram).
I’m very sorry about this. You should look for another job. But make stink about this - write a letter to local congressman, senators and newspapers. It’s ok to hire and fire at will, but it should be not ok for Amazon to do this. A months pay is a spit in the face- they could have let you known upfront; it’s not like recession happened last night. You shouldn’t suffer for their mistake.
I mean, this seems to be self-contradictory.
"We don't want to have rules around hiring and firing! We just want companies to be good!"
If there are no rules against particular abuses of labor, large, unethical companies will commit those abuses, especially if it makes things more convenient for them or someone can argue that it saves 0.03¢.
It should not be considered to be OK to hire and fire at will.
Likely you would win an amount equivalent to the severance you would be eligible for from your previous employer plus additional expenses for relocation.
A letter from a wrongful dismissal lawyer will likely open the window to a better deal without having to file a lawsuit as companies don't like to see their name dragged in the mud with this kind of lawsuit.
Really sorry to hear that. This is a reminder that you should never work for Amazon if you need a visa. Sadly your story is not the first one I heard. The most recent, a friend of mine was promised they would support her visa application after one year working there (which is really simple and cheap for them) and now they say it is against their rules.
I'm curious if there will ever be an inflection point where Amazon's reputation is so bad that they just can't hire the workers they want, even with competitive total comp. My intuition is that there will always be enough people who are too desperate, or uninformed, to steer clear. I hope I'm wrong.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think that's going to accomplish more than this HN post on Christmas, honestly Jassy knows how easy it is for engineers who passed the Amazon bar to find new jobs. He's going to think "Welcome to The Jungle, kid" and move on If you ask me. OP dodged a bullet here. Amazon has turned into a toxic swamp
You're writing this as if Bezos / Jaffy or anyone at their level is even going to read some random person's angry email.
Sidenote: EAs are just as good. Having been on the end of an EA to a CEO telling me to fix something I can tell you it's not a place you want to be. They can, in a limited way, invoke CEO power.
It's never a sure thing but it doesn't hurt to try either.
Also Werner Vogels once popped into a hacker news thread I posted about my AWS account having leaked keys and a bill run up by a "hacker" (this was before it was common)[0][1].
[0]: https://vertis.io/2013/12/16/unauthorised-litecoin-mining/
Have you got a signed contract? In which case them paying you is not a "gift" but something you are most likely legally entitled to, and you should find out how much they are required to pay you first of all. You can probably get a decent idea by a bit of googling, and if it looks like you are entitled to a good bit more than the one month they offered you, you should seek out an employment lawyer asap. If the law is on your side and you are lawyered up, hopefully it won't be necessary to sue them.
> In every step I tried to behave ethically and high trust.
Never trust faceless magacorps, especially not ones with a long documented pattern of screwing over their employees (and everyone else) without a second thought and right when they are going through mass lay-offs. Working for bigtech can be a great idea compensation and career wise, but never lose sight of the fact that to them you are just a replaceable cog whatever the in-house brain-washing department will try to tell you. Also, try to understand how critical the team you are hired into is to the company's current revenue streams, especially if the economy looks like it does now.
I would also suggest putting some contact details in your HN profile, maybe someone will reach out who can help (either with advice or, if you are really lucky and happen to have the right skills and tell people here about them, potentially even a visa-sponsorship; one difficulty is that you are on a short time frame and typically only larger companies will offer visa sponsorships unless you have some particular key skills).
> Are all places like this?
No, but you should be prepared to get screwed over at startups or small to medium companies as well. For faceless megacorps reading up on (ex-)employee experiences on forums like HN and glassdoor etc. is a good idea. For small companies being a good judge of character and talking to the CEO or similar as part of the interview helps.