It depends, I was TN for 3 years and Cisco working as a FT registered me as computer technician and low balled me that they needed to increase my salary 20k when Department of Labor found that I was a SWE with technician salary in San Jose. Allowing immigration or not depends on your country and economy I'm grateful with US but wouldn't mind if they encourage more restrict rules to employ their own citizens, I blame it on my country who doesn't give me the same technical opportunities to grow. Not happy in a foreign country you are welcome to leave
Laid Off, Now What?
231–240 of 376 posts
Re: Laid Off, Now What?
#232Earlier quoted context omitted.
I grew up with a dad working for 70-120k and a mom at home. I can’t even imagine how nice the lifestyles of Bay Area kids are.
As I see it, beyond a certain level money and things don't make you much happier. They just give you a different set of things to feel the same level of happiness about. edit: This is as someone who has experienced household lifestyles going from $250k/year.
I don't agree with you.
I've gone from 0K to 200K in my life and more money is always better, it's more freedom and it's more happiness and there has never been any downside.
Making more money has always made me happier and it's given me the ability to take care of the people I care about.
I want more and if a job comes up tomorrow that will pay me more, I'm there.
Re: Laid Off, Now What?
#233H1B rules are quite ridiculous (or more accurately, cruel). Do people here know that even this 60-day grace window was only put into place relatively recently by the Obama administration? Before that, you technically had to leave the country the day you were laid off. Never mind that you might have a house a family and might have been living here for more than a decade. You would officially be staying illegally if yo…
> Do people here know that even this 60-day grace window was only put into place relatively recently by the Obama administration? My worst situation dealing with this was a TN status rather than an H1B, where I was told at a border that I could be ineligible for admission to the US because I had no left the day that I was laid off from a previous position. I had to tell the CBP officer that there was a 60 day grace p…
I feel your pain. I've had the _worst_ luck crossing the US border with a TN. And I'm a white male Canadian, you'd think the racial stereotypes would be in my favour.
Many CBP works simply do not know the rules as you said. I've been pulled aside for 3+ hours. I've almost missed flights even though it's 110% legal for me to be here and work. I was pulled aside for not having an I-94 paper in my passport even though they had switched to a digital system for Canada and Mexico 5+ years ago (aka NO ONE has the paper). I've had border officers give me off hand remarks like "It's a shame an American wasn't given this job" looking at my TN application. All you can say is yes/no sir/ma'am and hope they're not having a bad day and send you back.
Then other days I'm waiting in the line at LAX getting back into the country, they ask where I had been, give me a stamp in two seconds and wave me through. I never know exactly how they're going to react.
It's gotten to the point where I'm treating getting a green card at this point the same way someone treats buying a lottery ticket. If it happens that's great. But if it doesn't I already have a backup plan of banking up all my USD and moving to Europe (my immediate family all live there and I have a British passport from my parents).
The immigration game is all fine and good for me now (29 years old, single, no mortgage and no kids). But even if I make half the amount of money in Europe at 33-35 when I want to start a family would be worth it to know that I don't have to worry about being kicked out the country. I especially feel for my close Chinese friend who can't even re-enter the USA right now if he goes back to China.
Re: Laid Off, Now What?
#234Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure but do people want to actually want to live in those places? My wife and I both live in SF and we were able to buy a house which would be impossible now, but I don’t think we’ve ever cleared more then 250K max combined in actual salary. Now with only one of us working which could drop to zero at any moment it seems a move to cash out our equity in the house and move to Europe is a more feasible option than stayi…
>Sure but do people want to actually want to live in those places? I don't see why not. It's not like the Bay Area is particularly great culturally, culinarily or in most other ways. It's a giant suburb sandwiched between a medium sized city and a place that is only technically dense enough to be a city. There's plenty of mid-sized cities and suburbs in the US with reasonable costs of living.
Yeah I don’t know. I think there is a difference between places with reasonable costs of living but I don’t know if those are places where 1-2M is going to last 40yrs. I grew up in Astoria, OR with population of 10k and can say that at least compared to that place SF Bay Area is miles beyond culturally and culinarily. Even Portland seems rather lacking just in the sense that there really isn’t the amount of cultural diversity there as you can find here. I feel like if there is anything I am interested in getting into here there is almost always a club or group of people you can find here that are doing it which wasn’t always the case in other places I’ve lived. On the other hand, if you’re into things like hunting and similar recreational pursuits, the Bay Area doesn’t seem as good as other places where there aren’t as many hurdles to overcome and a lot of people are doing it as well.
Re: Laid Off, Now What?
#235Earlier quoted context omitted.
The nice salaries are also there to attract talented people despite all this bullshit.
It’s funny that our industry lets anyone, from any background have a fair shot at top paying jobs with only a few weeks or months of practice against freely-available practice problems that can be done from the comfort of your home. If you struggle, there is an endless supply of tutorials and YouTube videos to help you out. Did I mention it’s all free and you can do it on your own time? When I tell my doctor, lawyer,…
This has been my take on it as well. Sure it sucks having to jump through these hoops and sometimes even being evaluated by people you know don't understand the topic as well as you and are looking for specific answers/solutions, but this same process also helped me, a "C/D student" from a no-name school and a poor family with 0 connections in the tech industry end up with job offers in the $300k+ range.
The only thing I'm salty about is that I can only get these offers in the US and not in Canada and that my options for permanent residence in the US seem to be gated behind an 80+ year wait... https://medium.com/@happy_sushi_roll/the-endless-wait-for-a-...
Re: Laid Off, Now What?
#236Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean, are you still writing any code? If not then those questions will look pretty damn difficult, as their objective is to filter for people that know how to write code (it's a high precision, lower recall filter, though). As an engineering manager you're probably not really writing any code on a regular basis. It's the same for expecienced managers in a BigCoolKnownCorp that I work for, I think they would have pr…
Correct - I don't write code 100% of my time but I do code reviews on daily basis, involved in architecture, design of new feature; implementing a side project using swift, xcode,java for personal finance app. But still I feel so clueless when I see these questions on leetcode or similar sites.
It's a different skill set. Even as an IC, this requires hundreds of hours of practice to get to an adequate level.
Re: Laid Off, Now What?
#237The problem is that, as an Indian, you will be doing this dance routine for the rest of your life. Sure it is easy to do it when you are in your late twenties, early thirties but once you reach late thirties and early forties, you will not even get any interest from the recruiters. Ageism is very real in the tech industry and your only options are to either get a green card or move to another country. Recessions and…
I think the green card option was valid for Indians who came to the country at least a decade ago. It's no longer viable for Indians who are coming to the country now (or came in the past few years). Tying your immigration status to the ups and downs of politics for decades together is a sure-fire way to damage your mental peace.
Re: Laid Off, Now What?
#238Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you think so? I am not familiar with doctor's state of things, but do they have to prepare for 10 years for each interview during their career, or just once in a lifetime to get into a profession? Are they tested on irrelevant stuff to their job's duties every time they change the job? I am genuinely interested. I see that the current state of job search/acquiring in software industry is inadequate both for employ…
Trying to compare a few weeks of LeetCode to years of graduate school followed by years of underpaid 80-hour residency workweeks is out of touch. Also, any programmer with a few years of experience shouldn’t have to completely relearn how to do LeetCode style problems every few years. The LeetCode easy and medium problems aren’t that difficult for anyone with a few years of experience. Finally, I don’t understand how…
> Finally, I don’t understand how so many people are convinced that LeetCode problems are an entirely different domain than typical programming work. Sure, they’re toy problems, but the concepts are relevant to anyone doing things at scale that involves more than just connecting some APIs together.
But the overwhelming majority of us are just connecting APIs or what not.
Most people (even in FAANG) are not using DP in their day-to-day...
Re: Laid Off, Now What?
#239Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Sure but do people want to actually want to live in those places? I don't see why not. It's not like the Bay Area is particularly great culturally, culinarily or in most other ways. It's a giant suburb sandwiched between a medium sized city and a place that is only technically dense enough to be a city. There's plenty of mid-sized cities and suburbs in the US with reasonable costs of living.
Yeah I don’t know. I think there is a difference between places with reasonable costs of living but I don’t know if those are places where 1-2M is going to last 40yrs. I grew up in Astoria, OR with population of 10k and can say that at least compared to that place SF Bay Area is miles beyond culturally and culinarily. Even Portland seems rather lacking just in the sense that there really isn’t the amount of cultural…
I didn't mean you could retire with 1-2 million but simply you could take whatever job you wanted and not worry about major expenses. The person I was talking to mentioned kids a few times so I was talking more from that point. With kids, your free time shrinks dramatically as do your priorities. So hobbies and so on matter a lot less than good schools, stable environment, etc, etc.
In terms of diverse activities I've personally found east coast cities better and most have broader suburbs than the bay area (due to not being restricted by mountains) so it's easier to trade commute against price.
Re: Laid Off, Now What?
#240Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not confusing them, I just oversimplified the interaction between the petition expiration date and the I-94 expiration date. I forgot to add that my comment above applies to applications that go through consular processing though, which is a very important detail. H1b applications processed by consulates don't receive an I-94 which means that the application is "approved pending a visa stamping". The new work aut…
I am not trying to describe the happy path in any way. I have gone through a 4 year L1A green card which my colleagues got it in 10 months and I have been without advanced parole for 13 months which implied if I left the country due to any reason, I could not come back. And my experience too was in a different decade, no need for me to cover up the warts. It is quite an experience each interaction with the then INS t…
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