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Laid Off, Now What?

bharathpbhat.github.io

271–280 of 376 posts

Re: Laid Off, Now What?

#271
post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Does the 60 day timeline include the amount of time you need to be approved for the visa, as well? No. You must start a new job within 60 days. Due to H-1B portability rules, you can start a new job as soon as your employer has filed paperwork with USCIS. The H-1B processing time doesn't count. I recently started a new FAANG job on H-1B, and because I received an RFE it actually took nearly 3 months after starting…

What happens if it’s not approved?

You're in a lotta trouble. It happened to a friend of mine and when his H-1B looked like it was going to be denied his FAANG company moved him to an office in Europe.

Re: Laid Off, Now What?

#272
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't about worker supply or wages. It's about workers' relative abilities to stand up for something (anything) versus having to keep one's head down and build whatever evil thing management wants built. As long as the "risk of having to leave the country" for speaking up about anything is greater than 0% the obviously-wisest thing to do is keep your mouth shut.

It's no single thing because people's decisions are affected by the sum total of their life's balance sheet. The labor market is something that emerges from the equilibrium of several opposing forces. We as a society decide which causal factors are 'reasonable' and which are 'unfair'. As a simple example, you could argue that 'the wages for married individuals with kids are depressed due to the massive labor pool of…

Should you have to compete for your wage in comparison to individuals from a foreign country with a much lower cost of living? For the most part you can't change your cost of living. (Yes, you can move else where but the delta between how you you keep/earn is pretty much relative around the country)

Single people tend to be younger and less experienced. They tend to be represented in entry level positions, and get paid as such.

Re: Laid Off, Now What?

#273
post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oof, that's a long wait. If you don't mind me asking, is it because of the whole H1B status with the current administration, or of additional hoops you had to jump through for the RFE, or something else?

I received the RFE before I started, the 3 month wait time was just to prepare the RFE, send it, and then wait for USCIS to adjudicate it.

Ah, thanks for sharing that. Guessing once the RFE was sent off, everything was okay?

Crazy that it took 3 months to prepare and send the RFE, though I'm assuming USCIS provided an answer within 15 days with Premium Processing.

Re: Laid Off, Now What?

#274
post #22

Does the 60 day timeline include the amount of time you need to be approved for the visa, as well? I wasn't laid off, but am in the process of changing employers with my TN visa. This is probably the least smooth part of the entire interviewing/job changing process, at least from my perspective, as a software dev who doesn't have a degree in computer science or computer engineering. Wish it were all a little more tra…

Just wondering. Can't this time-out be life-hacked somehow with getting e.g. no pay and no show up job just to stop the timer, or just creating LLC and employing oneself?

Not that I would (or have) tried either idea, but you'd still need USCIS to grant you a TN visa that's tied to your employer, and I imagine it would be tougher if it was a no name or self made company.

In fact, for your own company, I think that's a different kind of visa, but I'm not very well versed in immigration law.

Re: Laid Off, Now What?

#275

These are all great tips. It is a really well-written article with great advice. I just come away from this with a crushing sense of depression driven by the following thoughts: I can't believe this is how the country I live in treats people who bring their high-demand skills here. 60 days or get out. This absolutely effects every engineer. Even the most racist ones: that there is a bedrock of people they are allowed…

On that last part a Jr. CS question that you maybe not even use in real life for some CS jobs. People forget that not everyone is writing awesome ML things or other awesome things you read about in newspapers. Most of the people are writing CRUD code, do some data transformation , automate so simple office process, etc. Never had much use there of Big-O knowledge....

Does not mean I never used much of this knowledge I have needed at some points. But by that tine I had to refresh the knowledge again...

Re: Laid Off, Now What?

#276
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many people who are in the guest visa apply for and are approved for permanent residency (which is what, I think, you meant by “immigrant visa”). They are simply waiting for years - decades even - for their turn. Life happens while they wait - marriage, kids, house etc - as mentioned by GP.

The term immigrant visa is well defined[1]. If you want to bring your wife and have kids and buy a house you should get an E series visa[2], not an H one. If you choose to go with the H-1B anyhow you are taking your chances and like any chance sometime it doesn't go your way and you have to deal with the consequences. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_policy_of_the_United_Stat... [2] https://travel.state.gov/con…

[deleted]

Re: Laid Off, Now What?

#277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can we stop pretending that's true? Like there are really jobs that are sooooo unique that NO Americans have the skills and only some foreign worker unicorns can fulfill them? H1Bs are just skilled worker visas, let's stop with the charade that they're anything else.

If you want to stop that charade, you need to admit that H1Bs are frequently abused and are used to depress the salaries of American workers.

I agree with this, but the best way to fix that is to remove some of the restrictions on the H1b workers so that they are not as easy to exploit.

I also favor dutch auction allocation.

That, and ban all of the body shops using them.

BTW, I have worked somewhere where H1b was knowingly abused and used to reduce the average wage.

Re: Laid Off, Now What?

#278
post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

The fatigue is over having to run the same gauntlet again, and again, and again. Proving yourself over and over gets really old.

I once interviewed a candidate with 10 years of experience who failed a rendition of fizz buzz.

After being asked the coding question, they even asked if I had been provided with their resume.

Leet code mediums and above I agree are pretty much testing if you know leet code. But the vast majority of 'easy' level questions are extremely basic coding challenges that anyone with experience should be able to solve.

Re: Laid Off, Now What?

#279
post #83

H1B 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…

Work / study visas are (in my opinion anyway) a significant reason why the majority of post-graduate students are foreign. Working as a grad student is really a quite poor economic trade off unless you have the unspoken side benefit of qualifying for a visa. It's basically a form of academic wage suppression.

Visas of many varieties are used for wage suppression.

H1b, for example, is well studied to result in wage suppression.[1]

[1] https://gspp.berkeley.edu/assets/uploads/research/pdf/h1b.pd...

Re: Laid Off, Now What?

#280

I don't get it. Is that hard to apply for citizenship in US once you're there and working/paying taxes, all legal? Because if there is some legal crap that basically once you get H1B you can't apply for citizenship then this needs to be changed. Otherwise there is absolutely no excuse to become a US naturalized citizen. You went there, spend a decade and then you complain you have 60 days and then you're out. What ab…

> What about 600 days before that? That's just laziness

Your mind will be blown when you read up about the actual immigration process.

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