
Need job to save my relationship - mazenne
Dear HNers
I have been reading HN for a while and I've never thought I would reach out to this community for this reason. Guess what, I want to save my relationship, and I'm sure you guys can help me. Here's the problem: my girlfriend can't find a job.<p>She is very smart (not only because I say she is, she is actually really smart) and has all qualities to be doing awesome work in a startup as a multi-hat talent. She has been a product manager in the valley for a couple years and has project management experience, well appreciated by customers. She is also perfectly trilingual and has a real gift for communication.<p>But, it's not that simple. She is not a US citizen. She needs a visa to work, and the more we try to understand why she doesn't get any traction after the usual first round of interviews, the more we are convinced that doors close automatically when HR people get to know that they will have to transfer her H1-B visa.<p>I have been trying to help her myself with my network of friends and acquaintances, but since I'm not particularly well connected, I wasn't able to help in promoting her search. So this is my best bet, probably the last one from my side before she has to abandon her job search and leave the SF Bay Area to return to her country, forgetting me, her nerdy boyfriend who thinks he's gonna "save" her by posting on hacker news. Anyways, I can't believe there are no companies around San Francisco who wouldn't benefit from a person like her to manage in an elegant fashion things related to product / project / customer / partner management.<p>Any piece or help or advice is appreciated. Thanks!<p>PS: If you guys feel like reaching out privately I have setup this gmail that I'll be monitoring: jean.felkerat@gmail.com
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djt
Some thoughts: 1\. Would be good if you had a HN account before now. People
are more likely to give help if you have given others help in the past. It
gives them confidence that you're legit too.

2\. What is your girlfriends name? What companies has she worked for? What
jobs titles has she had?

3\. If you're a US citizen then consider marriage if you are serious about
your relationship or consider going to her country if you're not sure yet.

4\. Submit her resume or her HN name so people can check out her past
experience.

5\. I googled your name and gmail and came up with no hits. This is one of
those times when having a blog, github etc would be a good thing.

6\. Ask her to talk to her old workmates and managers, they are the best
source of leads for a job, especially if they know people in big companies
that work with Visa issues all the time.

Good luck!

~~~
mazenne
Thanks for your constructive feedback. 1\. I had no HN account in the past, I
have been following this community for a while but never posted anything. I
don't have a blog neither and the email address I added was created for the
purpose of this post only so I didn't have to post my regular email address
publicly. The name on this address is fake. 2\. In the past she has held the
titles of Senior Business Analyst and Marketing Manager. 3\. I am not a US
citizen and marriage for a visa is IMHO a direct way to shoot ourselves in the
feet. 5\. I'm not a blogger. Just a regular engineer with no blog, and no open
source contribs. 6\. She did all this. She got some help, obviously not enough
to land a job..

Thanks for your suggestions!

------
kgc
You have options: 1\. Marriage 2\. She can apply to a large company. The visa
issue isn't even a speed bump. 3\. Long distance relationship

~~~
supo
There is more: 4. Leave the country with her!

~~~
polemic
+1 there's lot's of great stuff happening all over the world, don't limit
yourself =D

~~~
nXqd
+1 yes yes :D

------
trdtaylor
Apply to m-soft, google, and any other company on the top 100 list of H1-B
sponsors.

~~~
config_yml
here's that list: <http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2012-H1B-Visa-
Sponsor.aspx>

~~~
moubarak
HN is a gem

------
treyguinn
Don't marry for a visa. As an American with an English wife and having lived
as an expat for the past 8 years in expat communities - marring for a visa is
a likely to ruin the relationship. One person will always think it is for love
and the other for the visa, and this imbalance is hard to overcome.

~~~
mazenne
totally agree.

------
benzesandbetter
I think you need to consider more options, most likely some further outside of
your comfort zone.

Are you madly in love with this woman? If so, be willing to consider leaving
your job, and going to live in another country where you can both get
residency status.

It may also be an option for you two to spend blocks of time in each others
countries so that you stay under the visa-free travel requirements. For
example, my girlfriend is from a Schengen country and I'm a California native.
We can both spend 90 days out of every 6 months in each others' country, and
do a bit of travel together in other countries. This has enabled us to let the
relationship progress at a natural pace, and not rush into marriage for
visa/citizenship reasons. I think that's really important. Some years ago I
was dating a woman from New Caledonia whose ability to stay legally in the US
was approaching a deadline. She suggested marriage as a workaround, but it
really made me doubt the sincerity of her intentions.

If you're totally and completely in love with this woman, then you'll find a
way. Asking around on HN can be one part of that, but more likely, you'll need
to step your game up, hustle, maybe work some extra projects to cover
travel/legal expenses, and possibly make some real sacrifices. If you love her
with a real fire inside you, then the most important thing to both of you will
be that you two are together and you'll find/make a way.

Sounds like it's time for you to go hard in the paint. Good luck.

------
johnny22
you might want to repost this at a different time. perhaps 8-10 hours from now
if you want to get better visibility.

------
maxcan
if you love it put a ring it. first, get yourself a prenup. communal property
laws can be.. interesting.

~~~
ScottBurson
"It"? What is this "it"? If you think of your betrothed as an "it" I would
suggest you're not ready to marry anyone.

(I know, this meme is out there, but you've given me an opportunity to protest
it, so I am.)

~~~
einhverfr
I assume from the quoted song lyrics, "it" is "her finger." How is that not
appropriate?

~~~
qu4z-2
Ah, the ever-catchy "If you love her finger, put a ring on it."

------
ignaciogiri
Same happened to me. But in my case I was the non US citizen boyfriend. You
know what happened? I'm back to my country, shes got a new guy, I'm still
alone. Move on. Life is hard. Nevertheless, I'm still looking for a H1-B job
for myself. Good luck anyway, marry her!

~~~
mazenne
good luck to you too!

------
MysticFear
Marry her

~~~
punterguy
This is a good idea.

~~~
nailer
No it's not. Regardless of how well you establish the ground rules, it's
socially unacceptable which puts huge pressure on both people to lie about
their relationship every time they're asked in the new country. If you split
up, even if its as friends, undoing a marriage is a lot more difficult than
undoing a regular unmarked relationship.

------
goldfeld
How does one go about looking for an employer who will be able to arrange such
a visa? I'm not from the US neither do I live there, but would like to (I'm a
Junior Developer).

~~~
anjo
send your resume to work@anametrix.com and i will take a look at it.

~~~
goldfeld
Thanks, I'm finishing up a little project where I'm designing on top of
developing front and backend, so I'll contact you within a few days when I
have it up as it's coming together rather nicely and will serve as a latest
work sample.

------
wpietri
At my last startup we looked at trying to get H1-B visas for engineers. I
forget the details, but the basic answer was: impossible. Or, rather, too
expensive, difficult, and slow to be a useful option in a startup context.
(FWIW, E3 visas, which are limited to Australians, were supposed to be much
easier.)

As others suggest, I think your best option is to find an established company,
one for whom getting visas is a well-established process. Good luck!

~~~
mazenne
yes we got to the same conclusions. wise advice. thanks !

------
xijuan
How much do you love her? How important do you think the relationship is for
you? How much do you both value this relationship? Think about those
questions..and think about if you should marry her...

------
benzofuran
If she's European, she can likely overstay without too much of an issue and
the odds of her getting asked are slim to nil at most smaller companies

~~~
thisone
I don't think people should be encouraged to break immigration law.

People would say similar things to me: "such and such group does it and they
never get deported, why don't you?" not realising that what they're advising
me to do is risk my family and livelihood based on their unfounded (and often
slightly racist) assumptions.

------
traintefes
Well, good luck with a new job [I'm sure you will get a job for your GF :D)

------
anirugu
I am happy to see this post.

I am from India. I have no work for now and ready to start working on
JS,Html,css & PHP kind of work. I am free from last September where last time
I worked on a E-Commerce project.

I have previously worked on ASP.NET MVC. Made more then dozen of site and all
of them still alive on internet with a great reputation.

These days I focus on Wordpress Administration, JS framework. bootstrap &
jQuery development. This is all I love to work with.

I do work from Home (Remotely). I work on low price that's why people love to
got better service at great price.

I have many clients that are return with few more. This will make my service
game better. But really I want to do something innovative.

Making my own project never paid me something from #1 days. I have no good
funding for my own family so I can't rely on my personal project.

Right now, I am looking for someone who love to get developer work Remotely.
It's kind of work like tell in Night and got work done in Morning when you
come from sleep and see that work is done whatever you want.

Is this not amazing. That's all Why people love it. Please contact me
anirugu@gmail.com for get some cool response.

Thanks Gupta Anirudha F1beta

~~~
elchief
A guy posts looking for a job and you put up your own ad? C'mon.

------
wakjob
GO HOME JOB ROBBERS.

TITLE 8, SECTION 1182 - INADMISSIBLE ALIENS says you are BOTH illegals and
need to go home right now. We have smart US citizens living in tents and smart
US citizen PhDs working at Staples.

GO HOME NOW

You people have destroyed 28 million US jobs since 1998 and now there are not
enough jobs to go around, are there? In 1998 the USA had FULL EMPLOYMENT. That
was before the dark times, before the poojoos. We were here first and built
this place and we're citizens so it's you who have to leave.

You were only supposed to be here temporarily anyway and go home in 2002.

Why are you still here?

I hear there is great demand for someone in India to start toilet factories.

~~~
jdotjdot
Literally 15 seconds of googling:
<http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0104719.html>

No, America did not have full employment in 1998. Closest was 1.5 unemployment
in 1944 (which, to be fair, is really impressive.)

Not to mention the inherent xenophobia and nativism in your post. You should
maybe look into labor economics and what Sacco and Vanzetti might have to say
about your comments.

~~~
Tichy
"Closest was 1.5 unemployment in 1944 (which, to be fair, is really
impressive.)"

Could using up surplus workers in a world war have anything to do with that?

~~~
jdotjdot
Of course it does. Doesn't make it not impressive.

