
IFit: "No applicants from Brazil, please." - outworlder
http://careers.stackoverflow.com/jobs/37299/web-developer-html-css-ifit?a=JungU8qQ
======
horofx
We(brazilians) have a good amount of people on github that are rails-core or
maintain very big and successful projects(I do maintain some 4k+ starred
projects, for example). This happened probably because the CEO or somebody got
emotional from a bad hire and think all brazilians are bad.

I want to get my H1B soon in order to work in a better environment(and a more
liberal economy) and I'm sure this kind of comment won't make anyone's mind as
everyone I've worked with in open source with treated me with equal respect.

~~~
xplorer
Go to Canada, you will be in a much better position in a country that really
encourages immigration for skilled professionals.

~~~
horofx
From what I've researched, the average worker make around $40k(canadian
dolars) and it's about my market average.

Canadians pay around 40% of taxes(not a liberal country, right?).

I'm still in a way better position here in Brazil(in income). I think what is
going to change is the lifestyle... but I'm not looking for some lifestyle,
I'm young and want to work hard and conquer a lot.

~~~
LaSombra
You have to think what those 40% in taxes mean. What is the return? Good
public health care, decent educational system, good public safety, good social
security.

Those are things the US don't give to you, so it is an illusion thinking that
in the US you make more money. Taxes there are quite high depending on the
state you are going to live. A friend of mine moved from Rio to Massachusetts
and told me there are a lot of taxes and he pays around 25% in taxes plus
health care, private pension plan an so on. In the end 50% of his salary is
for these things.

I moved to the UK this year and I make about the same as I did in Rio. I can
say that I have a much better life now than before. Money here means a lot
more than in Brazil.

If you want, we can take this conversation privately.

------
dictum
>But, we also love unlimited soda, video games, and luvsacs.

Unlimited soda? You sure _love_ fitness.

~~~
gonzo
that stood out for me, too.

Of course... Utah, so no coffee, tea, or beer.

~~~
artmageddon
> Utah, so no coffee, tea, or beer.

Beer I understand, but coffee, tea? Why would those be excluded?

~~~
bauer
As I understand it Mormons don't consume anything caffeinated.

~~~
tcfunk
But...free soda...

~~~
Kadin
Free soda! _yay_

But only Sprite! _boo_

------
ekidd
IFit appears to be located in Logan, Utah, which means that they presumably
fall under US employment law. In which case, they probably want to consult
their lawyers about national origin discrimination:
[http://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/nationalorigin.cfm](http://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/nationalorigin.cfm)

TD;DR: Risk of lawsuits, consult a professional.

~~~
grimtrigger
I believe the law refers to US citizens of foreign national origin while iFit
is referring to Brazilian citizens.

~~~
DanBC
From the supplied link:

> The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA) makes it illegal for
> an employer to discriminate with respect to hiring, firing, or recruitment
> or referral for a fee, based upon an individual's citizenship or immigration
> status. The law prohibits employers from hiring only U.S. citizens or lawful
> permanent residents unless required to do so by law, regulation or
> government contract.

Also, Why didn't they say "Brazilian citizens"? Why did they use the ambiguous
"applicants from Brazil"?

~~~
mbreese
I think they are referring to applicants specifically located in Brazil. I'm
not sure if that would qualify as discriminatory if they are using the term as
a geographic qualifier as opposed to an ethnic one. I'm also not sure if that
law even applies if they are recruiting possible international employees. (It
certainly would though if there was a US based Brazilian citizen applying).

They should probably clarify the posting.

~~~
jsun
It would be reasonable to assume that instead of having some inexplicable
prejudice against our Brazilian brethren, they are simply tired of getting a
thousand emails from shitty off-shore chop shops. It's a very real problem
when you post any "low-tech" position.

------
msantos
Plausible motivations to deny applications from Brazil:

\- If the Brazilian is working remotely, sending money to Brazil is costly and
a huge hassle for the employer.

\- The company had a previous bad experience with a Brazilian employee

Other not so serious reasons

\- Some Brazilians are loud, touchy-feely and unaware of the personal-space
concept, therefore they are annoying for most non-Brazilians.

\- Most of this company's HR is from Argentina

~~~
jrmoretti
None of those are true. I've been working for US companies from .br for the
past 3yrs and: – Sending money to .br is not a hassle for the employer... it's
as simple as making a deposit. And it lands in any .br bank in less than 3hrs.
– Could be that they had bad experiences, but to rule out the whole country is
idiotic to say the least. – So are italians and they are still welcome. Stop
being self prejudicial about your country. – Yes, let's perpetrate the
stereotype by adding another stereotype.

I assume you're Brazilian and you hate the fact that you are. You should think
twice before posting bullshit like this on the internet.

~~~
msantos
I have nearly 10 years experience with international payments to and from
Brazil. And although most times, it's as simple as you said, when it comes for
largers amounts (i.e. USD 5K+) it is indeed a hassle.

Yes, I'm Brazilian but I do _not_ hate the fact I'm one. I just don't have
pointless and blinding patriotic feelings. Go see the world, expand your
horizons, then let me know if you still think that Brazil is really as
"maravilhoso" as you like to think.

Regarding the stereotypes, I had made it clear that those points where "not so
serious", but since you seem to have taken them serious: Yes, _some_
Brazilians are too touchy-feely and that's _not_ a stereotype, that's a fact.
Some people appreciate that type of personality, others don't.

And finally, here's the actual response from iFit =>
[https://twitter.com/iFit/status/394852154680172544](https://twitter.com/iFit/status/394852154680172544)

~~~
gverri
Brazil is not near as "maravilhoso" as we want it to be.

But it's far from the worse place you could have been born into. So have just
a little gratitude. You could be living in Kenya or Haiti right now.

Disseminating false stereotypes will not help you, neither your country
friends. So if you don't have anything useful to say, just stay quiet. It's
not worth the karma.

I don't care if you have 10+ years experience with international payments,
your word is not enough. Show me some source.

As even yourself pointed, it's not about money transfer/payment, is about
draconian labour law. So don't make a fool of yourself.

------
outworlder
I was the one who submitted the link originally. Unfortunately, one cannot
submit a link _and_ a description. The intention was not to bash IFit (and
that's why I submitted here and not to, say, Reddit).

IFit probably has a point, as brazilian labor laws sure are draconian. As
someone who has worked with overseas companies, I know something about it:

A person cannot (legally) receive money from foreign companies. The way to get
around this is to open a company (even if it consists of a single person).
Also, a contract between the two companies is required - though in my
experience, even a NDA will suffice.

It might be the case that IFit cannot legally say, in the US, that they are
hiring someone from Brazil, as they would be actually dealing with a proxy
company, even if it is the sole purpose of the company's existence.

I don't think there are any extra costs to the employer (maybe taxes?) and
SWIFT transfers work fine.

------
codegeek
I would only hope that the posting is referring to Brazilian applicants who
want to work remotely out of Brazil. Having said that, this job posting is
very very ambiguous and can be interpreted in many ways. Some of my
interpretations:

1\. We do not want you to apply if you are Brazilian citizen. Remote or on-
site . <Invites Lawsuits for discrimination>

2\. "(no applicants from Brazil please). We need brilliant people ".

Brazilians are not brilliant. <I know I am going a little too far on this one
but still>

3\. (no applicants from Brazil please). Qualifications: Are you smart ?

Brazilians are not smart. we don't want you

May be someone should let SO know and ask them to fix this posting.

EDIT: And SO has already edited it out. But the real question still remains.
What was the motive behind such requirement ? Simply deleting the text means
that SO probably enforced it on the employer. What would be interesting is to
see if any brazilians apply to this job now.

------
LaSombra
As a Brazilian, I would love to hear from them why.

My guess is that it's expensive to send a MBP + second monitor to Brazil or
the price to refund someone is just too expensive.

I you are a Brazilian who wants to work overseas, try Europe. US immigration
laws are very complicated and expensive. Some European countries, like Czech
Republic are more permissive.

------
gonzo
One of my companies has a remote worker who lives in Brazil. Dude gets an
incredible amount of solid work done.

------
jplewicke
On the face of it, this is quite clearly illegal discrimination on the basis
of the prospective employee's country of origin:
[http://www.justice.gov/crt/legalinfo/natorigin.htm](http://www.justice.gov/crt/legalinfo/natorigin.htm)

If you're from Brazil and have work authorization to work in the US, any
employment lawyer would be very excited to hear from you. The company
responsible is quite likely liable for substantial fines, not to mention the
principle of the matter.

~~~
LaSombra
Well, since they allow remote workers I think they are referring to remote
Brazilian workers, but you are right if they are discriminating against local
workers as well.

~~~
macspoofing
What's the difference between remote Brazilian workers and remote Peruvian
workers?

~~~
Kadin
It could be something specific to Brazilian employment or finance law that
affects remote workers based there. Perhaps the company is afraid of somehow
having a tax nexus there, e.g. (perhaps, and this is just a theory) because
they're already doing some sort of activity in Brazil and are nervous they are
getting close to whatever standard Brazil has for tax presence.

That would explain why they are specifically concerned about Brazil and not,
say, Peru or Singapore or anyplace else. It might be that they have assets in
Brazil that they are concerned about getting caught up in a tax or labor
dispute.

------
JasonPunyon
We (SO Careers) are aware and are working on it.

------
marrs
The message this sends to me as a potential hire is that they don't know how
to identify a good candidate, which immediately puts me off applying for the
role.

------
andrewcooke
guys; there's no real reason brazil is a country that has some problem no
other country has. stop producing your personal bugbears against brazil as
justification.

the only logical explanation here is that they're a bit dumb, had a bad
experience with a brazillian (or group of) and decided to ban the whole
country.

this says more about ifit than it does about brazillians.

------
HugoDias
The most easy way to pay a Brazilian freelancer is using Paypal because just
transferring some money for an account has so many bureaucracy, due the
brazilian laws. And get money from paypal isn't a good idea from my
experience... So i think that the reason is really the difficulty to get fit
in brazil labor laws ..

------
dustingetz
Pro tip: you can safely ignore whole classes of applicants, that way you don't
come off as a douche. I probably won't ever work in a non-functional language,
but my resume doesn't say "no javashops, please". Most javashops don't
consider themselves to be javashops anyway.

------
msantos
Found their justification on Twitter
[https://twitter.com/iFit/status/394852154680172544](https://twitter.com/iFit/status/394852154680172544)

iFit said: "due to Brazilian labor laws, our corporation will not allow us to
hire from Brazil."

~~~
spacial
This is bullshit. The Brazillian labor law is not that draconian. How it would
be with Sweden? Italy ?(which Brazil's law is inspired)

This is bullshit, these guys say this so no one could fine about
discrimination.

------
marcosvpj
Why such prohibition?

~~~
galuggus
Maybe it's to do with Brazilian labor laws.

They are very pro-employee.

It's very difficult to sack somebody etc.

Perhaps someone from Brazil could enlighten us further?

~~~
bighi
I'm Brazilian. It's not difficult at all to fire someone from a company. You
just have to give him a 30-days notice or, if you really want the employee out
of the company RIGHT NOW, pay for one more month of work as if the employee
was still there for those 30 days.

Also there's a small fine to pay, relative to the time the employee worked in
your company. It's not really expensive. For every year the guy worked there,
you pay him for almost 2 weeks of work (our law says 40% of a month's salary,
I'm just rounding it to "almost two weeks of work"). It's like the
compensation that some US companies give when firing someone, but in here
there's a law enforcing it (in a low value).

But the main thing is: working for a company outside Brazil he loses almost
all of the protection of the law. Not because it's illegal, it's just that our
standard employment laws are for Brazilian companies. When working for
companies outside Brazil we usually start our own company and just sign a
service contract.

~~~
billeh
That's a hell of a lot more difficult than most US employers are used to. A
lot of companies here offer what is called "at will" employment, which
basically rounds down to "we can fire you whenever, you can leave whenever."

See how that wouldn't necessarily align well with the Brazilian way of doing
things?

~~~
pilsetnieks
Yeah but it's not that much different from other non-US countries. I bet it's
much harder to fire someone in France or Sweden than in Brazil.

~~~
billeh
Sweden requires about 3 months notice before firing/leaving companies.

------
rodrigocoelho
Cached:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:G_Ci0C3...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:G_Ci0C39YJwJ:careers.stackoverflow.com/jobs/remote+&cd=1&hl=pt-
BR&ct=clnk)

------
Peroni
iFit response:
[https://twitter.com/iFit/status/394852154680172544](https://twitter.com/iFit/status/394852154680172544)

------
ArekDymalski
If their core requirement is defined as precisely as "Are you smart?" I'm not
surprised that the job posting contained a discriminating fail as well.

------
kfk
Partially OT: are we still pushing for all this soft fitness stuff?

To be fit you have to: exercise regularly, eat well. Easy to say, but it's a
mind shift (try doing 1hr of exercise 3 times a week, see how "easy" is to
keep up). Something innovative in this field should push people to change
their lifestyle, not to buy yet another fitness product.

~~~
cpfohl
Innovative like sending a drill sergeant to your home or workplace to get you
moving? Not only would you get your heart rate up right at the start it'd be
hard to say no when there's someone swearing loudly in your ear and making you
make your bed perfectly at 5:00am... Once they left you'd be allowed a shower
longer than 3 minutes.

~~~
kfk
The only problem I see with this is that it's not cost effective. Make that
cheap* and it would be a great innovation.

* Maybe you could apply random checks on people and not reach out to them every time? That way they are scared 24/7.

------
golergka
Do they mean Brazil citizens or applicants of Brazilian origin?

------
msantos
That was fast. They removed the reference from the post.

------
smackfu
Why you should have your lawyers vet your job postings.

------
pit
Maybe this is their exit strategy?

