I'm horrified by so many of the comments here that seem to lack even the most basic of human decency. Allow me to fill people in for those who have never uprooted your life and moved across the world for a job. It is a massive commitment on the part of the employee, where you sell the majority of your earthly possessions, property, cars, etc. Then you go through an immigration process which even if its handled by FAANG involves a ton of work. You get to the new country, find a place to live and start to adjust.
So to do that to someone and then days later be like "we actually don't want you" is beyond shitty. This persons visa is dependent on their employment so now they get to go into a city they don't know and try desperately to find employment with an employer who is interested in sponsoring someone from abroad (which is a small fraction of the total employers).
For all you budding Elons, here's a shorthand for it. If you ask someone to move across the world and don't need them anymore, give them three months on the books to find somewhere else that don't count against their visa. It will give them a chance to get settled and go on interviews. Or don't recruit internationally.
> you sell the majority of your earthly possessions
Not only those. You give up being able to easily meet your family, friends, ... your favorite spot for hanging out is gone and you are in a completely different society, with other ways how things are done.
And then in this case with just two days in you are probably still in some temporary housing.
For staying you need to find a new job, quickly and a new apartment (which is hard without a job and without permanent visa) and when going home you likely will be marked as a loser who couldn't do it.
When I immigrated to Canada, online ordering was not as ubiquitous as it is now. I needed to ask someone in the elevator where to buy a laundry basket. I had no idea. Come to think of, how on earth would you know? They do not give you a "handbook to Canadian living" when you land on an IM-1 visa.
Bookkeeper. Lawyer. Handyman. Figure all that out, again, as if those weren't hard enough in the first case.
These things are much harder than anyone would reasonably expect. I expected the change of friends, places etc but never occurred to me how hard it'll be to re-learn shopping.
When I immigrated to Sweden I jokingly said to my friends "I'm relearning how to be an adult".
Taxes, bank accounts, grocery stores, buying alcohol, going to the doctor's, and so and so forth. I had to learn how to do these things again.
If one never moved to a very different society there's no way to really empathise how deep these changes go, you uproot everything that was considered your life. The only thing you have left when moving 10000km away for a job is... The job itself.
And you will get homesick eventually. You will miss the food you usually eat, the places you visit, the feeling you get after e.g. the rain in that special place etc.
And the culture of the people or just hearing your home slang, or the smell.
Not easy
> so many of the comments here that seem to lack even the most basic of human decency
Reading them, so am I. There is no sign of empathy: that understanding of another individual, the ability to put oneself in someone else's shoes, that is fundamental to a healthy society and (IMO) personal integrity.
I read a comment a few years ago that no-one thinks of themselves as a bad person. To yourself, you are always okay. Yet lacking as you phrase it 'human decency', or for me, 'empathy', as so clearly illustrated in those harsh, inhuman, uncaring, comments that show no concern nor understanding of the person, the human, the feeling caring uprooted emotion-bearing trouble-striving human at the center of this...
I don't know. I feel like quite a few people in this post need to question themselves.
I can't stand reading the conversations on HN about anything related to the well-being or suffering of other people. I try to limit myself to technical topics only, or I start to get depressed and/or angry.
There's a vocal contingent of PHB middle manager of the year contestants that are desperately trying to flood discussion with their inhumane opinions to make them seem mainstream. The previous "budding Elons" label is a good one, and we should be flagging these bad actors at every turn.
Even in technical discussions, you can observe arrogance and dismissal by commenters who are unacceptably underqualified in the subjects being discussed. This place has become a joke nowadays.
I wouldn't go that far. The signal to noise ratio is worse than it used to be, but there's still nothing else like HN and there are still a lot of interesting technical conversations to observe or to be had. I continue to learn more here than anywhere else. I'll cope with putting in a bit more effort mentally filtering out the unproductive conversations.
i would not say it's "exactly HN". lobste.rs articles are much more programming focused. majority of posts you find on HN you would not find on lobste.rs
which is fine, if that's what you want, but, as a daily reader of both, they aren't even close to being the same thing
So the site invite only? It looks interesting, but I’m not sure I know anyone on it or am interested in bumming around for an invite from a stranger. I guess that’s part of the charm.
"Basic human decency" might be the only gate worth keeping. Without that, harassers and trolls have more effective freedom of speech than their targets, and I for one find that unacceptable. See also: paradox of tolerance.
>A colleague a few years ago went as far as to suggest that this is how you ended up with nazis.
Your colleague does appear to have done a lot of reflection and/or reading ( feel free to ask him to contact me if he finds the stuff on my profile of interest). Most people just think Hitler=evil as the sole contibuting factor to the holocast, but I say that it's people around him, who did not have the conscience or who ignored it, that lead to his rise. There are a fair number of potential 'hitlers' around us, but it's primarily people around those dysfunctional individuals that keep them in check.
Oh no he has. His grandparents were tortured to death by nazis. He’s been to Auschwitz.
There are two types: the ignorant and the complicit. The complicit are who you have to worry about. It was seen as a means to an end and was without compassion or care of others just the personal gain of rank or power.
Ah, near first hand experience. Unfortunately that wisdom will be lost in another generation, and to even most contemporaries that did not experience it, it's just another story. History will repeats and teching history will not help.
Darned if you do, damned if you don't. You need to block fascists but need to stop short of fascist levels of intolerance or else you're the fascist. Strive not with monsters, as Nietzsche said.
I understand that there are different opinions and priorities but consider that a lot of people to be entirely lacking in any virtue and compassion restricted only by the power that they do not (currently) possess.
To empower those folk is how you end up with nazis, which is the point.
Unnecessary reference to Nazism. I agree with your general idea, but being intolerant and unempathetic isn't something only some people in the 30s started to do.
Below average empathy is pervasive and a pretty common human characteristic, like being tall or having curly hair.
If the total lack of employment rights (no maternity or paternity leave, no sick leave, no holidays, no protection against being fired) was applied in any other developed country, it would be the number 1 political topic every day until they were brought back.
Ask an American active in tech-orientated social media about it, they'll invariably say "Oh, well of course that doesn't affect people like me".
> Ask an American active in tech-orientated social media about it, they'll invariably say "Oh, well of course that doesn't affect people like me".
Until they want to go to a restaurant, but it's been shut down because the owners couldn't get it in their head that they should pay more than minimum wage and no one wants to work for that. Or the restaurant is open, with employees who cannot afford to stay home even though they are contagious, and the tech people get sick. Or their boss wants to shrink the workforce by 10-50% and so they make it undesirable to be there to avoid paying severance.
And it has to be them, not people in the same position.
But it's only some Americans who think like that. Too broad a brush doesn't work.
It's unsurprising when you consider the history of Silicon Valley and the Randian philosophy that underpins everything. All problems can be solved by the union of entrepreneurship and technology, and anything that stands in the way of progress is a distraction.
There's an Adam Curtis documentary All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace [0] that I think is relevant. HN (and even at this point broader programmer "culture") is a "fruit of the poison tree" in a sense - the philosophy of individualism and "greed is good" runs deep.
> I read a comment a few years ago that no-one thinks of themselves as a bad person. To yourself, you are always okay.
From my focus on emotions and conflict over the last 10 years, I'd say many people actually think they're bad people (or at least that they might be). I think one of the hardest things is to defend our own good intentions and I've found that as I get better at doing it for myself, I tend to also defend the good intentions of others.
I wonder if it's not a bit like the Dunning-Kruger effect. The good people around us struggle thinking that they're bad, while the bad people blithely go around thinking they're good.
That is a really interesting thought. Thank you. Now that you mention it, I'm thinking that having a conscience means getting "false alarms" sometimes. One way some people choose to prevent that is to disable the alarm instead of fixing the actual problem. I'm sure anyone who has worked in tech for any amount of time has seen the literal form of that.
Emotional empathy may be relatively prevalent in the world (though sometimes it is more in the virtue signalling domain) but true cognitive empathy is rare and very much needed in abundance if we wish to continue to thrive as a humanity.
I'm struggling to understand how something as trivial and harmless as a vaccine mandate could persuade someone that "empathy" is a bad guiding principle.
I am assuming you haven't spent much time around the kind of people that didn't approve of the vaccine. Let me write out a string of thoughts that support saying empathy isn't a great core principle.
At the start of the pandemic we are told it's no big deal. Then a few weeks later it's a massive deal. At first masks don't work so don't rush out and buy them. Then masks are mandatory in all public places. We then put society on hold for about a year. Finally we have an experimental drug that helps you be protected from the virus. YOU MUST TAKE THE DRUG! Don't want it? YOU MUST TAKE THE DRUG! You already had COVID and recovered? YOU MUST TAKE THE DRUG! You had a legitimate medical reaction to a previous vaccine? YOU MUST TAKE THE DRUG!
That process broke the trust of a significant amount of people. Why trust the establishment when they change their minds all the time and demand demand demand? If they do all these things in the name of empathy, empathy shouldn't be the base principle.
Objectively, the vaccine is extremely low risk, and the benefit is orders of magnitude larger than the risk for almost all groups.
I understand that some people have an irrational fear of the vaccine, and I can even try to empathize with them to that extent. However, it still is very difficult to understand the level of opposition to something which is so simple (just two painless injections, each taking seconds to administer) and so overwhelmingly positive (a 90+% reduction in the chance of serious disease, in exchange for a vanishingly small risk).
Public health messaging in the US was terrible, but US public health agencies were extremely cautious with the vaccines. If they hadn't cared about testing the vaccines, the vaccines could have been rolled out by mid-2020. After all, the vaccines were formulated all the way back in January 2020, pretty much as soon as the viral RNA sequence was published. I think it's sad that people have the impression that the vaccines were not thoroughly tested, because they were actually subjected to an extremely high level of scrutiny. They weren't approved until full-scale phase-3 trials with tens of thousands of participants had shown that the risk of severe side-effects was minuscule (i.e., as low as in other approved, safe vaccines).
The vaccine saved on the order of a million lives in the US. It's one of the most unambiguously positive things developed by humankind. That's why the strident opposition is so difficult to understand - it points to something very wrong in society.
Yep, pretty much hits the nail on the head. It’s not so much about empathy vs. feigning it for internet points. I can empathize with the situation in OP, but not in an outsized proportion to what’s occurred in society in the past few years. The same folks repping “empathy” were laughing to the bank when humans were locked in cages for getting around the vaccine mandate in their own way.
There’s people who were forced to sell their homes, lost their jobs, and can’t move back to the place they grew up right here on American soil - in layman’s terms, I’m out of f’s to give.
Empathy isn’t the core principle of getting vaccinated. It’s just one of the reasons; and you cannot claim to be empathetic if you refuse to do it out of something that isn’t medical exemption.
The actual reasons are self preservation and slowing down a pandemic. And when people don’t care about the latter, that is an easy tell that yeah they have zero empathy.
"Empathy for my children [and nobody else's]" is a good round-about way of saying "for entirely selfish reasons".
Especially since your actions do absolutely nothing to advance that goal you likely just made up now. If the governments have learned anything, it's that mandates need to be quicker and stronger, with much more stringent penalties for the dodgers.
Ya, after watching the bodily reactions of family members that led up to death in some cases I’d never go out on a limb to get that shot for a dollar. But the “lived experience” crowd sure don’t want to hear about mine.
Second, the POTUS himself - self proclaimed enemy of divisiveness - yapped "pandemic of the unvaccinated." Which was a lie. A lie for which he has yet to acknowledge, let alone apologize for.
The point is, people with an appreciation for history, and a willingness to exert their God given rights were being manipulated and maligned. That's not cool. That's not unifying.
To see it as trivial and harmless says more about you buying into the ruse than anything else.
History is clear my friend...be careful what you wish for, especially when your government is making big promises that hinge on your convenience and someone else's loss of liberty.
There's a long history of vaccine requirements, including in the US.
For example, NY state requires that children attending daycare or school be vaccinated against a range of pathogens.
I don't know what you're envisioning happening with mandatory SARS-CoV-2 vaccination, or why you consider it a "ruse." A "ruse" for what, exactly?
I don't think mandatory vaccination equals anyone's "loss of liberty." I don't think there's a right to not be vaccinated. It's a critical public health measure that brings huge benefits to society, and which imposes virtually no burden on the individual.
Rewind and remember all that was promised with the vaccinations. The effectiveness. The long term safety (without *any* such testing). Remember the comparisons to other historic vaccinations by professionals well aware the mRNA technology was new and relatively untested. The Covid jab !== The Polio jab. Not even close.
Remember how masks were required. Then remember the news that most masks are ineffective because the virus is smaller that what the masks can stop? How did we not know that? Why do some continue to push masks, even the ones that are effectively useless?
Remember the guy (i.e., Biden) who talked down the divisiveness of others then shamelessly said, "It's a pandemic of the unvaccinated" forcing an unnecessary wedge between the citizens. For what? To get a jab that does perform as promised? To wear "government sanctioned" masks that don't do anything?
For the record, being someone's guinea pig is not liberty. Being someone's political chew toy is not liberty. You can think what you want about public health and the mRNA jabs but don't confuse your confidence with liberty.
The fact that many reasonable and intelligent people such as yourself have forgotten so many important details can only be explained by...a ruse. But that ok, just be sure to carry your Covid papers / Covid passport and you'll be safe.
I still don't understand what the "ruse" is. A "ruse" is an attempt to achieve some ulterior goal, under the guise of something completely different. What ulterior motives are you alleging?
> The effectiveness.
The vaccines are highly effective at preventing severe disease and death, which was always their primary goal. If you go back and read the vaccine trial procedures on clinicaltrials.gov, you'll see that their "primary endpoint" was prevention of serious disease, and that preventing infection was viewed as the cherry on top - it wasn't the primary endpoint, and the trials weren't designed to test for infection. The fact that the mRNA vaccines protected so well against infection with the original strain was just an added bonus.
> The long term safety (without any such testing).
There was extremely rigorous safety testing. They followed tens of thousands of people for months. The "long term" aspect you're bringing up is unscientific. Based on the modern scientific understanding of the immune system, the types of long-term side-effects that anti-vaxxers posit are not possible, and there is no known example of such a side effect ever occurring with any vaccine. Vaccine side-effects always show up within a few months at most, and there was extensive testing to look for such side-effects.
> The Covid jab !== The Polio jab. Not even close.
You're right, but not in Ruhe way you think. The mRNA CoVID vaccines are far safer than the widely used oral polio vaccine. The alternative, the inactivated polio vaccine, doesn't prevent infection - it only prevents the infection from developing into paralytic disease. With polio, you have the choice between a safe vaccine that doesn't stop the virus from spreading, and a more effective vaccine that has a very small chance of paralyzing you. The polio vaccines are miracles of mid-20th-Century science, but they're old technology that could be (and are being) improved on with modern technology. One of the reasons mRNA vaccines have been deployed during this pandemic is that they are considered to be a much safer technology that many of the older alternatives.
> don't confuse your confidence with liberty
I don't agree with you on the definition of "liberty." I view the "liberty" to not get vaccinated as similar to the "liberty" to not wear a seatbelt or to buy a car without airbags.
> But that ok, just be sure to carry your Covid papers / Covid passport and you'll be safe.
If you travel around the world, you'll find that much more than just CoVID vaccination is required.
>You yourself have no empathy for those who would make those supposedly "harsh, inhuman, uncaring, comments"
That's fine. You don't have to go down infinite meta-levels of empathy.
You can just treat nazis like scum, and jerks like jerks. As long as you treat other people well and with compassion, you would still be behaving far better and more positively than how those who would make those supposedly "harsh, inhuman, uncaring, comments" are.
> As long as you treat other people well and with compassion
And you just choose who you consider "people" and who you consider "scum". It's like that old joke about Linux being user-friendly, it's just very picky about who it considers a user.
>And you just choose who you consider "people" and who you consider "scum".
Yes. That's necessary too. Did you rather treat everybody as an undifferentiated fog? Compassion is not about bending over backwards for jerks.
>It's like that old joke about Linux being user-friendly, it's just very picky about who it considers a user.
Even that is very defensible: you can be user-friendly for different groups with different needs - and this often does not translate to being user-friendly to everybody.
E.g. if you try to please admins, and developers, and power users, and professionals, you won't also be user friendly in the sense that an OS focused on consumers or a program aimed at children is.
What a professional designer considers must-have and user-friendly features (to him as a user) and what someone who just shot a couple of holiday photos and wants to resize them considers user frienly, is not the same thing...
>And the Nazis do the same, they'll just, like you, say "I don't consider that a human", and then act like you.
Yeah, it's kind of like how Nazis killed people, and anti-Nazis killed people too.
So from that aspect they'd be the same. Besides, both sides also breathed, drank beer, and tied their shoes.
But the anti-nazis killed Nazis, not just anybody that they fancied for power, and they did it for freedom, and they didn't base it on innate characteristics (like being a Jew, or gypsie, or gay) but on bad behavior (like having occupied half of Europe, and burned people) and on stopping aggression.
Being empathetic (take it from someone that believes they're an hyper empath) means understanding that if I were born in the 1910s in Germany and maybe blond and blue eyed, I could have probably been a big Adolf fan, but I was not, so current me believes fascists in general should get punched in the face indiscriminately and with extreme prejudice.
Having black-and-white thinking, of "I would never do that", like you seem to do, is proof itself of lack of empathy.
> Having black-and-white thinking, of "I would never do that", like you seem to do, is proof itself of lack of empathy.
No, it's the opposite. I wouldn't treat anyone as an Untermensch because I'm convinced that the difference between me and them is a few throws of the dice. If you divide the world into "people worthy of empathy (by virtue of the dice showing X)" and "sub-humans to be treated like scum and vermin (by virtue of the dice showing Y)", you're completely sharing their worldview, you just randomly weren't born into their shoes and you don't agree with them on what the dice should show, but that's it.
That's not to say you should tolerate Nazis, but to not feel any empathy for them, and to not treat them as humans? Yeah, good luck on that road.
"Sure I tortured prisoners and waterboarded them ... but they were insurgents, and I'm a good guy, so it's all cool if I do it. Had they done the same to me though, wow, what a crime against humanity" has a super weird vibe to me. But it works, and Abu Ghraib documented neatly, how happy people can be while they torture others, if you tell them they're the good guys and that it's okay, because the others aren't really human.
I am not sure where it is coming from exactly. I’ve been around for other major downturns, this is the first I recall at least where there’s almost like a “What Would Ebenezer Scrooge Do” mentality that has taken over amongst technology leaders. A lot of people I thought I respected are tweeting things like you have to put family second if you want to succeed, or people who don’t work every weekend should be fired (or even apologising to someone if you ask them to work on the weekend is a capitulation), that sort of thing. Unnecessary cruelty around layoffs, to send a message, seems like another.
I agree that work isn’t family and that it’s a business first, but recently it seems like causing or experiencing suffering is being seen as a kind of proof of commitment. I don’t think that path ends well.
I do agree, but I guess I'm not sure what the solution is here?
Large layoffs in large orgs are generally done at a team level rather than an individual level. So presumably this individual's entire team no longer exists.
So out of respect for them relocating do you then try to reposition them in the company somehow?
And what about all the people who didn't relocate but may have recently left stable job for an opportunity at Meta? Do they not matter or should they also be repositioned out of respect? And what about those who have personal reasons that make the layoff extra difficult? For example, those who might have just had a new born or who have family members in hospital? Do their personal situations not also matter?
And for how long would these individuals be safe if you do make an exception? Do you keep them for 3 months just to be nice then proceed with the layoff anyway? I'm not sure that's much better...
I think maybe the best thing to do here is just to give good severance packages?
I don't think I'm being heartless. I'm sat here thinking both, "man this is awful" while also having no idea what the right answer is. You can argue layoffs suck more for certain people and those people should be protected, but for a larger org needing to do mass-layoffs it seems almost impossible to make those kinds of assessments on an individual level in a way that is fair. You'd inevitably just end up protecting certain types of crappy situations (recently located) over other types of crappy situations (family member just died).
Just thinking out loud... Maybe I'm missing something here.
The solution is right there in OPs post: “give them three months on the books to find somewhere else that don't count against their visa. It will give them a chance to get settled and go on interviews.”
Thats it. HR knows who is working on visa. Inform them of the situation, give them 3 months, take away all their accesses and let them spend the 3 months to look for a new job. Meta makes a bazillion USD pr year. Even if they had to pay 1000 workers on visa for 3 months it wont make a dent in their profits.
For the employee that just relocated, on the other hand, this makes all the difference in the world.
Corporate greed is disgusting when its put above Human decency like this.
My company’s been through multiple rounds of large layoffs. This was standard SOP.
People on immigration visas were not given traditional severances. They were simply kept on the books for that period of time without having any access to any resources and/or being expected to do any work.
I’m not entirely sure what happened if they started a job before the period ended. Whether they got the rest of the money as severance or forfeited it but I doubt they really cared.
It's even simpler: make 3 months notice mandatory across the board. Or heck, even 30 days notice would be a start. Of course there's no way you can rely on a corporation to do this voluntarily and regulation is unlikely given who pays the bills.
I wish there was a way to make this happen but I keep hearing software workers don't need unions because we already make so much money and the better ones have nothing to worry about.
Well I’m from Denmark with 3 months required by law (if you’ve been employeed more than 6 months. 1 month if its <6 months.), so I completely agree. Sometimes it just usually distracts from the conversion if you mention danish basic rights to americans :-)
3 months notice, while retaining access to company networks and campus?
I support "keeping them on the books" for purposes of visa and health insurance, for example, but there are legitimate security reasons to have people cut off quickly when they've been laid off or fired.
I don't think anyone advocating the 3 months thinks you need to keep them doing something. You just need to keep providing the benefits (salary, health if in the US, visa, etc.) for 3 months. Even in the EU you don't have to let someone come in to the office during that time.
I suppose if you had really, really, really good meals provided, it would be reasonable to argue about whether that was a benefit or there for people in the office.
I've never been in the situation, but from what I gather then both things happen. Sometimes your are given notice (and pay) but access revoked. But its also my understanding that in many cases, maybe even most, the employee works in the 3 months. The employer may even be a bit more lax with time off so the employee can do interviews with other companies. I know in most cases the notice period is used for handing over projects/work to another employee at the company, so stuff doesn't just get dropped. I get the security aspect, but from my experience its just not something an employee usually does. Maybe some other Danes can pitch in with their experiences.
I think its b/c getting fired is bad ofc, but not bad like in the US. I mean we have universal basic income, free healthcare etc. So I just don't think people feel pressured in a way that drives them to exploit access even after a notice, or get mad at the company in the same way. I'm just speculating. Again, there are companies and positions in companies where its a no brainer that access is revoked for security reasons.
Remaining vacation days should cover the better part of one month alone. If you don't want them to come in for whatever reason, you can send them on paid leave.
Most companies stop having "legitimate security reasons" when the alternative is to pay people for doing nothing. Turns out the fact that actual sabotage and theft of trade secrets is illegal (and often represents a breach of the employment contract, which can incur hefty fines) is a sufficient deterrent for most industries.
The problem is not so much the money, but the damn Visa: The moment you become unemployed, the countdown clock to deportation starts ticking.
This is a HUGE stress, and also puts you at a disadvantage against your prospect employers.
IMHO, there should be legislation for covering these cases. I.e. when you sponsor a Visa as an employer, it should be mandatory to pay the employee for a minimum of 12-24 months. If you want to lay them off, that's fine, but legally they would still be considered employed and paid in full until that grace period expires.
Depending on the type of visa, it's not even like the situation depends on employment.
I've seen a few people with stable jobs sent home from the US when their visa came up for renewal.
Immigrating to the west, the USA in particular but also Canada, involves an element of luck, beyond what most people realize.
edit: To be very fair, though, there is an implicit warning in the paperwork and interview for every US work visa for exactly this kind of situation. It's not like they're playing some gotcha game. They don't come right out and say it, but, it's also not exactly hidden between the lines or in small print.
> The moment you become unemployed, the countdown clock to deportation starts ticking.
I am NOT 100% sure about this, but to the best of my knowledge, this is not the case in Canada. Work Permits are issues for the duration of the expected work and are usually at least one year long. If you lose your job, you can still remain in Canada until the expiry date of your work permit. You cannot simply start working elsewhere, but if you find a new job, your new employer can start the process of applying for a work permit for you while you are waiting in Canada. So this developer should be good to stay for another 11 to 12 months, if not even longer, while searching for a new job.
This why it happens, the company I work with would rather hire someone who is in a tight bind if their employment goes away, they'll work harder, be scared to lose it. etc. its called the H1B solution
Yeah, I’m almost certain the articles I read about the layoffs said that those on a Visa are getting an extra 90 days or so on payroll to find other employment. Maybe I’m mixing it up with Twitter?
> Do you keep them for 3 months just to be nice then proceed with the layoff anyway? I'm not sure that's much better...
Much better than days of notice.
The solutions seem pretty simple to me, contractually required notice periods. My last job I had either a two or three month notice period, I can't quite remember. For those coming over on visas, you could have an initial notice period that's longer.
> I think maybe the best thing to do here is just to give good severance packages?
Missing in this for the case of visas is about how long you're allowed to stay in the country without a job. A notice period should mean you're still employed, so that adds to any grace period around a visa.
> You'd inevitably just end up protecting certain types of crappy situations (recently located) over other types of crappy situations (family member just died).
Maybe, yeah. But protecting some people rather than none is an improvement, particularly when some cases are extremely easy to identify and may make a much larger proportion of people affected significantly.
> I do agree, but I guess I'm not sure what the solution is here?
The solution is obvious: Stop clinging to this backward butts-in-seats culture that has people move to a new location even if the job they're going to do can easily be done from anywhere in the world.
I mean, that’s simply not true. At a most basic level, if you’re going to collaborate effectively as part of a team for a long period of time then you need to realistically be ± 3 time zones at most.
That's only true if you're working entirely or mostly synchronously, which might be an indicator of inherent anti-patterns in your work culture and processes, e.g., lots of meetings instead of written documentation.
Still, it's the environment that is broken. Hence, it's the environment that needs to be fixed.
Having people relocate to another country, because your organization isn't able to fix its own internal problems, means you're simply outsourcing your own costs to your employees.
George Bernard Shaw comes to mind here: “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
Reality being as it is, is no argument for not trying to be better or improve a situation:
Contrary to the Shaw quote above I’d say that simply resigning oneself to reality as it is and therefore precluding better approaches is the unreasonable choice.
It seems you are working in a very niche area where most of the work is entirely asynchronous. In my area of work (non-trivial software development), there is a wide consensus that some in-person collaboration is needed on a regular basis. My company has fully embraced remote work, is going through an economic down turn like many other "growth startups" and yet finds it necessary to mandate meeting hours where everyone has to be present or to organize offsites where people can meet and get to know each other in a better way.
> some in-person collaboration is needed on a regular basis
I keep hearing such arguments but those typically aren't backed up by any data or reason as to why that's the case.
That said, poster child remote-first companies such as Basecamp, GitLab, or Zapier have their people gather a few times throughout the year, too, to allow them to get to know each other better. That's not a contradiction at all and something entirely different than mandating people move to specific location to work there the entire time.
> I keep hearing such arguments but those typically aren't backed up by any data or reason as to why that's the case.
I'd say burden of proof is on you to provide any data that remote work is equally good.
I have given remote-working a shot for three years - first ~1.5 were mandatory during COVID and last ~1.5 were during normal times. My company has gone all in on remote work and has tried to make it work. It just doesn't work and everyone is openly admitting its flaws. To name a few: a lack of trust, very shallow relationships, struggles for junior and new team members to ramp up, a lack of engagement etc.
Based on my personal experience and that of my social and professional circles, >80% people seem to prefer a hybrid model where they work 2-3 days in office and 2-3 days at home. Of course, in-office days have to be mandated for the entire team to be effective.
This question seems to imply that junior engineers require lots of synchronous, in-person meetings and handholding.
Is there any proof that's truly the case? Or isn't that yet another one of those commonly accepted, yet rarely questioned truisms when it comes to - an often dysfunctional - work culture?
Not the OP but the proof is my own experience in both in-office and remote settings. And everyone is going to go by their own life experiences. If enough people think that remote setting sucks and that junior engineers, along with many other roles, are more effective in person, then the burden of proof is on you to demonstrate that that's not the case.
Well, there are entirely distributed, remote-first companies like Automattic, Zapier, GitLab, or Basecamp. I'm certain each of those also employs junior engineers.
Therefore, someone claiming it doesn't work, is effectively saying it doesn't work for their company, which in turn gives rise to questions as to why that's the case:
Is their company and its work truly that unique and special that it can only effectively be done synchronously and in person?
Or is it rather that the company in question itself has an underlying organizational problem?
> Well, there are entirely distributed, remote-first companies like Automattic, Zapier, GitLab, or Basecamp. I'm certain each of those also employs junior engineers.
Yes. My company is also in that category. We employ a lot of junior engineers too. >90% of them say they want some in-person interaction because it is hard to ramp up effectively on a complex codebase and a different culture.
> Therefore, someone claiming it doesn't work, is effectively saying it doesn't work for their company, which in turn gives rise to questions as to why that's the case
Because we are all humans and in absence of an in-person presence, we are not able to form trusting deep relationships.
> Is their company and its work truly that unique and special that it can only effectively be done synchronously and in person?
countless remote teams have faced this problem. it's a trade-off, of course, but it's not an insurmountable challenge.
for example we are using gather.town. much better than Google Meet (full HD screen sharing, ad-hoc breakout sessions, blablabla, free under team size of 25, if I remember correctly)
While in most organizations pair programming probably is far less common than pointless meetings, even then it's preferable to document the outcomes of pair programming sessions, so others can benefit from those results without having to have been there synchronously or in person.
Maybe look at how it's done in pretty much every other developed country in the world? Employees have notice periods and extra safety margins around visas.
I think this works on two levels. Yes, pay good severance packages which includes keep paying for the benefits. And in addition find them another sponsor. The sponsor thing is what is different for immigrants from all the other situations you mentioned. This should also be up to the government. When you get fired you shouldn’t outright lose your permit.
Who sells everything instantly when moving to a new job? What if it won't work out?
I think for a few months the company should subsidize renting a place, so new hires who move are not forced to liquidate everything back home. (Relocation packages are a thing after all.)
I'm inclined to agree. Giving a neutral, business sounding label to something like this, and normalising it doesn't make it right. As an interaction between two individuals, this would be immediately recognised as morally wrong, even if contractually right. Isn't morality supposed to scale?
Theoretically it is; practically corporations are implicitly immoral - they’re not human, they have no feelings, it’s only left to whatever (HR in this case) procedures are in place to ensure a positive outcome.
Such procedures tend to fail when you move fast and break things.
No matter which way you try and slice it, there's always a human at the end of the decision. A human made the policies, a human made the layoff decision, a human decides to enforce policy.
Corporations often engage in a sort of 'responsibility laundering'
Andrew in HR just does what the policy says, it's unfortunate but rules are rules, and the policy doesn't say this is any exception.
Barbra the CEO who set the policy would have made an exception if it had been brought to her attention, but it wasn't. The policy was set serving the interests of the shareholders.
Charles the shareholder is just an average member of the public and isn't party to any internal firing plans. And in any case, he owns 0.0000002% of facebook - far from a controlling interest.
And like magic, the responsibility has disappeared - vanished into the gap between Andrew and Barbra.
And thats why in UK almost 100 people burned alive in a skyscraper that was built in breach of all fire safety rules. It turns out noone is responsible- not the architect, builders, builder owner and management, or the fire safety inspector.
The only charges brought in relation to this incident, where against people making offensive jokes about it on social media.
I'm having trouble accepting this comment is not sarcastic. The fact that most CEOs or boards would behave the same way doesn't make it moral, and the whole point of this specific threat is whether morality can be applied to corporations.
I'm not being sarcastic at all. I'm not saying that Meta's actions are moral.
The comment above mine said "there's always a human at the end of the decision" implying that if Meta just had more ethical individuals, then Meta would make more ethical decisions. I am arguing that it doesn't matter whether the individuals have good or bad moral values, because the company values profit above all else.
More generally, sticking with the status quo is a moral decision. Just because you feel less guilty because you just followed orders instead of "making a choice", that doesn't make you morally neutral. We like to talk big words about how "evil only exists because good people do nothing" or whatever but when facing the banality of minor evils every day we not only do nothing but shrug our shoulders when others do the same.
While this is true, it is utterly infeasible for a company with tens of thousands of employees to consider the individual employee in their decisions.
They can perhaps consider actions which will result in large impacts to large numbers of employees (such as regulating the inflow a bit more to protect against sudden needs to dump 11,000 people). Hire fewer, more slowly, and they can then slowly and with more consideration lay off fewer people.
> While this is true, it is utterly infeasible for a company with tens of thousands of employees to consider the individual employee in their decisions.
This isn't collectively decided by a company with tens of thousands of employees, it's decided by one or two people in HR and approved by groups rarely larger than five people. It's not only perfectly feasible to "consider the individual employee" in this decision, but a handful of people are literally paid to do exactly that, and miserably failed to do their job.
Lots of people here understandably focus on the part where those guys failed at just being decent human beings. But what I find truly disheartening is the part where those guys really sucked at doing their job: the people in that hiring chain made a decision that cost several departments thousands of dollars in covering relocation paperwork and legal fees, even though that turned out to be entirely unnecessary, and then literally caused an employer branding and PR dumpster fire. This is the equivalent of committing a bunch of performance fixes that turn out to be unnecessary, then attempting to revert them only to cause a massive crash in production -- tl;dr it's just incompetence. And it's really hilarious to see the same people who advocate for ruthlessly firing people for incompetence defend this gross incompetence under the guise of pseudo-philosophical talk about corporate morality.
This very much depends on the person. When I moved abroad when I was 23 I did so with nothing more than the backpack I brought along. If they’d let me go two days later I would have bought a ticket home and returned to my previous job.
If I did the same thing now, I would have to sell my house, somehow ship all my posessions to the other country without inconveniencing my wife and child, etc. I’d have to be damn certain my job wouldn’t disappear a day after I arrive.
> When I moved abroad when I was 23 I did so with nothing more than the backpack I brought along.
That was my experience. I moved to the US, stayed in a hostel for a month, it seems very normal. At that age, you're also more likely to be able to rely on your parents if things go wrong.
20 years later, I relocated again. This was a different story. Even without a family, it was a much bigger commitment. Over the years, we accumulate goods, friends, job security, we start to worry about saving for retirement and want to avoid mistakes.
as someone on visa and survived the layoffs and who internally inquired on how the layoff logistics worked for employees on work visas. The answer is, the layoff is only effective 8 weeks from nov 9 , so something like Jan 10th, after which the countdown to find the new job begins (60 days for US, not sure about canadian work visa)
So its not as bad as it sounds or portrayed by parent comment.
> you sell the majority of your earthly possessions
When I was younger, my father worked in the oil business. Relocation to other states & countries was reasonably common.
One of the scariest stories came from their last time in Saudi Arabia (I usually save the "you & your family are being deported in 48 hours" or "oops, your moonshine still burned down your house" stories for drinking time). This family was being relocated back to the US after more than 2 decades working in Saudi Arabia. There was a storm in the Atlantic. A really bad one. The shipping company had to jettison about 100 containers to "save the ship". Everything they owned. Every thing they collected in their adult life went overboard to a watery grave. All they had left was the luggage that they carried on the airflight back to the US. Insurance covered nothing since it was an intentional act by the ship's crew.
Just two things:
1) Remember that a lot of tech people score higher on the autistic spectrum than normal people do. So most likely many of the commentators just don't have the biological wiring for feeling empathy like many others do. This might ease your mind a little.
2) Also remember that Musk would probably have given someone those three months to find other employment, seeing as he gave Twitter employees up to six months. So I don't think he's a good example for this. Use instead... hm... how about Meta?
> autistic spectrum than normal people do. So most likely many of the commentators just don't have the biological wiring for feeling empathy like many others do
This is outdated. Assuming you are using "empathy" conversationally, it's driven by the fact that people higher on the autistic spectrum don't perceive what other people feel very well, and historically this was misinterpreted. The comments on HN aren't "I don't understand why anyone would be upset". They are "it's only business". Those who claim that they are autistic so they can be assholes are just assholes who are happy to lie to try to justify it socially.
Or, people with autism have a correlation to issues with cognitive empathy (recognizing what another person's mental state), but not affective empathy (the desire to respond to the other person's mental state.)[1]
> Musk would probably have given someone those three months to find other employment, seeing as he gave Twitter employees up to six months.
Has it changed again? Last I saw was 3 months. At any rate, he started and continues to try to get people to quit by a lot of policy changes. And has a history of burning out his employees in fairly harsh ways.
You can say he's effective, but he doesn't sound pleasant to work for.
People with a hard time to be empathetic (alternatively let's call it theory of mind deficiency) or who have trouble with emotional regulation tend to develop coping mechanisms, for example a typical one is that they start to simply ignore feelings of others in most situations, don't mention feelings in communications, etc.
Does this absolve them of hurting others? Of course not really, but it might help others understand why it's hard to get people with such defenses to even acknowledge that their communication can be hurtful, etc.
The graph in the paper is very telling. It's pretty consistent with ADHD having non-significant negative correlation with EQ. But it's also very consistent with a small effect :)
> Remember that a lot of tech people score higher on the autistic spectrum than normal people do.
They do? This comes as a surprise to me. It could very well be true but I would like a citation for this. Kind of finding it hard to just accept this for a fact because I have been hanging out with technical folks for a long time and most folks I hang out don't see to be high on the autistic spectrum.
one typical symptom of ADHD is a deficiency of emotional regulation and impaired inhibitory function (which results in a bit of impulsiveness). HN is a perfect place for folks addicted to novelty (interesting tech news always!), so it's not that surprising that there is a relative abundance of comments that would have been better left unsent :)
also, high is relative. too high would make it very hard to get and maintain a job.
Elon would definitely behave like this. a perfect example imo. Him being forced by law or PR to give people more time doesn’t show his character or how he is.
Elon — the classist, union busting, worker rights abusing (like how he treated lower working class workers during lockdown or how he will randomly fire you while walking around a factory), hyper capitalist. He is definitely okay with this. Can’t imagine him not wanting to do this if he could get away with it.
The use of supposed mental illness being used to discount any opposing belief is terrifying. Did you ever stop and consider that maybe empathizing in this situation is wrong?
> This persons visa is dependent on their employment so now they get to go into a city they don't know and try desperately to find employment with an employer who is interested in sponsoring someone from abroad (which is a small fraction of the total employers).
Alternatively they can just return to India? I'd be surprised if they didn't receive reallocation package (16k USD according to teamblind?). I don't expect any employer to go above and beyond their contractual obligations.
There is also certain irony here in Meta employees expecting ethical behavior from Meta whilst happily creating and maintaining unethical outcomes for the customers.
Indeed. So many have returned to India in far worse circumstances during 2008 recession.
> There is also certain irony here in Meta employees expecting ethical behavior from Meta whilst happily creating and maintaining unethical outcomes for the customers.
You are right. I am sorry to say but this outpouring for folks who are in vastly better financial situation is an example of People like Us have more feelings than masses.
> I'd be surprised if they didn't receive reallocation package (16k USD according to teamblind?).
Are you sure they will be allowed to keep it? Relocation package is usually tied to one year work period in the new location and you have to give it back if you leave earlier than that.
Totally agree. I have no love for FAANG but it seems like there’s a huge amount of tech worker resentment on HN. Whenever layoffs are announced there’s always cheering from some vocal group who is convinced those who got cut are facing some form of cosmic retribution for the perceived wrongdoings of the larger org (eg: censorship, bad product decisions, politics, or laziness). Here’s a case where you can’t project any of those grievances onto this employee because the man literally just started it’s a classic case of a LIFO layoff but people can’t help themselves it seems.
I'm not reading the comments here the same way at all, as a "lack of even the most basic of human decency".
Rather, I'm seeing it more as just -- that's just life, what makes this particular case so special?
People move for jobs all the time (including internationally), and shit happens all the time (you get laid off, your significant other breaks up with you, a loved one passes away).
It would be one thing if Facebook was actively tricking him. But we all can assume it was just a normal hiring/transfer process that had been in motion for many months, and company-wide layoffs wound up hitting his team (which couldn't have been known months in advance), and so he was the victim of really bad timing. But not out of malice, and he's still presumably getting months of severance like everyone else, so he can go back to India with money and look for a new job, which he's presumably extremely qualified to do (having been hired by Facebook).
And heck, it's usually a lot better to get laid off after 2 days (living in a temporary apartment) than say 4 months (you've bought a house).
So is it a bunch of time and effort wasted? Of course. Does it suck? Of course. But people get laid off all the time through no fault of their own, and sometimes the timing is terrible. Which sucks. But does that make it HN front-page worthy? I think it's totally valid to say it's not -- but that doesn't mean you lack "even the most basic of human decency". It just means you don't think this is news. And that's OK.
"Everyone will get an email soon letting you know what this layoff means for you. After that, every affected employee will have the opportunity to speak with someone to get their questions answered and join information sessions.
Some of the details in the US include:
Severance. We will pay 16 weeks of base pay plus two additional weeks for every year of service, with no cap.
PTO. We’ll pay for all remaining PTO time.
RSU vesting. Everyone impacted will receive their November 15, 2022 vesting.
Health insurance. We’ll cover the cost of healthcare for people and their families for six months.
Career services. We’ll provide three months of career support with an external vendor, including early access to unpublished job leads.
Immigration support. I know this is especially difficult if you’re here on a visa. There’s a notice period before termination and some visa grace periods, which means everyone will have time to make plans and work through their immigration status. We have dedicated immigration specialists to help guide you based on what you and your family need.
Outside the US, support will be similar, and we’ll follow up soon with separate processes that take into account local employment laws."
>I'm horrified by so many of the comments here that seem to lack even the most basic of human decency. Allow me to fill people in for those who have never uprooted your life and moved across the world for a job.
I think the best time to remind those kind of people of this, is when they get fucked over themselves at some point.
Kind of telling them "Just shut up and cope doesn't feel so good when shit happens to you now does it? Nanananana"
> I think the best time to remind those kind of people of this, is when they get fucked over themselves at some point.
Alternative POV: that's the worst time. At those moments, the person is unlikely to be very receptive. They'll see it as proof that you are a bitter, vengeful person not worth listening to. Yes, that would a bit hypocritical of them, but that's humanity for you. That hardens people, leading to exactly the kind of cold-hearted comments the original commenter was talking about. Also, you will have foregone an opportunity to show contrast with a better way of being around other people. Lead by example, and all that.
I suggest that the best time is a while after such an event, when they have recovered from it but it's still fresh in their memory. While they're feeling good about having received help, that's a good time to remind them that giving help also feels good. I've seen people's attitudes get turned around by that, vs. never by forsaking them in an hour of need.
Yeah, after the fact might work too. But the fact being painful and an experienced of how bad how they treat others is, I've also seen help, in a "Damn, have I've been such a jerk to others all along?" way.
Else many will often brush it off and reboot the "jerk" act when they've recovered.
Especially if they feel entitled to the help and compassion shown to them when they're down, and it helps them recover faster and scratch free (and thus makes the falling down less impactful). In that case they end up still not valuing said help and compassion (because for them it was on full and easy supply).
Unless it is explicitly pointed out to them before help is given to them that it is help, they usually refuse to recognize it after the fact. I'm not saying that you shouldn't help. But I've seen a lot of people get helped and then immediately deny anyone ever did.
Feel free after to make the point that normally such help should be given cheerfully, or different types of help they can pay forward.
I think I speak for the whole HN community in that it's not the code or the visual design; it's instead can we find the value of the community and re-tell and value those community values that makes startup people successful.
Meta firing people is not the problem in of itself, but the methods used to do it is somewhat destroying the impression that they value what they have hoisted up to everyone; namely the degree of connectiveness and that community of connectiveness.
A better way would be for Mark Z to sell some of his stock holdings and offer dis-engagement bonuses for people to leave.
This is also highlights the incentives bias you have to avoid, in this case the ads-revenue incentive bias.
IMHO, the libertarian trends of thought are pushing people to think everyone as a trader and abolishment of professions. From that perspective, business is business and the employee should have striken a better deal but from a professionals perspective they are not businessmen - they are professionals and the business is handled by someone else and they join a team where they get compensated for their time(they don't expect to get rich in the job, they expect to have stable career until retirement).
When the distinction is not clear, professionals are essentially getting ripped off. If it was clear that everyone is a trader and some trade their coding time, then Meta wouldn't be able to do this because the trader would have put the cancellation terms in the deal. If it was clear that they are professionals and don't with FB but join that company, then it is expected that the law should protect the workers.
It's the worst when you ara positioned as a single person trader who doesn't want to be a trader, doesn't have the skills of a trader and trades with a giant trader.
I agree. Many professions are essential, as we saw during the pandemic - someone must do those jobs. Yet again, most of those jobs are not suitable to strike it big and retire early because you can't kanban hard enough to retire in your 30s or clean the hospital floors through enough to be set for life. Which means, unless you lust for human misery and collapse of the civilisation the professionals should be protected against exploitation.
Why do you think the trump hate is irrational? What is the main rational points and reasons you like Trump? Or at least, think that he is being unfairly treated, since that does not require liking/agreeing with him.
I despise the man, but if you are shifting a long held position/opinion just because you don’t want to be in an opinion alignment with Donald Trump, that to me is irrational.
I saw a lot of folks do this over the last six years. I found that really strange.
no that's not it, I have opinions as well, I didn't say I didn't have them. I wanted to hear a genuine opinion and tried to ask a stranger for it, is that so bad? For some people, maybe behind the hateful rhetoric some of them see and some of them do, there would be other reasons for their alignment, maybe good reasons which in actuality would have nothing to do with Trump, and could be debated as political issues on their own merit, and is it wrong to be curious about that?
The problem is that people immedietly put people into either against or with, and the whole rhetoric is so tribalistic since it always ends up being so emotional as well. Instead of talking about interesting issues, it's just these one dimensional soundbite opinions.
But what do you really mean? You think that hearing a person out without immedietly announcing my political stances is wrong? Could the issue be that you are tired of injustice and think of people as 'enablers' immedietly if they are not in opposition?
In the spirit of openness, I don't have problems admitting my politicals views, I never liked Trumps political agendas or the person himself. And I think what he did is not ok, and I'm bewildered that he hasn't been brought to court, or gone to jail. Doesn't mean I can't hear other people's opinions without shouting my alignemnts first, which seems unproductive tbh.
Perhaps I wasn’t clear, but I think you may have personalized my generalized comment. Let me illustrate my perspective differently.
A person thinks the sky is blue. Then Trump publicly says “the sky is blue”. This person now makes the point to say “the sky is NOT blue” just because Trump agreed with their original opinion. What I find irrational about some people’s reaction to Trump is that they feel compelled to change because Trump might agree with them.
Well, the whole reason for asking in the first place is to find something I could relate to which could stand on its own, whether Trump said it or not. I think you are reading too much into it, I'm mostly an outside observer interested in the whole situation and curious why there's such a divisive and emotional component to it. From what I gathered, talking about him in any way is greatly unproductive, because you have people making assumptions about what you do or don't do immediately, instead of just trying to understand where the other person is coming from with their argument to begin with. The whole thing just seems like a toxic subject, and I'm curious how the American people get out of all this in a few years, or if it will tear your country apart even more. But it will affect us all globally.
My perspective is that Trump is as much a reaction to toxic politics as a cause of…although he definitely perpetuates and elevates them. For every elevation there seems to be a counter reaction from the other side that has to elevate it further. This is what is tearing the country apart.
I can only hope that the middle gets sick and tired of the extremes of both sides and starts voting in a way that makes the extremes reflective on their own behavior.
There is rational people who disapprove or criticize Trump or Elon, but people who fall into the "hate" camp seem to have fallen for the loudest voices lacking reason or logic.
As a Canadian, I am not on either side, so I don't actually like or support Trump. Sometimes he is funny, sometimes his antics expose the folly of others, and sometimes he is a stupid brute.
As an outside observer, it is easy to see that Trump is not treated the same as others, and my observation is that pattern is being repeated with Elon.
Fwiw I understand why people despise Don. But I don't understand the blind dedication to hate, especially when other politicians and leaders pull similar shenanigans and then there's crickets.
If you're violently against X or Y that's fine. But apply the rules evenly, fairly, and rationally. When you hate so hard and so long that you lose your compass...that's irrational.
The majority of Trump haters fall into this bucket.
> But I don't understand the blind dedication to hate, especially when other politicians and leaders pull similar shenanigans and then there's crickets
Do feel free to share examples of other politicians mocking disabled people, or bragging about sexual assault, or trying a coup or any of the millions of transgressions of trump and not facing any criticism.
Mocking disabled people is bad. Bragging about sexual assault is horrific.
But let's talk about the stuff politicians do that is truly wrong and evil, like waging wars that kill people?
Let's talk about the War on Terror and how many people died. Remember that the media and government sold the American people a bunch of lies to sell these wars.
yeah, one of the real big issues are the government enabling alot of these wars and the dependency of a large part of the economy on the military-industrial complex, the morals thereof and the corruptional influence of the entities which want to further gain through military-industrial means, or justify it as as necessary at this point wrt. the economy.
Sadly, this is true, distractions are a tool which have been well used as subterfuge. And the fourth pillar of democracy have been bought, and most of the rest just spew badly written clickbait. It's hard to have a good government when people are not well informed or educated, to see things more broadly, question things and relate them to historical events. The thing is, it's hard to question things if you don't have a good framework, which has to be more than just navel-gazing. Some only see what is immedietly in front of them, and feed into the emotional side of things as a distraction.
That's my point. His conduct is bad. It deserves to be called out. But that's no excuse to forgive loads of things just because:
- the media doesn't make an issue out of it
- it's been normalized
The irony is, the loud broken-compass hypocrites are part of the problem. They're not speaking truth to the prevailing powers. Power who have set the stage for Trump and his ilk. Don is a symptom. It's foolish to obsess over a symptom while the root causes get a free pass.
You're right. Instead he should have shamelessly claimed his Peace Prize and then proceed to bomb the sh*t out of Afghanistan - often killing civilians - all the while keeping that I'm so lovable smile on his face.
Or, he should have told you how wonderful he was for signing the Paris Climate Agreement, yet - per Naomi Klein and others - it was a nonsense agreement (i.e., nothing binding, soft commitments, etc.). And then on his watch of 8 yrs, USA fracking production ramps up to the point of the USA becoming a net exporter of fossil fuels. How green is that?
And these things compare how to your example? You have lost your compass as well.
I understand that there's frustration and a lot has to do with the focus on hate or being hated, that's where the rhetoric seems to land at least.
I would say, if the hate was completely irrational, or you think that the other politicians are just as bad, then that is not ok either. Since two wrongs does not equal right, and actions should not be seen as a balance scale of 'doing equally bad things to each other', which somehow rationally makes it ok to do bad things in what seems to be a hateful way. It should not be accepted to do bad things, no matter the party, the opposition or person.
So if you think Trump is doing bad things, and the other party is doing bad things as well, rejecting both Trump and the other party seems like the logical option given the options? You don't have to belong to any camp/party, it's a hurtful illusion/rhetoric IMO, 'us or them'.
And if you think the current other politicians are doing bad things as well, I'm genuinely interested to know what bad things they are, and not just things which can be seen as political disagreements. Because I I just don't know what you are thinking about when you say it specifically, it's as simple as that, not ill intentioned. But I can understand if you do not wish to air your opinions.
But I'm under no illusion that on both sides of the parties there are and have been bad actors and corruption, which has been ongoing in many forms, which must be fought no matter where it is. I'm just afraid that when you 'weigh evil' as a justification you lose nuance, and people are more likely to fall into the tribalistic rhetoric equivalent of 'mud slinging' or just calling 'hate' which I find sadly unproductive.
Elon only cuts 3K. He also well known to cut people for a decade. His tussle with previous board dragged for more than 6mths. People should be aware and should have been preparing 2nd route. Mark Zuck on the hand misled people from the very beginning which just 2 mths ago had zero intention to retrench. And he did it so sudden with 11K (and this is only phase 1, there are at least 2 more phases before end of 2023). Personally I would "hate" Zuck several magnitude before hating Elon....and I really dislike Elon public antics.
> If you ask someone to move across the world and don't need them anymore, give them three months on the books to find somewhere else that don't count against their visa. It will give them a chance to get settled and go on interviews. Or don't recruit internationally.
Or, don't relocate [internationally] to a job which can fire you with zero notice or compensation?
Don't get me wrong I agree with the sentiment of it being a Dick Move, but the only protection from that is contractual. Saying "please be nice" is not a serious direction to corporate governance.
Alternatively: don't hire internationally if your hiring process can't do it correctly. Personal responsibility is indeed a thing, but it shouldn't be used as an excuse for management incompetence.
Meta is a company who's product is people sausage. Don't be surprised if they view the people who work at the sausage factory with the same regard they the people who are ground up and fed to advertisers.
Whatever they do to people who are weaker than you they'll do to you next. Or something like that.
As someone who immigrated to West. I was initially shocked by people's attitude. At times I was outright told that you are
* Filling diversity quota
* Cheaper
* Economic migrant
The worst part about this is that I was working doubly hard, paying insane taxes while paying insane rents. But eventually I realized people saying these things are just looking for their psychological safety. Of course such people are a minority and usually from lower rungs of society. When they see foreigners coming over and living a better life, they come up with abstracts and conspiracy theories. Sad to see such people filtering onto HN. This place has always been forward looking, so far.
When times get tough and everyone is on the block, people who are not necessarily from the 'lower rungs' show their true colors. It becomes them over you and they will resort to code-words or sometimes, as in my case, plain out point out my immigration status in 2-3 standup meetings (once the rumor mill of layoffs got started). This person was an 'upper-rung' sort of chap too; after all, they got their degree from a Christian college/university in South Carolina (or was it North Carolina? - one of the Carolinas). Compassion, empathy and all that must have come as second nature. But not their first.
This is bizarre to me that people would actually say this to you. Anecdotally, I've worked for some pretty well known tech companies and have never heard anyone talk this way openly. I never worked in Silicon Valley or SF, but these corporations I worked for regularly hired Indian and Eastern European developers because they were great developers... Some of my best mentors immigrated from these areas.
If you are hearing this kind of talk regularly, I think it's time to change who you work with as this doesn't seem right or normal to me.
> For all you budding Elons, here's a shorthand for it. If you ask someone to move across the world and don't need them anymore, give them three months on the books to find somewhere else that don't count against their visa. It will give them a chance to get settled and go on interviews. Or don't recruit internationally.
It's amusing that even when the subject is completely unrelated to Elon Musk, people keep finding ways to drag him back into the conversation for some inexplicable reason.
It's not that inexplicable. Successful people copy other successful people. There's an association in people's mind, both due to the temporal and the thematic closeness of the events.
He, his name, his problems/acts/behavior are in the zeitgeist, it's on people's minds, it's not surprising that he gets mentioned frequently.
First of all, he isn't "living" but on a timer against VISA expiration.
I also think that you are under-estimating the luxurious and easy lifestyle which one can enjoy while living in India. (and what he tried to give up for migrating)
I know some of the top talents who decided to never migrate, because of better helping hands, supporting community and families, easy cabs/transportation to easy payments. And it is just improving over time...
Three months salary in a tech job is more than most people make in a year.
If you are moving overseas, maybe wait before selling all your stuff until you pass probation. This idea that you should be guaranteed three months is so backwards. You are on trial.
Tell me anyone’s advice that goes “we should fire slow, hire fast”.
Your partner also quits their good job. That good job might not be available if you come back, congratulations, you're back at years of job hunting and job hopping to be where you were years before. In the new country maybe this was not a concern and the other partner who was just laid off had a great salary to cover.
Your kids leave their good school. Now that school no longer accepts applicants and you're stuck with whatever you can find on a short notice.
Exactly... these are mental costs that many of us who have done the move understand and feel deeply as it has been experienced. For everyone else, we rely on their ability to empathize. Empathy, compassion, and life experiences make it easier to understand people.
So you're going "all in", hoping for a giant reward (aka to make more in a year than the average Indian makes in their lifetime). It doesn't work out. That's part of the risk of going all in.
Or you don't go all in, you don't move your family immediately, and you have a much lower risk for the cost of paying for a flat in Canada and one in India for a few months until everything has settled and you're confident enough.
Exactly, why do we keep absolving people from their personal decisions, expecting society to take the hit from the personal risks they take is beyond me. Like nobody wants to plan for their best-case scenario not materialising and when it doesn't it's the fault of everybody else that they find themselves in that situation.
> where you sell the majority of your earthly possessions, property, cars, etc.
I think this bit is actually a good thing. The rest of the story is indeed unfortunate, but having to eliminate possessions is probably more positive in life than negative. We tend to accumulate so much, and then our stuff becomes an invisible burden.
Simple solution: Only agree to relocate if your contract guarantees you employment for at least X months... Or a termination payment of Y dollars if employment lasts less than X months.
Anyone who moves across the world for an employer without getting a term like that in writing simply is naive - and we shouldn't offer them sympathy after the fact. It's like someone having their house flooded when they deliberately decided not to get flood insurance... Like, you knew the risk you were taking on...
If enough engineers started demanding it, it wouldn't be fantasy land...
I have negotiated changes to my employment contract at every job I've ever worked, big and small companies, so it is very possible. Usually just crossing out a clause or editing a number is pretty straightforward and doesn't require approvals too high up the management chain.
"Too much protection" doesn't match "whatever they do" to me.
On your larger point, looking at countries with pretty strong worker protection, companies still have a flurry of tools to punish or get rid of workers that are way below their expected performance or crossing lines. "We can't fire people" is basically a myth, or what people really mean is "We can't willy nilly fire people like they're cattle".
I've seen people fired on the spot after heated discussion with the direction or people let go following a month or two of HR monitoring. The company only needs to do its homework and properly document offenses, follow the processes, or pay the full price if it really wants to get rid of someone with no objective reason.
Most developed countries have consultation requirements and notice period requirements for layoffs that would have made this either a non-issue or at least significantly less of a problem.
The US (EDIT: given this was in Canada, clearly the US isn't as extreme an outlier as I thought, overall point still stands for the US and Canada) is a pretty extreme outlier in how it allows employers to deal with redundancies, because almost every other developed country recognises there's a massive power asymmetry.
I missed that it was Canada (title cut off, and yes I didn't read the article), not least because I didn't expect Canada would be as awful as the US in this respect.
Fire the employee who has put in 10 years building the business up for you, has deep internal knowledge, knows their way around the maze of infrastructure instead?
Budding Elons are not capable of doing anything else.
There are leaders who understand that and keep them on a tight leash, (cuz u can't not use their mindless ambition and over optimizing tendencies or ur competition will) and there are people who call themselves leaders who loose the leash.
We understand the predicament and feel for this guy, but so what? This sort of thing happens and there is nothing wrong with a company doing that. There is no need to be overly dramatic or immature.
We can just hope that the company will provide a good level of support and that the person will be able to get back on their feet ASAP.
Why should there be anything 'wrong' with laying off someone who has just joined, whether they've relocated or not? When companies decide on large re-orgs, whole teams, departments, business unit can go. That's just the way it is.
Relocating is no protection against being laid off, be it legally or ethically.
Companies can show empathy and that they care by providing support, as said.
So many commenters here (presumably US/CA citizens) don't realize that the gut-wrenching feeling of being laid off whilst your visa depends on uninterrupted employment is _nothing_ like the SHTF-but-all's-ok feeling of being laid off 'regularly'.
In the USA, for most work visas, you are given a 60 day death clock pleasantly sugarcoated as a 'grace period' to find a new employer or leave the country. Cue trying weave in that baggage in between screening calls & technical interviews to explain to prospective employers how you have 47 days and 15 hours left to be hired or leave. The complication of dealing with USCIS and attaining a work visa (usually bound to your employer) is a marathon even with unlimited time, but in a puny 8 week window?...
In my own experience this also happened in mid 2021 when Australia's borders were closed (to AU citizens as well...) so leaving back home wasn't even an option.
For the USA, you can't attain an H1-B / E-3 / <other work visa for SWE or other technical role> without your employer compensating you above the prevailing wage[0] (determined by the DoL) paid in the city you are being hired in in the field you are being hired in.
"But this week on 60 Minutes, correspondent Bill Whitaker reports that the H-1B visa program has since been seriously abused, allowing companies to fire American workers and to bring in cheap foreign labor."
No H1-B engineer at a FAANG class company is going to tolerate getting less compensation than their peers and their managers, many of them former H1-Bs as well, would not tolerate giving them less compensation either. Pichai at Google and Nadella at Microsoft are themselves non-US born engineers who have climbed their way to the top.
The body shops are a different story but this is about Meta.
I vouched for your post because you posted that companies abuse visas, with links. I don't see why it was flagged.
As far as Meta, I don't understand why recent articles criticize it. The engineers themselves are just posting on LinkedIn to seek new opportunities. This was Meta's first layoff and they're paying people for 3-4 months before the 60 day period even begins.
And when locals are let go, coworkers say "Oh, but it's good that you're not on a Visa". Should that really be a factor Meta takes into account when laying people off?
And for many tech companies, many or most of their engineering employees are on Visa; it's expected that percentage reflected in the layoffs, too.
Aside from Visas, Meta had a hiring freeze below E7 for most roles since May, which might be seen as a signal they were trying to preserve existing employees in favor of onboarding new ones.
Also, many people who last more than a week are later let go right before stock vests. Most everyone in that position will have wished they were let go their first week and got paid for four months, while they accept another offer from that same interview cycle.
Imho the real question here is, why is it that Meta keeps hiring right right until they do large layoff rounds?
The kind of issue that requires large layoff rounds is not something that just materializes overnight, out of the blue.
So why does their management - which should be able to read the writing on the wall, since that's part of their job - not issue a strict hiring freeze (in addition to other measures taken to try and avoid/reduce the impeding layoffs).
Why do they go from hiring to firing in the blink of an eye?
> So why does their management - which should be able to read the writing on the wall, since that's part of their job - not issue a strict hiring freeze [...] Why do they go from hiring to firing in the blink of an eye?
They did have a hiring freeze, and didn't really go from hiring to firing in the blink of an eye:
* In May they froze hiring for engineers and low-level data scientists.
* In July they announced that there would be restructures, and asked managers to start identifying weak performers.
* In September they extended the freeze to all areas and announced that they would be reducing labour budgets for teams, and restructuring.
In all probability, this engineer was probably considered 'on-shoring' rather than a hire so slipped through the hiring freeze (headcount figure stays the same, we are just moving someone on-shore) but then didn't escape the corporate redundancy. Although this individual story is awful, at the scale of 12,000 layoffs unfortunately there will inevitably be instances where the circumstances are poor.
It probably would have been cheaper and less effort to make sure the hiring freeze actually properly works as intended - rather than interviewing, hiring, relocating and firing someone (including relocation and severance packages) for just two days of work.
Eh, large redundancies are usually planned semi-confidentially and executed immediately for obvious reasons, which makes these sort of things pretty inevitable.
The obvious reasons aren't just from a corporate perspective, it's also for an employee welfare perspective - Sometimes it's better that 13% of people immediately know rather than 100% of employees worrying about their job before 13% are eventually sacked.
That's the problem with just reading data reports at scale.
Hiring 30k people so recently then firing almost half of them the next year, even filtering a tiny quarter of a percent is going to create outliers who get affected with serious life changing events.
> Doesn't have to inevitable, though. They literally have all the data.
Even if you have all the data, lets say there is a 4 person team being reduced to 3 during this redundancy - What do you do? Fire Anne instead of Peter purely because Peter joined the team more recently? Sure that sounds more fair for Peter, but it's less fair for Anne.
Someone else suggested putting Peter at risk - inform him that in 3 months he will be part of a layoff, so that he has those 3 months to find a new job.
> Although this individual story is awful, at the scale of 12,000 layoffs unfortunately there will inevitably be instances where the circumstances are poor.
Basically 1 layoff is a tragedy, 12K is a statistic.
> So why does their management - which should be able to read the writing on the wall, since that's part of their job - not issue a strict hiring freeze (in addition to other measures taken to try and avoid/reduce the impeding layoffs).
Hiring freezes are an internally visible sign (which may lead to critical people jumping ship at the wrong time or uncontrolled ship-on-fire quittings that end up larger than the original plans), but most importantly they are externally visible - and at that point they're market relevant, because early knowledge can be used to time the market as a serious headcount reduction will at least cause a significant volatility for the stock. Since there are specific disclosure requirements on potentially market relevant news, it makes sense to treat hiring freezes and layoffs by default as market relevant to keep the SEC and other market regulators away. And often enough, it's only highest level leadership that knows about plans, with not even HR being involved until the very last second, much less some middle manager with hiring authority.
It absolutely sucks for everyone involved, particularly new hires, but I don't see a way around that for a publicly traded company. However, companies should be mandated to cover all costs of relocation and half a year severance for breach of contract in bad faith for such cases.
So, basically a Perverse Incentive [0] - a systemic problem.
But the firings are externally visible as well - and it's also externally visible whether the firings occurred with or without a hiring freeze in place beforehand. And whether the number of people fired is larger - or smaller is visible as well (and after a hiring freeze and counter-measures it's always gonna be somewhat smaller).
And one of those two options signals greater unpredictability and volatility then the other - which to investors means higher risk, right?
> But the firings are externally visible as well - and it's also externally visible whether the firings occurred with or without a hiring freeze in place beforehand.
Yeah, the key thing that a company this size has to take care about is to announce the news to everyone - employees, media and investors - at the exact same time, so no one can claim that "insider trading" has taken place.
> And one of those two options signals greater unpredictability and volatility then the other - which to investors means higher risk, right?
Yes but no at the same time. The playing field is theoretically the same for every investor, which means that there is always a non-zero chance of a company announcing massive layoffs.
It can take 3+ months from offering a contract to a foreigner before they start, depending how quickly visas can be processed, where the person and their family live, and notice periods.
its too big.
Meta wont want to leak that people are going to get laid off so they let the business carry on globally as per usual right up until the layoff button gets pressed.
I read a story on my LinkedIn feed about a lady who had it worse: she relocated to the US with her family a couple months ago on an L1 visa, before being fired from Meta. Because of this, she now has a few months to pack her belongings, because obviously the L1 is non-transferable, and even if she applies and wins on the H1-B lottery and finds a sponsor the earliest she could start working again is fall of next year. There is nothing she can do about it. Life is really unfair sometimes.
I think that treating the adversarial and anti-business (and, dare I say, inhumane) US immigration policies as simple facts of life is a mistake. These are not stone tablets carved by a god; these are policies that people presently living dreamed up and implemented. They were made and they can be unmade.
Life isn’t unfair nearly as often as US immigration policies are unfair.
If there is no provision on L1 for early termination, then the rules of this particular type of visa are entirely broken and needs fixing. I understand the reason L1 exists, I actually lived in the US under L1 myself, but there is no excuse for a country to accept a worker they deemed necessary and acceptable to migrate, and then impose such a harsh rule for edge cases. If the person needs to be let go because somehow their own fault, it is fine. But layoffs are an example where the company is at fault and the employee is the victim - in this case the minimum the government should do is to offer a fair amount of time for the person to find another job.
... but who gambles their whole family on these horrible visas? (Okay, obviously people who don't have better options. Still, very disturbing cautionary tales :/)
>>Okay, obviously people who don't have better options.
As some body who has been through this whole process. Let me tell you people come to the US to work on Visas happen to be the most privileged of the pool.
Simply put, it is a high stakes game of luck, which you are more or less guaranteed to lose eventually. It just makes it very painful when you lose it sooner than you expect.
Immigration itself is a game of luck. People who end up winning really go through multiple level of family, career, health and visa luck situations. Most people get filtered out one phase or the other.
There were many people who were axed as part of the layoffs days after start.
But these layoffs were planned for months.
The thinking was either 1) we can rescind job offers and give them nothing or 2) at least give a severance package to people who expected employment.
Now, I'm not excusing that there are cases like this that fall through the cracks. It really really sucks.
I'm not sure how to process it... when you're laying off 10k+ people there are bound to be "bugs"/misses and general failures.
Should META have preemptively rescinded this employee's offer so they got nothing but at least didn't move? Maybe. Or give months of pay as an "I'm sorry our timing was awful (like they did)" in exchange for their own failure? Also a bad option given the move.
I feel for this person. They got caught in get crossfire and that really blows. I'd be pretty pissed.
In the other hand, the thought behind what happened was admirable - even though it created some awful edge cases.
META has done a lot to draw ire. In this case I was impressed by management's decision not to rescind offers and save maximum money but to acknowledge that people would have quit jobs, moved, etc and give severances.
A counterpoint could be "why give the job offer in the first place"? Given the level of secrecy and reality of a nearly 90k person company - it's highly doubtful that the people involved in the hiring process had any idea of the impending layoffs.
Still - super super crappy for anyone who relocated due to the offer.
> Should META have preemptively rescinded this employee's offer so they got nothing but at least didn't move? Maybe.
Yes, 100%. Relocating internationally is extremely taxing. Dealing with immigration stuff, even if another company "handles it" for you, it's still a huge toll on you mentally.
Sadly, in the mind of these young white knights making these decisions, they thought they were doing these folks a favor by saving them from their poor country.
> Given the level of secrecy and reality of a nearly 90k person company - it's highly doubtful that the people involved in the hiring process had any idea of the impending layoffs.
This is a reality of the world that many commentators on HN seems to miss on these layoff threads. The circle of knowledge on layoffs starts small, and stays small, and only expands slightly maybe a day or two before the event as you bring into the fold key personnel that might be needed to support the event.
There are way more options than the two you listed. The trouble is that you're using bureaucratic thinking about how to handle all the cases instead of getting down to the human, personal level of how you handle each specific case.
These scenarios don't just apply to being laid off. Another scenario which happens is that company ownership or control changes, and some key promises which were made to prospective employees get broken.
I relocated to a big unpleasant city for a job early in my career, and the big promise from the hiring folks (all good people) was that "we hire at a low rate, but we give big raises fast". Their prime example was another young "star" like me who doubled his salar in less than two years.
What the managers (and I) didn't know is that the recent acquisition of the company by a much bigger company meant that significant changes were coming. In my first six months, a lot of the developer perks (free lunch, but just normal food... nothing like a Google lunch) started to get scaled back or eliminated entirely. And then at my six month review, when my first raise should occur, my manager was honestly regretful to inform me that despite my excellent performance, he was only able to give an 8% raise because any higher increase had to be personally reviewed and signed off on by the CEO... and nobody was doing that.
So not only did I burn 6 months at a place that was heading downhill, but it took another 6 months to be sure of this when the next review/raise period came (and disappointed). Meanwhile, I had other peers who had gone to some big accounting firms and were already enjoying nice perks, travel opportunities, and rapidly increasing pay.
None of this was life shattering, but it is life days or months misspent. The feeling is that one has been cheated, even if there was no malintent on the part of the company. Aka, "bum deal".
I empathize with your story about being promised one thing and then not getting it..
But I think it's important to acknowledge that in most industries, you get a 2-5% raise maybe once a year, sometimes adjusted for cost of living if your employer is particularly good.
Getting an 8% raise after 6 months is actually pretty good, relative to the rest of the working world, even though it's not what you were promised (so I acknowledge that maybe you accepted a lower starting salary with the assumption it would go up quickly - and so definitely a "bum deal").
Even with all the problems we face, we (the tech industry) have it pretty good, relative to the rest of the working world.
My sympathies for the gentleman -- but out of curiosity: for cases like this, what "time duration" would be "not surprising"? Even if he had stayed on for one more month, that would have been as shocking as well. Two months? Three?
My suspicion is that there's no time duration within which this wouldn't be an upsetting experience. Perhaps unless we're talking about like a year, which no company would do anyway.
But there are degrees, also in two days this person has probably close to zero social safety network in Canada. No friends, no colleagues, no acquaintances at other companies. Even 2 or 3 months would have allowed them to start having some friends and do some networking.
Clearly the impact to a visa holders (especially new ones) is high. I would be curious if this something that can be insured against? Either as an employer to provide certainly in an uncertain jobs market, or as an employee about to relocate.
>The severance amount or any other services provided are irrelevant, because he was implicitly treated poorly by having contract terminated?
Yes, I'm glad you understand that after a months-long period of preparing to uproot his entire life, it is cruel to him to immediately go back on your word.
I think the article describes in detail someone being treated poorly yes.
Even in mass layoffs, every single employee should be treated with more care and consideration than this. Freezing hires entirely for a period before any layoffs could prevent this from happening for example.
You can’t assume that recruiting has been told that layoffs are coming. Likely they are in the dark intentionally. A hiring freeze would be news that could negatively affect stock price for a well known public company. Think of layoffs as a controlled PR burn, you don’t want to go set off a bunch of little random fires ahead of the big event that might burn out of control.
Depends on the treatment. If someone tortures me, then probably not. If someone hires me, I move to the other side of the world, they fire me in two days and pay me out a million dollars, then I would say it is very acceptable.
I don't think you appreciate how difficult it is to navigate in a foreign country with no help. You could well be given $100 million and end up on the street because you were unable to complete the move-in process on your own. It's not like you can wave with dollars bills to fix this.
I don’t think you appreciate how much money $100 million is. You can literally wave massive piles of dollar bills at nearly any problem and fix it. People have gotten away with murder for much less money. I think you can avoid homelessness with it as well. Even 1/100th that amount would solve a huge number of problems.
I'm 100% sure that with my 100M I would be able to find a place to live in Canada without any help. I would also be able to buy a plane ticket and find a new place to live in my home country.
But anyway, how do you know Meta is not helping him "complete the move-in process"? That's what I'm ranting about here — we know NOTHING about the terms and circumstances with which they've ended the contract. Yet you all seem to be incredibly sure that it was handled poorly.
While I've never experienced a similar situation myself, I've had several friends and acquaintances who have had similar issues with tech jobs that required relocation from Canada to the US - from having jobs rescinded last minute after selling their home in Canada, to being downsized due to company cutbacks within days or weeks of starting the new job (after all, new employees are more likely to be let go during those times).
In short, there is always a risk associated with relocation for work, and the job or location must be worth that risk in order to upheave your life and move for it.
Do immigrants do this often? I mean sell their houses, cars and other belongings before moving abroad? It's a sincere question from someone who also considered emigrating for work at some point. I could never imagine getting rid of all my stuff before I actually sit down in the office with my new bosses and co-workers for a couple of months and have a taste of what it is like. I won't be buying any house or a car in the new place right away anyway. I could just rent both before I decide I want to stay there for good. Or am I talking from some sort of a privileged position of a person who has some savings to deal with situations like this ... or maybe I'm too conservative and that's why I never left?
I wouldn't be so certain that his contract is as good as contract of US citizen working for Meta. Whole point of hiring and relocating people from abroad is that they have much weaker negotiation position so they usually being paid much less.
This really isn’t true at Meta or other top companies. They hire people from abroad simply because the USA is only 5% of the world and they don’t want to miss out on 95% of the talent.
I worked at Meta and we had thoroughly reverse-engineered compensation formulas in internal discussion groups. Whether you were a citizen or on a visa made zero difference.
It remains to be seen whether relocating someone will still be a thing as much as it is now. I mean, we have remote tools and most big companies have branches everywhere in the world.
Why bother with visas, lawyers and tragic cases like this. Sure for people who want to become a citizen somewhere in the West its great. For the companies I'm not that sure its better than the alternatives.
Relocation to US / Canada is usually primary reason why people look for offers like that. No amount of remote tools an offices abroad will ever replace option to move countries.
I am immigrant myself who want to get to EU / US at some point so I can understand reasons of other people really well.
I'm not from India so no idea how many good engineers are there. I am immigrant myself though and I have a lot of friends who changed countries so have some insight there.
People who decide to move countries usually not just do it for reasons like career or more money. Most often it's because they dislike something in their home country or want better opportunities for their children.
So no amount of shiny remote work tools or good local offices will make any difference for people who look for relocation. They'll just choose to work for company that does offer relocation.
Have you been to India? I genuinely love the place but if you want to live and work somewhere then (in general) you're not going to choose a country with poor infrastructure over places like the US or most of Europe unless you're feeling adventurous or have some specific reason to. So it's not a case of not being willing to work remotely but preferring to move.
> you're not going to choose a country with poor infrastructure over places like the US or most of Europe unless you're feeling adventurous or have some specific reason to
Being FROM India is a good reason to work in India. Do you think uprooting your life is a piece of cake? What if you have old parents? What if you prefer your own culture and not being an immigrant for the rest of your life?
Also, you're overlooking how much a good software engineer makes in India (adjusted for cost of living). It's probably somewhere in the top 1% of Indian earners. That's living in a mansion with servants kinda rich. In Canada a software engineer, even working for Meta, is still middle to upper middle class. Some of them probably can't afford a home without taking a huge debt. They will live comfortably but won't be rich in relative terms.
> Do you think uprooting your life is a piece of cake?
I'm an immigrant in a non-English speaking country, I'm well aware of how difficult it is to uproot, and I can tell you that what I'm doing (on the surface) is much harder than going from India to North America.
> That's living in a mansion with servants kinda rich.
That doesn't counter the problems with the infrastructure. If you stay in your mansion then I'm sure it's great but go outside…
Funnily enough, I used to wonder if I could set myself up in India with a VOIP number with a London area code, so I've considered it. But now I'm older and wiser and I'd choose Canada too (just).
You can probably still go to Canada if you wanted to! Their generous immigration policy is only getting more generous.
Anyway best of luck! From a fellow (ex) immigrant.
I dont think that's true in canada. IANAL but i was under the impression that if you are fired you are still allowed to stay until your work permit expires. Its only usa that has the problem you describe.
The grace period can vary wildly by country and, often, by the type of visa or work permit you hold. Just in my own sphere of experience, for example:
- Hong Kong GEP holders can stay for the length of their original permit, while people on domestic help visas get only 14 days
- EU Blue Card and Japanese work visa holders get 90 days
- US H-1B holders get 60 days
- Singaporean EP and Chinese Z-visa holders get 30 days
Of course there are ways to extend all of these (and some are much easier than others) but you can't legally work unless and until you find a new sponsor.
In Canada, one can stay until it expires but they aren't allowed to work for anyone else in that time. (some will let you look for work for varying times)
I’m not knowledgeable about Canadian work visas specifically, but many countries extend them only within the context of specific employment. In other words, he may need to take what he can get, in a rough economy, under immense stress (as someone who has lived in that situation before can attest to), lest he have to go all the way back.
Catch-22. You often can't legally search for a job as a tourist. Typically, like the US H1-B, a sponsoring company needs to "prove" that they tried and failed to source the employee onshore first, and therefore immigration is the interest of the domestic company.
I'm separated from my family right now -- wife and kids -- while waiting on an immigration process that has taken far longer than we were expecting. I assure you that any immigration-related worry can seem outsized.
ok, didn't know that, though would he still have had a vest date then?
ex. lets say meta vests one per month on the 15th, and he starts on the 14th, would he normally have vested right away, or would he have had to wait to Dec 15th? (and can apply to whatever schedule you want, just picked a monthly one for example sake).
I don't know how you've seen it, but I've seen it mean exactly that. A one-year cliff means that your whole year (usually your first) vests at once, in one day.
I can't see the article to mention if he gets this package, remembering a few situations from my life I'd expect him not to get any package since he only worked for 2 days..
I don't know that, I don't work for Meta. Would be nice if you can share source to back your claim, if Meta is paying whole package to somebody who only worked for 2 days then that would be entirely different story for that guy.
You can skimp on the extras, but you cannot skimp on the basics. It’s their fault for hiring him after all. Not his fault for coming to the US and trusting them.
Immigration related to work is generally shitty in almost any country worth working in.
Even in countries not worth working in.
In many countries, Once your employer fires you, then you have 7 days to leave the country. Period.
The US/Canada/UK are relatively friendly about this and give a bit more leeway.
Don’t get me started on Indian work permits.
Yes it’s horrible all around. Working in another country is always a risk and on a whim you can get shafted by your employer.
Always have, or start working on a plan B immediately (savings, side project, more money).
And please don’t get started on “I’m not able to do anything else” - because that’s not true and if you think about it there is always unrelated things you csn do to get around this.
As a person who worked in a few countries - I’m always aware or the fact that at any moment below permanent residency, everything could be pulled away.
Please everyone reading about this guy’s fate, never leave your future in the hands of an employer or immigration authorities.
Start working on a plan B and a way out - just in case.
Anything otherwise is just putting your head in the sand.
I have watched this countless times in Canada. “Foreign worker visas” are tantamount to indentured servitude. Worse is that companies hire third parties making commissions on finding workers - whose very compensation depends on carefully neglecting to tell the recruits about local market conditions and the lack of safeguards. It is exploitation.
I don't understand. That's unfortunately how it is, sadly enough.
Should they have fired another person instead just because of location?
I believe they should have not given the GO at all to the hiring manager, but hey... these CEOs nowadays like to take full responsibility accountability blabla-ility for their actions :)
Some years ago I worked at a company that had to fire 3 people. They picked one of the guys that was still on probation time (like ~10 days before the end of probation).
This person came from South America, and the worst part of it was that he decided to get his family here after a few months, because "you know, I came alone so that it's easier to find an apartment, to have bureaucratic things sorted out, etc.". Yeah. Then the family came and boom, fired.
Why did they hire him in the first place? I believe that this is what many companies do wrong.
Its not uncommon for people to turn the company upside-down (by leaving or other ways), why should the company care?
The company is a subject to the categorical imperative, but it is also a subject to the seven deadly sins (metaphorically). It does what the law allows in order to preserve itself, and rarely more.
In some companies I honestly think that all decisions are made with good intentions from each individual, and yet the emergent results are horrific.
> Its not uncommon for people to turn the company upside-down (by leaving or other ways), why should the company care?
Just because a person might do something bad doesn't justify the company doing something bad to an innocent employee. And don't forget, Meta could easily sue someone if they for eg sabotaged something. An individual in this case getting fired is not likely to have the resources to sue a company the size of Meta.
"don't understand. That's unfortunately how it is, sadly enough.
Should they have fired another person instead just because of location"
I see this as their fuckup, the job for a new hire should exist for at least 6 months, and if that means they cant fire and one and have to eat the loss, thats their problem.
Decisions have consequences, except for conpanies it seems.
> Decisions have consequences, except for conpanies it seems.
It's a risk you take by leaving your continent and flying to another one without any permanent residence permit. It's really shit, but that's how it is. It's always been the case, it just makes now the news because it's Facebook.
As I mentioned above, an ex colleague of mine moved from South America to Europe without even speaking the country's language and he got fired shortly before the probation period. Same situation: visa, no job, etc. Actually he got kids and one of them even enrolled last minute at the kindergarten. He didn't write any blog or anything, he simply found another job the fastest he could find. But again, it's not Facebook, so of course it doesn't make the news.
The only thing I can wish for is of course that these people can find a job right away in the country they move to. At least this guy can say to the next employer "I made it to Facebook", which should still count for someting..., and he/she can even speak the language.
I have been a foreigner for a while now, so it would be against my own interests to wish for such things.
In some EU countries you have a termination period of 2 weeks during probation. Maybe that's a compromise? It's not the best, but it has to be good for everyone (foreigners and not) otherwise it risks to create the opposite: companies not hiring foreigners without visa anymore.
That's not what he said, where did you get this from?
His entire point is that companies just fire people. That they were a citizen or working with a visa may not even have entered the decision making process.
I sympathize but also people need to get a clue. This layoff didn't come out of nowhere like people are implying, it was strongly telegraphed in advance. On June 30 Zuckerberg said at an all hands "there are a lot of you that probably shouldn't be here". There were hiring freezes in place. The share price is down like 75% from peak. Stop being dumb sheep and learn to read the signs.
Just a few days ago, I was thinking about what relocating could mean for me and my family and it frightened me to think about being a stranger in a strange land without a job.
I sympathize sincerely. A friend once worked at a startup that hired new people and made them relocate from all over the U.S. to NYC.
The founders said noting about the runway ending. A few weeks later, the company closed.
I imagine being from India, you have little leverage. Just getting sponsored is a feat.
Personally, if I am ever in that situation, I will demand a reciprocal commitment - if you let me go right after I uproot my life, I want a healthy bundle of walk-away money.
This happens a lot in my country. Eastern Europeans on temporary contracts and company housing (and we use the word house very liberally it is usually just a bed) end up on the streets when fired. They don't get help from the government because no passport.
The socialist welfare state cannot be extended to foreigners or it would run out of € and the temp agencies take no responsibility.
It should be ideally, but I don't know a country where that is. Relocation between EU countries has no barriers and is relatively common but is expected to be on your own dime. Sure, for skilled professions in demand sometimes you get a relocation bonus to sweeten the deal and soften the financial blow, but there's always the risk that you get laid off during the probation period, which is something you need to take into consideration if you have to uproot your entire family to move to another country for a new job. Best way is to find a cheap place to rent and live below your means for a while until you feel comfortable and stable in your new country/job and not blow all your money on arrival.
I've seen this happen a lot. Guy sells everything he has to move family to a new country for a new dream job, then spending big money on renting a nice new house for his family, buying a new car and tons of new stuff for the house and the kids, and a few weeks/months down the line he doesn't pass probation or the company changes course and lays him off, or he realizes the job or city is not what he thought and wishes to leave. And since he hasn't been contributing to the social services for long enough he's not entitled to any welfare/assistance from the state. It happens more often than you think.
The good thing is that in EU your residence permit is not tied to an employer so if you get let go, you can still stay and find another job with relative ease, but no country or company that I'm aware of here pays for your relocation if things don't work out for you. That's why having some savings and living below your means for a while is of major importance when you move cities/countries.
I would agree ethically, but unfortunately this would open a hornets nest of small fraud and abuse. On a way smaller scale, here in Brazil, every single rule that was made to protect "too much" the employee is largely exploited and breaks the system.
Don't get me wrong. The case of working only 2 days after the move is an absolute nightmare. But it is the exception that needs to be dealt with, not the reason for a rule that is hard to enforce and easy to fraud.
Hello from Eastern Europe. We must possess passport/id card if at least 15 yrs old whether travelling or not. So staying at some EU country without passport I suspect is illegal, let alone who brings such people to work? Shady.
But people who officially work abroad... yeah, not the best conditions for many. As usual, people think grass is greener on the other side of the fence.
>> The socialist welfare state cannot be extended to foreigners or it would run out of €
Here's what's odd about the USA. I know people from India and Canada, who were here and their visa expired, and they couldn't get a job, so they have to leave.
I also know people from Mexico, who are here illegally/undocumented/whatever, and they don't leave. They stay for years.
Because you don't already have an expired visa, you can file taxes (and get a refund!), open a bank account, get a driver's license, etc. But if you were in the process of coming here legally, they have your number and you're done.
I mean, they have to leave just like the first example. But they don't.
From the description, I would assume Germany, since that's precisely what happens here. But I can also imagine Germany is not the only state that allows its companies to act like this.
Why would workers from Eastern Europe not have passports?
"Eastern European" typically means EU-member states, with Ukraine being the exception even before the war (within reasonable distance, populous enough for recruiters to go to). EU-citizens don't need a residency permit, and they have access to the social system in Germany. They're often not informed about their rights and that should be improved, but "they end up on the streets because no passport" sounds like something that's not true for a significant number.
> and they have access to the social system in Germany
This is with a huge asterisk. Workers (EU or otherwise) moving to Germany or any other country for that matter, have access to welfare only once they've contributed enough to the system, not right away.
Being highly vulnerable, having small kids or health issues may entitle you to some benefits right away, but welfare/unemployment benefits have a mandatory period of contributions to the system before you can claim them.
Sure, there are system savvy people, locals and immigrants alike, that have found loopholes and ways to game the system, turning welfare into a taxpayer-funded lifestyle, which is the topic of many heated political debates on the future of the socialist welfare safety system, as too many people rely on it and not enough contribute.
Ukraine isn’t the only eastern country that’s not in the EU. Belarus, Russia, Moldova, Turkey, and most of the former Yugoslavia (all but Croatia and Slovenia) are also in that group.
Whether Turkey or Russia count as “Eastern Europe” is I suppose debatable, but the other examples are unambiguous.
Sure, but it's much easier to enter Germany from Ukraine (and currently also Moldova and Belarus, but they have a smaller population), as you won't need a visa and special work-permit, as you would from Russia, Serbia or Turkey, so it's more common to have Ukrainians working in Germany than Russians. EU-citizens have an easier time still, so they make up the lion's share.
The "employer provides accommodation" is common in farming (seasonal work) and some factories, e.g. industrial slaughterhouses are well known for that kind of setup, and for bad conditions.
This story doesn't pass the smell test. Appears OP is from the netherlands, not a friendly country towards east europe, but I still don't see how people can end up on the streets in a country where by law they have equal rights (or is very cheap to return to home countries, and sue the abusive employer).
1. Don't speak any language other than your own, especially not the one spoken in the country you are planning to work in.
2. Get your work and accommodation organized by the same company or person, trust him when he says that you need to pay X amount upfront for the accommodation, but you will get it back eventually.
3. Give your passport to the organizing company or person, so you won't accidentally lose it (if you have a passport at all - moving within the EU does not require one).
4. Do not request a contract, or sign it without understanding what is in it (because it is not in a language you understand).
5. Be in such a desperate financial situation that you cannot just travel anytime you want, let alone find another accommodation.
6. Even if the circumstances are troubling (living in a small apartment with 10 other people, working and not being paid after a month etc), do not go to the police, partly because you don't speak the language, partly because you don't know what rights you have, partly because they can kick you out of your job and accommodation if you complain.
7. For younger girls the steps are a bit different, and much more evil. Let's not get into that.
In a way, the EU being a single job market makes these kinds of things even easier - no real control of who enters a country, who lives where etc. In theory, you must register your change of address, social security etc. In practice, the system is easy to exploit.
To me it sounds like a colossal policing failure in that country; almost as if this type of exploitation is tolerated. Wondering why the eu never bothers solving it, instead of just blaming the victims.
German industries in low margin businesses (meat, agriculture, harvesting, construction work, hospitality, etc.) are dependent on exploiting low wage migrant labor, mostly form Eastern Europe (why do you think food prices are so low in Germany, and why do you think the country has the most liberal open borders migration policy in Europe?).
The German government and state institutions turn a blind eye to migrant exploitation, because otherwise supermarket prices would explode and some German exports would no longer be competitive on price. For example, when you see super cheap bananas or whatever food in the supermarkets, that have to be grown, harvested and shipped and wages paid along the supply chain, how do you think such low prices are possible? Easy, people and the environment are usually exploited along the way, as supermarket chains know consumers are very price sensitive so the entire industry price-competes themselves downward into oblivion thriving on exploitation. To be clear, this isn't an isolated issue to Germany alone, but applies to many wealthy countries.
>Please provide sources for your claims, otherwise it's hard to take them serious.
As this exploitation has been happening for a while, there are countless stories and articles about this in German media, especially DW and other NGOs. They're so well documented, they're impossible to miss, so I'm a bit surprised by your skepticism, but here you go:
Romanian workers reveal dire conditions at slaughterhouses [1]
A story about
seasonal workers,
exploitation
and vulnerability [2]
Precarious Posted Migration:
The Case of Romanian Construction
and Meat-Industry Workers in Germany [3]
Apparently Facebook (oh, wait, it is Meta now, how could I forget) cares about employees as human beings as little as it cares of its useds as human beings. Good to have these kind of things surface and brought to attention. Some counterweight against the rose-colored glasses, through which many people see Face...Meta.
Working for FB/Meta is a questionable choice in itself, though.
Going on on the whole fb/meta thing, I was wondering why people don't do the same for Alphabet. Everyone still calls it Google. But for facebook, the name was dropped almost immediately. Isn't that strange?
Might be for historical reasons. Was Google first or Alphabet first there? Also because of time. In Internet terms it has been ages since Google became big. Little is heard about what Alphabet is actually doing, except being the parent company of Google. I couldn't name one thing.
I mean, if it was just the title that happened, but actually the big layoffs coincided with the person moving from India to Canada, thus something like this was bound to happen. Do we really need to drum up animosity towards Meta that bad? (They already do it without needing to add a click bait twist on top..)
He uprooted his life, moved across the globe, then got laid off and is likely facing a prospect of having to leave Canada (not familiar with work visa types there).
This sucks, and the fact "it was bound to happen" (which is incorrect, it's not a law of nature) does not absolve Meta.
Exactly what I was going to say.We need to have empathy every once in a while. 11K people being fired from Meta seems abstract but these are 11K families that have been at least temporarily disrupted.
I have been laid off, or close to being laid off in that I had to leave, something like 3 different positions since the start of the pandemic and unemployed for around 6 months (doing amazing now in a recent role but that is besides the point). Was borderline close to being forced to move back in with my parents. I never got a story written up for me about that. I feel sympathy for many of those folks, but why should this guy, or anyone else at META, get so much press for themselves? These things have happened quietly in the background all the time in the industry in the past and nobody bats an eye until now because "META." It is kind of annoying.
> Was borderline close to being forced to move back in with my parents. I never got a story written up for me about that.
Nobody was talking about your personal struggle so now nobody should be allowed to talk about anyone else's? I'll never understand that weird crab bucket mentality. You somehow manage to start from "These things have happened quietly in the background all the time in the industry" and instead of ending up at "I'm so glad people are talking about this more because I've been through it and it sucks and we should find some way to make these horrible things happen less often!" you instead opt for "Who cares about this issue! Things sucked for me once and nobody said anything about it so now it's annoying when the media calls attention to anyone else who is struggling!"
No, I am saying things have sucked for people for years when it comes to layoffs. Many have similar stories as the person who this was written about now. Why is it only getting attention now with people who managed to get hired at a FAANG?
> Why is it only getting attention now with people who managed to get hired at a FAANG?
It's a good thing when corporations who treat their employees like shit get called out for their behavior. It's bad that they haven't always been called out for it in the past, but that doesn't mean that no one should be doing it now.
I suppose we can ask ourselves why this case managed to get the media's attention...
I suspect that this story may have gotten more people's attention because facebook/meta is a big company with lots of brand recognition, facebook/meta has a ton of money and could easily afford to treat their employees better, and because they really screwed this guy over and his situation is a worse version of what a lot of people are going through after recent layoffs so perhaps business insider thought this story would resonate with a lot of workers.
Really no matter what the reason is for this story getting media attention it's a good thing that people are talking about it now! Hopefully sharing these stories and talking about these issues will bring attention to the problems outside of FAANG as well.
Because there is this "heroic tale-telling" where you had been so strong and good for chewing up how you were mistreated, and everybody should just do the same. "Fight to find a new job, you can do it, you are a warrior!"
I mean your comments talk about how "everyone has it, why is this particular story news". Which makes it sound like you don't get the point of this specific story existing (sorry for poor grammar/wording).
The line of thought I am at least trying to present here is that we should have been talking about stories like this and making them well known that have been happening throughout the industry well before hitting MANGA companies.
All good! I have been trying to better gather my thoughts on this in the face of... ongoing critique... so it is on me for not presenting it better in the first place. I blame it on being 5:30 AM in the morning here and not having had any coffee yet.
I,too, have been impacted by layoffs. I myself was at a "unicorn" startup in my country and couldn't continue there once the pandemic began. I didn't get a story about me personally either (that being said there was quite a lot of articles about the events that happened where I worked).
That being said, its a little different for this guy cause
a)
as the parent commenter mentioned, the guy uprooted his life and moved to a new country and laid off almost instantaneously.
b) I don't think he asked the press to write a story on him, he wrote a LinkedIn post
c) this isn't the Time magazine doing a puff piece for somebody, it's just some person from Business Insider who saw a viral post on LinkedIn and wrote a story about it.
I think you answered it yourself, right? MAANG are the poster children of Big-Tech and that invites clicks and views. That being said, if people are more aware of such things, there is a chance we can ask for better conditions in the future.
I suspect some of the criticism you are getting in these comments is due to comments of yours that seem to point to the villain in this case as The Media for not, I guess, reporting all misguided layoffs.
Perhaps you are correct. Perhaps the solution to these heartless layoffs is to put a spotlight on each and every one of them in order to shame and embarrass the executives at all companies.
But I suspect many people see instead deflection — you are absolving Meta's management because The Media dropped the ball a long time ago.
I mean your feelings and experience and valid but following the same logic, no one should complain about anything because there's always someone who has been the through the same hell if not worse. If they could get some resolution, good for them, for the rest of us, oh well life is unfair.
(This is coming from a woman who grew up in a Muslim country and sees women around her complain about video game representation lol)
I'd say it's good we have so much press for this case, maybe he got attention you had not but in my opinion it's good for community if cases like this get highlighted, even if it's not my case...
What about the case that happened so many times to contractors and employees like him in the past that didn't get coverage at lesser known companies? Why are so many people pretending to care now?
How am I "defending megacorps" right now? I am literally knocking them down because people are worshiping them and focusing only on the people affected by them instead of writing about this type of practice that has happened literally everywhere at this point. What you wrote is straight up double speak nonsense.
No, because it has happened to others at companies in the past all the time to people have been complaining for years. By your logic we should only care about practices good or bad that happen at META companies, and the rest fall by the wayside. It's ridiculous that this story makes HN front page, yet the woman who recently won a lawsuit for $366 million due to racial discrimination at FedEx doesn't because "not META."
If we trust Mark Zuckerberg's message [1], and in his CEO position and responsabilities within a public company I think we should trust him, he wrote:
"Immigration support. I know this is especially difficult if you’re here on a visa. There’s a notice period before termination and some visa grace periods, which means everyone will have time to make plans and work through their immigration status. We have dedicated immigration specialists to help guide you based on what you and your family need."
> is likely facing a prospect of having to leave Canada (not familiar with work visa types there)
Unless it changed in the last few years, Canadian work permits allow you to continue to reside in the country for the duration of their validity, even if you lose your employment.
The vast majority of them are tied to an employer though, so even if you find another job, you need to go through the process again, which takes quite a lot of time.
> Canadian work permits allow you to continue to reside in the country [...] majority of them are tied to an employer though.
I understand there must be some rationale behind this, but from an outside viewpoint it's quite bizarre. The incentives are exactly opposite of what one would expect (either move out or become productive member of the society as easily as possible).
Canada don't care much whether immigrants are "productive members of society". You're free to spend your money in Canada, and as an immigrant without a job, you won't benefit from much welfare and such.
The only thing they care about regarding work permits is wether the job the immigrant will occupy could be filled by a Canadian citizen.
That is the thing: They can stay, but they can't work for someone else. No income makes it very difficult to stick around and look for a job. At least they get a severance package: It'd be worse without it.
Having empathy has nothing to do with recognising that lay-offs happen and that the fact that someone had just relocated is not a good reason to protect them from lay-offs. There is no wrong that needs 'absolving' here.
What the employer can be judged on in such situation is how they handle it and, indeed, how empathic and helpful their are, but that's a different issue.
Just relocated shouldn't protect them, but just hired should. Wouldn't it be smarter for Meta to cut one more far-below average employee, and give this unknown quantity a shot at succeeding?
> Just relocated shouldn't protect them, but just hired should.
Obviously not.
If they've just been hired it means that they are the least trained and least operational, and in any case that has no bearing on the continued existence of the role they were hired for.
Depends on if 1) Did Meta ask him to move? 2) Did they change their remote work policies such that he does not have any other choice but to move? 3) Was he working in Meta India, and being sent on an on-site opportunity, in which case, some prefer to move with their families.
If answer is yes to any of the above questions, then yeah Meta is at fault. The person deserves atleast a contractual position till he is able to move back to India or find a job in Canada. Alternatively, he can be compensated to account for the complete disruption of his life. People in India liquidate assets to move abroad. This may be an absolute life changing and costly decision for him and his family.
Are you trying to make a distinction without a difference? Nope, hiring for a role you expect to cut at the same time is not the decent or even sane thing to do.
I'm wondering if that makes Meta look any better.. I am receiving invitations to move to Canada or to US, I have also spent more than a decade working in different countries.. I can relate to that person, it's horrible that any company can do something like this with no consequences.
On the upside of such a shitty situation, being there will bring the guy a lot of other opportunities too to resolve that fast. Or result in something even better than originally thought.
I don't work in the US so "at will" is meaningless to me - unlike the US we have decent labor laws and unemployment.
On the SME thing - working on a new database, a replacement for C++, come on really - why is this PO not being processed - it pays the bills and working on interesting stuff after hours :).
And so many people are okay coming into another country and wage dump because "its their right" to move halfway across the world to work in the USA or EU.
"But this week on 60 Minutes, correspondent Bill Whitaker reports that the H-1B visa program has since been seriously abused, allowing companies to fire American workers and to bring in cheap foreign labor."
"But this week on 60 Minutes, correspondent Bill Whitaker reports that the H-1B visa program has since been seriously abused, allowing companies to fire American workers and to bring in cheap foreign labor."
I was dumb 20 years ago where I thought exactly like you. Also, this kind of thinking is generally coming from people with lack of self-confidence.
I've been on both sides of this, and I saw in the last 20 years and continue to see how this works. Now, I'm on the hiring side for the last 7 years, and there is no way this push down wages, in fact it is exactly the opposite, this pushes wages up. I prefer pay more to bring someone very good, than pay half to have someone semi competent. If I restrict my hiring locally, I'll mostly get low quality workers, the market is satured of low quality which will push wages down, the very good ones are very difficult to hire.
I mean, setting aside the emotional aspect of the issue for a moment and just being analytical, can't we also acknowledge that there is a type of observation bias here?
When you're talking about thousands of people getting hired a year, and a sudden event having to be done that affects 11,000 employees, you're bound to get a couple of very unusual and unfortunate cases.
If we looked at different windows of time, we would get even more people who fall into sympathetic categories. How many people were just laid off after just 2 weeks of being on the job / moving countries? How about a month ago? 2 months?
I wonder why the news story didn't look at an even larger window? But I guess they just are interested in (or heard about) the sensational case that draws your attention, huh? Or isn't the real story, "where's the person who got off his flight that morning and received an email that he was laid off?"
When you deal with human processes, and have to draw a line somewhere, certain cases will pop up as falling into very odd or unfortunate cracks. Hopefully the compensation and severance is designed to make up for these cases.
> When you deal with human processes, and have to draw a line somewhere, certain cases will pop up as falling into very odd or unfortunate cracks.
So, how does it work - a snap like Thanos? or is there a process behind every name who is getting fired? this is ridiculous, it can't just be a chance that they fired him. They take multiple interviews to hire each individual, atleast half as much effort will go in firing an individual right?
So to do that to someone and then days later be like "we actually don't want you" is beyond shitty. This persons visa is dependent on their employment so now they get to go into a city they don't know and try desperately to find employment with an employer who is interested in sponsoring someone from abroad (which is a small fraction of the total employers).
For all you budding Elons, here's a shorthand for it. If you ask someone to move across the world and don't need them anymore, give them three months on the books to find somewhere else that don't count against their visa. It will give them a chance to get settled and go on interviews. Or don't recruit internationally.