> Immigration support: We will set the termination date for March 1, 2023, giving those with visa applications (and a desire to stay in the US) as much time as possible to find a new job.
While I'm sure no one will care to enforce it, such an arrangement still puts you in violation of your visa status. If you aren't working full time and don't even have network access, you are out of H-1B eligibility, regardless of whether you are on someone's payroll or not.
Pretty right. In the HFT world, we have people going on non-competes all the time. During that time, most firms do not pull their visa petition from USCIS, pay continues every two weeks and the employee is still technically an employee of the firm, just that they're on garden leave. This is done by firms so that the employees do not have to leave the US during their non-compete.
They're not doing any work, so technically still counts as a visa status violation.
A lot of the stuff in trading firms is proprietary and pretty secretive like trading strategies, how their systems achieve some level of latency, if they have FPGA/HW teams then what are their capabilities like.
When an employee resigns to go to another trading firm, to ensure that they don't leave right away and use the secret sauce at their new firm, they put that employee on a non-compete or a garden leave. Basically, for a period of time, could be as little as 2-3 months to 2 years, that employee can either sit at home or go work in an industry that is not trading but for that duration they cannot work in the same industry. The logic is that strategies and systems change pretty frequently, so in that time whatever knowledge that employee has, becomes outdated.
If they decide to sit at home, to make it lucrative, most firms will pay their base salary for that period, or some percentage of total comp (base+bonus). Since the employee is getting paid to do nothing, almost nobody in trading has any issues with non-competes.
While this is pretty awesome, it is a pain in the butt for a visa holder making such a transition. Technically, to remain in status a visa worker has to also be performing the duties on their petition, so even if they get paid during non-compete it can lead for them to leave the US. Since this is not as simple to enforce and not rigorously checked, their previous employer does not revoke their petition till they start at their new firm. Since the workers petition is still active with USCIS, they're getting paid and have benefits still active, it just appears that the employee is still working.
> Since the employee is getting paid to do nothing, almost nobody in trading has any issues with non-competes.
That's surprising to me, I assume these are mostly ambitious people who would not want the gap in their work record that came from spending a year being paid to do nothing. Obviously there are other things one could do, but they probably don't advance the career the same way a year of real work does
In some lines of work, it is only possible to get hired by signing a non-compete. As long as such garden-leave practice is industry-standard, it may not be a career problem.
Furthermore, if you're in ambitious-mode, you can take that entire year to get better at your discipline of choice, paid for by your "ex"-employer.
It seems odd to conflate a gapless resume with ambition, desire to work, or even constant work with career advancement or career advancement with generalized ambition. The people I know that manage to maintain long gapless work histories aren't the most ambitious, and they often work harder than the people who've seen more career advancement. The people I think of as the most ambitious might not even have careers, but some do.
But that might be unrelated, and I think you're perhaps referring to people who specifically have the ambition to climb a career ladder and I've definitely found resume gaps to not help in that pursuit, but I don't think people with unsuperficial career ambition care so much about gaps.
I think career ambition is somewhat mundane, and within the parameters that a given person can control, runs its useful course with limited categorically different positive lifestyle impact. Limited in the sense that often times you end up just working on different products, or moving into a higher level decision making role, or making more money to do more programming or sales or whatever. The parameters that one can control being the stuff outside of getting extremely lucky while more or less doing the stuff you'd be doing anyway. For example, I could set my sights very high and end up at Google working on whatever. I'll make more money, but it'll go right into my bank account or on some fancy product. It's certainly more glamorous I guess, maybe the code is trickier to write, or the outcome more interesting, and that's all great and something that might be worthwhile to shoot for, but it's not really that interesting or that unimaginable or that risky, except to one's personal life balance. I just have to work on particular skills and devote a certain amount of time, and then maybe I get it, or I don't. Same reason people working at Apple's new campus on whatever product probably don't think too much of it, they're just doing work day to day. It's compelling and it's ambitious if you're not already there, and interesting, but it doesn't cross my mind when thinking of the most ambitious people.
The most ambition I see, represents seeking a categorically unlikelihood, usually one that is rewarding in a wildly extreme or different way (which could be career oriented for sure), that is potentially life threatening or otherwise actually risky, in a categorically different discipline or environment, and repeatedly.
Admittedly many of the examples I can think of come out with with the possibility of professional notoriety, but it's not a fundamental component. A popular example would be Alex Honnold, but he'd still be missing horizontal leaps, which may still come. Someone else set their sights on becoming the best BMX rider, then bike company founder, and then quit to become a custom furniture designer; the first being extremely costly and risky in a number of ways, with rewards being ambiguous at best and with no linear trajectory, the second being more obvious but requiring different skills that you'd need to build from scratch, and the third being a fundamentally different thing that's rather unlikely for someone to become successful in starting from zero.
The most ambitious I know though have no clear career at all, and do that sort of stuff even though there's no obvious notoriety, tangible monetary reward, or glamour to be had. That, or the extreme unlikelihood in successfully getting out of extreme poverty with no connections or skills, and then trying to do it again with something unrelated.
I.E become extremely good at skateboarding -> then a pilot -> then a mountaineer, and all the while you're just doing some arbitrary thing for money.
A career (and life) trajectory of the sorts that you described is ideal for people that don't much care about their social standing in terms of what is "expected" of them. As in you wouldn't expect those people to be head girls, they wouldn't much care about what was expected of them. The primary impetus for most success is ego and envy, and almost never bragging rights. The people who do things BECAUSE those things happen to be the best they could do are vanishingly rare.
Someone like Alex Honnold would fare very poorly in an office environment, and would get chewed up by the sociopaths-in-charge, and the regular office drone monotony would not respond well to someone like him joining a clique / group / "being the [X] guy"
There are many organizational explanations for this, but one that's sort of easy to understand without much background (ie sans MBTI / ways people respond to culture/novel things / esoteric woo / etc) is https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...
Most "ambitious" people care about their careers because they aren't properly ambitious in the first place.
Yes, I agree with every point you made and I'm glad you liked my extremely long reply :) It was a somewhat tricky thing to articulate while also not dismissing the merit of having career ambitions as their own useful thing.
If they're going to stick in trading then that doesn't matter because non-competes are standard in the industry, so everyone will understand. Some take it as a way to get some paid downtime. A friend of mine, who joined my firm, went around Europe on his 4-month non-compete. Others do something like that, if it is too long then they just work in tech.
Some firms like Jane Street and Old Mission have no non-competes.
This happens all the time. We won't know until someone tries to push the limit.
Some more similar examples:
- Green card holders can't leave the country more than 6 months. Many have stayed outside of US for 6 months with no issue. One of green cards' goal is for you to settle in US as home country. So, the general consensus is that, in a year, if you stay outside of US more than 6 months, then US is not really a home.
- RSU expiring in 7 years in order to avoid upfront tax. No one know why it is 7 years. Can it be 8 years?
- This layoff thing as well. H1B workers are on the payroll until 31 of March. Well, can it be 31 Dec 2023? Nobody knows. If you went to court, can you claim that this H1B worker respect the intention of the law? probably not.
sorry that's very lousy and irrelevant, nothing uncharted about what defines employment in immigration laws. Or that immigration cannot dictate how private companies hire people (can't have people on the payroll while doing nothing? Who tf are you to tell them?)
USCIS literally dictates how company uses H1B. OPT and H1B have to submit a document, signed by manager, explain their responsibility.
I'm pretty sure if that says "im doing nothing. I just get paid". They will be in trouble.
This case is uncharted because nobody knows how long on the payroll is wrong. We can all agree 2y is wrong. But 3 months, 4 months, 3 months 2 days? Nobody knows.
I gave you a few other examples where the lengths of periods are also arbitrary. One of them is even around immigration.
I don’t know anything about this, so I bet you are right (and hope you are!)
I do have to wonder if it would have been better to just not mention it, though. Could highlighting their (light, and well-intentioned) rule breaking invite enforcement?
I don't think agents are paid well enough to care this much about any particular company unless one of their higher ups told them to. And the higher ups aren't going to care about what will likely be less than 100 people, at least some of which will get jobs within 60 days, and who overall are not trying to game the system even if it's technically what they're doing.
In other words, I'm pretty sure they all have better things to do.
We are lucky that US is not ripe with corruptions. They either enforce it uniformly or they don't.
In some shady countries, you can bet that this would be enforced selectively.
It's sad that, for a company like Stripe that wants to do things by the book and/or needs to do things by the book (because they are in the financial sector), they will not extend employment date like this and will be criticized for it.
To no one's surprise, Stripe didn't offer this in the latest layoff.
I'm not without gripes about the immigration system in the US as my wife is European and we've been fighting to get her permanent residence established long enough that we've had two kids and moved three times, yet still we are in the struggle. However, the beauracracy is so complex that one's standing doesn't fall into the hands of any one particular USCIS officer. Such an assertion is incredibly disingenuous to how mundane, slow, beauracratic, and absurd the process really is.
What kind of bureaucracy are you facing? The biggest I've noticed is making sure everything is perfect on submittal so you don't get put into the exception handling path of approval. Common mistakes are wrong/missing forms, form entry error, missing/inconsistent supporting documents.
Sometimes its no fault of anybody, its just the length of the queue. E.g. green card renewals, simple, used to be done in 6 months or less. Now it is assumed that it will take 24 months. This i90 has no burden of proof or stuff, its just simple pay fee & get new card. So, sometimes applicant thinks rightfully they are stuck in there for ages, and USCIS has no saying in hiring new staff or implementing new laws or changes.
Maybe someone who knows queue theory could explain this, but if circumstances have driven the length from 6 to 24 months, doesn't that mean it's heading upwards to unlimited lengths?
In (basic) queue theory, at equilibrium (average input rate = average output rate), the length of the queue is proportional to the variance in the input rate. Make that what you want :D
How is this possible? My brother-in-laws wife is from Costa Rica and it took about 12 months to get her permanent residence. Have things changed that much in 4 years? Are you working with an immigration lawyer?
Have you tried contacting your senators and congressional representatives? They can sometimes kick in the right place to get a stuck bureaucracy moving again.
+1 on contacting your senator(s). I was
stuck in a bit of an immigration nightmare once and they helped get it fast tracked, connect me with the best attorney for my particular situation. Be sure to mention you’re married and have kids :)
> Pay + RSU vest: Anyone impacted will receive 17 weeks (13 weeks + 1 four-week lump sum severance pay) of compensation, as well as your February 2023 stock vest.
So basically, DoorDash is setting the termination date to align with when severance pay ends.
While US citizens can take their time and find another job while also receive unemployment benefits, someone on H1 visa has to technically leave the country as soon as possible.A laid off person on H1 cannot remain unemployed and continue to remain in the country. This is particularly hard on those with families, many living in this country for 10+ years, with school going kids. Many have been waiting for years to get a green card. This is a very kind gesture by the employer. Hope more employers do this.
As part of the LCA the employer must attest there is no strike or lockout, that the salary of similarly employed workers is not affected, & that the job application must be provided to workers already at the company.
So no, you can't just threaten to replace all your employees with H1-B visa holders.
Damn you are dense. It is on the employer to prove they are not affecting the wages of US legal residents as part of the LCA.
Bringing in foreign labor to a market implicitly lowers the wages of those workers. That is how markets work. Thus, there must be absolutely 0 residents already capable of performing the job. Otherwise the LCA is fraudulent. The only other possibility would be the employer is bringing in foreign labor to pay them a premium over legal residents. Which obviously no one does.
This advice is incongruent with that of any lawyer I have consulted on the subject (both from the perspective of an employer and as an employee). To those interested in the subject, you'll have a more accurate picture of the current legal climate from a lawyer. In my experience, it will be very different from this user's legal determination of whether one must prove the existence of 0 US residents for the job. As an employer, USCIS has never required this proof from us for a H-1B.
> It is on the employer to prove they are not affecting the wages of US legal residents as part of the LCA.
False. All that matters is that H1B workers are being paid over the prevailing wage.
> Bringing in foreign labor to a market implicitly lowers the wages of those workers.
False. Almost every study done on this has shown the opposite.
> That is how markets work.
False. That is how the first lecture in Econ 101 says markets work. The first lecture in Econ 101 isn't real.
> Thus, there must be absolutely 0 residents already capable of performing the job.
False.
> Otherwise the LCA is fraudulent.
False.
> The only other possibility would be the employer is bringing in foreign labor to pay them a premium over legal residents. Which obviously no one does.
False. Depends on the employer. You have to pay H1B employees more than the prevailing wage for the job. Many employers target 80th or even 90th+ percentile wages for everyone, including H1B workers.
> False. Depends on the employer. You have to pay H1B employees more than the prevailing wage for the job. Many employers target 80th or even 90th+ percentile wages for everyone, including H1B workers.
Technically not false, pretty obtuse though. Or are you claiming that e.g. software engineers/IT professionals on H1B visas are paid more than local with comparable skills/qualifications?
> Bringing in foreign labor to a market implicitly lowers the wages of those workers.
> False. That is how the first lecture in Econ 101 says markets work. The first lecture in Econ 101 isn't real.
You might try telling that J.Powell he probably never went past Econ 101 (if you listen what he says).
I'm saying that people on H1B are paid more than the prevailing wage for a metropolitan region. Many employers pay all employees more than the prevailing wage for the metropolitan region.
Where has Powell said anything about immigration, especially the sort of skilled immigration that H1Bs are issued for, and the labor market?
> Where has Powell said anything about immigration
He did mention that lack of labor supply is driving up wages.
> people on H1B are paid more than the prevailing wage for a metropolitan region
Because H1B visas are generally only issued to high skilled professionals? Sure. a software engineer on H1B is probably gonna earn more than the waiter or cashier in the shop downstairs. Are they gonna earn more than their colleagues who are citizens/permanent residents? Obviously not...
Regarding "Thus, there must be absolutely 0 residents already capable of performing the job.", I think on paper it's true but the burden on the employer to prove that there are absolutely 0 residents already capable of performing the job is really low: https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/20/656.17
(e)(1)(i) Mandatory steps. Two of the steps, a job order and two print advertisements, are mandatory for all applications involving professional occupations, except applications for college or university teachers selected in a competitive selection and recruitment process as provided in § 656.18. The mandatory recruitment steps must be conducted at least 30 days, but no more than 180 days, before the filing of the application.
(A) Job order. [...]
(B) Advertisements in newspaper or professional journals. [...]
(e)(1)(ii) Additional recruitment steps. The employer must select three additional recruitment steps from the alternatives listed in paragraphs (e)(1)(ii)(A)-(J) of this section. Only one of the additional steps may consist solely of activity that took place within 30 days of the filing of the application. None of the steps may have taken place more than 180 days prior to filing the application.
(A) Job fairs. [...]
(B) Employer's Web site. [...]
(C) Job search Web site other than the employer's. [...]
(D) On-campus recruiting. [...]
(E) Trade or professional organizations. [...]
(F) Private employment firms. [...]
(G) Employee referral program with incentives. [...]
(H) Campus placement offices. [...]
(I) Local and ethnic newspapers. [...]
(J) Radio and television advertisements. [...]
What is discrimination by national origin is the fact that employment-based green cards have a quota by country of birth, without any adjustment for the country's population. However, the American legal system accepts that kind of discrimination by national origin, because it doesn't fall under the Civil Rights Act.
How? You get severance until March the only difference between US and non-US employees is the technically the date that employment ends. Everyone is paid through March anyway.
It doesn't mean they are paid until then... it just says your last day as an employee is that date, giving them time to look for other jobs.
Don't confuse it with being paid to do nothing because that isn't the case.
This "benefit" is available to everyone laid off. It's not discriminatory just because some people don't need it. Otherwise offering free bicycle storage would be discriminatory to people who bus to work, and offering free bus passes would be discriminatory to cyclists.
That's really nice.