Comment by vgs_interviewee | Hacker News Reader

Comment by vgs_interviewee | Hacker News Reader

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vgs_interviewee

Anonymous account, because of reasons.

I interviewed and was offered a job at this company. I turned it down because they had some of the most morally bankrupt leadership I have ever seen in a startup. Frankly, it made me less likely to interview with YC companies at all.

Just a quick list of giant red flags-

1. They are violating visa laws by having their employees in the Ukraine lie on their applications and say they are coming into the US for tourism instead of business.

2. The Ukrainian developers they get out here are kept on their Ukrainian salary, with a small stipend for housing. So they get to live in the bay area on a eastern european salary.

3. Their CEO actually bragged to me about how little they were paying the only female developer they had in the office. He thought it was hilarious.

4. When they made an offer they refused to tell me how many shares had been issued for the company or what percentage the offer included, making their offer completely impossible to decipher. It was also about 15% lower than the numbers they had discussed with me beforehand.

If I was an investor in this company I would demand the removal of the CEO and put their CTO in charge.

Whether they actually violate visa laws really depends on particular circumstances. Getting paid Ukrainian salaries actually makes it more likely that what they're doing is completely fine from USCIS point of view. Employees of multinationals such as Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Intel etc. who live and work outside of the US routinely travel to US on B2 visa for various work purposes. It really depends on how long you are planning to stay, what exactly you are planning to do, etc.

It does violate the letter of the law. B1 visa is only for training, meetings, conferences, etc, if you work remotely for an U.S. company you're not supposed to work while there, only training and meetings. Not sure if you work for a foreign entity (maybe Facebook Ireland is a separate, foreign entity for B1 visa purposes, and maybe they're being paid by an Ukranian entity in Ukrania). B2 is the tourism visa, so definitely no work, but most people get a dual B1/B2 visa.

Edit: apparently the key part is "no salary/income from a U.S. based source". So maybe they're in the right.

In practice, if they're only staying for a few months I don't know if USCIS will care, unless they get caught red-handed.

I wouldn't want to argue with USCIS about the letter of the law though, they'll deport first, ask questions later.

https://travel.state.gov/content/dam/visas/BusinessVisa%20Pu...

Ah, I meant to write that they routinely travel on _B1_ visa for work purposes -- I confused which one is tourist, and which one is business visa. And yes, the difference here is mostly immaterial, since most people simply get a dual B1/B2 visa.

> I wouldn't want to argue with USCIS about the letter of the law though, they'll deport first, ask questions later.

I don't think that's how it works in practice. It is quite rare that people are deported in cases like this, and much less on a short notice too.

A16Z should look into these alleged practices, given that they are the lead investor in VGS.

Edit: I've sent an e-mail about it.

You should put this on Glassdoor.

This sounds weird.

What kind of software engineer in their sane mind would want to stay in the US illegally (I don't think one can get any long-term tourist visa?) _and_ get paid peanuts? Even if they really want to live in the US, being poor sounds like a very strange sacrifice.

Unless one's a junior developer (where I heard it's hard to compete those days), as far as I know there are a lot of realistic options to find a legal immigration venue to a first-world country (probably not to the US, though) - so, why do stupid things like that?

I actually went to the US in that exact scenario - tourist visa, six months, paid peanuts. (This was back in 2000.) Until then, it had been a dream of mine to visit the US and that accomplished that dream.

I have fond memories of that time and I would revisit... but I'll wait until things return to how they were back then. (Start at "no TSA" and go from there.)

Makes sense, thanks. Yes, no doubt US is a good country and one can wish to live there.

I didn't knew tourist visas can be as long as 6 months - thought they're normally shorter.

Yet, this is still odd to me (just me). As far as I get it, if you're caught, you're banned from visiting the country again, and for a long while. Feels like a bad way to end a dream.

It must be that my subjective perception of the risks involved overweighted the positive aspects.

To be fair that was actually an issue he brought up- he said that several of their Ukrainian staff could not come to the US because they were not willing to lie on their visa application.

Yours was a good question, no idea why you got downvoted. Mdpopescu provided an insightful answer.

Also, it opens up networking opportunities for said developers, maybe they get a better remote contract afterwards.

I don't think they're YC: http://www.ycombinator.com/companies/

The CEO is a former YC founder and is using the resources that are provided to YC founders to help start VGS. You'd be amazed the cool stuff former YC founders get access too.

Their list of investors: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/very-good-security/i...

I'm sure the CEO @mahmoudimus can chime in - he's been posting in this thread noting that he works at VGS.

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