Meta fires a software engineer two days after he relocated from India to Canada
businessinsider.com
businessinsider.com
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.
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.
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.
> Living & Working in Canada: A Survival Handbook (Living and Working)
https://www.amazon.com/Living-Working-Canada-Survival-Handbo...
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.
A colleague a few years ago went as far as to suggest that this is how you ended up with nazis.
I hope with ubiquitous communications now that we tell these people that no it’s not acceptable to behave like this! Compassion should be awarded.
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.
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.
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.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Watched_Over_by_Machines_o...
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
But that’s socialism! Soon after, we’ll be eating our own dogs, who wants that?
/s
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.
> Maybe I'm missing something here.
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.
(Of course not in USA)
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.)
Such procedures tend to fail when you move fast and break things.
> corporations are implicitly immoral
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.
In other words, I could _never_ move to the US.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
also, high is relative. too high would make it very hard to get and maintain a job.
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.
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.
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.
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."
https://facebook.relayto.com/e/mark-zuckerberg-s-message-to-...
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"
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.
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).
Feel free after to make the point that normally such help should be given cheerfully, or different types of help they can pay forward.
He had just immigrated with his family from Asia for a job, and soon after the startup we were at fired everyone and shut down.
I took it easy before finding a job but he had to literally accept the 1st offer he got (which was bad) or he would have probably needed to move back.
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.
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’ll take the pearl clutching more sincerely when your calls to “human decency” target your own moral failures that matter.
It’s not JUST you treating the planet like an open sewer, but you do it too. Low effort “thoughts and prayers” outputs are not good enough.
Oh no; snarky words!!! chucks another plastic bottle/phone/laptop in the garbage
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.
Same issue.
Facebook is evil. When bad things happen to elite people who choose evil, sympathy is misplaced.
there was no way he could tell he would be laid off ahead of time
Whatever they do to people who are weaker than you they'll do to you next. Or something like that.
* 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.
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.
You must not wade into the political topics very often.
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.
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.
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.
This list is far from comprehensive.
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.
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.
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...
What you're saying is fantasy land except for executives.
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.
That would be for the best as well.
Enjoy companies never hiring anyone because they'll be completely unable to let them go.
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.
Immigrants are paid less than locals… do you think that is fair?
Pretty solid post barring that non sequitur. This is a post about Meta, which is not controlled by Elon.
Something being legal doesn't make it moral.
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 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.
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.
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.
See stuff like: https://www.thelocal.se/20070523/7387/
You can't have it both ways.
----
I guess this is just CBS being racist :)
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-h-1b-visas-have-been-abused...
"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."
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No no, just downvote me more, don't reply, don't discuss, just hide what is uncomfortable.
[0] https://www.dol.gov/agencies/eta/foreign-labor/wages#:~:text....
I have heard they can just claim "oh we cant find anyone!" and get someone for cheaper abroad.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-h-1b-visas-have-been-abused...
"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."
The body shops are a different story but this is about Meta.
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.
I have super super super distant relatives in the USA due to the Swedish migration 200 years ago. https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Swedish_emigration_to_the_United...
But that was a different time, with different rules, with a different market.
Basically: - Greedy company wants to hire latvian workers for cheap. Latvian wages in Sweden. basically half of Swedish wages.
- Union strikes
- Union gets called racists and all kinds of shit
- Weird compromise is made that basically gives EU countries right to social wage dump
Basically Sweden is heavy unionized so when companies can just remove the deal it breaks down: https://www.unionen.se/in-english/videos-more-about-unionen-...
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Basically 1 layoff is a tragedy, 12K is a statistic.
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.
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?
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.
Hiring is used as a metric for middle management.
You know how many engineers can’t code right? I don’t think a check of whether someone can read the future is part of a management interview.
its safer for the company to manage it that way.
Life isn’t unfair nearly as often as US immigration policies are unfair.
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.
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.
I would pay $$$ to avoid a needless relocation.
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.
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".
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 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.
The severance amount or any other services provided are irrelevant, because he was implicitly treated poorly by having contract terminated?
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.
How would you feel if someone did this to you?
1. :-)
2. :-|
3. :-(
How do you think someone else would feel if you did this to them?
1. :-)
2. :-|
3. :-(
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.
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.
I am immigrant myself who want to get to EU / US at some point so I can understand reasons of other people really well.
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.
It isn't the same doom, but doom nonetheless.
As much as I dislike FB as a company, I'm not sure he is worse off?
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.
I don't think so. I believe they only get the November 15, 2022 vesting.
So he probably got around 1.5 years of his previous yearly comp.
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.
Just curious because I know nothing about this, but what are 10 countries where this is true?
Don’t be lazy, spend the 15 minutes and do that research yourself.
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.
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.
(playing devil's advocate)
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.
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.
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.
This is a catch 22 - a permanent residence permit is only obtained by living in the country.
> It's really shit, but that's how it is. It's always been the case
You entire argument seems to boil down to 'its okay for our companies to exploit foreigners because it's always been this way'.
You don't actually provide any information or reasoning for why this is right and proper, or even nessesary.
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.
Wishing them best of luck.
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.
The socialist welfare state cannot be extended to foreigners or it would run out of € and the temp agencies take no responsibility.
This should have broad political appeal for the obvious reasons.
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.
Singapore for certain low paid jobs.
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.
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.
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.
Zero fucking sense.
"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.
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.
Whether Turkey or Russia count as “Eastern Europe” is I suppose debatable, but the other examples are unambiguous.
Working for FB/Meta is a questionable choice in itself, though.
This sucks, and the fact "it was bound to happen" (which is incorrect, it's not a law of nature) does not absolve Meta.
"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."
[1] https://about.fb.com/news/2022/11/mark-zuckerberg-layoff-mes...
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.
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).
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.
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.
Setting up situation where "something like this was bound to happen" is FB fault, and makes it worse rather than absolving them.
I know of companies that layed off 100s of engineers that just relocated from another country. Sometimes it's really not up to the company.
It is sad, but that's just the life we live in, in a post-COVID world. Too much uncertainty and things change in a snap.
Has anyone else noticed a great percentage of those being laid off are of asian descent?
See stuff like: https://www.thelocal.se/20070523/7387/
You can't have it both ways.
----
I guess this is just CBS being racist :)
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-h-1b-visas-have-been-abused...
"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."
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-h-1b-visas-have-been-abused...
"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'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.
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.
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?