Comment by sackfield | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sackfield | Hacker News Reader

I'm glad the article posts about visa sponsorship changes, as an immigrant to the US/EU this is the biggest falloff I've seen. Over the years I've seen relocation as a perk slide:

2013: Was flown to EU country for an interview, accepted, they handled the immigration paperwork (mostly) and helped me find a place and get settled. Plane trip was at my discretion.

2015: Immigrated to US with same company, they handled the visa and gave me help to find a place and get settled. Plane trip was at my discretion.

2018: Accepted new job in US, visa was handled however plane trip was 3am in the morning out of Gatwick.

2021: Accepted new job in US (after leaving the US for 3 years), visa was handled but I had to pay for my own plane trip. No help with finding apartments or any relocation expenses.

2022: Accepted new job in US at FAANG, work permit was handled however visa was not, all expenses to get the visa came out of my pocket (plane tickets, hotel accommodation, embassy appointment). No relocation help or expenses.

2023: Accepted new job in US, all work permit/visa issues came out of my pocket including the fee paid to the lawyers for handling the visa application. No relocation help or expenses.

Not sure how much further this perk can slide.

Not sure what kind of visa you applied for but an employer is liable for all visa-related fees

https://ogletree.com/insights-resources/blog-posts/u-s-emplo....

2028: Accepted new job in US. Work given by them. Salary paid by me to them for the privilege of having a job.

But you try and tell the young people today that... they won′t believe ya!

Also known as going to graduate school.

not directly related but strikes a similar chord, here in my country a lot of kids take up nursing so they can eventually get a job overseas. Once they graduate they need work experience before they can apply for jobs overseas so they work at local hospitals that give meager pay. Factoring in commute and meal expenses, they earn less than their living expenses. In a way, they are "paying" for this privilege of getting the experience necessary to move on and take a shot at a better life outside the country.

Maybe try sticking around at a company longer than 2 years.

Looks like the first company was 6 years, unfortunately you can be either snarky or wrong :(

Or both! ;)

You're almost certainly losing out, in terms of salary progression. Climbing from 50k to 200k by swapping every 2 years is typical. It can be done before you're 50 at almost any skill level.

This "greedy algorithm" can have worse long-term results. If you want to grow, you need to stick around longer to get enough know-how and develop relations to actually achieve something big. If you are happy with being Google L5 equivalent permanently then yes it is a good strategy.

The only thing I want to grow is my brokerage account. ymmv. You can be the best, hardest worker and still get tossed out when layoffs come (as Google has shown recently, among others [1]); you'll get a sad LinkedIn post opportunity tagging a bunch of colleagues about "your incredible journey together in the books" that folks will scroll past and move on to your next role. It is important to cultivate opportunities to have meaningful work, certainly, but freedom is more important (imho) than whatever slides you'll put together to communicate some corporate success story that'll be a line item on your resume/CV as soon as you're out the door competing with hundreds of other folks for a new role (if you don't have a network you keep hot).

TLDR Skill and luck are orthogonal. No one is going to look out for you but you.

[1] https://layoffs.fyi/

(>20 years in tech, been through both 2000 and 2008 financial events)

Additional recent citation with regards to skill, talent, and experience meaning little at layoff time:

https://web.archive.org/web/20240208182735/https://old.reddi...

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/jpl-workforce-update

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39303463

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39282161

My experience has been quite different.

At Amazon, after year one, I didn't learn much that was new - just a lot of the same stuff month-over-month. I found the biggest growth was when I switched jobs and learned a new environment, systems, team processes; and that was second to working on open source where I probably learned at about 5x the rate I was compared to professional work.

On each job hop, every 2 to 3 years, the pay increase was 30% to 50% each time. I'm now at year 5 in my current job, I've gotten a 10% pay raise just based on the company giving raises, and got a 20% raise in a counter-offer.

Thus, job hopping, I learned a lot more & was effectively increasing my pay by 10% every year. Now that I'm at the same place for 5 years, my pay effectively increased by less than 5% per year and that number is dropping (I'm at max salary, no raises are forecasted for me).

I think it's largely situational what is better for someone. I've known various "senior" MS or Amzn engineers that had long since been so far removed from coding that they were lousy developers (10 years of the same two years of experience). Thus, I think growth (salary and personal) is largely just what you do with it, IMHO there are likely bigger variables at play compared to job tenure.

I agree that it's definitely nuanced. However, I have also seen many cases of people "failing upwards". They basically do a mediocre job at their current company with middling performance ratings, such that there is no way they would get a promotion (for obv reasons), then jump to another company at L+1, rinse and repeat, until they plateau after 2-3 promotions. It's good for them personally, but terrible for the industry, as these people with actually very mediocre experience and ability are now leads.

I always get the most growth when I switch companies. Staying at the same place tends to mean I simply continue to see the same problems again and again.

I hope the perk completely stops existing. The tides are very much turning against this perk because of the result.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com