The Foreigner Dilemna
After hearing the same thing over and over again from recruiters: "check back in a few months", because my resume didn't check their boxes, I sent one of them the following message:
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Just to let you know, I'm about to quit my job to work on my own project and above all to do what I love. Quitting my job means waiving up my H1-B work-visa and not being able to work in the US for the near future.
My value and potential is not in having prior experience in X or Y technology, but being able to understand and adapt fast to the emerging technologies. I would need one month or two to be up and running on iOS Mobile development.
Unfortunately, lot of people don't see these opportunities and complain about a half-existing talent-war. So frustrating.
To sum-up about myself:
- I was the 6th engineer at STARTUP_X, a one billion dollars start-up right now, I left for visa issues. My main job was doing things I had never done before (hacking nginx servers mainly by reading the code source directly, no documentation available at that time).
- I started a company when I was a student which was my main revenue stream to pay my engineering school. I was selling over Internet sporting goods imported from China. From the customer perspective, the transport cost was more expensive than the product itself but it didn't prevent people from buying it as the brand was becoming notorious. I got unexpected traction across Europe but I decided to shut it down to come in San Francisco (I still own the brand).
- One year ago, I wasn't speaking English at all.
If your change your mind, let me know. I'm flexible enough to prove my value with a trial period or so. Just what I need is to keep up my visa alive which would be crazily hard to rebuild from scratch (Visa transfer is one paper to fill out, building a visa is a 6 months to one year process and the result is not even guaranteed).
Best, MR_Y