Well, I'm not Japanese so that's practically impossible (outside of universities).
19 karma · joined January 31, 2013
I don't mind working overtime, I just don't want to work 70+ hours every week. I'm OK with working "under stress", but I don't want to work for xenophobic bullies like my last boss.
I don't even expect to do truly exciting work (for instance working at a company like Google or startup like RethinkDB, just to illustrate) anymore, I'd settle for any job that let me actually build software, as opposed to pure app support or pure DBA.
And getting a decent salary. And by decent salary I don't mean the exorbitant salaries that experienced programmers earn in the US (like over U$120k). I'd be happy with $70k or even less if the company was interesting. After many rejections at large foreign companies, I applied for a "senior programmer" position at a small company and after multiple tests and interviews I got an offer. The offer was about U$35k/year. FML.
> For the past few years, the visas haven't run out until after October, so you can really apply anytime.
Well, last year it ran out in June. I was interviewing at an American company but we stopped the process because of that.
I'm aware of L1 but that would be extremely hard to pull off. I live in Japan (though not a Japanese citizen), and it's very hard enough to get a programming job at a good American company here in the first place. Mostly they hire in sales & bizdev etc, not much for software development. Then I would have to hope to be transferred. I have heard of companies hiring specifically to transfer but that's quite rare.
The other visas aren't available to citizens of my country (E3 etc), or I don't personally qualify to them (O1 etc).
2) and 3) are reassuring.
And yes, I'll be in touch!
There are no other kind of visa available to citizens of my country. Even the green card lottery isn't available to me (being vague to keep my anonymity, sorry).
Have the other clients accepted your new rate? Do you expect to easily get additional clients at the new rate? If so, then you could work on a compromise with client X (the one who "can't afford" your new rate), e.g.
(i) lowering total number of hours per month you work with them, such that the total bill works out about the same as before. Proactively suggest scope cuts. If you know more or less how much revenue (or how much savings) they get due to the projects you do, you should also have a good idea of what features lead to more gains for them.
(ii) give them a discount, or even better, give them a number of "bonus" hours for free, as long as they order over x hours in an n-month period. Think of it as giving them the option of locking in a lower price in exchange for ordering in bulk. They get a lower price and you decrease the risk you won't have enough income in that period.