DoorDash lays off 1250 employees
doordash.news
doordash.news
That's really nice.
So no, you can't just threaten to replace all your employees with H1-B visa holders.
Bringing in foreign labor to a market implicitly lowers the wages of those workers. That is how markets work. Thus, there must be absolutely 0 residents already capable of performing the job. Otherwise the LCA is fraudulent. The only other possibility would be the employer is bringing in foreign labor to pay them a premium over legal residents. Which obviously no one does.
False. All that matters is that H1B workers are being paid over the prevailing wage.
> Bringing in foreign labor to a market implicitly lowers the wages of those workers.
False. Almost every study done on this has shown the opposite.
> That is how markets work.
False. That is how the first lecture in Econ 101 says markets work. The first lecture in Econ 101 isn't real.
> Thus, there must be absolutely 0 residents already capable of performing the job.
False.
> Otherwise the LCA is fraudulent.
False.
> The only other possibility would be the employer is bringing in foreign labor to pay them a premium over legal residents. Which obviously no one does.
False. Depends on the employer. You have to pay H1B employees more than the prevailing wage for the job. Many employers target 80th or even 90th+ percentile wages for everyone, including H1B workers.
Technically not false, pretty obtuse though. Or are you claiming that e.g. software engineers/IT professionals on H1B visas are paid more than local with comparable skills/qualifications?
> Bringing in foreign labor to a market implicitly lowers the wages of those workers. > False. That is how the first lecture in Econ 101 says markets work. The first lecture in Econ 101 isn't real.
You might try telling that J.Powell he probably never went past Econ 101 (if you listen what he says).
Where has Powell said anything about immigration, especially the sort of skilled immigration that H1Bs are issued for, and the labor market?
That's not how statistics work. You can't just have everyone paying above the normal wage. We'd call it the normal wage.
Anyway, I'm done with this. Go talk to a lawyer and see what they say.
He did mention that lack of labor supply is driving up wages.
> people on H1B are paid more than the prevailing wage for a metropolitan region
Because H1B visas are generally only issued to high skilled professionals? Sure. a software engineer on H1B is probably gonna earn more than the waiter or cashier in the shop downstairs. Are they gonna earn more than their colleagues who are citizens/permanent residents? Obviously not...
(e)(1)(i) Mandatory steps. Two of the steps, a job order and two print advertisements, are mandatory for all applications involving professional occupations, except applications for college or university teachers selected in a competitive selection and recruitment process as provided in § 656.18. The mandatory recruitment steps must be conducted at least 30 days, but no more than 180 days, before the filing of the application.
(A) Job order. [...]
(B) Advertisements in newspaper or professional journals. [...]
(e)(1)(ii) Additional recruitment steps. The employer must select three additional recruitment steps from the alternatives listed in paragraphs (e)(1)(ii)(A)-(J) of this section. Only one of the additional steps may consist solely of activity that took place within 30 days of the filing of the application. None of the steps may have taken place more than 180 days prior to filing the application.
(A) Job fairs. [...]
(B) Employer's Web site. [...]
(C) Job search Web site other than the employer's. [...]
(D) On-campus recruiting. [...]
(E) Trade or professional organizations. [...]
(F) Private employment firms. [...]
(G) Employee referral program with incentives. [...]
(H) Campus placement offices. [...]
(I) Local and ethnic newspapers. [...]
(J) Radio and television advertisements. [...]What is discrimination by national origin is the fact that employment-based green cards have a quota by country of birth, without any adjustment for the country's population. However, the American legal system accepts that kind of discrimination by national origin, because it doesn't fall under the Civil Rights Act.
So one question is then, which view does a court take?
[0] At least those working within the US.
I do have to wonder if it would have been better to just not mention it, though. Could highlighting their (light, and well-intentioned) rule breaking invite enforcement?
In other words, I'm pretty sure they all have better things to do.
Pretty right. In the HFT world, we have people going on non-competes all the time. During that time, most firms do not pull their visa petition from USCIS, pay continues every two weeks and the employee is still technically an employee of the firm, just that they're on garden leave. This is done by firms so that the employees do not have to leave the US during their non-compete.
They're not doing any work, so technically still counts as a visa status violation.
When an employee resigns to go to another trading firm, to ensure that they don't leave right away and use the secret sauce at their new firm, they put that employee on a non-compete or a garden leave. Basically, for a period of time, could be as little as 2-3 months to 2 years, that employee can either sit at home or go work in an industry that is not trading but for that duration they cannot work in the same industry. The logic is that strategies and systems change pretty frequently, so in that time whatever knowledge that employee has, becomes outdated.
If they decide to sit at home, to make it lucrative, most firms will pay their base salary for that period, or some percentage of total comp (base+bonus). Since the employee is getting paid to do nothing, almost nobody in trading has any issues with non-competes.
While this is pretty awesome, it is a pain in the butt for a visa holder making such a transition. Technically, to remain in status a visa worker has to also be performing the duties on their petition, so even if they get paid during non-compete it can lead for them to leave the US. Since this is not as simple to enforce and not rigorously checked, their previous employer does not revoke their petition till they start at their new firm. Since the workers petition is still active with USCIS, they're getting paid and have benefits still active, it just appears that the employee is still working.
That's surprising to me, I assume these are mostly ambitious people who would not want the gap in their work record that came from spending a year being paid to do nothing. Obviously there are other things one could do, but they probably don't advance the career the same way a year of real work does
Furthermore, if you're in ambitious-mode, you can take that entire year to get better at your discipline of choice, paid for by your "ex"-employer.
Some firms like Jane Street and Old Mission have no non-competes.
But that might be unrelated, and I think you're perhaps referring to people who specifically have the ambition to climb a career ladder and I've definitely found resume gaps to not help in that pursuit, but I don't think people with unsuperficial career ambition care so much about gaps.
Could you expand on that?
The most ambition I see, represents seeking a categorically unlikelihood, usually one that is rewarding in a wildly extreme or different way (which could be career oriented for sure), that is potentially life threatening or otherwise actually risky, in a categorically different discipline or environment, and repeatedly.
Admittedly many of the examples I can think of come out with with the possibility of professional notoriety, but it's not a fundamental component. A popular example would be Alex Honnold, but he'd still be missing horizontal leaps, which may still come. Someone else set their sights on becoming the best BMX rider, then bike company founder, and then quit to become a custom furniture designer; the first being extremely costly and risky in a number of ways, with rewards being ambiguous at best and with no linear trajectory, the second being more obvious but requiring different skills that you'd need to build from scratch, and the third being a fundamentally different thing that's rather unlikely for someone to become successful in starting from zero.
The most ambitious I know though have no clear career at all, and do that sort of stuff even though there's no obvious notoriety, tangible monetary reward, or glamour to be had. That, or the extreme unlikelihood in successfully getting out of extreme poverty with no connections or skills, and then trying to do it again with something unrelated.
I.E become extremely good at skateboarding -> then a pilot -> then a mountaineer, and all the while you're just doing some arbitrary thing for money.
A career (and life) trajectory of the sorts that you described is ideal for people that don't much care about their social standing in terms of what is "expected" of them. As in you wouldn't expect those people to be head girls, they wouldn't much care about what was expected of them. The primary impetus for most success is ego and envy, and almost never bragging rights. The people who do things BECAUSE those things happen to be the best they could do are vanishingly rare.
Someone like Alex Honnold would fare very poorly in an office environment, and would get chewed up by the sociopaths-in-charge, and the regular office drone monotony would not respond well to someone like him joining a clique / group / "being the [X] guy"
There are many organizational explanations for this, but one that's sort of easy to understand without much background (ie sans MBTI / ways people respond to culture/novel things / esoteric woo / etc) is https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...
Most "ambitious" people care about their careers because they aren't properly ambitious in the first place.
Wikipedia's got a better and more thorough definition than what I tried to write: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_leave
In some shady countries, you can bet that this would be enforced selectively.
It's sad that, for a company like Stripe that wants to do things by the book and/or needs to do things by the book (because they are in the financial sector), they will not extend employment date like this and will be criticized for it.
To no one's surprise, Stripe didn't offer this in the latest layoff.
How so? How is “working full time”, or whatever the eligibility criterion defined, legally? Not the employment agreement?
Do you actually know this stuff or you just speculating?
This happens all the time. We won't know until someone tries to push the limit.
Some more similar examples:
- Green card holders can't leave the country more than 6 months. Many have stayed outside of US for 6 months with no issue. One of green cards' goal is for you to settle in US as home country. So, the general consensus is that, in a year, if you stay outside of US more than 6 months, then US is not really a home.
- RSU expiring in 7 years in order to avoid upfront tax. No one know why it is 7 years. Can it be 8 years?
- This layoff thing as well. H1B workers are on the payroll until 31 of March. Well, can it be 31 Dec 2023? Nobody knows. If you went to court, can you claim that this H1B worker respect the intention of the law? probably not.
I'm pretty sure if that says "im doing nothing. I just get paid". They will be in trouble.
This case is uncharted because nobody knows how long on the payroll is wrong. We can all agree 2y is wrong. But 3 months, 4 months, 3 months 2 days? Nobody knows.
I gave you a few other examples where the lengths of periods are also arbitrary. One of them is even around immigration.
So basically, DoorDash is setting the termination date to align with when severance pay ends.
If you want to do layoffs you will be best suited doing them at the same time as all the other companies. That’s because normally layoffs bust morale and lead not only to the ejection of the people you wanted gone, but also to the departure of the people you wanted to stay. However when everyone is doing layoffs at the same time there is nowhere for your good employees to go.
Is this effect real, or am I seeing things?
Another tactic is announcing negative news on a Friday afternoon, to miss the news cycle.
"nowhere else to go" isn't really a thing right now - but "the mood is right" is probably more of what is happening. Employees are at least a little on edge (which significantly impacts performance, for what it is worth) right now.
Most companies that are laying off people do not need to lay them off. Their survival is not at stake.
Doordash, for example, is making something like 4billion $ of gross profit a year.
That's enough to pay all of these 1200 employees $3m a year, with some left over.
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/DASH/doordash/net-...
Take it up with them.
So while the 700M statement is true in financial speak it's not true in the way you're impyling it i.e. it's not profit leftover they could be paying out instead it's just a certain financial measure in a company that overall is losing money pretty hard. Likely feeding into this reduction of corporate headcount to be honest.
Profit is an opinion, but cash flow is a fact.
What do you base that on? As others have pointed out, DoorDash is losing money every quarter. These companies have experienced hyper growth in employee count while the economy is good. But they are still losing a lot of money every quarter. When the economy turns, that high burn rate quickly becomes a threat to their continued existence. I think most of these layoffs are essential and may still prove inadequate. DoorDash for instance is selling a non-essential service. When the economy tightens up, people stop spending on things like DoorDash.
Easy money is gone. Companies that balanced their budget without the need for debt to continue to operate are OK.
The reason why the distinction is important is that the bandwagon effect will come and go, while the fundamentals can stay negative for any amount of time.
Many companies are going to get hit hard when their corporate loans come due over the next 1-3 years.
Naturally my life is financially in order (no debt, no kids to support, no visa issues), so I recognize my privileged position, and I say this as a first generation US immigrant who went through many precarious visas including H1B. Envy was nonetheless the first emotion the article evoked in me.
And now to see loan forgiveness for people who took far fewer sacrifices (especially lawyers/doctors, who make significantly more than me now) - it sort of reinforces that working hard is a sucker move, and definitely discourages me from doing such paths if I believe I can just get a bail out later.
Do lawyers or doctors typically earn less than $125,000 or $250,000/household? If not, loan forgiveness does not impact them the way you think.
One of my friend groups has a lot of young doctors and recent med school grads. They are all looking for the best ways to take advantage of this, including things like accelerating marriage timelines to be a "household" instead of individual so they can qualify under the limit. Starting salaries for family practice physicians, for example, can fit under that $250K limit.
I'm not opposed to loan forgiveness for certain people, but the $250K household limit without a gradual phaseout is a baffling move.
I completely agree, some folks drastically benefit from this (in a needed way), and I feel no envy or upset towards them. It looks like my thoughts were misguided.
Fun fact: rural doctors actually make more than city/urban doctors usually.
[1] https://dailyyonder.com/pay-is-higher-for-rural-physicians-n... [2] https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/practices/primary-care-docs...
Just a note for anyone else reading this, but you’re only eligible for the $10k forgiveness if you have government undergraduate loans, and you make less than $125k. Few high paid professionals will qualify, and graduate law school/med school can cost $200k+.
TLDR: probably still work hard. Welfare is for the needy, or corporations.
The federal government designed the federal loan program to make them money, based on interest. It has panned out as a very stupid fucking idea, in retrospect, and has made millions of people debt slaves for years on end. They set themselves up for this, combined with stagnating wages, making everything a joke. Everybody wants to talk about bailouts and "work ethic" but seemingly forget the monetary policy was set and managed by the federal government over the past several decades. They could have done better policy if they didn't want a bunch of bullshit.
It has nothing to do with work ethic, at the end of the day. It was a policy decision from on high, and the snowball was set in motion probably long before you even went to school.
I can assure you that lawyers/doctors have FARRRRRR more than that.
I worked about 30 hrs/week while going to school. I didn't take a summer break. I finished my BS in CS in 2014 with about $45K of student loan debt that I paid off in 6 years.
For me to get upset now about people having some of their loans forgiven seems weird to me. It reeks of "I suffered, so should you!" energy. It'd be like fighting against new treatments for a disease because a loved one died from said disease already.
It is precisely because of how much that hampered me that I’m glad that others are relived of that burden. It’s even harder for kids these days!
If the money was clawed back from universities, that would be fine, since they were at the receiving end of the racket.
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2022/11/22/why-cant-the-do...
At the end of the day, this debt forgiveness is a drop in the bucket compared to other things that the government does that my tax dollars get spent on that I would prefer it not be. If we’re truly worried about the cost here, there’s plenty of other things we could take that money from that I would happily support.
Student loans are predatory. Some people fell for it and some people avoided it. I think the question: Who is (or should be) bailing any of this; rather than making you whole or keep this system just because you are the one who figured it out.
Of course, it is the tax payers (the weakest and most easily accessible $$ thing) who will pay for this (either with taxes, government debt or money go brrrrr). This will further alienate these tax payers and lead to the eventual collapse of this economic system.
So I guess I started off trying to make you feel better about it but now you are going to feel worse (since not only you won't be getting the special treatment but you are also probably the one paying both the predators and the "less intelligent" people who took these loans).
But the truth is that good jobs are going to be very competitive over the coming months. Many being laid off now are likely to end up accepting comp packages far below their previous comp. The doors are pretty much closed at the usual FAANG types
I can say anecdotally that I've already noticed an incredible easing of the difficulty in hiring (while maintaining a high bar)
I can tell you've never been laid off before, because even with severance it doesn't feel like a "long vacation".
Layoffs like this are heavily correlated with a collapsing job market. Finding a new job right now is orders of magnitude more difficult than finding a job a year ago. Getting laid off also works against you, as many potential hirers assume that laid off people were among the lowest performers of their company. It's not fair, but it happens.
It's also not really a relaxing vacation when you're busy prepping for interviews, dealing with interview calls and/or flights randomly scattered across the week, and other interview-related stresses. The clock is ticking and your full time job is now to interview to get a job. It's also likely (in this market anyway) that any company you interview with would prefer that you start ASAP, so you don't even have a defined end date.
Getting laid off with severance sounds fun until it happens and you're faced with the realities, especially in the middle of a collapsing hiring market that has been flooded with 100,000+ laid off FAANG engineers competing for every great job out there.
I've been laid off with no severance and it felt like vacation, so it might depends on your specific situation. It was my first job, in Germany, 70% of so of my salary guaranteed as unemployment benefits.
I didn't look for a job for like six months, I could have used the full 12 months as I was more than cash positive and still managed to save 40% of my income without changing my lifestyle, it took me two weeks to find a new one. That being said I'm not a "study for interview" kind of dude, life's too short to grind for that imho
Uhh, yeah obviously that felt like a vacation.
In my US state (Ohio), weekly benefits for those without dependents cap out at $530. That's about 19% of my current salary. It would be barely enough to cover my mortgage and utilities, but throw in the car (payment / gas / insurance), groceries, incidentals ... I'd be in trouble. (And unlike some of the forward-thinking individuals who've posted here, I don't have several years' worth of savings to rely on.)
Edit: and if, god forbid, I became disabled ... my government-provided benefits would be something like $150 a week. They may as well give me a kiss on the cheek for all the good that amount would do for me.
I was last laid off in 2015 by a large media company, we received only 1 month of severance. (Which was 1.5 months paychecks because they paid in arrears)
Severance and notice of small scale layoffs (company under 50) has no protection in most states. 8 person company offered no severance, but we had a pretty good sense it was coming a month away.
Taking the state to court for this while also trying to get a job would be difficult.
(for the record, I don't have any of these aside from the runway, since I have no significant debts due to the lack of a mortgage)
Engineers are quite privleged. We make money hand over fist, more than enough that its pretty trivial to save up 6 months of expenses, and just quit, and do nothing for a couple months.
After all, there is no point in making money if you don't spend it, and one way of spending it is to just take a break from working for a little while. If a break is something you think would make you happy, you should do it.
In this case, I did a Doordash technical screen three months ago during a job hunt. Recruiter painted a rosy picture of growth and outlook, slathered me in honey-words, etc. This was well into the downturn.
Normalcy bias is powerful and I can understand that some companies did not move fast enough to respond to the change in the weather, but I can also fault them for it, and find these apologies self-serving.
I had a realtor point out issues with properties that I might never have thought to ask about. Now, maybe that was to steer me to other properties that he would make more money on, but they were real issues. It did serve to build a sense that he was not hiding information just to get a sale.
Firstly, this isn't about me -- I was smart; I took a different option.
But this is about my industry, and so my sword must flash from its scabbard.
I know you're sick to death of the P-word, but do think of the privilege that would be required in order to take responsibility for the decision, i.e. in order for the decision to be made non-coercively.
Thinking it through, you'd need:
1. Local knowledge about the way the tech industry works (which I do, so guess which job I didn't take after looking over their figures)
2. Access to plausible alternatives
3. (most importantly) confidence in oneself and one's perceptions.
I've spent the past half-decade of my good fortune trying to help friends enter the industry from other careers (urban planning etc.) and it's this implicit-never-spoken-about shit that is the biggest barrier-to-entry.
You can either have diversity in your industry or you can have life-or-death decision things that 'everybody just knows,' except for the newcomers. Pick one.
P.S. also the stakes are much higher if you're offered a work visa and a relocation package to a country where you can only legally work for a single employer. And that employer, if they fsck off -- well; that's how you get people alone and stuck, strangers in a strange land, running out of money and hope.
They did not lie about the company doing well and having a good outlook. Seems like they do.
For people born in India, regardless of current citizenship, this may end up terminate a wait for a green card that has been ongoing for 10-15 years, leaving them little choice but to leave the country.
The process is completely arbitrary and deliberately capricious. For example, USCIS randomly audits some percentage (estimated to be ~30%) of applications, ostensibly to stop people figuring out how to game the system (ie by figuring out what USCIS will flag for further review). Now that's fine in principle but the audit (at the time my application was in process) added an additional 18 months. Completely randomly. When the audit happened it simply passed. with no requests for evidence ("RFEs").
Another example: examiners aren't consistent. Your case will be assigned to an officer. That officer might be quick or slow. Two different officers may treat the same application different. For example, one may request a form you and your lawyer think unnecessary while another doesn't. If you proactively include it anyway, that too can lead to delays to explain why that form is in there.
Unfortunately immigrants are an easy political scapegoat and a non-voting one at that. No party seems inclined to truly address these problems. Or it comes up occasionally with a bad bill.
In 2004, PBS had a documentary called The New Americans. I can't really find a way to wtach it online. It follows immigrants from a number of different countries. One was an Indian man (and his family) who got laid off in the dot-com crash (and ultimately returned to India IIRC). I suspect there'll be many repetitions of this in the coming year.
This lack of certainty and security in your living situation can hang over your head for years, sometimes more than a decade. It's stressful and cruel.
All correct. General recommendation is to wait at least six months. A friend got his case delayed for two years, due to constant layoffs in our area.
> for example, USCIS randomly audits some percentage (estimated to be ~30%) of applications, ostensibly to stop people figuring out how to game the system
Yeap. Got unlucky with that too. And apparently the audit did nothing, because not only very simple and irrelevant things were asked (like org charts for a non-managerial position). Then, when I got to the I-140 process they issued a NOIR (Notice of Intent to Revoke), asking for a document that was filed in the PERM. One would think that, if there was an issue, it would have been flagged back then.
What it did do was to delay the process by a lot. On top of the usual delays – plus delays until your company gets around to filing for your green card. Which they have zero incentive to do.
Most immigrants don't know all the details and all the rules that exist before they sign up. It's not due to lack of research, it's because some things are really obscure and don't come into play until you care about them. For example, H1B is restricted to _one income source_ (spouse can't work). However, there's an exception for purely "passive" income. Examples would be investments – as long as you don't trade frequently. What's "frequently"? Noone knows. Day trading is obviously out but you still can't be "too active".
You can also be a landlord. But you are not allowed to be involved in the day to day activities. For example, a faucet broke. You could go to Home Depot, grab a new one and install it, right? No, that would be a violation. You would have to pay someone else to do it. But wouldn't hiring a plumber be something that demands time, and thus you are "working"? No, apparently not.
Even _expectation of future income_ can run afoul of the rules (and you don't receive a booklet explaining that). For example: you spouse cannot work, but can they start working on a game, or iOS application, but not sell until they are authorized to work? No, they can't. They are considered to be "working" even if they are not getting any income right now.
So, if you are on H1B and your spouse has a career(but not in a field that's in high demand), they essentially have to kiss their career goodbye. There will be a massive gap in their resume in the best case.
Also, if you are from India (not my case, and it still took 7 years), given the current wait times, even if you bring your newborn to the US, there's a chance you won't get a green card by the time they turn 21. Which means they will have to leave as they are no longer considered to be your dependent. It doesn't matter that they have not known any other country and may not even speak the language.
Much more can be said about the whole thing. I would advise any wanna-be immigrants to talk to someone that's been through the process. Don't ask US citizens (unless they have naturalized and used the work visa path) because they will have no idea what the process is like.
The verbiage is standard PR pap but the actual actions are quite very considerate.
However, what actual responsibility are the CEOs taking after hiring like crazy knowing fully well that the pandemic exuberance and stimulus wasn’t going to keep the recession away, only delay it? I’m sure competitive pressure was part of the reason for the overhiring but it’s still not the whole story.
What consequence do you think the CEO should face?
Nobody seems to be able to explain what they think this looks like. "You'll know it when you see it"?
"It's good that the company paid [nearly unfathomable severance benefits], but what ACCOUNTABILITY is there?"
My brother in Christ, the accountability is that the company is paying unfathomable severance benefits, watching their stock price tank, and getting dragged in the public sphere.
What would you like the CEO to do? Quit?
Yep
I've seen peers fired for much less.
The real answer is he doesn't take responsibility for anything other than doing his job exactly as expected and prioritizing short term profits for stakeholders.
Either quit, because you're a bad CEO, or do away with this "I'm taking responsibility" facade. Just be upfront with it. "I fired you to make a quick buck." I can at least respect the honesty there.
So if you took a huge bonus for all your leadership during the pandemic, I don't see why you shouldn't lose your job when your lack of leadership did the opposite. Either you were responsible or you weren't. You choose to "be in charge" only on the upside.
Why do you think Doordash/Shopify/Stripe "knew full well" that this boom wouldn't last?
The common thinking in SV and the world as a whole was that the pandemic accelerated the adoption of online services by about 5 years due to lockdowns and WFH. Unfortunately, the world reverted to the mean with regards to online shopping and ordering food pretty quickly in 2022, but this idea of accelerated-online was a reasonable one held by many.
Hell, if you looked at the numbers during those quarters at all these companies, the boards and shareholders would have fired the CEOs if they hadn't staffed up.
In the Doordash case, it's pretty god damn obvious the boom wouldn't last. DoorDash shot up because restaurant dining rooms were closed. As soon as restaurants started opening back up, it only makes sense that DoorDash's popularity would sink. While certainly some people will have decided "Hey, this is pretty convenient" and keep using them, I think it's absolutely bone-headed to think it wasn't going to eventually dip.
> Unfortunately, the world reverted to the mean with regards to online shopping and ordering food pretty quickly in 2022
Again, completely bone-headed to have not expected this to happen.
Here's a different way to look at it - a whole lot of people started using DD that would have never tried it during lockdowns. If those users liked the experience and convenience, then they'd stuck with it. DoorDash bet that a lot more people would stick around than actually did. DD was wrong, but I would argue that it wasn't a dumb bet given the stickiness of their product, and their excellence in execution up until that point.
There is only way to prove your credentials here. Show your returns in stock market from 2018 to 2022.
Else you are just a sad pathetic whiner who whines about CEOs all the time
Translated: The free money party from VCs is over. Across the board, it's OVER. Time for actual good businesses. No more spending $1.50 to make $0.60 and grow.
Party's over gents.
I do wonder how much of the shitty behavior we've seen in the past 10-15 years eventually falls back to "Whatever, we'll just get more money if we need it". I am optimistic of businesses that do their work and stay out of politics, that actually need to be competitive, that give a shit about customers because they really do need you.
My simple policy is: I will never stop talking trash, never work for, and avoid entirely any company that lays people off without the basic ethics of providing reasonable financial support. The companies providing two weeks should be shamed for eternity.
As long as enough people adopt this attitude it will effectively force companies to behave well, even if they don't want to. Tech workers on HN have particularly powerful influence in this regard and should utilize it.
(It'd be great if layoffs.fyi provided severance data to shame and reward the right companies.)
It's the biggest lose lose lose lose of all time. The only real winner is the government who collects tax on this net loss of a transaction.
This is also why direct delivery like a pizza shop or chinese place with its own delivery drivers works but the app delivery model doesn't.
I generally hate tipping culture but don't mind tipping. However with food delivery I'm LITERALLY paying more precisely for the delivery..
We were hungry piggies at a trough and didn't care what was in it we just ate.
>Most of our investments are paying off
I got rich, what about you? Oh? no? Well too bad.
>we’ve always been disciplined in how we have managed our business...operating expenses grew quickly
We were/are not disciplined we just fly by the seat of our pants.
Where does one learn disgusting corporate double speak like this? Its so common now it must be taught somewhere. Seeing a person write something like this with a straight face makes me understand why some people believe demons are a real thing.
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/30/doordash-lays-off-1250-emplo...
If you can lay off between 10% or more of the staff and expect to continue to operate unimpeded, then why didn't they do it sooner? I'm not counting Twitter, because while perhaps overstaffed, firing 50%+ is just nuts.
X and Y became unusually high in 2021. If we have an actual recession I'd expect more layoffs from the same companies.
He also bluntly stated that Twitter was not concerned with being a profitable business venture, as they were not capitalists but socialists (his words).
This was backed up by "Lead Client Partner" Alex Martinez, who stated that Twitter's focus on being ideologically driven led to them becoming unprofitable.
Unless Twitter's culture of unprofitability and dead weight employment programs is unique in SV, perhaps other companies in midst of layoffs have similar reasons as did the new Twitter owner.
* This is the most difficult change to COMPANY NAME HERE that I’ve had to announce in our almost n-year history. Today, we are reducing our corporate headcount by approximately n people and saying goodbye to many talented teammates.*
* While there is no great way to manage this process, we strive to treat each of you with respect and integrity. Each of you who is impacted will have the opportunity to speak to a leader this week.*
* While I want to focus today’s attention on our talented teammates who are departing, I did want to say a few words to the team that is staying and carrying the baton. While today’s news is painful, I continue to be very optimistic about our future and convinced of the importance of the role we can play in the world.*
I'm no supporter of PR speak. The CEO ranks seem to have no problem in finding their next gig. Some some receive ludicrous compensation even when the company does poorly.
I'm just not sure what is the desired outcome here? And how do we get there?
I agree with that part ^
Let me frame this more broadly. _How_ and _when_ should companies adapt? There are many ways, across many timescales.
I'll give a made up example, hopefully in a reasonable ballpark. A company needs to save $250M / year. Let's say there are three options under consideration, not mutually exclusive / can be blended:
Option A: Lay off 1% of 10,000 employees, saving $250M/year.
Option B: 15% across the board salary cuts, saving $250M/year.
Option C: Lower executive and VP-level compensation packages (salary, options, stock, deferred pay, etc), saving $250M.
Fairness in service of the company goals means that all viable options are given due consideration.
It is relatively easy for a CEO to do lay offs, even if other options (lowering their own comp) has better effects.
However, the specific context here is this quote from the CEO:
> we were not as rigorous as we should have been in managing our team growth. That’s on me.
If the CEO admits they made a mistake that led to the current layoffs then I think it would be admirable to take personal responsibility and accept some personal consequences as a result.
In other words, Tony hasn't gotten paid anything from this package, and may never will.
The package is described in the revised s1, and DoorDash is required to report it because they have to account for this package (probabilistically via Monte Carlo simulations) on their books.
https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001792789/8e0717f...
While it's true stock has dropped like a rock since then, it's impacted corporate employee comp as well so I don't agree that stock tanking exclusively impacted the CEO and hence he has paid for the bad decisions.
I'm not sure what people expect, "I will whip myself once for every employee I had to layoff to atone for overhiring during one of the biggest market bull run"?
It's especially weird considering that DoorDash is probably the company that had the best reason to overhire during a pandemic where delivery apps where being used a lot more than usual.
- have a portion of their stock allowance taken back and have to be re-earned based on performance
- have their other benefits and expense account cut and have to be re-earned based on performance
Basically have literally anything they benefit from have to be justified in any way as a reflection of the holistic performance of the company.
I like the sound of that! Joking aside, while physical harm may not fly I can imagine a scenario where it hits the CEOs' wallets either by losing stock options/grants or actual salary based on the number of employees they had to layoff. Because seriously, what does it even mean for the CEO to take responsibility when there are no actual consequences for them? If they're doing it to save the business (which they are) then just say that instead of saying they take responsibility as the latter is just virtue signaling.
I think many employees and investors care about employee retention. I don't know how much it factors in, but it is something.
The morality here is hard because the end results are largely driven by the system. Sure, there are some leaders who are particularly ill-suited for their jobs from the employee POV. Unfortunately some of those leaders serve their investors quite well.
If you point one finger, you'll quickly realize you might need many more to follow the interconnected trail of power.
Also let's not forget that so much of Silicon Valley's advantageous job market is linked to investor behavior, good and bad. My point? Sure, criticize these feaux-emotional layoff letters, just don't forget to look back to see the reality distortion field already in place when you joined that job.
What do you think people mean when they say they should take responsibility? Screaming "I declare responsibility!"?
It's an unwinnable game in the court of public opinion, so why do it? Because it signals to the underlings that the CEO is not expecting resignations from them.
Nothing prevents the CEO from resigning and gifting the golden parachute back to the company. You know, if they want to "take responsibility."
Maybe it's reasonable to expect a CEO to resign when layoffs happen during a market upswing but... during a market downturn like this it's kind of inevitable to see layoffs in a services-based company when services are the some of the easiest things for consumers to scale back on when belt-tightening occurs. A change in leadership would only further hurt the people staying in the company, IMO.
It’s more difficult but that desire to think critically and put in the effort is what makes the community here so much better than most sites.
I genuinely don't understand comments like this. Do you know who wrote the letter? Do you know how much they get paid?
Communications is a real skill with actual, real people that devote their careers to doing it well. And they get paid fairly, unless you know something I don't.
Nobody wants to write this letter, least of all the PR person who wrote it.
What would you have the CEO say, if not what they all say when this happens? "Our business isn't growing like we hoped now get fucked"?
> We sped up our hiring to catch up with our growth and started many new businesses in response to feedback from our audiences.
> Most of our investments are paying off, and while we’ve always been disciplined in how we have managed our business and operational metrics, we were not as rigorous as we should have been in managing our team growth
> While our business continues to grow fast, given how quickly we hired, our operating expenses – if left unabated – would continue to outgrow our revenue.
We grew too fast and revenue wasn't catching up. What other tangibles do you want? Would they somehow help the situation?
> What other tangibles do you want?
In short-form: you're gone, here's why, here's some money. The diction doesn't need to be apologetic. It's condescending.
It was a long letter b/c it provided a lot of information. The information you're asking for was wrapped up in 3 sentences. But I guess that was still too long?
If it's not apologetic, they get reamed for being too cold/unsympethetic.
Ie: does HR numbers need to be bolstered to handle it? How do you choose the 1200+ individuals?
* https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/termination/plantclosings
* https://edd.ca.gov/en/Jobs_and_Training/Layoff_Services_WARN
Doordash is making something like $700m in gross profit a quarter.
Just remember this when a company calls you a family.
[1] https://www.sec.gov/edgar/browse/?CIK=1792789&owner=exclude
There is no good reason that any third party should see more than a tiny tiny bit of operating money for the act of local drivers delivering local food from local restaurants to local customers.
They made a bit of money in the beginning, great. Time to move on to a fairer solution, given that it's trivially easy to replicate.
This is all very common; your likely problem is that you've bought into the "free market" fantasy; that somehow some meritorious competitor will rise above the others. Unfortunately, a free market like that requires more protections against e.g. "healthy competition" than we currently have.
That’s possible, of course, but I don’t think it’s the most plausible hypothesis without more evidence.
I don't care about legality, I care about fairness and obvious first principle things. Namely: everyone here knows it would be extremely cheap and easy to build a local uber/doordash whatever competitor. Lots of off the shelf software to do so.
I don't believe those companies deserve that money for doing relatively little work, especially today. This is generally in tune even with the principles of intellectual property, namely a temporary advantage.
No need anymore. Like a lot of services, local would be better.
Therefor you, the CEO, are resigning as well, right? Oh.
I think resignation would be the more cowardly move. The ceo dug a deep hole and at least 1k ppl lost their job. They have the responsibility of digging out of that hole before more ppl have to get laid off.
Resigning now would read to me like “hey guys, I know I made a mess here but, oh well, have fun dealing with it, good luck to the next guy”. Absolutely would not work with someone like that in future prospects
USA is really mean [to immigrants].
Also any reason to point out Chimpanzees have wars including patrolling land borders and recon missions :)
“Animals do it” is not a compelling argument for humans to participate in… well, anything. We know better!
Edit: Depending on the type of visa you're kicked out of the country much sooner than 60 days.
It is stupid, but it's apparently how Americans want it.
>We want smart skilled people to immigrate, not make it hard on them.
No, you want that. American voters don't seem to agree with you, or at least, not enough of them to make a change. Meanwhile, in other countries, smart skilled people have a relatively easy time immigrating. I'm in Japan and it couldn't get much easier for skilled professionals than this.
>Can you imagine living with the threat of being kicked out lingering over you? I would never feel secure or set down real roots in a country that might kick me out in 60 days.
Yeah, me neither. I'm not sure why people want to torture themselves by going to such a country. There are other places looking for skilled professionals, and that make the immigration process pretty painless and easy. People need to get over this mythical idea of the US being some great welcoming haven for immigrants; it really isn't these days.
If tech companies were in charge, the borders would be mostly open, especially (or perhaps only) for skilled professionals. Obviously, this isn't the case, so the corporate lobbyists are not the ones responsible for America's anti-skilled-immigrant policy, the American voters are. It doesn't get "fixed" because it's politically unpopular to do so.
Nobody's really campaigned on "the H1B system should be a byzantine nightmare" but somehow that's what we got.
Wrong. The issue is immigration, period. Trump's voters are too stupid to tell the difference between high- and low-skilled immigrants. They're nativists: they want only "real Americans" (i.e., white Christians) in America, and not more people who don't fit that mold.
>Nobody's really campaigned on "the H1B system should be a byzantine nightmare" but somehow that's what we got.
You got that because the system, just like any long-running software system that gets hacks upon hacks and never gets a proper refactor, turns into a jumbled mess over time. The system was never fixed because there is no political will to do so. Other countries have leaders that aren't always fighting with each other over every single thing, and decided together that they want more high-skilled immigrants to help their economies because they recognize the value such immigrants bring (they can look at America's 20th century history to see this, after all: look how many tech companies were started by immigrants, for instance), so they cleaned up their immigration policies to achieve this goal. That's how it is here in Japan: immigrating as a skilled worker is extremely easy. It wasn't like this 20 years ago at all. Since the leaders wanted it, and the people weren't opposed in any great way, it got done. America can't do that: the leaders are too divided, and the voters will punish anyone who tries. The Dems can try it, but the Reps will oppose it. Any Reps who don't will be voted out by the MAGAts. This is why things are the way they are in America.
You can’t own progress, you can’t own a society, and you definitely can’t own the concept of freedom (can’t believe that isn’t clear).
Your ancestors were thieves and oppressors, and took things that didn’t belong to them, which means the resulting better society isn’t yours or theirs to give or take. It’s free for whoever comes and helps grow it.
Honestly I wish we had some mechanism to cast out the entitled and let in the hopeful. People who believe as you do don’t deserve the gift of a progressive society.
You are a self-loathing, little person.
I personally think their statement has a high likelihood of being valid, at least in part, and only on a probabilistic basis.
Your response indicates they hit a nerve.
Funny though how money is still allowed to go anywhere in the world, while people are trapped in their own countries (for better or worse). Those with money can make more money, taking advantage of labor and other resources that can't move, often to the detriment of labor at home and the environment abroad.
Except that ~zero prehistoric people had access to the resources / skills / knowledge / etc. to actually travel really long distances.
And if they tried moving, at scale, into an already-inhabited area - well, whether or not the people in the destination qualified as a "state", I suspect that pretty universally resulted in violent push-back.
Merchants activity was often regulated, with passports for commercial activity and other customs controls. But not people. The opposite of today.
I acknowledge that there would be concerns like you mention, like violent push-back from the natives, same as there are today. Some peoples are raised in insular cultures, some are welcoming, sometimes migrations cause understandable problems, etc.
I don't think the way we do things today is optimal. We've changed things so that money is given more freedom than people. And too many people are taught that foreigners are scary.
[0] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/article/a-history-...
Society is a sacred part of what makes human beings human, it is why we are such a successful species. It requires cultural indoctrination and nationalism and things that definitely have an ugly side, but are also important to our function.
Your viewpoint basically assumes people have no loyalty, nationalism or responsibility to their society so they can be freely swapped with anybody.
Because you won't let them.
> and why can't I jump to another one?
You can. People do sometimes, if their birth family is bad enough.
Immigrants are, by definition, people with more loyalty to another country than to the one they were born in. Why deny them that?
We are successful as a species because we socialize, and there is no reason to limit that only to people who were born in specific geographic areas; that doesn’t make any sense.
It would make a lot more sense to group by shared goals and beliefs, with free movement as your goals and beliefs change.
Blind nationalistic loyalty is in no way a requirement for a successful human society.
Blind nationalism is bad, but absolutely no responsibility towards the society and the people that raised and support you is a crazy take. You're ideal would only work if we had 0 social programs and people were 100% responsible for providing for themselves and their loved ones, including education.
That just doesn't involve excluding others from that society. They deserve, just as much as you, to participate (and improve!) in your society as you do.
My country only exists because people came from many other societies and brought the best parts of those societies together to create my country and its culture. I want that for everyone, if they want it for themselves.
Especially given that the ability for global communication is newer than most existing countries.
Western societies all value liberty, and liberty is incompatible with exclusion based on geographic origin.
When women couldn't vote most men couldn't either. Just landholders. Slavery was an improvement on killing entire populations and authoritarian monarchy were better than savages like Genghis Khan. Whatever trouble you have with recent history go back.. things were worse.
What would happen if Canada decided to do this. Couldn't China send in 15 million people who vote to join Canada.
Huge red flags.
I guess all I can say is that I just don’t see how you can be so cruel to others like this.
Slavery is not a white/black issue although it might be for your location but the Arab slave trade was so massive and went on for so long it overshadows the trans Atlantic slave in size/scope and present day effects.
Things are not perfect today but they replaced things that were worse. That keeps happening. Why we vote for someone when we could introduce direct voting to me seems like a relic of the past that future generations will look negativity at.
* didn't buy my house, I inherited it,
* the people I inherited it from stole it from other people who
* also still live in the house somehow but just in the not-as-nice parts, and
* the house is gigantic and can easily fit literally billions more people without even coming close to exhausting the resources of the house, in fact
* bringing more people into the house would in fact substantially increase the house's shared ability to operate and provide for the members of the house.
So yeah, if we want to use this analogy in a meaningful way, nothing at all entitles me to my house!
Of course, one could be motivated to make such impassioned outpourings by a guilt regarding an ultimately comfortable existence, a fear of lacking virtue, and a thrill of proselytizing the nonbelievers, rather than a compulsion to achieve material socioeconomic outcomes for the postcolonial working class of the world. But I'm sure, dear interlocutor, you are motivated by nothing of the sort, and your intentions are of course, impregnable and wholly pure.
But it’s not, and I did buy this home with money rather than inherit it through theft, so instead of my home I will continue to vote and donate in ways that return the US to a pre-eugenics immigration policy.
This would give those refugees a much fairer chance at their own American dream, the one I was given because my ancestors oppressed and stole from the people who didn’t look like them.
It's the same way every other right exists. Property rights don't exist as a law of the universe. Rather, "the people" decided they like the stability of having "permanent" control over things so, as a group, decided to enforce those rights.
Similar situation is in US work ethic, where CEO is something akin to a feudal lord.
We even have laws about this, that's why there's a whole eviction process and it applies to people living with you as much as to normal tenants.
It's like giving a home plumber access to your yard and then you move but he still hang around your yard.
It was never intended as “come here permanently”.
You’re basically expecting something it never promised.
And no, that's not treating them as animals. But you are not exactly a proper host either.
If you're Indian, you're waiting way longer than that in the US.
However, I think if you're not from India/China/Mexico, the constraint is that getting an H-1B is lottery-bound, and then you'll get the GC easily.
None of that "give us your teeming useless masses from Africa" stuff.
Canada has policies that prefer high skilled immigrants coming for employment, and does not discriminate on where they come from.
So yeah, USA has more difficult for immigrants from big countries who want to contribute with their skills, while Canada welcomes those.
Honestly, I don't see why a country would prefer people to bring in all their distant cousins, rather than a bunch of highly skilled professionals who contribute a lot to the economy.
Isn't that exactly the same for the US ? If anything, because of the lottery, having a job offer is only gives you a 30% chance to actually get the visa. The USA (practically) has no path to permanent residency if you are Indian.
Even just getting to the job offer needs you to be on an F1-OPT which usually implies between $100-200k of college tuition just to apply for a job permit.
In that sense, the US needs both significant wealth & a job offer all while giving no pathway to permanent residency if you're born in the wrong country.
_______
For tech workers: Canada, the EU (through France, Ireland) and Australia are certainly easier to immigrate to. (wages are another question). Singapore & Dubai/UAE are popular destinations for working, though PRs can be awkward or impossible.
Even supposed harder to immigrate countries look easier, if you think about how every country needs you to be fluent in the local language. That everyone learns English is a testament to the political dominance of the USA & the UK over the last 300 years, and not a foregone conclusion.
I’m sympathetic, but it’s not really feasible for the US to accommodate everyone in the world and it’s not like the US owes it to anyone to just let anyone live there just because they’d like to.
They are asking for one or multiple of :
1. Use of lapsed green cards slots from other categories to be used for pending green cards.
2. Removal/Relaxing of the 7% rule, which uniquely inconveniences Indians. (If the idea is diversity, then in almost every way India is more diverse than arbitrarily formed culturally homogeneous tiny nations around the world.)
3. More humane work permit rules for those who have a PR in the waiting. Eg: relaxing the insane 60 day unemployment rule, reducing need to restamp visa incredibly often, allowing secondary sources of income or starting a startup.
4. More stable processing times and predictions on how long PR waiting time actually are. Current estimates vary from 20-100 years. That is simply unacceptable as a range.
Everybody loves diversity until it’s not them.
USA hands out a million green cards, but only 150k for employment based. For all the talks of immigrants bringing skills, we are really not preferred. They'll hand out 50k "diversity visas" by lottery, but God forbid more than 10k indians come into the country for their skills. And even the skills based visas barely prefer more skilled or in demand immigrants. That's what they call "abuse" by H1B/eb1 but also oppose any wage based or PhD preferring rules. Hypocrites hiding their true racist intentions.
USA hands out a million green cards every year. But only 150k are employment based. These are capped at 7% for each country. Only 10k out of a million green cards are assigned per year for Indian immigrants based on their employments.
For all the talk of meritocracy, looking beyond skin color, and valuing high skilled immigrants, USA definitely has policies that discriminate on national origin and actively encourage low skilled immigration (2 million unauthorized border crossings, policies allowing rampant "abuse" in h1b/eb1c visas whenever high skilled immigrants are concerned, constant opposition to making it easier for PhDs to get a green card or say putting wage rules on h1b/eb1,2,3).
The easier path to low skill admission is all about rural interests. We need bodies working farms, we packing meat, etc.
it’s not like the US owes it to anyone to just let anyone live there just because they’d like to
For the last couple of decades, a US university degree -> STEM job is the only way known legal way for an Indian to come to US on their own merit. I specify STEM, because none of the other professions get the STEM-OPT (3 tries at the low-probability h1b lottery vs 1 try for normal students), so most US employers blanket reject candidates in non-STEM professions.
That aside, I would agree that Canada is easier.
I love the US, lived there for a decade and would love to go back to California. But I'd never go on H-1B and I don't see anyone sponsoring me a green card again (returned mine seven years ago). So there's that.
TL;DR: The US is not easy to (legally) immigrate to compared to many other places.
Which other country goes "skilled immigrants RAH RAH!" but also imposes a random lottery instead of going on the basis of some kind of points/job offer based system? In which other country can you have a "manager" in your job title and then get a fast track to PR (L1-A) regardless of whether you are a Technical Account Manager 2 years out of school vs a Director with 20 years of experience?
Which other country imposes arbitrary moving dates for when you can get permanent residency? My understanding is every western democracy has a well defined path to permanent residency from a work visa. In Canada it is 0-3 years, in the EU it is 2-5 years (based on various factors). But once you tick those boxes you know how much time it will take. In the US, it really depends on USCIS's budget, the phase of the moon, which country you are born in, and how many green cards they decide to "waste" in any given year.
I think I've posted about this before, but yeah it's pretty ridiculous. My college girlfriend was a foreign exchange student from India, was here all through highschool, had a fullride to college via a (maybe government sponsored?) academic scholarship, graduated with her degree in electrical engineering 2nd in her class, and got a 6 figure job right of out college. She got kicked out about a year later because she didn't "win" the "lottery" and her visa wasn't renewed. What a sheer fucking waste of talent and time and money educating her just to boot her out of the country like that.
A literal week after she was forced to leave, I was talking to my uber driver who told me of her sister's boyfriend who was also an Indian emigrant, in and out of court/jail for petty theft and various levels of assault/battery, that somehow managed to secure his citizenship a couple of months prior. I know it's just one anecdote among literally thousands of possibly millions of cases, but what a fucking crazy world we live in today where that's how things can play out.
Being young and dumb and in love, I briefly floated the idea of marriage to secure her a greencard, but she talked me out of it and we ended up parting as friends when she left. Lost contact after she got married a few years later and moved to Australia with her new partner so she definitely landed okay and I am so extremely happy where I am today in life and with my current partner, but somedays my mind just wanders and I find myself reminiscing and wondering about what could've been.
Personal opinion: I think the point based systems are unfair.
For example, you get points by merely finishing college. Someone who didn’t have the opportunity to do college is not necessarily a low-skill worker neither are they less intelligent. A fairer thing will be to access people individually on their capabilities.
The US has things like the O1 visa which in my opinion is not random and more fair than most systems. But a random system is also valuable and necessary, so you need both.
In the absence of enough funding and employees at USCIS to be able to individually assess people, having some kind of cutoff criteria is better than a lottery. Don't let perfect be the enemy of the good.
So even though h1b folks pay into the system they cannot claim unemployment.
"An alien admitted or otherwise provided status in E-1, E-2, E-3, H-1B, H-1B1, L-1, O-1 or TN classification and his or her dependents shall not be considered to have failed to maintain nonimmigrant status solely on the basis of a cessation of the employment on which the alien's classification was based, for up to 60 consecutive days or until the end of the authorized validity period, whichever is shorter, once during each authorized validity period. DHS may eliminate or shorten this 60-day period as a matter of discretion. Unless otherwise authorized under 8 CFR 274a.12, the alien may not work during such a period."
This is also what I've been told by my company's lawyers.
The I-485 would have to be rejected, or, you lose your job after the I-485 is filed. Even then if you maintain yourself for 6 months after the I-485 was filed and your employer doesn't withdraw the approved I-140, you can find a new job under AC21; or get lucky with no interview request or RFE.
The pain point is that you won't be able to travel after I-485 filing until your Advanced Parole turns up and you'll depend on EADs if you want to change jobs under AC21.
You could have your Green Card before you even win the H1-B lottery.
If you get fired/company folds/etc. then I think the 60 days things holds.
It’s not that hard to stay for extended periods to either settle affairs or find another job.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/immigrati...
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/mapped-immigration-by-co...
Surprised to see it higher than Canada, U.S., and any major country in Europe...
USA is very friendly to immigrants - it is not a homogeneous society, and there is mutual respect of all religions, faiths, and languages. On contrast, I find many populations in EU to be actively hostile towards immigrants (in Germany one will have a difficult time not knowing German, for example).
As a result, it is a demand and supply problem. Compare how many are wanting to immigrate to, say, Germany, Austria or Switzerland, as opposed to US.
No, that couldn't be farther from the truth. I lived in Germany, and have friends there who still don't know German after 10+ years and never have any problems. If you work in a non-office industry you need German, but in office/tech workplaces nobody knows German.
Integrating into a society can mean many things but the FIRST step of that should be learning the local language to be able to talk to locals.
By the way, I’m American. Anyone who lives here for that long without learning English is what I’m talking about.
Clearly you can manage but I stand by my original opinion that I would not approve of hearing such a story from an immigrant.
I've been a tourist in Germany too. Basically, if the German person you're talking to is university-educated, they speak English, and probably extremely well. If they aren't (like the cashier at the supermarket), they probably don't speak English much at all.
For example, almost all Government locations in the Bay Area make every document available in several languages, including posted signs, forms etc.. And they have staff who can speak multiple languages. Also, many elders of Chinatown in San Francisco do not speak English, have spent almost all of their life here, yet are reasonably integrated into the American society (their kids generally know English).
[] Friendly needs explanation: US is friendly once you immigrate, not while you are immigrating. This is simply the demand-supply forces at play (too many people wanting to immigrate).
I may be mistaken, but I don't think any EU country makes an active and conscious effort to be "immigrant friendly".
Also, by "immigrant" I mean those who immigrate legally. American media clubs both legal immigrants and illegal aliens into the "immigrant" category, which can be hella confusing.
Maybe they just there to save some amount of money and go back to their country?
Not hard? Which foreign languages did you learn as an adult?
Way to cut out the part where I said “it’s not hard to learn a foreign language” and just drop the time scale. It’s of course a lot of work but it is NOT difficult with such an opportunity to absord and practice.
“That's not an excuse for not integrating into a culture with the bare minimum amount of effort. It is not hard to learn a language with 10 years of immersion.”
Is it hard to learn a language in a year? Yes! That is not what I said. I said that not making the modicum of effort required over 10 years of practice and immersion required to achieve functional fluency is not difficult. It simply is not. The passive input alone is absolutely enormous, and it’s the least you can do to a country that’s graciously accepted you into its own borders.
I'm sorry? Maybe more like "invited to prop up ponzi-pyramid of welfare state that the ageing local population can't sustain anymore"?
Do you truly believe someone not capable of speaking English is not being discriminated in the US? Seriously now?
To be rational, I work in academia and I shouldn't need to worry too much about job safety and/or visa applications, but I still semi-regularly woke up at night from nightmares of my visa expiring, not being renewed, suddenly being deported, or similar stuff.
I got my permanent residence earlier this year and all of it stopped. It gives you some sense of stability/security. It also makes one feel a bit more accepted in society by not needing to leave it if a work agreement (for whatever reason) ends.
I'm qualified to apply for a permanent residence in 4 months.
The worst thing is that if I get laid off, the 5-year clock resets, and it would waste almost 5 years.
Technically, it takes 45+ days to lay off someone. However, the application requires a letter from the employer to confirm I'm still needed at a job, which means the lay-off just a few days before the application could invalidate the application and has a potential to reset the clock.
It is happening so often. Almost everyday.