13 ms·
Need job to save my relationship
Dear HNers
I have been reading HN for a while and I've never thought I would reach out to this community for this reason. Guess what, I want to save my relationship, and I'm sure you guys can help me. Here's the problem: my girlfriend can't find a job.
She is very smart (not only because I say she is, she is actually really smart) and has all qualities to be doing awesome work in a startup as a multi-hat talent. She has been a product manager in the valley for a couple years and has project management experience, well appreciated by customers. She is also perfectly trilingual and has a real gift for communication.
But, it's not that simple. She is not a US citizen. She needs a visa to work, and the more we try to understand why she doesn't get any traction after the usual first round of interviews, the more we are convinced that doors close automatically when HR people get to know that they will have to transfer her H1-B visa.
I have been trying to help her myself with my network of friends and acquaintances, but since I'm not particularly well connected, I wasn't able to help in promoting her search. So this is my best bet, probably the last one from my side before she has to abandon her job search and leave the SF Bay Area to return to her country, forgetting me, her nerdy boyfriend who thinks he's gonna "save" her by posting on hacker news. Anyways, I can't believe there are no companies around San Francisco who wouldn't benefit from a person like her to manage in an elegant fashion things related to product / project / customer / partner management.
Any piece or help or advice is appreciated. Thanks!
PS: If you guys feel like reaching out privately I have setup this gmail that I'll be monitoring: jean.felkerat@gmail.com
- goldfeld 14y agoHow does one go about looking for an employer who will be able to arrange such a visa? I'm not from the US neither do I live there, but would like to (I'm a Junior Developer).
- anjo 14y agosend your resume to work@anametrix.com and i will take a look at it.
- goldfeld 14y agoThanks, I'm finishing up a little project where I'm designing on top of developing front and backend, so I'll contact you within a few days when I have it up as it's coming together rather nicely and will serve as a latest work sample.
- johnny22 14y agoyou might want to repost this at a different time. perhaps 8-10 hours from now if you want to get better visibility.
- anirugu 14y agoI am happy to see this post. I am from India. I have no work for now and ready to start working on JS,Html,css & PHP kind of work. I am free from last September where last time I worked on a E-Commerce project. I have previously worked on ASP.NET MVC. Made more then dozen of site and all of them still alive on internet with a great reputation. These days I focus on Wordpress Administration, JS framework. bootstrap & jQuery development. This is all I love to work with. I do work from Home (Remotely). I work on low price that's why people love to got better service at great price. I have many clients that are return with few more. This will make my service game better. But really I want to do something innovative. Making my own project never paid me something from #1 days. I have no good funding for my own family so I can't rely on my personal project. Right now, I am looking for someone who love to get developer work Remotely. It's kind of work like tell in Night and got work done in Morning when you come from sleep and see that work is done whatever you want. Is this not amazing. That's all Why people love it. Please contact me anirugu@gmail.com for get some cool response. Thanks Gupta Anirudha F1beta
- lexarchy 14y agoYou could always marry her: http://www.immihelp.com/greencard/familybasedimmigration/persons-in-us.html http://www.immihelp.com/greencard/familybasedimmigration/per...
- MysticFear 14y agoMarry her
- punterguy 14y agoThis is a good idea.
- nailer 14y agoNo it's not. Regardless of how well you establish the ground rules, it's socially unacceptable which puts huge pressure on both people to lie about their relationship every time they're asked in the new country. If you split up, even if its as friends, undoing a marriage is a lot more difficult than undoing a regular unmarked relationship.
- trdtaylor 14y agoApply to m-soft, google, and any other company on the top 100 list of H1-B sponsors.
- config_yml 14y agohere's that list: http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2012-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2012-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx
- Xion 14y agoWholesale this. Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, etc. will have no problems dealing with visa shenanigans if you get an offer from them.
- kgc 14y agoYou have options: 1. Marriage 2. She can apply to a large company. The visa issue isn't even a speed bump. 3. Long distance relationship
- supo 14y agoThere is more: 4. Leave the country with her!
- polemic 14y ago+1 there's lot's of great stuff happening all over the world, don't limit yourself =D
- nXqd 14y ago+1 yes yes :D
- onemorepassword 14y agoNo joke. Most of the world is more open to immigrants these days. The US seems to have completely forgotten its roots.
- troels 14y agoJust pray she's not from an EU country then ..
- okonomiyaki3000 14y agoDon't necessarily have to go back to her country.
- thisone 14y agodepending on their living circumstances, they'd have a much easier time in the EU than the US. In the EU "human rights" extends to the right to respect for private and family life[1], meaning that there are much different rules on unmarried partners than in the US. [1]: http://echr.coe.int/NR/rdonlyres/77A6BD48-CD95-4CFF-BAB4-ECB974C5BD15/0/DG2ENHRHAND012003.pdf http://echr.coe.int/NR/rdonlyres/77A6BD48-CD95-4CFF-BAB4-ECB...
- maxcan 14y agoif you love it put a ring it. first, get yourself a prenup. communal property laws can be.. interesting.
- ScottBurson 14y ago"It"? What is this "it"? If you think of your betrothed as an "it" I would suggest you're not ready to marry anyone. (I know, this meme is out there, but you've given me an opportunity to protest it, so I am.)
- _lex 14y agoSounds like you're speaking from personal experience. My startup is working to solve this problem, and I'd love to chat with you. Drop me a line - lexsebro@stanford.edu
- maxcan 14y agoemailed you
- traintefes 14y agoWell, good luck with a new job [I'm sure you will get a job for your GF :D)
- wakjob 14y agoGO HOME JOB ROBBERS. TITLE 8, SECTION 1182 - INADMISSIBLE ALIENS says you are BOTH illegals and need to go home right now. We have smart US citizens living in tents and smart US citizen PhDs working at Staples. GO HOME NOW You people have destroyed 28 million US jobs since 1998 and now there are not enough jobs to go around, are there? In 1998 the USA had FULL EMPLOYMENT. That was before the dark times, before the poojoos. We were here first and built this place and we're citizens so it's you who have to leave. You were only supposed to be here temporarily anyway and go home in 2002. Why are you still here? I hear there is great demand for someone in India to start toilet factories.
- goldfeld 14y agoAnd as for all the startups founded by Aliens creating jobs and fueling the economy, including Google?
- wakjob 14y agoSergei Brin emigrated at age 3, grew up here, was born here, and educated here. He's more American than foreign. And Larry Page was born here. And it's a well known fact Google was funded by CIA. It wasn't just an accident. Can you name any companies founded ENTIRELY by Indians that are profitable and creating jobs? Didn't think so. And you forgot all the companies they destroyed including Bell Labs and Sun: Companies ruined or almost ruined by imported Indian labor (US) Adaptec - Indian CEO Subramanian Sundaresh fired. AIG (signed outsourcing deal in 2007 in Europe with Accenture Indian frauds, collapsed in 2009) AirBus (Qantas plane plunged 650 feet injuring passengers when its computer system written by India disengaged the auto-pilot). Apple - R&D CLOSED in India in 2006. Australia's National Australia Bank (Outsourced jobs to India in 2007, nationwide ATM and account failure in late 2010). Bell Labs (Arun Netravalli took over, closed, turned into a shopping mall) Boeing Dreamliner ES software (written by HCL, banned by FAA) Bristol-Myers-Squibb (Trade Secrets and documents stolen in U.S. by Indian national guest worker) Caymas - Startup run by Indian CEO, French director of dev, Chinese tech lead. Closed after 5 years of sucking VC out of America. Caterpillar misses earnings a mere 4 months after outsourcing to India, Inc. Circuit City - Outsourced all IT to Indian-run IBM and went bankrupt shortly thereafter. ComAir crew system run by 100% Indian IT workers caused the 12/25/05 U.S. airport shutdown when they used a short int instead of a long int Deloitte - 2010 - this Indian-packed consulting company is being sued under RICO fraud charges by Marin Country, California for a failed solution. Dell - call center (closed in India) Delta call centers (closed in India) Fannie Mae - Hired large numbers of Indians, had to be bailed out. Indian logic bomb creator found guilty. GM - Was booming in 2006, signed $300 million outsourcing deal with Wipro that same year, went bankrupt 3 years later HSBC ATMs (software taken over by Indians, failed in 2006) Intel Whitefield processor project (cancelled, Indian staff canned) Lehman (Spectramind software bought by Wipro, ruined, trashed by Indian programmers) Medicare - Defrauded by Indian national doctor Arun Sharma & wife in the U.S. Microsoft - Employs over 35,000 H-1Bs. Stock used to be $100. Today it's lucky to be over $25. Not to mention that Vista thing. MIT Media Lab Asia (canceled) PeopleSoft (Taken over by Indians in 2000, collapsed). PepsiCo - Slides from #1 to #3 during Indian CEO Indra Nooyi' watch. Polycom - Former senior executive Sunil Bhalla charged with insider trading. Qantas - See AirBus above Quark (Alukah Kamar CEO, fired, lost 60% of its customers to Adobe because Indian-written QuarkExpress 6 was a failure) Rolls Royce (Sent aircraft engine work to India in 2006, engines delayed for Boeing 787, and failed on at least 2 Quantas planes in 2010, cost Rolls $500m). SAP - Same as Deloitte above in 2010. Skype (Madhu Yarlagadda fired) State of Indiana $867 million FAILED IBM project, IBM being sued State of Texas failed IBM project. Sun Micro (Taken over by Indian and Chinese workers in 2001, collapsed, had to be sold off to Oracle). UK's NHS outsourced numerous jobs including health records to India in mid-2000 resulting in $26 billion over budget. Union Bank of California - Cancelled Finacle project run by India's InfoSys in 2011. United - call center (closed in India) Victorian Order of Nurses, Canada (Payroll system screwed up by SAP/IBM in mid-2011) Virgin Atlantic (software written in India caused cloud IT failure) World Bank (Indian fraudsters BANNED for 3 years because they stole data).
- wpietri 14y agoAt my last startup we looked at trying to get H1-B visas for engineers. I forget the details, but the basic answer was: impossible. Or, rather, too expensive, difficult, and slow to be a useful option in a startup context. (FWIW, E3 visas, which are limited to Australians, were supposed to be much easier.) As others suggest, I think your best option is to find an established company, one for whom getting visas is a well-established process. Good luck!
- mazenne 14y agoyes we got to the same conclusions. wise advice. thanks !
- djt 14y agoSome thoughts: 1. Would be good if you had a HN account before now. People are more likely to give help if you have given others help in the past. It gives them confidence that you're legit too. 2. What is your girlfriends name? What companies has she worked for? What jobs titles has she had? 3. If you're a US citizen then consider marriage if you are serious about your relationship or consider going to her country if you're not sure yet. 4. Submit her resume or her HN name so people can check out her past experience. 5. I googled your name and gmail and came up with no hits. This is one of those times when having a blog, github etc would be a good thing. 6. Ask her to talk to her old workmates and managers, they are the best source of leads for a job, especially if they know people in big companies that work with Visa issues all the time. Good luck!
- mazenne 14y agoThanks for your constructive feedback. 1. I had no HN account in the past, I have been following this community for a while but never posted anything. I don't have a blog neither and the email address I added was created for the purpose of this post only so I didn't have to post my regular email address publicly. The name on this address is fake. 2. In the past she has held the titles of Senior Business Analyst and Marketing Manager. 3. I am not a US citizen and marriage for a visa is IMHO a direct way to shoot ourselves in the feet. 5. I'm not a blogger. Just a regular engineer with no blog, and no open source contribs. 6. She did all this. She got some help, obviously not enough to land a job.. Thanks for your suggestions!
- drunky 14y agoAsian Massage Parlor?
- benzofuran 14y agoIf she's European, she can likely overstay without too much of an issue and the odds of her getting asked are slim to nil at most smaller companies
- thisone 14y agoI don't think people should be encouraged to break immigration law. People would say similar things to me: "such and such group does it and they never get deported, why don't you?" not realising that what they're advising me to do is risk my family and livelihood based on their unfounded (and often slightly racist) assumptions.
- drunky 14y agoAsian Massage Parlor?
- treyguinn 14y agoDon't marry for a visa. As an American with an English wife and having lived as an expat for the past 8 years in expat communities - marring for a visa is a likely to ruin the relationship. One person will always think it is for love and the other for the visa, and this imbalance is hard to overcome.
- mazenne 14y agototally agree.
- ignaciogiri 14y agoSame happened to me. But in my case I was the non US citizen boyfriend. You know what happened? I'm back to my country, shes got a new guy, I'm still alone. Move on. Life is hard. Nevertheless, I'm still looking for a H1-B job for myself. Good luck anyway, marry her!
- mazenne 14y agogood luck to you too!
- xijuan 14y agoHow much do you love her? How important do you think the relationship is for you? How much do you both value this relationship? Think about those questions..and think about if you should marry her...
- wakjob 14y agoHow many abortions has she had? That might have something to do with it.
- benzesandbetter 14y agoI think you need to consider more options, most likely some further outside of your comfort zone. Are you madly in love with this woman? If so, be willing to consider leaving your job, and going to live in another country where you can both get residency status. It may also be an option for you two to spend blocks of time in each others countries so that you stay under the visa-free travel requirements. For example, my girlfriend is from a Schengen country and I'm a California native. We can both spend 90 days out of every 6 months in each others' country, and do a bit of travel together in other countries. This has enabled us to let the relationship progress at a natural pace, and not rush into marriage for visa/citizenship reasons. I think that's really important. Some years ago I was dating a woman from New Caledonia whose ability to stay legally in the US was approaching a deadline. She suggested marriage as a workaround, but it really made me doubt the sincerity of her intentions. If you're totally and completely in love with this woman, then you'll find a way. Asking around on HN can be one part of that, but more likely, you'll need to step your game up, hustle, maybe work some extra projects to cover travel/legal expenses, and possibly make some real sacrifices. If you love her with a real fire inside you, then the most important thing to both of you will be that you two are together and you'll find/make a way. Sounds like it's time for you to go hard in the paint. Good luck.