On the flip side

This week has been abundant with situations making one pay close attention to alternative viewpoints on a situation. Multiple facets of the same happening are hardly a revelation in our present post-modern culture but it never ceases to amuse me to observe the other side of the coin.

To begin with, the UK employment opportunity I mentioned before briefly appeared to have vanished in a highly spectacular manner. I was kindly informed that the hiring company and the bodyshop I joined last month in order to obtain an H1B visa had an agreement not to inveigle each others employees. Never mind employment at will or the fierce competition among local companies for experienced people. That tiny-scale attempt to reenact the infamous MS-Google bouts was so laughable that it took just an appeal to the common sense of a higher-level manager to resolve. Again, the old wisdom suggesting to evade dealing with 'ours' turned out to be true for the 1001th time.

Nevertheless, this glimmering British opportunity is making me think hard about my orthodox strategy. Historically, I have been strongly inclined to consider exclusively immigration to the US. The unexpected possibility to join a venerable financial institution and be virtually guaranteed permanent residence in a few years is something totally new to me. Obviously nothing serious can be decided until I have a tangible offer but I foresee a stunningly difficult choice ahead.

As if it had been carefully planned exactly this week one of the people deserted the company after only 3 months of employment in the US. Allegedly, he undertook the escape in a rather dirty way and with complete disregard for the contract and some costly perks provided to him upon arrival. It was highly instructive to observe diverse reactions to this event but in general the occurrence sent a mixed message to other would-be H1B holders. The fact that the company does not care about people breaching the contract hints that either the contract is somehow flawed and unenforceable or the adherence to it is just for pussies. In both cases I feel myself substantially uncertain because this is exactly a situation for which I despise this country so much - only the people who play by the rules are penalized and usually laughed at.

Another amusement of the week was conducting an interview with a potential colleague. The guy is a system architect in the local HP office. His CV featured a few warning signs such as experience in almost all the imaginable technical areas (pretty much the style the Indians are notoriously famous for) from mySQL/Oracle/SQLServer to multithreading and CMMI. Naturally, I expected an amicable discussion with a fellow architect and even hoped to learn something new from such an experienced person. What a disappointment. The dude was vague in basically all the technical areas from isolation levels supported by Oracle to architectural patterns. Later I was told he wanted $3K+ ... In a sense, he showed the habit common among many local programmers, namely not to prepare for an interview and state in one's CV more knowledge and experience than can be immediately proven.

Lessons learned? Do not trust, be persistent and ask for more