Microsoft has long since had offices in Vancouver. It's only a few hours drive from headquarters down in Redmond. And another choice for employees that lose the H1B lottery.
Big companies seem to care less, so are one option. For example, Microsoft hires plenty of people who didn't live in the Seattle area prior to being hired.
Telling 10,000 employees to move to Redmond isn't particularly practical or likely. Particularly when they could likely find jobs with other Silicon Valley companies instead.
My sister recently received a job offer from Microsoft at their Mountain View office. She will be moving there for the entire summer. I will let you know what the process involves. I am Canadian, and therefore concerned about this myself. (here's my email: jawad.exe@gmail.com)
Why would they have to stop working for Microsoft?
Microsoft is a large, multi-national corporation. What better way to say "We still support these people" than, where possible, helping to relocate them to an office in their country of origin? Not every country, or city, has a Microsoft office, but Microsoft isn't exclusively in Redmond, either.
This issue should not be simplified to "You have to go back." Even if it were, that would still leave a lot of creative solutions for how Microsoft (and other large, wealthy corporations) could take care of the employees they claim to care so much about, regardless of where they live.
For many companies, cost is not as much a factor as being able to attract top talent, and not fragmenting their offices too much by spreading teams across them.
Many people in smaller metro areas that you mentioned are able to relocate to the West Coast, and many people actually do. The are no visa or immigration issues for them.
If the choice for a new location is between Vancouver and Mississippi, literally anyone in the world can work in Vancouver easily, expanding their potential hiring talent pool. Whereas a Mississippi office only attracts people that are unwilling to relocate to the bigger metro areas within the US. Any new location in the US has to deal with these new immigration issues if they don't find an exact match or if they have to hire a foreign born grad from one of the schools you mentioned. Vancouver does not have these issues.
Eh, happens even to the best companies in US. Microsoft employment agreement stipulates that if you quit earlier than one year, you have to pay back all relocation expenses (visas, temporary housing, etc). Easily tens of thousands of dollars.
That isn't so bad per se. It's pretty common at MSFT from experience, sometimes it helps. But if you are connected in the Seattle area/have a mortgage and such it can def see annoying then to leave.
When I make this argument to tech companies in Vancouver (where typically compensation is an 80% discount from right across the border in Seattle), the response is usually that I can move if I want to.
Couldn't she just have gone and become CEO at a different company if she wanted to make more, like the rest of us do?
Microsoft definitely still did as of late 2017, when I was still there. You're absolutely right, it was easier to just get a job elsewhere and that was what I did! Hah. I'm trying to avoid that here, because I like the company, just hoping to work on a different product.
Is a transfer interview not common elsewhere? Anyone know if Amazon or Google requires something like that?
That's right. When I worked there, I had a colleague planning to move away from Seattle. Our director wouldn't allow remote work, so this person switched teams into an official Virtual location under a director that would.
I'm a full-stack developer looking to move permanently from Portland, OR to Vancouver, BC. I am curious how people here handled this type of move and have some specific questions.
1. Should I expect a Canadian company to pay for my relocation, or is this hit or miss depending on the company?
2. Were there many unforeseen costs involved throughout your move? How expensive was the move, overall?
3. Did you hire a relocation company to assist with the move or handle all details yourself? If you had a good experience with a relocation company, can you leave a recommendation?
it sounds to me that the relocation money never passes through the employee's hands - microsoft probably deals with relocation vendors directly (most likely have long-standing relationships), and it is not part of your compensation. it's an expense that you may or may not choose to incur, with stipulations.
This year we finally moved to the US after 2 years of Covid-induced delays. We moved to Seattle because it's where my team is based.
I'm far from impressed. The housing market is so inaccessible that we had to rent a house about 1 hour commute from the office. I have hardly visited the offices a handful of times since we moved, and every time there is maybe 1 or 2 people there. Also this spring seems to be one of the wettest and coldest in recent memory.
So high prices, dreadful weather and no value from visiting the office is making us very seriously consider moving to a southern state. I have already brought this up and my manager is ok with me going fully remote and coming to the office on an as-needed basis. For anyone who has no roots or reason to stay here sounds like a no brainer.
There is a cost-benefit tradeoff to every decision. Analyse the tradeoff, and make your decision.
Less glibly, it might be worthwhile to target companies who already exist in SV/Seattle. I find it hard to believe that Facebook (the example given in the article) forced its engineers to accept a 50% pay cut to go to the Vancouver office.
It usually prevents the business' core from going away (if Microsoft moves the headquarter to London or Seattle for instance). The point would be less to preserve market value than jobs, technical expertise and surrounding ecosystem.
Not that I strongly agree with this line of thinking, I'm unopiniated at best.
Easy, above fairly junior level you're either told to be in one of the big offices at the point of joining or they'll hire you then crank up the pressure to move.
Places like the Seattle office exist mainly to get people in the company, then to drag the ones they like further south. Many of the rest will effectively be being paid to not work at MS or Amazon.
There's a good reason I described MV as a world apart.
From what I've seen, most companies are pretty stubborn about remaining in those coastal cities. As long as they can keep finding employees there, they don't have too much incentive to move to better areas with greater supply of labor. Instead, they'll just lobby congress for more H1Bs.
1st the Lure: bonu$ with first month check + $10K+ in relo
2nd the Hook: 6 month blushing period
3rd the Sinker: layoff old team, give threatening overtures and about lost trust and missed deliveries
Meanwhile everyone is in a 12-month lease, certainly spent the relocation, and definitely not in the mood to relocate again. Anyone that dipped into that bonus is really hooked, anyone that didn't is annoyed at the thought of giving up their signing bonus to cover relocation which would make the whole venture a wash.
So yeah, the further away from Seattle recruits are from the better. Luckily Seattle's geographic location enhances this. Ironically, an east coast HQ2 would probably weaken this trapping mechanism for all but foreign labor who are verily fucked no matter what thanks to visa,H1B,L1 fun.
reply