Why Did We Leave San Francisco (the U.S., Actually)?

26 Sep, 2024

This story starts a long time ago. My wife had just returned from Canada, had finished her PhD, and I was a Software Designer working for one of the founding companies of Silicon Valley, though I was based in Brazil.

In one of those unfortunate coincidences in life, I had the opportunity to relocate to the United States, while scientist was offered a postdoctoral research position in Canada—both at the same time.

After putting all the cards (offers, spreadsheets, etc.) on the table, my wife rejected the offer from the Canadian university, and I accepted the one in the U.S.

In Canada, scientist would have had a salary and health insurance, but I wouldn’t. Additionally, I wouldn’t be able to work as her dependent. In the U.S., however, we would both have everything—health insurance, the ability to work, study, and more.

In the U.S., my work visa was a dual-intent permit (L-1B), which meant it would allow us to work temporarily in the country or, if we chose, to keep renewing it and/or apply for a green card and citizenship later. It’s a special visa for international relocation for skilled workers, provided to companies that meet certain criteria, individuals with specific qualifications, and contracts that pay certain amounts.

One of the criteria for this work visa is that the person has to be working for the company for at least one year abroad. And since it’s a permit for international relocation, it requires the continuation of the contract to be able to keep it, either with the same company or a parent company of the one working abroad.

In Brazil, I was working with Embedded Systems and Virtualization. In the U.S., I moved to iOS development. I went from Enterprise to Consumer, from something hard to explain even to tech-savvy people, to something I could easily explain to my parents.

It was a move between two completely different Business Units¹, but I would still be working for the same company, which is what mattered for this visa.

Once in San Francisco, I worked with an amazing team. I often say it was the best experience I ever had in my career. The team culture, the methodology, and how united we were with excellent engineering retention made it special. I still keep in touch with some of the people I worked with there, which is something I can't really say about other companies I worked for.

Years later, everything was still going great, except for one tiny detail. The company had applied for a Green Card on my behalf a few times, but we never got it. Friends working for the same company in Texas managed to get their Green Cards in about two years. When a company applies for a Green Card on behalf of an employee, certain rules apply. One of these rules is that the company shouldn’t have had layoffs in that geographic region in the previous six months. In California, for a big company, that’s unlikely to happen. Every time we submitted the application for the Green Card, we got the documents and money back with the information that the company had layoffs during that period. During the Green Card attempts, the company applied for the H-1B visa, but that’s a lottery, and I wasn’t picked.

Other than that, all was fine. I could keep renewing my work visa until one of the Green Card requests was accepted and approved.

But every now and then, in the office, someone would mention something about our Business Unit being bought by a competitor, or us buying a competitor. I never gave much attention to these rumors, especially because it was either us buying or getting acquired, so it wasn’t very consistent or convincing.

Months went by, and we were all invited to an in-person All Hands meeting where something huge would be announced to all employees. The meeting was scheduled and happened on the very same morning, meaning something big was about to happen.

During the All Hands meeting, the acquisition of our Business Unit was announced. We were sold, not to a competitor, but to a partner company that was equally important to us as we were to them. During the session, it was said that all the details of the acquisition were already figured out, including immigration statuses and more.

Once the meeting was over, my manager held a meeting with our team. Honestly, he didn’t know much; it was a surprise to him, just as it was for all of us. But I used the opportunity to ask if they were aware that relocation visas are slightly different from more common types of work visas (e.g., H-1B). His answer was that everything was fine.

I knew it wasn’t. I’m familiar with the different types of visas, processes, implications, and everything. Also, I was the only non-North American on my team, and I knew that the immigration process is not something every person in a country is familiar with. If you ask me, I have no idea what the process for relocating to Brazil is. I get it.

scientist and I kept digging for more information and answers on government and law firm websites. In parallel, some of the preparations for the acquisition had already started. Employees were given two weeks to either stay working for the original company (if they found a new position inside a different Business Unit) or sign the contract with the new owners.

During these two weeks, we continued digging, and I finally got a message from the new owner's leadership: "Yes, your visa will require some work, which can only be done once you sign the new contract." I asked if they could put me in contact with the immigration lawyer before I signed the contract, just to chat, but they said they would only hire one if I signed the contract. And this was already at the end of the two-week period we had to find a new position inside the original company.

I signed the contract. I had no options. Without an employer, the only certainty was deportation.

It’s worth mentioning that the contract itself was a joke. No bonus or salary raise for two years. Health insurance, life insurance, and other benefits and perks were reduced to basic plans and amounts. No one was happy with the contracts.

A couple of days later—apparently government bureaucracy is only slow when they want it to be—I got a letter from the Department of Homeland Security stating that my new employer was incompatible with the visa I had and that I should figure it out with the USCIS (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services) or leave the country.

It was only after that point that the new owners decided to do something about it. They hired one of the best law firms in the U.S. for immigration matters. And to be honest, they really are one of the best—I have no complaints about the firm.

The law firm built a case and submitted it to the USCIS, attempting to transfer my permit between companies. Before building the case, I had a couple of meetings with the team of lawyers, as did my manager.

A month passed, and another letter arrived—a rejection. It stated that the visa couldn’t be transferred. They literally cited segments of the law that I had already forwarded to the new owners after the acquisition was announced. In short, it said that it’s a visa for international relocation, and one of the key aspects is that, while on American soil, I should be working for the same company, parent, or subsidiary of the company that relocated me.

Since the acquisition was announced, our nights became progressively worse. After that last letter, we started skipping nights of sleep. We were making plans A, B, C, D, E, deciding what to take with us in case we had to leave the country, gathering documents for our cat, deciding what to do with bank account, etc. It became virtually impossible to sleep—our minds wouldn’t stop racing.

The new company and its owners would say anything to pretend things were under control. Every week, they would “send me” to a different country as a plan B—UK, Australia, Germany, and others. For the UK, there was an immigration process which takes a long time. For other countries, they didn’t even have a legal entity to justify sending me there. They were completely lost, and that only made me more anxious.

The truth is, acquisitions like this don’t happen overnight. There’s a long process behind closed doors for at least a year before it becomes public. This means that the Business Unit, the original company, and the new owners had enough time to start thinking about the people who would be affected.

During the first few months of the acquisition, the new owners were frequently seen in our San Francisco office. During one of their visits, I asked to speak with one of them. They were aware of the entire situation—they were in all the email threads discussing this topic—and I gave them feedback that my wife and I were anxious about the whole situation. I suggested that maybe the process should have started earlier, or that perhaps they could have given me more time before asking me to sign the contract, just in case it failed and I could find another position within the original company. Their response was, "No one made you sign the contract and work with us. This is a free country; this is America." I had never felt so humiliated in my life. That day, I felt powerless, as if my life was owned by that company.

That was the day I knew I wouldn’t stay there anymore, even if I managed to get the visa transferred. That’s the day we decided we would use all the money we had, if necessary, to leave the U.S.

The law firm started a new case, a much bigger one this time. They interviewed co-workers, included information from our apps in the App Store, revenue figures for our Business Unit, and for my team alone (which was a fraction of the entire Business Unit but still responsible for 40% of its revenue). They also included patents I had submitted, patents granted, and much more. In this new case, the amount paid by the new owners for the Business Unit included the fact that specific individuals (including me, a Senior Software Designer) were part of the reason to justify the acquisition amount.

The process of building the new case took a few months, and during that time, we couldn’t sleep. We didn’t know if we were legal in the country, if I would have to return the salary I was receiving, or if we would have to leave the country on short notice.

This time, the letter we received wasn’t addressed directly to me, but to the lawyers and the new owners. And this time, the result was different: they managed to transfer an untransferable visa between companies.

But for me, it was too late. After six months of uncertainty, depending on a company to keep us in the country was no longer an option. By that point, my manager and most of my co-workers had moved on to competitors or other companies. I even had an interview with the competitor's VP, but I would have had to go back to Brazil, work from there for a year or two, and then reapply for the international relocation visa. I didn’t want to go through all of that again. The way the entire process was handled, the whole “this is a free country” speech, and the lack of bonuses and salary raises for two years wouldn’t work for me. And I would still be under their control. They knew I wouldn’t be able to go anywhere because the visa couldn’t be transferred. I wouldn’t be able to negotiate a salary or promotion, and I would be ignored if I asked for one. I was in their hands, and I knew they would never apply for a Green Card on my behalf, as doing so would free me from their control.

At that point, staying was no longer an option. Which means staying in San Francisco and in the U.S. was no longer an option either.

On the day I spoke with one of the new owners (the “free country” speech), my wife and I talked about what had happened and decided I should apply to a company in Europe. We considered different countries, weighed the pros and cons, and ultimately decided on Germany for a number of reasons.

I don’t like applying to more than one company at a time since technical interviews often require coding challenges that need to be submitted within a few days or a week. So, I picked just one company to try. In hindsight, it was risky. Maybe I should have tried two or three at the same time to improve my chances. But luckily, it worked out.

After a week of interviews and another week for a coding challenge submission, I got an offer to relocate to Germany. And best of all, they would pay for our relocation.

With the contract signed, the process to move to Germany took about two weeks, including the interview at the consulate and getting our passports back with the visa stamps. We moved to Germany with a Blue Card, which is a special type of work visa given to companies of certain sizes and for salaries above certain amounts.

The Blue Card requires renewal but doesn’t limit the holder to working for a specific company. It’s possible to move freely. The main limitation is that the person needs to be employed to keep the visa. In the case of a layoff or firing, the person has up to three months to find a new employer. That’s the main limitation.

Funny enough, to this day, the team and product I worked on in San Francisco were probably the best I ever worked on, but those are also the worst companies I ever worked for.

The day I quit that job was one of the best days of my life. They asked why I was quitting after all the effort we had put into transferring the visa. To this day, I don’t know if I said what was on my mind. My adrenaline was too high for me to remember everything I said that day, so I might have said I was quitting because “it’s a free country.” But I honestly don’t remember, and part of me hopes that I did say it.

So why post this now? It’s not uncommon for people to ask us why we left the U.S., and we usually give them an abridged version of the story. This is the full version. Also because last week was special, as we received our European papers, which means we can live anywhere in Europe and do whatever kind of work we want. Free. For real.

Leaving the U.S. was bumpy. We had to rush to sell and donate things, pack, deal with the apartment, finances, pre-doing taxes (yes, this exists and there’s no app for it), and more. But it turned out to be a great move for us. If we hadn’t moved to Germany, scientist and I probably wouldn’t have had our tinyScientist.

#handpick #work