I feel, above all, numb. I think I should be feeling angry and fearful, but I can't actually focus my mind very well.
I rarely post, so I'll bluntly try to express what I mean to say here, and hopefully one of my fellow board members will ask me questions that allow me to dig up the clarity I need right now.
I can feel my emotions coming back.
I feel terrified. I am here on an H1-B visa. This means that I became an "illegal alien" as of Friday last week, 17:54. Technically according to "the law", I was supposed to leave the country immediately, but apparently "the USCIS" gives ten days grace, after which you are "out of status" and they are "free" to "deport" you, by which they mean forcibly put you in a cage, and send you back to your country of origin, and if you have anything here, shit, too bad, fuck you, you lost it all.
Which I do. I have a couple of "things" here that I love beyond their material value. My dream girlfriend, who called into the Christmas Sunday show with me just 35 days ago. My dream car I always wanted to have, that has taken me places I can't even count. My gold, savings that I will surely get robbed of, as soon as I land on my corrupt country. All my material possessions, that cost me more than five thousand dollars to acquire, incrementally, building "a life away from home" for myself.
I am allegedly "safe" from deportation. I live in a "haven city", where "police" have explicitly refused to kidnap people solely on the basis of their "visa status". That doesn't mean I won't get "deported" -- it just means I am a virtual prisoner of this city. I can't go anywhere else, I can't afford to be stopped by the police, I am literally a traffic ticket away from being "deported", since jail means record cross-check, and record cross-check means "get the fuck out, we aren't going to give you a chance to sell your shit off". This ordeal has put into perspective for me how unbreakable of a jail we are all living in.
I can't find a job, not unless someone is willing to sponsor me for a visa (which means waiting to enjoy my services until I fly back to my country of origin, waiting there until they concede the visa, and then coming back after a few weeks). I could have found another job, if my previous employer hadn't fired me "on the spot". Now, I have to find an employer, all the while my bank accounts dwindle rapidly. I have five figures in my bank account, and that will shortly turn into four, and that will shortly turn into three, and that will shortly turn into hunger and "living" on the streets or in the back seat of my car, as I have seen so many Americans "live" here in this city. I say "shortly" because inflation means I can't buy any real food without spending hundreds of dollars.
Most importantly, I have come to terms with the all-encompassing hypocrisy of "American" labor life. Trust me when I say this, I have never seen, I couldn't possibly, rationally conceive how hypocrisy can profoundly affect and ruin people's lives until I lived it. I didn't believe it when American citizens told me "Do whatever you want, but you must shut up, at all costs, never tell people what you really think, never say the truth, just lie." but now I understand why they told me that.
The story begins with me joining a company in the city I live in now. A company that bills itself as a revolutionary way to do X, and sells itself very hard to its employees, with happy-go-lucky Monday meetings where the progress of the company is portrayed, and meaningless / valueless prizes are handed out to "everyone that has done good".
Forgive me, but I am now going to sound like the typical "disgruntled employee". Forgive me, because this is the observable truth.
From the day I joined the company, I could sense that I wasn't wanted there. I went to the offices one day before H.R. (statists par excellence) had done my paperwork, as they had promised they would.
I was promised a tour de force through all of the company's teams, after which I could choose what team to join. I joined the company, there wasn't even a clear idea of what the teams were, and of course I was never given the tour, much less a choice to join any team. The team I would have liked to join, didn't even exist when I joined the company.
The first week I was assigned a task to fix a serious problem with a key piece of software that handles their infrastructure. I fixed it in the very same week, using a technique that my boss at the time had recommended against. This fix saved them a shit-ton of money and trouble. My boss hated it doubly, because (a) he had been the one who wrote the bug, so my fixing it reflected poorly on his holier-than-thou "coding skills" (b) I did not follow his exact instructions to find the bug (which would have led me to failure, reputation loss, and early firing).
The second week I was assigned to fix numerous problems in a core infrastructure component that makes the company tick and assists customers that pay hundreds of thousands of dollars monthly. I fixed that in about three weeks. After fixing the bug, the normal path for the fix to go "into production" is one or two weeks after being reviewed. Nobody reviewed my changes, and it took another person who joined the company months after that, for my work to roll "into production", many months after my fixes were done. I was not given permission to roll those fixes "into production" myself, because my boss at the time didn't trust me at all (you can guess why).
The same pattern of treatment continued for the next months. I and my suggestions were routinely mocked by several coworkers, both openly and with the traditional upward rolling of the eyes. The company, in its severely operationally dysfunctional state, continued to trudge along.
At the time I had developed insomnia from the stress, which was being treated (and is still being treated as of now). I compensated by staying late and finishing my work regardless of consequence. Parallel to that, a new manager was hired, and I was moved to his team (after six months of requesting that move myself). During the second one-on-one meeting I had with that manager, after he had reassured me that our conversations were strictly confidential, he expressed his concern about the insomnia and its effects it was having on "the team" (not on me, not on my work, because he knew I was delivering, but on "the team"). Then I agreed to see a doctor (which I did, and she prescribed several medications to help me fix it). Immediately after that meeting, he broke his promise and sent an e-mail to H.R., completely distorting our conversation in a passive voice Cover Your Ass way, and saying that I was failing to meet my duties (which is a lie).
I was finally sidelined when I was assigned a project that would take many months to complete. This was a project I suggested, that several people hailed as the fundamental solution to the problems within the company. For months, I delivered continuous progress. Nobody but my direct manager (and a few interested people) heard progress reports from me, even though I was pushing code every day, regularly. I was already coming late two or three days out of every two weeks because of my battle with insomnia, which my manager was aware of.
The day before I delivered on the first milestone, a journalist hired to write advertising copy (who happened to have discovered the Lewinsky tapes, very "important" for this story) wrote an e-mail to the entire company during an election of names for meeting rooms, saying that meeting rooms should all be named after women.
I responded with a very short e-mail saying:
As unpopular as this might be, I strongly beg to differ ethically on this proposal.
There is no ratioonal reason why women inventors should get preference over men inventors, solely on the basis of gender. That's odious discrimination. To give them preference arbitrarily, is to insult the actual women inventors that have existed and will exist [...] If one is for true gender equality, one cannot rationally propose favoring people on the basis of gender. This is just common sense.
I won't bore you with more details. Suffice it to say, the next day I was summarily fired at 5:30 PM. The stated reason for my dismissal was "concerns about performance and absenteeism, and employee has displayed poor judgment in interacting with his coworkrers". I received, in response, a number of emails, someone mocking my idea, someone trying to "defuse the tension" with humor, and (of course) a very confrontational e-mail from the original sender -- the kind of email that distills the kind of "shut up!" anger, even as it attempts to conceal it.
My former boss (the one who hated my work) immediately wrote to me, saying "Stop posting on this thread. We will discuss tomorrow.".
They had found the perfect reason to fire me. I had insomnia, so I arrived late a small minority of days. I had written that e-mail, so now they had reason to say I had "offended" someone at the workplace. Everything came together for me.
The next day, I was fired.
I was crushed.
I was crushed for so many reasons.
The consistent lack of respect and consideration towards me as a person.
The consistent lack of acknowledgement of my efforts and my professional decisions.
The doubletalk and backstabbing, breaking of promises, outright betrayal on the part of people I trusted (including my manager, even as I hear you think "This dude made a mistake trusting him").
The pervasive taking of credit for my work.
The hypocrisy. Overwhelming hypocrisy and doubletalk. This company bills itself as a non-discriminatory, equalist company that sells itself as "the family", where everyone is heard and people are hired to think. Hell, they even hold meetings about gender equality, about how to attract more women programmers to the profession, and promote the participation of "the downtrodden gender"! Why, oh why, would an e-mail from someone, advocating for gender equality, cause so much disruption and chaos with a single e-mail?
Well... I had pointed out the lie, and the lie had caused everyone to scramble, run, stir, absolutely terrified of its contemplation.
I was never "reported" to H.R. for my "poor judgment". I was never given a chance to meet my accuser, a principle of "justice" so often proclaimed, it sounds like the bullshit that it is. I simply was hated for saying the truth. Not overtly, of course, you know -- plausible deniability and cover-your-ass is the rule. The actions subsequently taken by the people that fired me, speak louder than the words said to me.
Sitting down with that person from H.R. and the backstabbing manager, I was fired. They essentially tried to force me into signing some papers (which I didn't sign), and tried to give me some checks (including checks for the flight back to my country of origin), which evidenced in full what they were about to inflict on me. I asked "Do you realize that, by firing me like this, you are about to send me home, and I will lose everything I worked so hard for?". They said "It's okay, other people in your situation have found jobs" (implicitly saying that it's okay to break the law in my case). So I said "why don't you pay these checks out to me, the first, the fifteenth, and then again the first, so I have more time to find a job while USCIS doesn't get notified that I am in payroll"? The stern reply was: "Because it would be illegal for us to keep you in payroll".
"The checks cannot be made unless you are in payroll, and the decision has been made."
This is literally the way "American" hypocrites tell you "Fuck you, and if you are deported, I don't really give a shit -- I won't move a finger to step out of my comfort cage."
-----------------------------------------
This calvary is not limited to the company whose story I just told. No. In every single company that I have worked in the U.S., they have made a number of promises before I joined their company, yet (invariably) those promises have not materialized. Why, oh why, did I believe them.
I am now convinced the world runs on lies. I'm a pretty good liar myself... apparently, all I need to do is shed this compulsion for telling the truth, and then I will be able to "function" in the "real world" with the rest of the insane people that crowd it.
Fuck. I am now an "illegal alien", rapidly depleting my savings and with almost no chance of getting another job, even though the market and potential interested employers say I should be commanding a US$150.000 salary a year. I have been reduced to being treated like the scum of the Earth, a pariah, to the "country" that robbed me so much money, so much of my efforts, during the last two years. I am so angry right now.
I wish I was lying about that.