back from hell

So I've just been cruising around BN again after a fairly lengthy hiatus. A few months ago, I foolishly hooked my software team into a contract with a financial software firm which is what is commonly known here in the United States as an "H-1B sweatshop." This is a firm which imports foreign labor in certain critical industries and flogs its employees as if they were indentured servants for over 12 hours a day. The workload caused my blood pressure to go up 8 pts, gave me terrible insomnia, and eventually created digestion problems. My whole team became very nervous and irritable. My girlfriend walked out on me a month ago because I became an ogre to live with, and the contract almost ended the marriage of my lead architect. In order to keep my key employees, I eventually ended up sacrificing myself by staying in the contract alone and allowing my guys to leave it early in order to get their lives back in order again. My girlfriend eventually returned to me last Thursday night (after much begging and cajoling on my part), and yesterday was my last day working on the contract.

The project lead actually had the brazen audacity to ask me to finish out the workday after my 2pm exit interview Monday afternoon. Needless to say, I ... declined. I'm ecstatic to be out of that hell hole. However, I feel bad for the Indians, Pakistanis, Chinese, Russians, and Eastern Europeans we left behind, since they are "locked in" until they can gain permanent residency ... or get another firm to sponsor their H-1B.

Oh, and it's good to be reading BN again.

I had to do what I did to keep the team together, especially since it was me that pulled them all into the contract. This is the ugly side of running your own business. When the sh*t hits the fan ... you're standing right in front of it catching it in the face so that it doesn't hit anyone else.


She's a champ. We've been together 5 and 1/2 years now. I told the technical lead on the project that if she walked out on me it would guarantee a non-renewal on the contract, no matter what else happened. Since he wasn't truly human, he just looked at me as if I were from Mars.


Ordinarily I would agree with you, but the H-1B and L-1 visa are the dirty little secrets of the hi-tech world these days. The program exists with the full force and authority of the United States Congress, and everyone knows how the program is being used to thwart labor laws. I'm sorry to say that I have no excuse for having been snookered like this. Back in graduate school, I dated a Turkish woman who lost her F-1 student visa status when she left our PhD program. She got sucked in by an H-1B software sweatshop which used to work people about 15 hours a day. She would come home crying every night because of the extreme stress. I really should have seen this coming before I signed the contract.


Ah, I decided to totally "slum it" by wearing 6 sprays of a fine elixir known as Jovan Musk for Men while playing KC and the Sunshine Band on my car stereo while driving through Hollywood. Pretty pitiful ... but it worked.


I suspect the Devil is on the company's Board of Directors, actually.

I would say that, on balance, the team came out the worse for the experience. I came perilously close to having my lead architect walk out on the contract twice. The second time was during a conference call in which his work was openly insulted by an inexperienced junior engineer. David quietly closed his laptop, said "F*ck this" in a clearly audible voice, and walked out. I watched him clean out his desk and carry everything out into the parking lot before I finally convinced him to come back.

As for being a "Zen warrior monk," I don't think I rise to the occasion. I've certainly managed to deal with high stress during two bouts of graduate school and some nasty contracts, but a real warrior monk could have fallen asleep properly. The real warrior monks are the foreign workers who are stuck in these companies for years at a time, raising families while working 14-hr days. I honestly have no idea how they do it. Americans should be very concerned that there are highly intelligent people from the third world, willing to and capable of suffering through conditions like this in order to earn money. That kind of competition should genuinely scare those of us in first world countries.


My blood pressure is about half way back to my normal range now, and I'm starting to be able to sleep normally without prescription medication. My blood pressure was what was scaring me the most. I could actually sit at my desk, hold my hands out in front of me, and take my pulse by feeling it in my fingertips. Scary stuff!

I'm thinking of going back there for it too, along with some other alumni from your neck of the woods. This probably dates me terribly, but two friends of mine and I were some of the first people to hack the Media Lab building before they installed the security system in there. Although, we confined our efforts to simple breaking and entering, nothing quite as elaborate as subsequent tomfoolery.