I've just heard that allegedly a Torrey Pines Insistitute in Florida is firing all their postdocs with 1 month notice. Well, all postdocs that don't have a funding on their own (but apparently not many of them have it).
And it's really weird actually, as a friend of mine was just hired there as a postdoc about half a year ago! Didn't they anticipate the funding going dry? Why did they hire them to begin with?
The drama gets even more intense because my friend is on the H visa, and thus doesn't have a grace period: the hour they lose their job they become illegal immigrants in the US, violating all possible laws. In practice that means that they can gamble, and desperately look for a job, but if they don't find one, they spoil their relationships with the US visa machinery for a long time. Alternatively they can buy tickets for their entire family to their respective country, but with 1 mo leadtime these tickets would be quite expensive. So essentially that's a trap.
Not that other people suffer less. As a person from Europe, I was really puzzled by the fact that here in the US, from the majority of jobs, you can fire a person immediately, without a warning, without any explanations at all. In my country it would be unthinkable. But anyway, a one month warning probably doesn't sound that bad in the Unites States. Still, when foreigners are concerned, a one month warning is a disaster, because you can easily screw somebody's career this way, even from purely financial point of view! For a family of 4 it would mean spending ~4 $M on the tickets back home, getting rid of all their belongings, selling a car at a loss, loosing the rental deposit... Probably about $10 000 of instantaneous loss. Even with careful budgeting, not every household living on a ~45 $k/y income would have a cushion to easily survive unforeseen expenses like that.
And it's really weird actually, as a friend of mine was just hired there as a postdoc about half a year ago! Didn't they anticipate the funding going dry? Why did they hire them to begin with?
The drama gets even more intense because my friend is on the H visa, and thus doesn't have a grace period: the hour they lose their job they become illegal immigrants in the US, violating all possible laws. In practice that means that they can gamble, and desperately look for a job, but if they don't find one, they spoil their relationships with the US visa machinery for a long time. Alternatively they can buy tickets for their entire family to their respective country, but with 1 mo leadtime these tickets would be quite expensive. So essentially that's a trap.
Not that other people suffer less. As a person from Europe, I was really puzzled by the fact that here in the US, from the majority of jobs, you can fire a person immediately, without a warning, without any explanations at all. In my country it would be unthinkable. But anyway, a one month warning probably doesn't sound that bad in the Unites States. Still, when foreigners are concerned, a one month warning is a disaster, because you can easily screw somebody's career this way, even from purely financial point of view! For a family of 4 it would mean spending ~4 $M on the tickets back home, getting rid of all their belongings, selling a car at a loss, loosing the rental deposit... Probably about $10 000 of instantaneous loss. Even with careful budgeting, not every household living on a ~45 $k/y income would have a cushion to easily survive unforeseen expenses like that.
