Randomness, Honesty, Naiveness, and Luck: How a mistake allowed me to get a job in NYC

The year was 2013, and I was working at @ThoughtWorks in Porto Alegre, Brazil. After working for a Brazilian client for one year, my English was finally "good enough" (I only started to learn English in my 20s) to join a new project for an American client.?

It was a big company in Midtown Manhattan in NYC, working on a massive Android project with over 100 engineers, 5 locations, and 3 different timezones: New York City & North Caroline (US), Porto Alegre (Brazil), Chennai, and Hyderabad (India).

After working on this project for 6 months or so, we had a Big Bang release ahead. For that, a couple of people from each location would be coming to NY for three weeks to help to strategize it, fix the last integration and end-to-end bugs, and take the product to the finish line.

My story with luck starts here: Only 3 of the consultants allocated on this project in Brazil would be coming to NYC. Everyone wanted to come. Everyone wanted to travel and have that experience. We had great benefits of traveling as a consultant at the time. We were all in our 20s, early 30s, eager to prove ourselves.

Luckily, I was one of the few working full time with all 5 locations trying to stabilize our super flaky CI/CD pipeline that had an end-to-end suite before there was even support for UI testing on Android, way before Appium and similar tools came around.

I could probably write another thread on that release, that CI/CD pipeline, and a couple of all-nighters we had to pull to get things done, but I will leave this here. A talk I gave in 2013 with some of the lessons learned if you are interested: The Test Pyramid

The other person working with me on the CI/CD had joined the company and the project a few months after me and acknowledged that I had more experience with the tooling and would help the team more during the release.

?? With that decided, I started to prepare for my trip. No expectations at all to move to NYC. It was my first time traveling to the US.

In the week before my trip, in one of the many long team lunches we had at Silva (our favorite "A la minuta" place in POA), one of my colleagues told me this:?

> Colleague: Now that you are going to NYC, you should test out how good your resume is.

> Me: Test out my resume?

> Colleague: Yes, change your LinkedIn location to New York while you are there to see if any recruiters will reach out.

> Me: Hmmm.

I didn't give much thought to this that day, but that idea stuck with me.

After two weeks in NYC, my girlfriend (now wife) visited me to take advantage of the free hotel stay.

It is costly to travel abroad when you get paid in Brazilian reais, especially to places like New York.

I was enjoying my time in New York, but my girlfriend just loved it. She was impressed.

On her first or second day in NYC, she said:

> Laura: We should move here. You should try to find a job here.

> Me: Seriously? Ok. Let me try this thing that one of my colleagues mentioned.

On that same night, I changed my LinkedIn location to New York, NY.

?? Booom, the next day, I started to receive messages from recruiters. I had never experienced that before. The market for developers in Brazil was good, but nothing like that.

Google, MongoDB, ZocDoc, On Deck, Amazon, and Voxy??? Voxy?

It looked promising. Easy. I started to respond to all of them. Until I start to get questions and begin to be rejected by every one of them (before or right after the screening interview with the recruiter)...

> "By the way, I should ask, are you qualified to work for any employer in the U.S.?"

> "At this time, _______ is not able to issue new H1B visas due to the US quota."

?? The dream was over.

Well, Almost.

That was not the case with Voxy.

Things were moving full speed ahead there.

We were cruising.

• ? Interview with the Project Manager,?
• ? Interview with the VP of Engineering?
• ? Coding Exercise
• ? Writing Exercise
• ? Follow up Interview with the VP of Engineering?
• ? Interview with the Director of Product
• ? Interview with the Co-founder/COO

?? Booom, we are back in business, baby.?

They really liked me, and they want to fly me to New York for a final two-day onsite interview and meet the rest of the product and engineering team.

F-A-N-T-A-S-T-I-C!

Flight booked. Hotel, booked! Days off at work on the calendar, done.

On a Sunday, I was fully packed and ready to go to the airport in a few hours.

Let me confirm one thing. With all the rejections I had, I was curious how they were planning to solve the Work Visa thing. I was suspicious. So, I emailed the recruiter.

5 minutes later on the Google Chat:

> Recruiter: What?? How don't you have a Visa? Did you say you only needed a renewal??

> Me: I never said I had a work visa. I said I needed a brand new H1B visa. Unfortunately, I don't have one.

30 minutes later, the recruiter talked to one of the co-founders, and they decided to cancel my trip to NY.

?? The dream was over.?

A big misunderstanding. A mistake. Miscommunication. I blamed myself for that.

The following Monday, I was formally rejected from the interview process. They said they would be moving forward with other local candidates already in the pipeline.

?? The dream was over.?

Approximately 2 weeks later, I got an email and a call from the COO. He was asking in which year I had graduated.

They were working with an Immigration Law Firm to figure out a way to get me a working Visa over the next few weeks. It was already mid-October. The H1B Visa deadline and quota were over for that year.

The next day, I had a call with the Immigration Attorney. She asked me if I would consider coming to the US on a J1 Exchange Trainee Visa to transition to H1B in the following year. I said, of course! I was ready to do anything to get that going.?

?? Booom, we are back in business, baby.

Flight booked. Hotel, booked!

YES!

Arriving at JFK after red-eye, I took the NY Subway Line A to Soho. I got lost, took the L, got 30 minutes late for my first Interview. Shit!

I had a full day onsite. Many white-boarding interviews. Additional conversation with the lawyers. And went for coffee with one of the co-founders at the end of the day.

> Me: So, what is the plan? When will I know if I got the job or not?

> Co-founder: He said, point-blank. Thiago, you are already in. We really liked you. We have already assessed you from all angles. The only reason we brought you to New York is for you to meet the team and for us to meet you personally and for you to meet the lawyers to get started working on your visa application today.

I was shocked. WHAATT?

I'm in???

I could not believe it.

My girlfriend was anxious. Apprehensive. Concerned.

I was excited, but she was probably ten times more excited than I was.

And, she had no idea.

I was incommunicable for the entire day.?

She had no idea about the conversation I had just had with the co-founder.

I went straight to the hotel I had booked in Chinatown. I could not believe I was in New York City.

I called her.?I remember saying:

> Me: They said this job is already mine and the only reason I'm here is to meet them in person.

Silence.

Silence.

Silence.

She started to cry.?

> Laura: What do we do now?

> Me: I asked her, was not this what you wanted?

She could not believe it.?

It took her a few minutes to accept that her life, our life, would be changing forever.

Over the next few weeks, we packed our lives in two suitcases, quit our jobs, said goodbye to friends and family, got married, got our Visa approved, and moved from Brazil to NYC.

Lesson Learned

A Mistake. A Misunderstanding. A Miscommunication. That was the main reason I was able to get this job. If the recruiter had not misunderstood my message about the visa thing, I would never have had a chance to meet and interview with most of the team at Voxy, prove myself to them, connect, inspire, and influence them. If not for this mistake, my application would have been rejected like many others before any screening interview. I would not have gotten the chance.?

I would have been just statistics. One of the thousands of engineers from developing countries gets rejected, not because they don't have experience or failed the interviews, but because of the US Visa System. Just because they don't have the US working Visa.

For a foreigner from a developing country and a non-native English speaker, I would say that today is probably 10X harder to get a Visa than it is to ace the interview process of any Tech Company.

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Side note 1;

After digging today, I found the exact quote on the original email I sent to the recruiter:

> Recruiter: Do you have a Visa for work in the USA? Or, do you need a new H1B visa?

> Me: I need a brand new H1B visa. I just have the B1/B2 Visa.

I blamed myself for that.

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Side note 2;

Back to the J1 Visa thing: I had no idea what I was signing up for. (More on how that J1 Visa delayed my Green Card process by more than one year in an upcoming post).

I got lucky.

Even though I already had six years of experience at the time, I had just graduated in 2011. That is one of the few perks of studying and working in Brazil: I did the evening classes for most of my Computer Science degree, so I was able to work full time as a Java Programmer from the second semester onwards.

Basically, I had Senior level developer experience. Still, I got a Visa thanks to my recent graduation as a "Trainee" even though I was running the entire engineering department two years later.

I got lucky.

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Final note:

Finally, I'm super thankful for my time at Voxy and Sean, Tiani, Gregg, Paul, André, Solon, and many other folks who believed in me and helped me get the job and this initial working visa.

I had an incredible partnership with everyone, and it was one of the favorite places I worked.

I could not be where I'm today without them.