How life is in the United States for non-IT people Other side

Life of People NON IT Person in USA

There are more than just it people on Habra. There are electricians, circuit engineers, chemists, marketers, and all sorts of people. And the possibility of moving to another country as a General specialist is interesting to them, too. In addition to the story of Dudya and similar articles, I want to tell my story about moving to the United States, on the opposite coast from California with the opposite profession from IT. About life, spending, finding and changing jobs and prospects. I'm 36, I'm a biologist by education, family — two people, English — so-so. I've lived in North Carolina for almost two years.

Since there was a lot of writing, here is a short version. When you move, you are almost guaranteed to reduce your social status. You can live on $1,500. The average salary of a "non-official" is $30K-50K per year. The average cost of a house is $200k. You can get health insurance for free. A lot of buns from the state. Finding a normal job is very non-trivial. The language does not learn itself, but there are free courses. Live comfortably. No one needs our education. Many people dream of a career in IT.

Important! All that I write here is solely my experience and my opinion. I do not pretend to be the truth in the last instance, but just tell how it was for me, especially since all non-traditional migrants have a fairly similar path.

If you are going to hunt a tiger, be prepared for the tiger to appear.

 I thought when I got a letter on the card that I won a green card. The first time. Submitted a form for the fan on the last day of submitting the form, and she won. Several months of waiting, an interview at the Embassy, visas and a plane. In General, it is all painted thousands of times and there is no special sense to stop here. I will only say that at the moment when I got off the plane in the United States, we had $10K in cash and $9K on the card. As it turned out later, in our scenario, we would have been able to keep up with 10K, but it would have been worse.

Once in the language environment, you will begin to speak English without noticing it...

... everyone says. I don't know about the others, but it definitely didn't happen for me. Despite my active life and studies, it was only after a year that I felt that I could calmly, without strain, understand speech and at least, without stress, speak. It came by itself. Apparently, the environment still gives effect, but very slowly.
Initial knowledge of the language at the level of "my want to buy it". That is, the school-Institute program plus intensive study for three months before leaving. I must say that in my case, the maximum benefit was shown to me by the combination of tools such as the course and the app English for 17 hours with Petrov plus the textbook "How to say it in English" by I. giventhal. The first in a very simple form gave the structure of the language and basic constructions, the second a stock of words and typical phrases. Therefore, I recommend that you try this combination to anyone who has a language that leaves much to be desired.
Already here in the US, I went to a community College for additional language classes. It turns out that in every city there are colleges or communities that provide free language courses to migrants. These are absolutely free classes, in full-time and part-time, segmented into student levels and attendance times. In other words, when you enroll, you are given a test that determines which group to enroll you in. This is a really good thing. Fully study in a foreign group with English teachers is very effective.
If you are interested, tell me, I will add a list of resources that local teachers actively use for training at the bottom. Some of them are very good.

HR gets only 5-8% of the resume

I'm a biotechnological engineer by training. For some reason, I was sure that with my education and work experience, it would not be difficult for me to find a job in a biotechnological-fertile region. It turned out that this was not the case. Our education is not interesting to anyone, I have never been asked about it. In order to become more visible in the market, I had to complete a three-month course In basic biotechnology at a local College for $300. And only in the combination of "local certificate" + "and I also have a Russian University diploma" it started to work somehow.

In addition, I have read and listened to stories about how people from IT simply have no end of offers when the LinkedIn page is correctly filled in and resumes, and spent a lot of effort to make both of them in the proper form. So, on my example, and on the example of my friends, I have a belief that LinkedIn is a story exclusively for IT.

NON IT Jobs in USA

Already in College, specially hired recruiters from reputable firms explained to us that the main problem of job search is the dominance of "robots" in HR departments. In other words, all incoming resumes and "applications" are filtered by these scripts for keywords. And what is most interesting, according to these recruiters, the percentage of applications that filter through this filter is 5-8%. And HR itself spends 5-7 seconds on viewing a new resume. And the second page is not viewed at all. And the cover letter is not read. And in General, jobs older than two days can not even look-this is garbage. I don't know how true this is, but given how many hundreds of resumes I've sent and how many responses I've received, I'm ready to believe it completely. When registering for a job, you don't just have to send your resume, but copy the words and phrases from the job as much as possible. Even declensions and endings are important. We were directly taught in practical classes how to bypass the robot. That is, there is no question of any universalization at all. Each response to a job is unique, plus or minus.

Further, in 90% of cases, after sending your resume, the system asks you to pass an assessment of 100500 questions for an hour and a half, where they ask your attitude to good work and bad work, to conflicts at work. Especially stressful questions like "what is better for you, to do the job well, to do the job not bad, or not to do the job bad? They ask if you will tell your superiors about your colleagues who violate something, etc. At this point, I was pretty screwed up at first, until they explained the point to me. It turns out that whatever happens at work-a conflict, an accident, a breakdown, your nose itches — you must go to the supervisor and tell him about it. No independent decisions. I am more than sure that this does not happen in real life, but it is necessary to respond in this way.
Moreover, such an assessment is waiting for you almost after each submission of your resume. The same thing over and over again. Every time, minus an hour of life and minus a billion nerve cells. And a complete understanding of meaninglessness. How it killed me! I have never been able to fully register for a job in less than 40 minutes. Needless to say that 80% of such actions do not bring any response FROM the employer at all!

By the way, I have a question for programmers and startups. 

Why can't I make a single resource where I spend a day answering a thousand similar questions and get a superlink that I will pin to each job, and that will replace all these identical surveys.

The next step, if you still made it through, is all sorts of interviews, in which you will collapse a bunch of " HR " questions like "What made you who you are now", "what fruit do you associate yourself with", "Tell us what the biggest fail you had in your life and how you coped with it", etc. If you are an it specialist, then you are asked problems about algorithms, or just problems on intelligence. But how can I check you if you're a biologist? In the entire history of my job search, I have never heard a single question about technology. Only this nonsense.

And then I started looking for work " from above“

One day everything changed. I was at a job fair for a very large pharmaceutical company, in the presence of their CEO and management. Several tables with HR and two hundred people waiting in line to give their resume. The eyes of the HR staff showed that they did not care (I would have written a different word here) about all these applicants. So I decided to cheat. I waited for my turn and told HR that I had just spoken to their CEO (pointing at him, since he was walking right there) and that he told me to immediately come and give this resume, referring to it. It seems like the CEO has already looked at it and is interested. The calculation was that HR would not ask the CEO for details. And so it happened. And most importantly, I was assigned the date and time of a full four-hour interview with four employees of the company. I was almost the only one who received such an honor that day. By the way, I failed that interview shamefully.

At this point, I realized that Einstein was right — it's stupid to expect a new result if you do the same thing. So I changed my tactics. Went not from below, but from above. Now I chose a company that would like to work, found it on LinkedIn and has been added to your contact for all CEO and VP, leaving them with the message General sense of "I can't live if I get a job in their neudivitelen and beautiful company, I am a very good specialist but will not be able to show off all facets of talent because of the weakness of the language that I'm willing to work for free the first month I was given the opportunity to actually show what I am worth" and asked the Council how to do it correctly. 8 out of 10 have added me to their contacts. Half of them asked for a resume. This resume was sent to the HR Department, where an invitation to an interview was guaranteed. The calculation that the personnel officers, having received my resume "from above" will treat it more responsibly fully justified. And the new job was not long in coming.

A former Director who washes dishes.

If you are not from IT, then only when you come to the States you will find the easiest job. It's either UBER/LYFT for $ 20 an hour dirty (on average). Or in a store like Walmart/Target, etc. for$ 9-12 an hour to put products on the shelves. Or all sorts of food delivery services like Instacart/DorDash. No one else will risk taking you.

So I, after a long walk around the indids and linkedins and getting fattening everywhere, even in the next pizzeria, I decided that I should take a car. And a couple of days later, I bought a 2010 KIA FROM a dealer in Venezuela for $ 3,500 with a mileage of 170,000 miles and a 3-month warranty on the engine. I'm in cars at all, so I chose more "in appearance", pointed my finger at different places, shook my head trying to catch on the face of the seller at least some hint. I didn't catch anything, just took it as it is.

And almost the next day I was picked up for delivery in one of the cafes. While I was inside, I was paid$ 9 an hour, while leaving,$ 5 an hour plus tips, plus $ 0.35 per mile. But this kind of work is for an Amateur. When the salary depends on tips, the team begins to "rot". Everyone tries to snatch a fatter order, and throw off a small order. In total, a month turned out to be clean on hand about $ 1500 for 30 hours of work.

The first tip

The money was not much, but enough to live on. Although psychologically every month "diverge edges" was hard. What if the car breaks down? What if your tooth hurts? What if there's no work? Plus I want something more than just to live from paycheck to paycheck.

It even got to the point that I wrote an article on vc that I am ready to act as a representative and register a company in the United States for any startup that has a desire to enter this market, or participate in a kickstarter. Especially since I have a similar example before my eyes. But whether I did not describe it correctly enough, or the audience was not in the mood, but I was accused of trying to profit from the poor fellow citizens, doused with sewage, and then the article was closed. Although I didn't even mention any money. It was an attempt to just try all the possibilities. By the way, in order not to be accused of advertising here, let me clarify — I am not interested in such options now, and I do not consider such proposals.

I had to keep moving. A couple of months later, I found a new job in Telecom. It was necessary to climb towers, weigh and repair the equipment of mobile operators. This work is full. You can start like me without having any knowledge at all. The main thing is not to be afraid of heights. They paid $ 20 an hour for a 10-12-hour working day. And this is the average salary in the industry. On the one hand, the work is simple, in the fresh air. But on the other hand, when you sit for 10 hours on a tower 100-150 meters high under the scorching sun, or in the January wind, without the ability to really, sorry, pee, balancing on a patch of 2x2 meters with a piece of iron weighing 25 kg, without medical insurance-it quickly gets boring. Although the experience is good because now I have a profession that is quoted in any state at any time. So let's say it was preserved.

My work on towers

By the way, another source of money for new arrivals is the hunt for bonuses. American banks in pursuit of a client conduct promotions such as "spend $ 300/500/1000 from our card for three months and get a bonus of $ 150/200/300", or "Send a referral link to a friend and get both $ 75". Given that you can always order a card for yourself and send a referral to your wife, you can earn$400-600 with this case. Of course, this is not permanent, but why refuse free money, if they are distributed just like that. Although, I think this story will end soon.

Buckwheat for $ 5, drying for$3

The cost of living in the United States has not been described or shown by anyone. So I'll run it short.

• Apartments from the living room and two bedrooms with garbage and water removal $ 950 per month.

• Electricity 40-80$ per month.

• Internet 50$ per month

• Cell phone 25 $ per month

• Car insurance 50$ per month

• Gasoline $ 50-80 per month (~$1.9 per gallon)

• The food is 300-400$ per month. But it's different for everyone. I am not a fan of theories about healthy and unhealthy food, about "organic" and" non-organic " products, and so on, so I am calmly ready to buy salmon from a salmon farm for $ 16/kg instead of wild salmon for $ 30 / kg, or regular eggs for$ 3 instead of organic for$10. If you want to have a native — there are Russian stores with drying for$ 3 or buckwheat for $ 5. Also quite accessible.

• Health insurance is $ 20. In General, my insurance costs $ 900 a month, but since my salary is below a certain level, the state compensates me for $ 880 and I only pay $ 20.

Accordingly, my average monthly expenses are about $ 1600-1700. Agree, the figures are more than affordable even with our salaries.

A girl psychologist became a QA tester.

I will not hide, like all new arrivals, I thought about trying to go to IT. You know, there's a cult of "Vit"here. The most common idea is QA. Just hundreds of schools Zas... whether the brain is all about how "a girl psychologist took a week-long course and got a job as a tester in Facebook on a salary of $ 70 per hour." Naturally, this picture is in the head of 9 out of 10 visitors. This is just some kind of mass insanity. Everyone talks about it, everyone tells each other stories about how a friend of a friend just got settled. And schools, as befits crooks, in every way it cultivates, selling under the guise of courses for 500-700$. The funny thing is, I don't know a single person who personally knows such a tester.

I'm not very close to this topic, I studied Pascal at school, I know HTML/CSS at a basic level, a little bit of Python. In addition, I have a friend, a real programmer, here in the United States, and I can see what it's like to be a programmer-red eyes, a square ass, and vertigo from three levels of abstraction. So I was smart enough not to run after that locomotive. However, I could not refuse completely. Since I was already a biologist, I decided that I could try to find something at the junction where I would have at least some advantage. Therefore, I am now trying to try on Data Science without much hope. It will be a good addition to my profession. If it doesn't come in, well, never mind.

Now, after a year and a half, things have calmed down a bit. Work is there, life is settled. You can afford to buy coffee, or fly to the Grand Canyon for the weekend, or swim in the ocean. So for now, I plan to enjoy what I have and earn another line in my resume.

In addition, after moving here, I had the opportunity to somehow use the potential of the American market. My friend and I have made several apps that have brought us almost nothing yet. Plus, we are preparing two projects for kickstarter. More for the fan than for the money, but who knows. Maybe I'll write more about it later.

As I see it, the history of moving to the United States without an IT specialty has differences. There are no salaries in 100k or 200k, there are no offices with coffee, snacks and air conditioning. Here all don't care about your University degree and experience. You need to break yourself to work in the kitchen or carry boxes in the store. But as practice shows, after a year or two, the life of migrants is getting better, the salary is gradually growing, and the credit history is also growing.

Do I see my future in the US? I don't know. 

You can talk a lot about how bad it is here and how good it is here. But after living here you understand that there is a lot of good and we have, to what America to grow and grow. And there are many good things to learn here. And people everywhere are the same-they want to work interesting and get good money. They love their country and culture. Appreciate family and friends. They watch the same movies and read the same books. Therefore, the minimum program is to learn the language and just live here. The maximum program is to get a passport. Here for three months the world turned upside down, it is difficult to guess what will happen next. But for now, I like it here.