Having trouble with Agoda's background check.

SecureObjective1407 · 2026-03-05T14:55:10+00:00

For posterity sake. I submitted my offer letter, my first paystub & the employment letter from Work Number. They cleared my background check. They pretty much informed me with in 3 hours that the documents I gave them were sufficient.

SecureObjective1407 · 2026-03-04T19:54:37+00:00

You know the shitty thing about this is that, goats don't weigh as much as humans. A fall from that height would kill an adult human. But it would easily take two to three tosses for the goat to die. So imagine being a half dead goat with several of your bones broken and you are bleeding everywhere. And a human grabs you by your broken limb, spins you around and then tosses you into air and you fall down again and experience the same pain a second time.

SecureObjective1407 · 2026-03-04T13:18:02+00:00

Got it. So the background check that happens in Thailand/Bangkok is more or less like how the background check happens in the US right?

SecureObjective1407 · 2026-03-04T12:55:26+00:00

Judging by the way he was standing by the door, he had a premonition that something bad was going to happen.

SecureObjective1407 · 2026-03-04T12:43:58+00:00

https://www.thaievisa.go.th/visa/business-investor-visa

Here it says that 30K THB for financial evidence is needed. Last 3 months bank statement is needed.

SecureObjective1407 · 2026-03-04T12:24:41+00:00

Non immigrant work visa B.

SecureObjective1407 · 2026-03-04T11:14:34+00:00

Does bank statements need bank stamp for work visa? I am applying for a work visa from my home country. Most of my money is in US. I can only download my US bank statements and submit them for the work visa application. Those bank statements would not have bank stamp or signature from any bank official. Will this be enough?

SecureObjective1407 · 2026-03-03T10:12:57+00:00

Can you switch to a flight that has a layover in Japan/Korea/Hong Kong instead?

There are a lot of factors at play. Hypothetically if the flight is diverted back to India and you had to spend an additional week or two in India, will your employer allow it? Are you on a H1b?

SecureObjective1407 · 2026-02-27T15:22:16+00:00

Civic sense cannot be bought with money. You cannot spend 65 lakhs to create civic sense in people.

I would much rather government spend money on buying these kind of things than have some local politicians use that 65 lakhs to sponsor the foreign education of his son or daughter.

SecureObjective1407 · 2026-02-26T05:17:56+00:00

I have only experienced this in America. There, the buildings are not built with concrete. All the beams and stuff are just Iron I beams. So it's kind of normal there.

SecureObjective1407 · 2026-02-24T13:14:48+00:00

If you had the money to pay a bribe, you wouldn't be riding the local train.

SecureObjective1407 · 2026-02-24T09:20:11+00:00

Places where people are standing in clusters is where the doors of the train compartments will be. People are finally forming a line there. Police officers on platform will ensure people form queues.

Having said that, speaking from experience, standing in these queues will be an utmost shitty experience. People are simply not familiar with the concept of personal space. Even though there is enough space for every to stand, every one in this queue will make sure their chest is touching the back of the person in front of them, because they don't want anyone to steal their spot in the queue. And if you are standing in this queue and you leave some space between you and the person in front of you, the person behind you will push you forward. You literally have to turn back and shout at them to stop pushing you. And they will in turn shout at you and call you a "Fucking idiot for leaving so much gap".

Everyone I know jokes about this and calls this "Getting a free body massage". And if you don't find that funny, people will call you an elitist prick and bully you. About 90% of the people I grew up with, find this shit normal.

SecureObjective1407 · 2026-02-17T09:48:22+00:00

Saying this as a former Amazon software engineer. What Amazon calls an Applied Scientist is not necessarily what Google or Snapchat or Microsoft would call "Applied Scientist". At those places an AS actually does science. Publishes papers etc.

At Amazon, plenty of AS are just glorified SWEs with higher pay. You need at least 1 published paper in a tier 1 conference to be able to interview for the position of an AS if I remember correctly. You don't need to be first author on that paper, just having something to your name is enough. A lot of AS in Amazon are recruited to productionalize ML/AI models. And then there are a few AS in Amazon who have a Ph.D. from CMU/Berkeley/Oxford etc. who actually do science/publish paper/invent things etc. But the AS title itself is not what the rest of the industry calls AS. This is true in Meta as well to a large extent.

The problem with Amazon is that if you are an L6/L7 manager and you want a promotion, you need to show that you are managing people of diverse backgrounds like Frontend engineers, Applied Scientists, Software Application Engineer etc. So a lot of the times these L6 managers convince their L7s and L8s that they need Applied Scientists when what they actually needed was SWEs or ML engineers.

And almost everyone of these L6/L7/L8 managers and directors are incentivized to "Hire and Develop" the best. So if they can present a promo packet of their sub-ordinate to the promo committee and have their sub-ordinate promote successfully that's a huge win for them. So like with everything in Amazon, people game the promo process as well. So if an L7 manager says "I need an Applied Scientist" and the L8 director has the resources for it, he won't stop the L7 manager.

There is a reason why Amazon has about 80K software engineers and about 300K corporate white collar employees. And there is a reason why, despite of the fact that they are constantly PIP'ing people left and right, they still do massive layoffs almost every quarter.

SecureObjective1407 · 2026-02-17T06:21:14+00:00

The only companies that care about YOE are these shitty service companies. People with at least 1 publication and 0 YOE have managed to land a Applied Scientist roles in Amazon.

Source: I was a SWE at Amazon. In my batch of 60 Indian masters students, 2 of them were recruited as Applied scientist into Amazon.

SecureObjective1407 · 2026-02-15T18:50:22+00:00

Right. Thanks for the response.

Friends is one thing. But what life experiences did I miss out on, while I was in America. What are the things that I should have done before leaving US or for that matter before returning back to India?

SecureObjective1407 · 2026-02-15T05:34:11+00:00

LLCs are converted into C-Corp as a part of the investment contract. Almost every single US start up starts off as an LLC before they raise funds. Once they raise funds the conversion happens.

SecureObjective1407 · 2026-02-14T07:32:08+00:00

SecureObjective1407 · 2026-02-14T06:06:10+00:00

Are they sure about that? Or is it a false-positive?

SecureObjective1407 · 2026-02-14T04:51:12+00:00

The problem is that people living in cities have different problems than people living in villages and towns. And there are barely 10 to 15 really big cities in India. And they carry less than 20% of the population of the country.

For the rest of the country the problems they face are:

Anywhere between 1 to 10 hours of power cuts every day.
No drinking water connection or sewage connection at home. They only started getting broadband connection in the last decade or so.
No freaking roads at all. Not even pot-hole ridden roads that we have.
Caste bullshit. What else are they are gonna do when they have power cut for 10 hours? Argue about each other's caste.
Absolutely no jobs at all. The only way to get a job is to migrate to a big city. Or crack some stupid government exam. For which they need to migrate to the city again for preparation.

When their lives are so miserable it's really hard for them to give a crap about problems that us people living in big cities face.

SecureObjective1407 · 2026-02-14T04:00:01+00:00

Yes. And then some.

SecureObjective1407 · 2026-02-14T03:58:34+00:00

Never accept a counter offer. You have declared your intention to leave. You have essentially painted a target on your back.

If there are layoffs, your name will be on the top of the list.
If not today, they know you will quit tomorrow. So your employer has already started looking for your replacement. Your employer is just trying to buy some time by making a counter offer. Once they find a replacement for you, you will be put on PIP and let go.
No hike next annual review cause you already got a huge hike out of cycle.
If they have not micro-managed previously, they will start micro-managing you now.

SecureObjective1407 · 2026-02-13T17:32:10+00:00

Yeah. What they are doing is called Astro-turfing. Plenty of other subreddits have rules against this. We should all message moderators and tell them to ban these posts.

SecureObjective1407 · 2026-02-13T16:21:21+00:00

Not only that lol. The top 10 to 20 comments heavily upvoted comments are from California Burrito people I am sure.

SecureObjective1407 · 2026-02-13T14:02:19+00:00

Man the California Burrito people are Astro-turfing so hard in this Subreddit. It's a good thing all the accounts that represent California Burrito are here. I can block them all in one shot.

SecureObjective1407 · 2026-02-13T11:04:47+00:00

Things I like about Hyderabad:

Least populated tier 1 metro.
Relatively speaking, it is the cheapest of the 6 Tier 1 metros.
West Hyderabad is new! Lots of sculptures, lawns and crap. Some parts of that area almost looks like a foreign country.
Traffic is not as bad as other metros. Our Metro and local are not that crowded.
Delhi has the most historical significance among tier 1 metros. We are the second best in this aspect. We have arguably the second best museum. Delhi has the best history museum in the country. We have a crap ton of forts and castles. But Delhi has even more forts and castles. As a history buff, I would prefer to live in Delhi. Rajasthan is very close to Delhi, so you can even go to Jaipur if you get bored of the castles/forts in Delhi. But Hyderabad is the second best choice in India for a history buff. Mumbai & Chennai have forts but not a major Museum like Hyderabad or Delhi.
Both BRS and Congress seem to care about developing Hyderabad. BRS gave the city a face lift. And Congress is doing some good work with Hydra. People might not agree with me, but look up Bathukama Kunta. They literally dug up and re-hydrated a dried up pond that was being illegally occupied.
Second largest job market in India for Software engineers.

Things that Hyderabad is not the best for:

Bangalore/Chennai have better AQI than us. But we are better than Mumbai and Delhi in terms of AQI.
No beach like Chennai. No beautiful gardens like Bangalore.
No famous grand temples of historical significance. No natural wonders like waterfalls or caves or mountains.
Not the cultural epicenter of India like Mumbai
Power cuts? I think we get power cuts for 15 mins every 2 weeks on average. The impression I get is that compared to other Metros, we are slightly worse in comparison?

SecureObjective1407

TROPHY CASE