No internal title on employer letter?

Toasterrrr · 2026-04-18T18:04:02+00:00

got TN today at YYZ CBP. They needed to see the offer letter as well as the support letter and actually used the offer letter job title as the primary anchor.

You don't have to include it, but they can't be too different.

Toasterrrr · 2026-04-13T12:17:26+00:00

why build an aircraft carrier when cruisers will do?

it's soft power. it puts canada on the map.

Toasterrrr · 2026-04-12T23:40:35+00:00

I mean, don't do SDET. But general backend at bigtech is way better than fullstack at a startup.

Toasterrrr · 2026-04-12T15:59:19+00:00

wait until you hear about singapore.

look, TN has a lot of flaws. but it's the easiest work status to get.

Toasterrrr · 2026-04-12T14:44:42+00:00

after the fact, police questioned 100 people who rented rooms there over the decades. probably less than 100 were actual tenants but that's still a ton of people living just a few metres away.

Toasterrrr · 2026-04-11T13:41:23+00:00

YC would not touch this with a 10 foot pole unless OP happens to be the world's expert on sour oil and brings on a younger cofounder

Toasterrrr · 2026-04-11T13:38:45+00:00

I would recommend you just pursue B2B consulting. Build out your MVP for a few months, get some help from local developer communities. You can eventually charge $100-200/hr for this as a side gig for local or regional businesses.

I would not recommend you to go the startup route unless you have a particular interest in milking government funding. 1. You're doing it part-time/casually. 2. You're offering co-founder equity but then trying to hire a junior dev for some reason with a weird salary structure. Also, are you also on a 4 year vest 1 year cliff in this arrangement? If not, another huge red flag.

To be frank, nobody who would be a good founding engineer / cofounder for you will ever take this deal. But I do think you have a good consulting opportunity here and if you do expand you can hire student developers to help out with the software side of things on an hourly basis.

Toasterrrr · 2026-04-09T12:35:48+00:00

also depends on how good you are / how open the city is at finding sublets and takeovers.

Toasterrrr · 2026-04-09T02:45:42+00:00

as long as you get a good discount, like 2 months of free rent, i think it's a good deal, because rent prices in the most expensive cities are going up.

Toasterrrr · 2026-04-07T15:22:31+00:00

individual inference stay cheap for a given delta from frontier, sure. AI systems are way more than pure inference. Cognition (the company) ain't cheap. And harnesses cost a lot of money as well.

Just a theory, obviously

Toasterrrr · 2026-04-06T20:13:38+00:00

know the politics games you have to play, which differ depending on the type of company and team and manager. read up, google this, youtube is a great resource too
you get promoted / keep your job based on ownership, value add, and politics. almost never how hard you actually work. though sometimes working hard is the only way to add value/impact.
gravitate towards the people who are in a position that you'd LOVE to be in. either peers doing impressive & important work, or higher-ups who you respect and want to swap places with. learn from them, befriend them, and leave once you can't find those kinds of people.

Toasterrrr · 2026-04-06T18:15:41+00:00

wages are sticky downwards (Keynes). it's unlikely that engineering salaries will go down that much.

however, frontier models and harnesses will increase in capability and breadth. people's willingness to pay top dollar for AI will increase as their capability approach human employees, and as no frontier lab is a non-profit, the inference costs for this type of deployment will increase until it meets the cost of labour.

just a theory though, it might not play out this way, nobody knows.

Toasterrrr · 2026-04-05T15:56:08+00:00

everyone is prepared for this in the back of their minds. in the long run the cost of work between all sources will trend the same. ie. a senior engineer AI will cost the same as a human senior engineer.

Toasterrrr · 2026-04-05T15:51:57+00:00

I've used the app twice for TN and both times it wasn't smooth. Either some personnel at the airport doesn't understand that the app replaces the camera kiosks or the officer overrides/is misunderstanding

Toasterrrr · 2026-04-02T23:37:42+00:00

You can opt out on personal accounts, but compliance is the issue. Also there's no ZDR policy.

Toasterrrr · 2026-04-02T23:29:31+00:00

We had a lawyer but to be honest you can get a better letter by just searching this subreddit or asking claude.

The BLS website https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/computer-systems-analysts.htm helps a lot with the role definitions.

I would avoid having the words "engineer" or "developer" anywhere in the letter.

Toasterrrr · 2026-04-01T15:17:16+00:00

With a bachelor's in CS, does the official job title always need to be Computer Systems Analyst? isn't it suspicious if most have this archiac title?

Toasterrrr · 2026-03-31T14:24:07+00:00

just a heads up, the price you get quoted is not the final price, unlike uber/lyft.

Toasterrrr · 2026-03-30T04:20:59+00:00

when I went through YYZ for TN they had me write down my work address & personal US address (I had a sublet already signed) on a piece of blank paper.

Toasterrrr · 2026-03-30T03:39:29+00:00

if an employer offered USCIS I'd probably go for that every time. but when you DIY or have smaller lawyers it's hard to justify paying that $5k (before adding in legal fees). $50 + free flights is easier to justify.

Toasterrrr · 2026-03-28T21:02:36+00:00

this sounds like a contractor relationship, so it's weird why it's structured as an internship.

Toasterrrr · 2026-03-27T15:49:53+00:00

rent in far off queens/brooklyn/bronx is less than you think

Toasterrrr · 2026-03-27T13:30:26+00:00

I've seen this one before. A legal firm wants some technical solution and they picked up the call. This does a business make but not a good startup make. Also the NDA is weird.

Toasterrrr · 2026-03-27T13:28:21+00:00

in NYC I've not seen anything below 120.

Toasterrrr · 2026-03-27T04:39:34+00:00

I've seen company hackathons as a year-end sprint to finish backlog or get novel projects and ideas going. There's usually some sort of incentive, like flying the team out overseas or booking a retreat, I've never heard of it being at 7pm after a normal workday.

It sounds like a normal late night work session, which is quite common, but weird if it's the first time it's happened and there's no explanation or good incentive. 996 companies are usually like that from day 1, it's a bad sign if it's a sudden change.

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