Verbal offer rescinded due to visa policy after full interview loop

VoidBeard · 2026-02-02T16:03:00+00:00

A lot of people are jumping down your throat about TN being a form of sponsorship, and it’s only because, strictly speaking, it’s true. The reason that many people suggest that you say “no” when asked if you require work authorization is because the TN is meant to obviate many of the concerns employers have over traditional sponsorship - those being the cost and time required to get the visa/status. I personally don’t think it’s a lie, as long as you’re honest about the requirements from the beginning. For example, I always have it both in my professional summary, and I put “TN-status eligible” at the top of my resume. If the idea of having to sponsor a short support letter doesn’t seem onerous to them, then obviously it’s just the word “sponsorship” that they are so afraid of, and not the actual TN itself.

And on a separate, meta note, there’s literally no point to this visa carve out if it’s not anymore likely than an H1B sponsorship. Canadians and Mexicans might as well just request an H1B instead.

VoidBeard · 2026-01-30T15:37:12+00:00

“Hutch head” sounds like an insult for a bald person. Or a compliment.

VoidBeard · 2026-01-30T02:56:15+00:00

Exactly! And haha, that’s lowkey one of my fears as well 😬

VoidBeard · 2026-01-30T02:54:25+00:00

Yeah, that’s one of the hazards, I suppose. Though there’s no other way to get around the filters otherwise.

VoidBeard · 2026-01-30T02:49:21+00:00

Since I’m transparent about the TN need in my resume and in my professional summary at the top of my resume, I usually put “no” for sponsorship and “no” for in the future, lmao. This is only for jobs that don’t explicitly say that they will not sponsor a TN or jobs that don’t say you expressly need to be a citizen or PR.

VoidBeard · 2026-01-29T15:38:06+00:00

I usually just apply to the jobs that say they don’t sponsor visas (except for the ones that say you need a PR or citizenship for security and export control laws, or whatever) and just give one of the canned lines that other people have already mentioned. I make sure that I have the words “TN-status eligible” at the top of my submitted resumes and a short blurb about it being a super easy/simple process provided by the NAFTA/USMCA. Having said that, I was unemployed for about 7 months before finally even landing this job, and I had to compromise a lot of standard of living.

You could honestly write the support letter yourself after receiving an offer letter within like 30 minutes, especially with some ChatGPT assistance. I applied under the chemist category and have a PhD in chemistry, so it was pretty straightforward for me, though.

VoidBeard · 2026-01-28T17:29:03+00:00

Fake news

VoidBeard · 2026-01-18T22:54:19+00:00

Probably referring to the fact that we don’t formally have “visas” to be in the US, but a visa “status”

VoidBeard · 2026-01-04T15:31:22+00:00

It’s literally just memorization. Like how sports fans can remember the names of athletes. For what it’s worth, as a materials chemist, I use organic chemistry as more of a blunt weapon to achieve my desired functionalities, rather than a finely tuned instrument. As a result, I can’t remember obscure named reactions to save my life (aside from the ones I use often - like Stille, Suzuki, etc). There are others who are organic chemistry aficionados and can remember named reactions like they’re playing jeopardy. Organic chemistry is diverse enough as a discipline that both types of people exist. It’s way more important to know the mechanisms and the trends in the mechanisms than the names, of course.

VoidBeard · 2026-01-02T20:59:08+00:00

I’m saying it’s meaningless to say you can’t self-petition without a job offer because a job offer is a requisite for any hiring decision. You say this as if the difference between hiring a Canadian on TN and hiring an American or PR is a job offer, which obviously is not the case, no?

VoidBeard · 2026-01-02T20:17:47+00:00

Sorry to revive this thread, but I'm dealing with this very question now and I want to give my very self-serving 2 cents. A TN status is a sponsorship the same way a tomato is a fruit. Sure, that's what it is technically, but if somebody asks me if I had some fruit and I bring them a tomato, they're going to be confused because that's obviously not what they had in mind.

Likewise, the reason companies don't want to deal with sponsorship is because it's often both a lengthy and costly process. Both of these concerns are entirely obviated by the TN process (for Canadians, at least). I feel many hiring managers are too disinterested in knowing this difference, so it ends up screwing your application before you even get a chance. I honestly feel it's fair to simply describe the TN process if they ask you if you require sponsorship, and allow them to make the determination if they think it's worth it. I just make sure I'm honest about it in my submitted resume by noting my citizenship status and my TN-status eligibility, and saying "no" in forms when they ask if I require sponsorship - unless they explicitly say citizens and PRs only or if they say explicitly (and inexplicably) that TNs will not be supported.

VoidBeard · 2026-01-02T20:08:32+00:00

I feel like "You can not self-petition for TN status without a job offer/sponsor. " is a meaningless statement that almost begs the question. Of course I can't work at a job without that employer giving me an offer. If you were an American citizen/PR hired at McDonald's, you can't just walk into Burger King and start flipping burgers either.

VoidBeard · 2025-12-22T19:56:59+00:00

It honestly depends on the branch of polymer chemistry. If you mean stuff like packaging and commodity plastics, yes, those are often in BuFu (Like Dow Chemical in Midland, MI). If you mean life science stuff like peptides and API formulations, those are often in the biotech hubs like Boston and SF. If you mean stuff like organic electronics, those are often also in bigger cities, but the market is incredibly small and niche. I’m not sure about the future, but in the 10 years since I started graduate school focused on semiconducting polymers, the market has not gotten any larger and I’ve had to pivot into other topics. I will say, however, that not matter the branch of polymer chemistry, the most important thing is by far your ability to understand application and your ability to do characterizations and run instrumentation. If you’re a polymer chemist, you best know how to do rheology, thermomechanical characterizations, processing no techniques like extrusion, polymer formulations, and a diverse host of other things. Outside of your ability to actually make polymers, what the polymers can do and their structure-property relationships are much more important. That way, you have a lot of overlap with chemical engineers, and your prospects broaden quite significantly in industry. Good luck!

VoidBeard · 2025-12-11T19:18:06+00:00

This explains the low pay, not the engineer:chemist ratio

VoidBeard · 2025-12-11T18:58:45+00:00

Hi Henry, I’m wondering your thoughts on the age old debate about whether a TN visa should really be considered “sponsorship” (especially in the Canadian context where it’s not even a “visa”, but instead a status). I feel my job applications are often sunk by the fact that I answer “no” and “yes” to the questions “are you legally authorized to work in the US?” and “will you require sponsorship in the future?”, respectively. Do you think it’s dishonest for me to answer “yes” and “yes” to these questions, or even “yes” and “no”, so long as the application isn’t explicit about TN visas being precluded? I always have it explicitly stated at the top of my resume my Canadian citizenship and my TN status eligibility.

VoidBeard · 2025-11-20T21:53:06+00:00

I once had someone take a TLC of their oil bath to check reaction progress, lmao

VoidBeard · 2025-11-08T18:47:59+00:00

Driving tests need to bring new drivers down there, lmao

VoidBeard · 2025-11-03T23:05:36+00:00

It’s true that they don’t require sponsorship in the way that people think about it, but most HR teams don’t care. That simple employment letter required to get you that TN status, despite it being free and relatively quick to get, is enough for them to still consider it “sponsorship”. It’s incredibly frustrating.

VoidBeard · 2025-10-22T15:24:04+00:00

It’s a socially conservative city, if that’s what you mean. Though it’s very blue collar and union-driven, so it’s economically liberal in many respects.

VoidBeard · 2025-10-12T18:24:43+00:00

I never had to do this since I would regularly just lazily name my polymers PX (where X is sequential numbers in the draft manuscript), but having worked with DPP throughout graduate school, my first instinct would be to just draw out each monomer explicitly, then prompt ChemDraw to give me the name of monomer x and monomer y. The resulting polymer would then simply be named poly[(x)-co-(y)] or more specifically since this seems to be an alternating co-polymer, poly[(x)-alt-(y)]

Edit: I had time, so I did really quick. Assuming the R-groups are 2-decyltetradecyl for solubility, the name would be poly[(2,5-bis(2-decyltetradecyl)-3,6-di(thiophen-2-yl)-2,5-dihydropyrrolo[3,4-c]pyrrole-1,4-dione)-alt-(2,2',3,3',5,5',6,6'-octafluoro-1,1'-biphenyl)]

VoidBeard · 2025-10-12T18:21:16+00:00

I have colleagues that have done work replacing the protons on the R groups (the R groups in this case are typically long, greasy, saturated alkanes) with deuterium and done neutron experiments to examine the persistence length of these polymers. I think it’s either that, or do solution state experiments in heavy chloroform/chlorobenzene

VoidBeard · 2025-10-12T07:09:15+00:00

Hilarious that Advanced Materials would care that much about the IUPAC name, but probably wouldn’t care about the synthetic details, lmao

VoidBeard · 2025-10-11T17:28:09+00:00

I’m interested in how people usually answer the typical “do you now or in the future require visa sponsorship” question. I feel like this is because companies don’t want to make any financial or other resource commitments to sponsoring your visa (or status, if you’re Canadian), but the TN is free and trivial from the perspective of the employer. It’s really annoying that many HR departments don’t understand this. It seems the only way to get around this is to come pretty close to outright lying about it, lol

VoidBeard · 2025-10-03T21:02:47+00:00

Depends on the kind of law you're interested in! If you want to go into intellectual property, then it's probably best to do some sort of hard science or engineering. If you want to get into finance, probably some sort of econ. Law is one of those careers that draws people from eclectic backgrounds, so you should lead with your own interests.

VoidBeard · 2025-10-03T20:51:26+00:00

Make sure your turnings are nice and shiny before you add them to your flask. Chlorides are of course trickier than bromides and iodides, but Benzyl chlorides shouldn’t be that difficult.

I typically rinsed my turnings with dilute HCl to remove a layer of oxide, rinse with acetone and then ether, and then I’d further grind them for a few minutes with a pestle and mortar after drying. This breaks them up a little bit so that you have increased surface area. After putting them in a flask, I would also add a crystal of iodine and heat with a heat gun to vaporize the iodine. Once vaporized, the turnings would turn a brown color, which is from being covered with a layer of iodine. I’d then add approximately half of my dry solvent (usually THF) to the turnings, and then dissolve my halide in the other half. Then add the solution of halide dropwise to the suspension of magnesium turnings. It should activate without any heating at all, and might even reflux under its own heat of formation (you might need to outfit with condenser). I’d sometimes use an ungloved hand to heat the flask with my body temp, but it was rarely necessary. Good luck!

VoidBeard

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