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Antiwork

False job ads at New York Life

This happened a few years ago for me, but it happened to a friend of mine recently as well so it seems they're still doing it. I graduated from a business master's in 2013 and applied to a job ad for New York Life in their San Francisco office. The ad presented the job as a financial advisor role for small businesses: It was explicitly not a sales role, but more of a consultant position where you helped small businesses make the most out of the business loans they've taken out. More crucially, the ad said the job was open for visa sponsorship (I was on a student visa and would need an H1B to stay in the US). When I showed up for the in-person interview the manager quickly disabused me: She claimed that the advertised position was something I would work up to, but that I would start…


This happened a few years ago for me, but it happened to a friend of mine recently as well so it seems they're still doing it.

I graduated from a business master's in 2013 and applied to a job ad for New York Life in their San Francisco office. The ad presented the job as a financial advisor role for small businesses: It was explicitly not a sales role, but more of a consultant position where you helped small businesses make the most out of the business loans they've taken out. More crucially, the ad said the job was open for visa sponsorship (I was on a student visa and would need an H1B to stay in the US).

When I showed up for the in-person interview the manager quickly disabused me: She claimed that the advertised position was something I would work up to, but that I would start as an insurance salesman making cold calls. The latter is basically a minimum wage position with no experience or degree requirements, although I literally had a masters' in business management and met all the qualifications for the job ad.

Even worse she said that the sponsorship wouldn't apply to sales position but instead said that many people in the sales role enrolled in CPT programs so they could maintain the pretense of a student visa while working full time. If you're not familiar with this, it's basically immigration fraud that exposes the worker to imprisonment or deportation while placing no responsibility on the employer. It's great blackmail material against your workers.

At this point I'm just sitting there fuming because I really needed a job to avoid getting deported, but this particular job would've been worse than useless for me. Then the manager tells me I need to take a short written exam to see if I'm qualified for the entry-level, minimum wage sales position. She took out the papers and walked out of the interview room.

I just stood up and walked out without even touching that test. I actually ran into a classmate of mine in the lobby who was there to apply for the same ad: We both kept walking out instead.

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