Rishta in Seattle

How to read a Seattle profile properly

Works at Microsoft: level, title and the colour of the badge

In a city where most profiles name one of two employers, the employer name tells you almost nothing and the title tells you less. Pakistani families — including the candidate’s own — treat these titles as though they were army ranks, and they are not. Here is how to read them.

Large American technology companies run on internal level numbers, and the words attached to those numbers differ from company to company. Senior at one employer and senior at another can be several years and a great deal of money apart. A manager may lead a team of eight or may manage nobody at all and simply hold a title. Equally, a plainly named engineer two or three grades in, with no impressive word in the title, may be on a strong salary and a good trajectory. So ask for the level rather than the adjective, and ask how long he has been at that level, because people do stall. Nobody will mind the question in this city; everybody here talks about levels.

Then the distinction that matters far more and that almost no family in Pakistan knows to ask about. The large employers here run very substantial contingent workforces: people who work on the same campus, in the same building, on the same products, whose email address even carries the company’s name, but who are employed by a staffing vendor rather than by the company. The difference is not cosmetic. Pay is lower, there is usually no stock, benefits are thinner, contracts run for a fixed period and are routinely allowed to lapse, and in many cases there is a mandatory break before the person can return. He works at Amazon and he is employed by Amazon are two different statements, and both are made in the same words.

So the question is simply: are you a full-time employee of the company, or employed through a vendor or agency. It is not an insulting question — the contingent workforce here is enormous and full of capable people, many of whom convert to full-time posts. It is a question about security, about stock, and, where a visa is involved, about who holds the sponsorship, which we set out in more detail on our Dallas page. Ask it plainly, early, and move on.

Sixty days in a two-employer town

This follows directly, and it is the structural risk of this city that families do not see. The Bay Area has hundreds of comparable employers within an hour’s drive. Seattle has two large ones, a handful of mid-sized ones, and then a steep drop. When the big employers cut staff — which they have done in large rounds in recent years — the local market cannot absorb the people they release, because everybody is competing for the same small number of alternative posts.

For an American citizen or a permanent resident that is a hard year. For somebody on a work visa it is a cliff. Losing the job starts a short grace period, commonly sixty days, in which a new employer must be found to take over the sponsorship — and in a city with few alternative sponsors, sixty days is not long. The realistic outcomes are a move to the Bay Area or Texas, a step down to a smaller employer, or leaving the country. A spouse on a dependent visa holds a status derived entirely from his, so all of that lands on her too, usually without her having had any say in it.

None of which is a reason to refuse a Seattle match. It is a reason to ask four things before anything is agreed. Full-time or vendor. Citizen, green card, or work visa — and if a work visa, what stage the permanent residence has reached. How many months could the household live with no income. And would he move to another city if the job went, because the honest answer to that question decides where this family will be in five years. A couple who have savings and a plan are in a strong position here. A couple who assume it cannot happen are the ones it happens to.

The dark months: light, vitamin D and her first winter

Everyone warns a bride about American cold. Nobody warns her about this, and Seattle is the American city where it matters most. The problem here is not temperature — winters are mild by the standards of Chicago or Boston. It is light. From November to February the days are among the shortest in the continental United States: the sun comes up after eight and is gone by half past four, and the sky in between is very often a flat, unbroken grey. There are weeks when nobody sees the sun at all.

That does measurable things to people, and it is worth knowing them rather than treating low spirits as a character failing. Seasonal low mood is common here and is a recognised medical condition rather than weakness. Vitamin D deficiency is widespread across this region, and markedly more so among people with darker skin, which converts sunlight less efficiently at this latitude, and among women who dress modestly and therefore expose little skin even in summer. A newly arrived Pakistani wife in Bellevue sits squarely in both groups. The symptoms are vague enough to be missed — tiredness, aching, low mood, poor sleep — and the test is a simple blood test any doctor here will order.

So, practically. In the first months, have her vitamin D levels checked and take whatever the doctor advises; it is one of the cheapest and most effective things anybody does in this city. Get outside in the middle of the day even when it is grey, because the light is still worth something. Many people here use a bright daylight lamp in the mornings during winter and find it helps. Keep her connected — the darkness is much harder alone than in company, and the Eastside centres run winter programmes for exactly this reason. And if the low mood is persistent rather than passing, treat it as a medical matter and see a doctor, because it is treatable and nobody should spend a first year in a new country enduring something that has a name.

And say the compensation out loud, because it is real. From late June to September this is one of the most beautiful places in the world, the evenings run to ten at night, and everybody is outdoors. Families who get through the first winter rarely want to leave.

When a parent in Pakistan falls ill: who flies, and can you

This is the conversation that no overseas rishta includes and that almost every overseas marriage eventually needs. Both sets of parents are eight thousand miles away and ageing. One day there is a telephone call at three in the morning, and what happens next has usually never been discussed.

Work through it in advance, because it is far easier now than in a crisis. Who flies — him, her, both, with the children or without. Who pays, when a last-minute return ticket to Pakistan costs what it costs. How much leave can actually be taken: American employers are not generous with this, many offer a small number of personal days, and extended unpaid leave depends on the employer and on how long the person has worked there. What happens to the children, and to the job, if one parent is away for three weeks. And the question that people avoid: if a parent needs long-term care rather than a visit, is the plan to bring them here, to pay for care there, or for somebody to go back for a period.

Two practical matters that genuinely decide whether you can go at all. First, immigration status: anybody with an application pending must know whether they are permitted to leave the country and return, as we explain on our San Diego page, because a parent’s illness is exactly when a family discovers too late that somebody cannot travel. Check it now, not then. Second, documents: keep both passports valid with a year to spare, keep the Pakistani identity documents and the NICOP current, and keep whatever visa or travel permission is needed in order, so that the household can be at an airport in twenty-four hours rather than in three weeks.

And the harder half of this, for families to settle honestly rather than assume. If he is the only son, or she the only daughter, there is very often an unspoken expectation about who will eventually care for whom and where. Some couples decide the parents will come. Some decide one of them will spend long periods in Pakistan. Some decide to return altogether. All of those are honourable. What causes lasting damage is a wife discovering in year five that her husband always intended to move back to Lahore, or a husband discovering that his wife will not have his mother in the house. Ask the question at the start, when it costs nothing but a conversation.

The Eastside, the lake, and a pool that runs north into Canada

Inside the metro, read the city and not the region. Crossing Lake Washington happens on two bridges and both are slow at peak; Bellevue to Everett is an hour, Redmond to Federal Way longer. So a match across the metro is a real commitment, and the practical centre of gravity for this community is the Eastside corridor from Renton up to Bothell.

Then widen, because the local Pakistani pool is small and homogeneous — a great many profiles will look alike, because a great many people here do the same job. Washington beyond the metro holds little: Spokane and Tri-Cities have small communities, and Portland is three hours south. The real extensions are two. First the Bay Area, two hours by air and the closest thing this community has to a sister city — the same employers, the same profiles, constant movement in both directions, and well worth opening in the filter from the start, along with Southern California and Phoenix. Second, and more unusually, Canada: Vancouver is two and a half hours by road, and Surrey beside it holds one of the largest South Asian populations in North America. A Seattle family can be at a sitting in British Columbia by lunchtime.

Be clear-eyed about the Canadian option, though. It is a short drive and an international border, and marrying across it means one of the two giving up their status in the country they leave — the mechanics are set out on our Detroit page and they are not a formality. Weigh that before anyone becomes attached.

One last Seattle note worth stating, because it affects what a salary means. Washington levies no state income tax, which is why so many technology people move here from California: the same package keeps noticeably more. Housing on the Eastside is nonetheless expensive, and the sales tax is high, so the gain is real but smaller than the headline suggests. As everywhere, ask what is left at the end of the month rather than what the offer letter says.