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Man, you have a very vauable asset for a tech career - a US Citizenship. I am very envious of folks who have it. The tech career opportunities outside of US are

Man, you have a very vauable asset for a tech career - a US Citizenship. I am very envious of folks who have it. The tech career opportunities outside of US are really not that diverse and are heavily scattered across the world - i.e. maybe the rest of the world combined is as interesting tech-wide as US is - but with lower salary and language/immigration barriers (i.e. try job-hopping, over a span of say 5 years, from Germany to New Zealand to China vs NYC to SF to Seattle).

askmike 10y ago
> a US Citizenship. I am very envious of folks who have it. Not everyone wants to move to/stay in the US, the world has a lot of beauty. ---- I for one am very happy to live in Europe. But Europe is a very diverse continent so it's an extremely broad question. I've lived in a few places within Europe, traveled through others. But there is still so much hidden for me. If I were to move outside I would probably go to Asia.
- taway_1212 10y ago
  A lot depends on the kind of career you want to have. If you're happy with staying within the mainstream business/web programming, then Europe does not constrain you that much (except lower salaries, which means less savings, which means retiring later). On the other hand, if you want to go into something niche (compilers, graphics, anything math-based), then US is really the place to be.
  - twic 10y ago
    There's a reasonable amount of graphics and compiler work in the UK - we have ARM, and Imagination Technologies, plus some other boutique local companies, and offices of international companies like Broadcom and IBM (Hursley did a lot of IBM's JVM work, not sure if that's still going).
dClauzel 10y ago
> you have a very vauable asset for a tech career - a US Citizenship DAFUQ ? I am a French research in computer science, now working for a company producing and streaming contents on the web. I can assure you that my carrer opportunities — as sysadmin, researcher, or developper — are pretty good in France and in Europe :)
- alexhakawy 10y ago
  how you get a job like that lol
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- taway_1212 10y ago
  I didn't say it's impossible, it's merely generally harder and for less money. Re: sysadmin and developer roles - my post was mostly about diversity and breadth of available roles. These sysadmin and developer roles are generic enough that one will be fine in them in Europe. A sufficiently specialized researcher, on the other hand, usually has only a handful of places in the entire world that are interested in hiring him within his specialty - a lot of which are in the US. I see this in a friend of mine. He's a young PhD Machine Learning Researcher with top credentials (Ivy League, top publications, won awards in his field). He wants to live in Europe due to family concerns, but he really can't find a position that would allow him use his talent, and is semi-wasting his time in random bad Data Science jobs for now - while he's getting numerous awesome offers from the US (like leading a research unit at Google or faculty positions in Ivy League schools).
  - jfaucett 10y ago
    > it's merely generally harder and for less money. My experience has been the opposite in terms of difficulty. In most EU countries the market of software engineers who can also speak the native country's language is really small so its way easier to stand out from the crowd. In the US, you have to compete in a 350 million+ population pool plus global candidates who have studied English their whole lives. In any given EU country the candidate pool is a fraction the size and of those the one's who can communicate fluently in the native language is a fraction of that fraction.
sadok 10y ago
I agreee with you. As a mexican with no college degree (I'm entirely self-taught), one of my 'career dreams' is to work at a company like Airbnb, Uber, Google, Facebook, etc, but the lack of work visa, or in this case, US citizenzhip, makes it IMPOSSIBLE for me unless I do some crazy stuff like getting an O-1 visa (extraordinary ability). I was offered a Product Design position at Medium but I couldn't move forward because of the visa. I was very sad. In contrast, working in Europe or Canada is easier because getting a work or resident visa is smoother, but the salary cut is way too much.
- oddsockmachine 10y ago
  There's always the L-1B visa option: work for a company that has offices both in the US and somewhere you can already work. After one year, apply to transfer to the US offices.
  - taway_1212 10y ago
    That's unfortunately not comparable to a citizenship. With the L-1 visa you get to work for this one company only - and changing jobs is usually essential to building a good career in tech.
- EduardoBautista 10y ago
  Same here. Add the fact that I lived in the USA for most of my life undocumented. I now live in Mexico and doing OK.
moo360 10y ago
> Man, you have a very vauable asset for a tech career - a US Citizenship This isn't really that important at all. I don't really recognise this as a specific asset in any way. > The tech career opportunities outside of US are really not that diverse and are heavily scattered across the world That's an extremely biased and, in my opinion, incorrect view. Even if you just take the big tech capitals in Europe - London, Berlin, Paris etc - you have hugh tech opportunities in each. The opportunities in London alone rival those in New York. Sure there's not really a specific place similar to Silicon Valley - but that's really the only thing missing.
- EduardoBautista 10y ago
  Salaries are much lower.
  - moo360 10y ago
    While I agree they are lower, not much lower, but lower. That's simply because of the market rate. I have some experience hiring devs in London and NYC so can only really comment on those two cities. You see approx ~20% reduction in market rate salary for a given full-stack position in London vs NYC. However there are factors that the simple NET salary comparison doesn't take into account. Do these factors negate the difference? No, not entirely - but they do reduce that percentage down quite significantly. The major one, which will be of no surprise, is healthcare. The addition of free healthcare for your family is unlikely to be equal in value directly to the entire 20% salary difference. However, often the fact is it might be worth it anyway just to not have to deal with that, often stressful and extremely difficult to budget for, expense. These aren't the only QoL differences between the two cities, others are often rather personal/bespoke to the candidate. The point being comparing net salary between two completely different countries is often not even close to the full picture.
    - EduardoBautista 10y ago
      Health insurance is commonly provided by employers if you are a software engineer.

askmike 10y ago

> a US Citizenship. I am very envious of folks who have it. Not everyone wants to move to/stay in the US, the world has a lot of beauty. ---- I for one am very happy to live in Europe. But Europe is a very diverse continent so it's an extremely broad question. I've lived in a few places within Europe, traveled through others. But there is still so much hidden for me. If I were to move outside I would probably go to Asia.

taway_1212 10y ago
A lot depends on the kind of career you want to have. If you're happy with staying within the mainstream business/web programming, then Europe does not constrain you that much (except lower salaries, which means less savings, which means retiring later). On the other hand, if you want to go into something niche (compilers, graphics, anything math-based), then US is really the place to be.
- twic 10y ago
  There's a reasonable amount of graphics and compiler work in the UK - we have ARM, and Imagination Technologies, plus some other boutique local companies, and offices of international companies like Broadcom and IBM (Hursley did a lot of IBM's JVM work, not sure if that's still going).

dClauzel 10y ago

> you have a very vauable asset for a tech career - a US Citizenship DAFUQ ? I am a French research in computer science, now working for a company producing and streaming contents on the web. I can assure you that my carrer opportunities — as sysadmin, researcher, or developper — are pretty good in France and in Europe :)

alexhakawy 10y ago
how you get a job like that lol
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
taway_1212 10y ago
I didn't say it's impossible, it's merely generally harder and for less money. Re: sysadmin and developer roles - my post was mostly about diversity and breadth of available roles. These sysadmin and developer roles are generic enough that one will be fine in them in Europe. A sufficiently specialized researcher, on the other hand, usually has only a handful of places in the entire world that are interested in hiring him within his specialty - a lot of which are in the US. I see this in a friend of mine. He's a young PhD Machine Learning Researcher with top credentials (Ivy League, top publications, won awards in his field). He wants to live in Europe due to family concerns, but he really can't find a position that would allow him use his talent, and is semi-wasting his time in random bad Data Science jobs for now - while he's getting numerous awesome offers from the US (like leading a research unit at Google or faculty positions in Ivy League schools).
- jfaucett 10y ago
  > it's merely generally harder and for less money. My experience has been the opposite in terms of difficulty. In most EU countries the market of software engineers who can also speak the native country's language is really small so its way easier to stand out from the crowd. In the US, you have to compete in a 350 million+ population pool plus global candidates who have studied English their whole lives. In any given EU country the candidate pool is a fraction the size and of those the one's who can communicate fluently in the native language is a fraction of that fraction.

sadok 10y ago

I agreee with you. As a mexican with no college degree (I'm entirely self-taught), one of my 'career dreams' is to work at a company like Airbnb, Uber, Google, Facebook, etc, but the lack of work visa, or in this case, US citizenzhip, makes it IMPOSSIBLE for me unless I do some crazy stuff like getting an O-1 visa (extraordinary ability). I was offered a Product Design position at Medium but I couldn't move forward because of the visa. I was very sad. In contrast, working in Europe or Canada is easier because getting a work or resident visa is smoother, but the salary cut is way too much.

oddsockmachine 10y ago
There's always the L-1B visa option: work for a company that has offices both in the US and somewhere you can already work. After one year, apply to transfer to the US offices.
- taway_1212 10y ago
  That's unfortunately not comparable to a citizenship. With the L-1 visa you get to work for this one company only - and changing jobs is usually essential to building a good career in tech.
EduardoBautista 10y ago
Same here. Add the fact that I lived in the USA for most of my life undocumented. I now live in Mexico and doing OK.

moo360 10y ago

> Man, you have a very vauable asset for a tech career - a US Citizenship This isn't really that important at all. I don't really recognise this as a specific asset in any way. > The tech career opportunities outside of US are really not that diverse and are heavily scattered across the world That's an extremely biased and, in my opinion, incorrect view. Even if you just take the big tech capitals in Europe - London, Berlin, Paris etc - you have hugh tech opportunities in each. The opportunities in London alone rival those in New York. Sure there's not really a specific place similar to Silicon Valley - but that's really the only thing missing.

EduardoBautista 10y ago
Salaries are much lower.
- moo360 10y ago
  While I agree they are lower, not much lower, but lower. That's simply because of the market rate. I have some experience hiring devs in London and NYC so can only really comment on those two cities. You see approx ~20% reduction in market rate salary for a given full-stack position in London vs NYC. However there are factors that the simple NET salary comparison doesn't take into account. Do these factors negate the difference? No, not entirely - but they do reduce that percentage down quite significantly. The major one, which will be of no surprise, is healthcare. The addition of free healthcare for your family is unlikely to be equal in value directly to the entire 20% salary difference. However, often the fact is it might be worth it anyway just to not have to deal with that, often stressful and extremely difficult to budget for, expense. These aren't the only QoL differences between the two cities, others are often rather personal/bespoke to the candidate. The point being comparing net salary between two completely different countries is often not even close to the full picture.
  - EduardoBautista 10y ago
    Health insurance is commonly provided by employers if you are a software engineer.