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Ask HN: Assistance with Rebuilding Life in Amsterdam
Hi all,
I am 42 years old, born in Sweden, and have been writing software since I got my C64 for Christmas at the age of 8. I spent 13 years working professionally in companies of all kinds and sizes in several countries.
Four years ago I met a woman with whom I decided to start a family. We ended up in a tiny village in Northern Germany next to her family, with VERY limited options for work. As a result, we lived mostly on welfare and I focused on designing the programming language I always wanted [0] [1] [2]. I setup a Liberapay account [3], but never received any donations. Then disaster struck; and my partner's family decided that since I still wasn't supporting the family, I needed to leave pronto.
So I ended up on the street with everything I owned in a bag and around €250; and no passport since I didn't need one when I got there and spending €150 on welfare wasn't an option. So got a temporary passport and headed South to Riace/Italy; where I was hoping to be able to arrange a simple life and get time to process.
I've now spent two months in Riace, and come to the conclusion that there is no future for me here. The first month I was able to find work harvesting olives, which paid €20 per day. And for the last month, I've been living with a family of African immigrants who kindly offered me a bed and food for free once they learned of my situation.
I have received enough donations on my Gofundme campaign [4] to renew the passport and make the trip back, but could really use a buffer. My plan is to aim for Amsterdam, which always felt like home and offers plenty of opportunities. Any help with finding software work there would be most appreciated, as would recommendations for a cheap place to stay.
Thank you!
[0] https://github.com/codr7/g-fu
[1] https://github.com/codr7/forthy2
[2] https://github.com/codr7/cidk
[3] https://liberapay.com/codr7/donate
[4] https://www.gofundme.com/f/analogistics
- keiferski 7y agoHave you looked into remote jobs? If you have 13 years of experience, you should have no issue finding a position. Weworkremotely.com and remote.co are the biggest two.
- codr7 7y agoThank you for the tip! I worked remotely for quite some time, and I much prefer interacting directly with humans. Resolving an issue that would take 10s with the person standing in front of you easily escalates into days of heated discussion, misunderstandings and back and forths over chat/email. Add more people and it gets exponentially worse. A combination is a possibility, but exclusively remote is nothing I feel like doing any more.
- gZdJNc5C 7y agoI am from southern Italy and feel a little offended by your fundraiser line "back to civilization". I wish I could also live a simpler life but, maybe because of direct experience, I knew living with 20€ a day would keep me stuck in a place forever. Just wanted to voice out this feeling. There are thousands of people like me who study and don't spend years working on their own dream language but start fixing bugs at 3 in the night for peanuts and end up working in boring corporate jobs in (fx. Sweden) so that others can enjoy their welfare and assistance. I am sorry you fucked up and I wish the best from you. But please cut down on the narrative and don't blame it on the place, it is entirely your mistake.
- codr7 7y agoChill? I was talking about Riace, and if you had been here you would most probably agree. Trust me, €20/day was not what I expected. Why do I get the feeling you're just trying to find reasons to hate? No I didn't and no it's not, this could happen to anyone. Everyone is just one disaster from being left to rot. Blaming the person is how we cover up the complete lack of empathy that rules this world. We do exactly the same to mentally ill and criminals, it's all their fault because anything else might mean we're part of the problem.