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Working in Canadian journalism, I’d often hear other editors reference the mythical former colleagues who had moved to New York—America, in this context, is alw

Working in Canadian journalism, I’d often hear other editors reference the mythical former colleagues who had moved to New York—America, in this context, is always New York. Lots of Americans dream of either LA or New York, depending on their industry. I imagine in Europe, it's probably Paris and London that draws both French/British and foreigners. Frank Sinatra had a song called New York, New York and one of the lines is "If I can make it there, I'll make it anywhere." It's sort of inevitable that the largest city in the region draws talent and ambition and this gravity pool does not respect international borders. Though I wish we did a better job of fostering diversity of views from other places even within the US. It's something I've lamented before: Even Americans get kind of brainwashed that their local culture is inferior and everything is better in New York (and California) because that's where so much of our popular media originates and is set.

giorgioz 4y ago
For software engineers in Europe is Dublin, Berlin and London. I'm one of the few that made it all the way to California. I've been always the guy trying to push fellow software engineers to go to the USA. Even though I lasted in the Silicon Valley only a year before quitting my full-time job and becoming a digital nomad and boostrapping my own SaaS company https://www.waiterio.com https://www.waiterio.com
- DoreenMichele 4y ago
  Thank you. For software, it's San Francisco, not Los Angeles, that is Mecca in the US.
  - Axsuul 4y ago
    Los Angeles has its own prominent startup scene as well if you’re looking for that kind of lifestyle.
- mettamage 4y ago
  If you have any tips to get to the US as a European, I’d be happy to hear them. If needed, my email is in my profile.
  - tehlike 4y ago
    Shortest path is working for one of the FAANG companies, and requesting internal transfer to US. This basically skips the daunting process that's H1B lottery.
  - kaashif 4y ago
    A path I have seen many people take, and one I'm going to take soon, is to work at a US tech company (not necessarily FAANG, lots of largish companies do this) and transfer internally from Europe to the US. There is no lottery for L1B visas, so it's usually hassle free compared to that H1B mess. L1B visas can also convert to green cards at some point, but I have no idea how easy that is (probably not easy at all).
    - Underphil 4y ago
      I internally transferred (with my family) from the UK to California in late 2016 and secured a green card in early 2020.
    - sgjohnson 4y ago
      > L1B visas can also convert to green cards at some point, but I have no idea how easy that is (probably not easy at all). False. L1B is not related to Green Card in any way. You can get the employer to petiton you for a green card while working on L1B.
      - School-Cotton 4y ago
        L1 is related to green card in the sense that with some statuses, you can never get a green card, but with L1 you can.
        4y ago
- ascar 4y ago
  My dream was to go to California too when I started studying computer science. Then I learned about employment laws, health care and social security in the US. As a person that had close experience how important these things are when things go wrong even though you might've been a millionaire, I feel pretty confident with my choice to stay in Europe. To anyone that thinks these things don't matter if you earn enough money and safe a fair amount, I wish that they and especially their children never get into a situation that shows them how naive that thought was.
  - tehlike 4y ago
    That doesn't compute. If you work for, say, a FAANG company, you have pretty solid healthcare. Social security is surely limited, but there's good benefits for disability and so on. The amount of money you can make in the US as an experienced engineer is probably 5 fold if not more. Senior engineers are easily pulling 7 figures here, which means even taking into account your cost-of-living, you'll end up fairly ahead.
    - ascar 4y ago
      > If you work for, say, a FAANG company, you have pretty solid healthcare. While you're employed. For how many days of sickness does your contract say do they have to keep you employed? Isn't it even employment at will? I don't wanna enter this discussion further. I'm just gonna finish with that I experienced first hand someone making what's today nearly a million a year (in Germany no less!) and ending up on social security within a few years due to sickness and bad investment. And that's with universal health care. A good job, high earnings and decent savings give you leeway, but they will not protect you from tragedy and even more important they will not protect your kids from tragedy that have no fault in whatever happens.
      - amscanne 4y ago
        Not extending the discussion (I’m not the parent commenter), but I think your argument highlights the cultural differences that exist in an interesting way. In the US, independence, self-reliance and optimism are a much bigger part of the common culture. You are considering only worst case scenarios and assuming that the state is the only thing you can rely on. Consider how your view would be different with a more optimistic view of your own luck/ability to recover, and a more pessimistic view of government.
- UweSchmidt 4y ago
  Never heard anyone in Germany dreaming of going to Berlin to "make it" as a software engineer, as if there was a mythical Silicon Valley-like atmosphere of opportunity. Correct me if I'm wrong and I'm missing out! You can go for that Berlin lifestyle and to work in some neat startups (as an underpaid employee) but that's not the canonical definition for succcess imo.
  - raverbashing 4y ago
    You're talking from a very German centric point of view ;) But it is true that most startups are in Berlin, even non-German ones open technical offices there. And it's also true that the average German has little interest in going there.
    - UweSchmidt 4y ago
      I met plenty of foreigners in software jobs all around Germany, aspiring to and usually achieving that sweet German middle class life; I have not noticed any aspirations from them of heading to Berlin. I think the dream of finding ambitious and cool people in a hot location and succeed with a true startup, i.e. not something backed or done by people who are already successful or well connected is dead anyway even in Silicon Valley and never really existed anywhere else. Over there however you still have those mystical FAANG salaries... Dublin and London might be different from Irish and English perspective, respectively.
      - raverbashing 4y ago
        > I have not noticed any aspirations from them of heading to Berlin. Yes, the profile of the people that go to Berlin is different from people who'll go to a software job somewhere else in Germany. Very rarely you'll have that situation of someone going internally to Berlin. I might say that Berlin have few engineering offices of the biggest (non-Berlin centered) German companies. > I think the dream of finding ambitious and cool people in a hot location and succeed with a true startup, i.e. not something backed or done by people who are already successful or well connected is dead anyway even in Silicon Valley and never really existed anywhere else. Very possible. But the cultural draw of Berlin is much bigger than SV. Hands down. Dublin and London also attract some profiles (given the companies that go there) but not many people think Dublin is the coolest city.
- tgv 4y ago
  What's so attractive about Dublin, Berlin and London? I've never seen them as remotely interesting for devs. London is for sleazy bankers.
  - toiletduck 4y ago
    Well there's not a great deal going on in somewhere like the middle of the Forest of Dean as far as software engineering challenges go - you do tend to have to go where businesses are solving problems.. even in a more remote culture the base for companies will be near big cities because big cities are near transport links.
  - rowanajmarshall 4y ago
    I can only speak for London, but: * Salary * Way more opportunities * Big city life, especially attractive to me, since I grew up in a rural, isolated farming town It's the same story as the last 200 years of industrialisation and urbanisation.
  - giorgioz 4y ago
    Dublin, a lot of US companies have European headquarters in Dublin. The salary is higher than other EU cities. The cost is higher but if you are in your 20s without kids you can save a lot more than what would save in other cheaper cities with lower salaries. London is big, there are A LOT of things in London. Yes there are more sleazy bankers in London than other places, but London is big, there are lot of things there, don't simplify things that much. It's NOT like 100% of people in Switzerland are only making watches and swiss army knives.
coastflow 4y ago
>” Even Americans get kind of brainwashed that their local culture is inferior and everything is better in New York (and California) because that's where so much of our popular media originates and is set.” For additional evidence, the setting of most of “Breaking Bad” (now continuing as “Better Call Saul”) in Albuquerque, New Mexico led to meaningful economic benefits for people living there, such as increased tourism (from https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/envelope/la-xpm-2013-aug-07-la-fi-ct-onlocation-breaking-bad20130807-story.html https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/envelope/la-xpm-2013-a...).
- thebean11 4y ago
  That’s surprising, watching those shows did not make me interested in going even a little bit
  - jimmygrapes 4y ago
    Having been to and through those regions I agree, I would not want to vacation or visit there without good reason. However, the show(s) made it seem like a fairly quiet and comfortable region (barring the cartels and drug addictions). Other than certain desert scenes, they really didn't do the environment justice; I rarely felt like long-sleeved Oxford shirt-wearing Walter or suit-wearing Jimmy/Saul were sweating constantly, which contradicted my own experiences, and I've been there in all months of the year. It does get chilly, as any desert/scrub land region does, but it felt a little off. I have the same issue with all the Dune adaptations, they just never really get across the temperature and/or humidity of the place unless it's relevant to a plot point.
purple_ferret 4y ago
The reality is the networking and opportunities in journalism are far superior in New York. There's no better place for advancement than the NYTimes IMO. Journalism is a hustle.
- openknot 4y ago
  I strongly agree with your main assertion. I heard several professional journalists recommend "networking" and "effective self-promotion and marketing" to get internships with well-known companies to add to your as the main advice for new journalists, versus focusing their advice on how to do quality reporting to produce good work samples. However, I speculate that The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post are equivalently great places for advancement for reporters (if only because the NYTimes's new executive editor/editor-in-chief spent much of his career with the WSJ).
samatman 4y ago
New York, New York is a film by Martin Scorcese, with a famous song composed by John Kander and Fred Ebb, and performed by Liza Minnelli. I will grant you that Sinatra's performance is strong, distinctive, even a bit better known. But he stands behind several eminent artists on this one.
dylan604 4y ago
>Even Americans get kind of brainwashed that their local culture is inferior In small town USA, the local culture usually is inferior. The local culture tends to be very monoculture. It's the larger cities where the culture tends to be more diverse. Getting out of small town into the nearest larger town opened me up to a hell of a lot more than the people that never left. However, even in that larger town, it's still limited. Yes, I eventually went to the west coast to have even more multi-cultural experience. Later, I even got to finally start travelling internationally to expand that multi-cultural experience further. Maybe it's a broad brush to paint with, but my local culture 100% was inferior, but I imagine it's not unique
- mmmmmjgcc 4y ago
  - jacques_chester 4y ago
    The right is the populist party because small towns get a disproportionate vote.
  - ramesh31 4y ago
    >What is with this insistence that every culture must be a mixture of foreign cultures? Why can't a town, a small town at that, just have its own culture and be allowed to have that? Yeah we tried that for like 200 years. Fought a war over it. Didn't work out so great.
    - epicureanideal 4y ago
      Where and when are you talking about?
    - School-Cotton 4y ago
      Huh? Which war?
    - osigurdson 4y ago
      I think the poster is equating a small town having its own culture to a region of a country operating with legalized slavery.
historia_novae 4y ago
>I imagine in Europe, it's probably Paris and London that draws both French/British and foreigners. Lol no. Most people go in Paris because it's where they can found a job opportunity or for studies but wouldn't have otherwise, and a whole part of the country (which I belong too) view it has a place to actively avoid for living. And I can't think of anyone that's hated more outside of Paris than Parisians.
- rco8786 4y ago
  Ha. You’re proving OP’s point without realizing it. Replace “Paris” with “New York City” and your statements are equally true.
- kcb 4y ago
  Some people would say this exact sentence about New York.
alar44 4y ago
- tristor 4y ago
  This is absolutely ridiculous and objectively untrue. Most of the food, drink, music, and art that is considered quintessentially American either derives from, was improved to it’s modern rendition, or was inspired by small towns. There’s literally a category called “Americana” for much of this.
  - alar44 4y ago
    Yeah Americana has been dead for like 50 years. Come join me in the Midwest and try not to kill yourself.
- llanowarelves 4y ago
  Yes I much prefer the culture of driveby shootings and quarterly The Current Thing protests. Makes me feel very culturally enriched and progressive. If you're west coast, you get the additional ambiance of poop on the streets and stepping over homeless people. At least they have much better food -- unlike backwards and uncultured homogeneous Japan.
  - alar44 4y ago
    Come to the midwest. You can get burgers or deep fried chicken. But that's it.
    - llanowarelves 4y ago
      I'm just being facetious about the tradeoffs some people (not you necessarily) make. Yes smalltown America doesn't have Michelin star restaurants but that's OK (and you can travel to the city for that). I've seen people say $4k rent is worth "the food". I mean come on. Cooking at home is a great skill
    - Mikeb85 4y ago
PragmaticPulp 4y ago
> It's something I've lamented before: Even Americans get kind of brainwashed that their local culture is inferior and everything is better in New York (and California) because that's where so much of our popular media originates and is set. In the context of finding the best jobs at the top of an industry, key locations like New York, Los Angeles, the Bay Area, Seattle, and others depending on the industry really are significantly better. That doesn’t mean you can’t find okay or good jobs in other locations, but if you’re in journalism then it’s far, far easier to get a top job by moving to New York or a small number of other cities than it is by moving to some random small city somewhere. In this context, if someone is going through all the trouble of emigrating to a different country for their career (a huge amount of work) then it only makes sense to choose the locations best suited for that work. It wouldn’t even begin to make sense if someone uprooted their entire life, switched countries, and then chose Alabama as their home base to launch their national journalism career. It’s definitely not because people are being swayed by Sinatra songs or other media. These cities really are epicenters for certain industries.
ramesh31 4y ago
>Even Americans get kind of brainwashed that their local culture is inferior and everything is better in New York (and California) because that's where so much of our popular media originates and is set. Because it mostly is. The vast swaths of the inland US are cultural black holes of consumption. There is simply not enough population density, diversity, or opportunity to generate anything meaningful. It's probably hard for Europeans to understand that in the US, I can get in a car, drive a thousand miles in any direction to a new city, get out, and find the exact identical built environment around me, inhabited by the exact same people, speaking the exact same language and accent, wearing the same clothes, eating the same food, driving the same cars, listening to the same music, and practicing the same religion.
- weatherlite 4y ago
  Finland and Japan are much more homogenous than the U.S or Canada. Does it make them worse places? In some ways yes and others no. Diversity in itself does not mean much. Yugoslavia was super diverse.
- rufus_foreman 4y ago
  >> the exact same people, speaking the exact same language and accent, wearing the same clothes, eating the same food, driving the same cars, listening to the same music, and practicing the same religion. That's called a nation.
throwaway894345 4y ago
> It's something I've lamented before: Even Americans get kind of brainwashed that their local culture is inferior and everything is better in New York (and California) because that's where so much of our popular media originates and is set. This reminds me of how Americans are brainwashed into believing that European culture is dramatically better than American culture (Americans are dumb, fat, ignorant, and uncultured while Europeans are intelligent and enlightened). This seems to have eased as our world has become more interconnected, but about a decade ago (before living abroad), this was definitely the impression I had from American media. I'm sure there's some truth to it in certain statistical abstractions, but in general there's enormous variety in America that a comparison of medians doesn't capture. Moreover, there's a lot of cherry-picking that goes on in those comparisons: for instance, I'd never heard any discussion about the significant (~30-50%) discrepancy in take-home (i.e., after tax, healthcare, pension/retirement, etc) income for professionals nor the high cost of living in Europe. Certainly nothing that could feasibly justify stereotypes of American inferiority.
- cinntaile 4y ago
  I don't get the link between income and culture here? It feels like you should have ended your post before bringing that up.
  - throwaway894345 4y ago
    I probably wasn't clear, but I was remarking about the belief that European culture and social systems were superior. How much a person takes home is related to the quality of those social systems (it's definitely not the only indicator, but it's one that isn't discussed often).
- soperj 4y ago
  >discrepancy in take-home I think that has more to do with the discrepancy in time at work though as well. If I make half as much as someone working 60-70 hour weeks (as someone who works 35 hour weeks), that makes a lot of sense.
  - 4y ago
jfk13 4y ago
> I imagine in Europe, it's probably Paris and London that draws both French/British and foreigners. For some people, I'm sure, but don't assume everyone wants the same kind of life. I could live in London if I chose, and there are some things about it that would be attractive, but on balance I'm far happier with my small-town life 50 miles away.
sluijs 4y ago
> I imagine in Europe, it's probably Paris and London that draws both French/British and foreigners. This is an interesting question. In my experience, there is no European equivalent. Relocating within the EU might be relatively easy visa-wise, but there is often a language barrier and a different culture you’d have to adjust to, which prevents the formation of industry-specific hubs. Depending on the country you’re from, you’ll likely say that your capital is some kind of hub for industry _xyz_, but if you ask citizens from another country in the EU the same question, I wouldn’t be surprised if you’d get different answers.
- DoreenMichele 4y ago
  The US is a mostly monolingual "country of countries." They are called states because they were envisioned as separate nation-states who shared an army for purposes of self defense. The original charter was a sort that historically never really worked anywhere and it was failing to provide funds, iirc, for paying for defense. So they gave the federal government more teeth and it became some weird beast of a sort the world had not seen before. And here we are, with this strange beast still behaving strangely all these years later.
- userulluipeste 4y ago
  It's true that there is no similar city advertisement anywhere in Europe, at least nothing on a level close to New York. Funnily, that doesn't prevent however some of the employers to sometimes try presenting their locations (say, Amsterdam or Zürich) in the list of benefits. "Depending on the country you’re from, you’ll likely say that your capital is some kind of hub for industry _xyz_" To narrow it down a bit, count only the places having a significant population. It's harder to make that claim for capitals like Ljubljana or Reykjavík.
ck425 4y ago
> I imagine in Europe, it's probably Paris and London that draws both French/British and foreigners. It's not as true in the UK. The salary differential between a medium city and The City isn't as big so while there's definitely more opportunity and higher pay in London it's wiped out by higher costs of living. Lots of people still move there because they like the lifestyle or to climb the ladder faster but if you're content to be a solid well paid professional there are lots of smaller (but not necessarily small) cities with plenty of opportunity, better work life balance and affordable housing.
simonebrunozzi 4y ago
Ok, but then why not Toronto?
- otoburb 4y ago
  Since New York City has more opportunities and larger scale compared to Toronto the question boils down to a career efficiency and potential future leverage. If you're going to have to relocate and bust your ass working anyway, then why not take the shot at making a larger impact and trying to reap more rewards in the larger and more prosperous city.
wolverine876 4y ago
> Lots of Americans dream of either LA or New York, depending on their industry. I was going to post the same thing. What the OP describes is the same in much of the US. > Even Americans get kind of brainwashed that their local culture is inferior and everything is better in New York (and California) because that's where so much of our popular media originates and is set. There is something to it: People who are ambitious, confident, and talented tend to want to be around similar people - it gives them opportunities to do more - and around other resources such as financing, leading organizations in their industry, etc. The motivated ones tend to go to NY, etc. So the talent level and resources are generally greater. Seriously, what would you tell a highly ambitious, talented coder in a small town in the middle of Nebraska? Stay where you are? Even in the days of remote work, that seems insane. > Though I wish we did a better job of fostering diversity of views from other places even within the US. Agreed.
- DoreenMichele 4y ago
  Seriously, what would you tell a highly ambitious, talented coder in a small town in the middle of Nebraska? Stay where you are? I'm trying to make a different point than people seem to think I'm making. I have absolutely no idea how to clarify that in comments here. I'm trying to sort my thoughts on the topic elsewhere, which likely means a blog post that likely won't be seen by over 30 people.
  - wolverine876 4y ago
    Sorry if I misunderstood! I'd be interested in grasping what I'm missing ...
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - DoreenMichele 4y ago
      You said you would be interested: https://butterflyeconomy.blogspot.com/2022/05/place-cutlure-context.html https://butterflyeconomy.blogspot.com/2022/05/place-cutlure-...
throwoutway 4y ago
Ralph Waldo Emerson called New York City "a sucked orange" (He did not like NY). Once I’ve visited it, I also did not like it. I don’t get the appeal

giorgioz 4y ago

For software engineers in Europe is Dublin, Berlin and London. I'm one of the few that made it all the way to California. I've been always the guy trying to push fellow software engineers to go to the USA. Even though I lasted in the Silicon Valley only a year before quitting my full-time job and becoming a digital nomad and boostrapping my own SaaS company https://www.waiterio.com https://www.waiterio.com

DoreenMichele 4y ago
Thank you. For software, it's San Francisco, not Los Angeles, that is Mecca in the US.
- Axsuul 4y ago
  Los Angeles has its own prominent startup scene as well if you’re looking for that kind of lifestyle.
mettamage 4y ago
If you have any tips to get to the US as a European, I’d be happy to hear them. If needed, my email is in my profile.
- tehlike 4y ago
  Shortest path is working for one of the FAANG companies, and requesting internal transfer to US. This basically skips the daunting process that's H1B lottery.
- kaashif 4y ago
  A path I have seen many people take, and one I'm going to take soon, is to work at a US tech company (not necessarily FAANG, lots of largish companies do this) and transfer internally from Europe to the US. There is no lottery for L1B visas, so it's usually hassle free compared to that H1B mess. L1B visas can also convert to green cards at some point, but I have no idea how easy that is (probably not easy at all).
  - Underphil 4y ago
    I internally transferred (with my family) from the UK to California in late 2016 and secured a green card in early 2020.
  - sgjohnson 4y ago
    > L1B visas can also convert to green cards at some point, but I have no idea how easy that is (probably not easy at all). False. L1B is not related to Green Card in any way. You can get the employer to petiton you for a green card while working on L1B.
    - School-Cotton 4y ago
      L1 is related to green card in the sense that with some statuses, you can never get a green card, but with L1 you can.
      - 4y ago
ascar 4y ago
My dream was to go to California too when I started studying computer science. Then I learned about employment laws, health care and social security in the US. As a person that had close experience how important these things are when things go wrong even though you might've been a millionaire, I feel pretty confident with my choice to stay in Europe. To anyone that thinks these things don't matter if you earn enough money and safe a fair amount, I wish that they and especially their children never get into a situation that shows them how naive that thought was.
- tehlike 4y ago
  That doesn't compute. If you work for, say, a FAANG company, you have pretty solid healthcare. Social security is surely limited, but there's good benefits for disability and so on. The amount of money you can make in the US as an experienced engineer is probably 5 fold if not more. Senior engineers are easily pulling 7 figures here, which means even taking into account your cost-of-living, you'll end up fairly ahead.
  - ascar 4y ago
    > If you work for, say, a FAANG company, you have pretty solid healthcare. While you're employed. For how many days of sickness does your contract say do they have to keep you employed? Isn't it even employment at will? I don't wanna enter this discussion further. I'm just gonna finish with that I experienced first hand someone making what's today nearly a million a year (in Germany no less!) and ending up on social security within a few years due to sickness and bad investment. And that's with universal health care. A good job, high earnings and decent savings give you leeway, but they will not protect you from tragedy and even more important they will not protect your kids from tragedy that have no fault in whatever happens.
    - amscanne 4y ago
      Not extending the discussion (I’m not the parent commenter), but I think your argument highlights the cultural differences that exist in an interesting way. In the US, independence, self-reliance and optimism are a much bigger part of the common culture. You are considering only worst case scenarios and assuming that the state is the only thing you can rely on. Consider how your view would be different with a more optimistic view of your own luck/ability to recover, and a more pessimistic view of government.
UweSchmidt 4y ago
Never heard anyone in Germany dreaming of going to Berlin to "make it" as a software engineer, as if there was a mythical Silicon Valley-like atmosphere of opportunity. Correct me if I'm wrong and I'm missing out! You can go for that Berlin lifestyle and to work in some neat startups (as an underpaid employee) but that's not the canonical definition for succcess imo.
- raverbashing 4y ago
  You're talking from a very German centric point of view ;) But it is true that most startups are in Berlin, even non-German ones open technical offices there. And it's also true that the average German has little interest in going there.
  - UweSchmidt 4y ago
    I met plenty of foreigners in software jobs all around Germany, aspiring to and usually achieving that sweet German middle class life; I have not noticed any aspirations from them of heading to Berlin. I think the dream of finding ambitious and cool people in a hot location and succeed with a true startup, i.e. not something backed or done by people who are already successful or well connected is dead anyway even in Silicon Valley and never really existed anywhere else. Over there however you still have those mystical FAANG salaries... Dublin and London might be different from Irish and English perspective, respectively.
    - raverbashing 4y ago
      > I have not noticed any aspirations from them of heading to Berlin. Yes, the profile of the people that go to Berlin is different from people who'll go to a software job somewhere else in Germany. Very rarely you'll have that situation of someone going internally to Berlin. I might say that Berlin have few engineering offices of the biggest (non-Berlin centered) German companies. > I think the dream of finding ambitious and cool people in a hot location and succeed with a true startup, i.e. not something backed or done by people who are already successful or well connected is dead anyway even in Silicon Valley and never really existed anywhere else. Very possible. But the cultural draw of Berlin is much bigger than SV. Hands down. Dublin and London also attract some profiles (given the companies that go there) but not many people think Dublin is the coolest city.
tgv 4y ago
What's so attractive about Dublin, Berlin and London? I've never seen them as remotely interesting for devs. London is for sleazy bankers.
- toiletduck 4y ago
  Well there's not a great deal going on in somewhere like the middle of the Forest of Dean as far as software engineering challenges go - you do tend to have to go where businesses are solving problems.. even in a more remote culture the base for companies will be near big cities because big cities are near transport links.
- rowanajmarshall 4y ago
  I can only speak for London, but: * Salary * Way more opportunities * Big city life, especially attractive to me, since I grew up in a rural, isolated farming town It's the same story as the last 200 years of industrialisation and urbanisation.
- giorgioz 4y ago
  Dublin, a lot of US companies have European headquarters in Dublin. The salary is higher than other EU cities. The cost is higher but if you are in your 20s without kids you can save a lot more than what would save in other cheaper cities with lower salaries. London is big, there are A LOT of things in London. Yes there are more sleazy bankers in London than other places, but London is big, there are lot of things there, don't simplify things that much. It's NOT like 100% of people in Switzerland are only making watches and swiss army knives.

coastflow 4y ago

>” Even Americans get kind of brainwashed that their local culture is inferior and everything is better in New York (and California) because that's where so much of our popular media originates and is set.” For additional evidence, the setting of most of “Breaking Bad” (now continuing as “Better Call Saul”) in Albuquerque, New Mexico led to meaningful economic benefits for people living there, such as increased tourism (from https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/envelope/la-xpm-2013-aug-07-la-fi-ct-onlocation-breaking-bad20130807-story.html https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/envelope/la-xpm-2013-a...).

thebean11 4y ago
That’s surprising, watching those shows did not make me interested in going even a little bit
- jimmygrapes 4y ago
  Having been to and through those regions I agree, I would not want to vacation or visit there without good reason. However, the show(s) made it seem like a fairly quiet and comfortable region (barring the cartels and drug addictions). Other than certain desert scenes, they really didn't do the environment justice; I rarely felt like long-sleeved Oxford shirt-wearing Walter or suit-wearing Jimmy/Saul were sweating constantly, which contradicted my own experiences, and I've been there in all months of the year. It does get chilly, as any desert/scrub land region does, but it felt a little off. I have the same issue with all the Dune adaptations, they just never really get across the temperature and/or humidity of the place unless it's relevant to a plot point.

purple_ferret 4y ago

The reality is the networking and opportunities in journalism are far superior in New York. There's no better place for advancement than the NYTimes IMO. Journalism is a hustle.

openknot 4y ago
I strongly agree with your main assertion. I heard several professional journalists recommend "networking" and "effective self-promotion and marketing" to get internships with well-known companies to add to your as the main advice for new journalists, versus focusing their advice on how to do quality reporting to produce good work samples. However, I speculate that The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post are equivalently great places for advancement for reporters (if only because the NYTimes's new executive editor/editor-in-chief spent much of his career with the WSJ).

samatman 4y ago

New York, New York is a film by Martin Scorcese, with a famous song composed by John Kander and Fred Ebb, and performed by Liza Minnelli. I will grant you that Sinatra's performance is strong, distinctive, even a bit better known. But he stands behind several eminent artists on this one.

dylan604 4y ago

>Even Americans get kind of brainwashed that their local culture is inferior In small town USA, the local culture usually is inferior. The local culture tends to be very monoculture. It's the larger cities where the culture tends to be more diverse. Getting out of small town into the nearest larger town opened me up to a hell of a lot more than the people that never left. However, even in that larger town, it's still limited. Yes, I eventually went to the west coast to have even more multi-cultural experience. Later, I even got to finally start travelling internationally to expand that multi-cultural experience further. Maybe it's a broad brush to paint with, but my local culture 100% was inferior, but I imagine it's not unique

mmmmmjgcc 4y ago
- jacques_chester 4y ago
  The right is the populist party because small towns get a disproportionate vote.
- ramesh31 4y ago
  >What is with this insistence that every culture must be a mixture of foreign cultures? Why can't a town, a small town at that, just have its own culture and be allowed to have that? Yeah we tried that for like 200 years. Fought a war over it. Didn't work out so great.
  - epicureanideal 4y ago
    Where and when are you talking about?
  - School-Cotton 4y ago
    Huh? Which war?
  - osigurdson 4y ago
    I think the poster is equating a small town having its own culture to a region of a country operating with legalized slavery.

historia_novae 4y ago

>I imagine in Europe, it's probably Paris and London that draws both French/British and foreigners. Lol no. Most people go in Paris because it's where they can found a job opportunity or for studies but wouldn't have otherwise, and a whole part of the country (which I belong too) view it has a place to actively avoid for living. And I can't think of anyone that's hated more outside of Paris than Parisians.

rco8786 4y ago
Ha. You’re proving OP’s point without realizing it. Replace “Paris” with “New York City” and your statements are equally true.
kcb 4y ago
Some people would say this exact sentence about New York.

alar44 4y ago

tristor 4y ago
This is absolutely ridiculous and objectively untrue. Most of the food, drink, music, and art that is considered quintessentially American either derives from, was improved to it’s modern rendition, or was inspired by small towns. There’s literally a category called “Americana” for much of this.
- alar44 4y ago
  Yeah Americana has been dead for like 50 years. Come join me in the Midwest and try not to kill yourself.
llanowarelves 4y ago
Yes I much prefer the culture of driveby shootings and quarterly The Current Thing protests. Makes me feel very culturally enriched and progressive. If you're west coast, you get the additional ambiance of poop on the streets and stepping over homeless people. At least they have much better food -- unlike backwards and uncultured homogeneous Japan.
- alar44 4y ago
  Come to the midwest. You can get burgers or deep fried chicken. But that's it.
  - llanowarelves 4y ago
    I'm just being facetious about the tradeoffs some people (not you necessarily) make. Yes smalltown America doesn't have Michelin star restaurants but that's OK (and you can travel to the city for that). I've seen people say $4k rent is worth "the food". I mean come on. Cooking at home is a great skill
  - Mikeb85 4y ago

PragmaticPulp 4y ago

> It's something I've lamented before: Even Americans get kind of brainwashed that their local culture is inferior and everything is better in New York (and California) because that's where so much of our popular media originates and is set. In the context of finding the best jobs at the top of an industry, key locations like New York, Los Angeles, the Bay Area, Seattle, and others depending on the industry really are significantly better. That doesn’t mean you can’t find okay or good jobs in other locations, but if you’re in journalism then it’s far, far easier to get a top job by moving to New York or a small number of other cities than it is by moving to some random small city somewhere. In this context, if someone is going through all the trouble of emigrating to a different country for their career (a huge amount of work) then it only makes sense to choose the locations best suited for that work. It wouldn’t even begin to make sense if someone uprooted their entire life, switched countries, and then chose Alabama as their home base to launch their national journalism career. It’s definitely not because people are being swayed by Sinatra songs or other media. These cities really are epicenters for certain industries.

ramesh31 4y ago

>Even Americans get kind of brainwashed that their local culture is inferior and everything is better in New York (and California) because that's where so much of our popular media originates and is set. Because it mostly is. The vast swaths of the inland US are cultural black holes of consumption. There is simply not enough population density, diversity, or opportunity to generate anything meaningful. It's probably hard for Europeans to understand that in the US, I can get in a car, drive a thousand miles in any direction to a new city, get out, and find the exact identical built environment around me, inhabited by the exact same people, speaking the exact same language and accent, wearing the same clothes, eating the same food, driving the same cars, listening to the same music, and practicing the same religion.

weatherlite 4y ago
Finland and Japan are much more homogenous than the U.S or Canada. Does it make them worse places? In some ways yes and others no. Diversity in itself does not mean much. Yugoslavia was super diverse.
rufus_foreman 4y ago
>> the exact same people, speaking the exact same language and accent, wearing the same clothes, eating the same food, driving the same cars, listening to the same music, and practicing the same religion. That's called a nation.

throwaway894345 4y ago

> It's something I've lamented before: Even Americans get kind of brainwashed that their local culture is inferior and everything is better in New York (and California) because that's where so much of our popular media originates and is set. This reminds me of how Americans are brainwashed into believing that European culture is dramatically better than American culture (Americans are dumb, fat, ignorant, and uncultured while Europeans are intelligent and enlightened). This seems to have eased as our world has become more interconnected, but about a decade ago (before living abroad), this was definitely the impression I had from American media. I'm sure there's some truth to it in certain statistical abstractions, but in general there's enormous variety in America that a comparison of medians doesn't capture. Moreover, there's a lot of cherry-picking that goes on in those comparisons: for instance, I'd never heard any discussion about the significant (~30-50%) discrepancy in take-home (i.e., after tax, healthcare, pension/retirement, etc) income for professionals nor the high cost of living in Europe. Certainly nothing that could feasibly justify stereotypes of American inferiority.

cinntaile 4y ago
I don't get the link between income and culture here? It feels like you should have ended your post before bringing that up.
- throwaway894345 4y ago
  I probably wasn't clear, but I was remarking about the belief that European culture and social systems were superior. How much a person takes home is related to the quality of those social systems (it's definitely not the only indicator, but it's one that isn't discussed often).
soperj 4y ago
>discrepancy in take-home I think that has more to do with the discrepancy in time at work though as well. If I make half as much as someone working 60-70 hour weeks (as someone who works 35 hour weeks), that makes a lot of sense.
- 4y ago

jfk13 4y ago

> I imagine in Europe, it's probably Paris and London that draws both French/British and foreigners. For some people, I'm sure, but don't assume everyone wants the same kind of life. I could live in London if I chose, and there are some things about it that would be attractive, but on balance I'm far happier with my small-town life 50 miles away.

sluijs 4y ago

> I imagine in Europe, it's probably Paris and London that draws both French/British and foreigners. This is an interesting question. In my experience, there is no European equivalent. Relocating within the EU might be relatively easy visa-wise, but there is often a language barrier and a different culture you’d have to adjust to, which prevents the formation of industry-specific hubs. Depending on the country you’re from, you’ll likely say that your capital is some kind of hub for industry _xyz_, but if you ask citizens from another country in the EU the same question, I wouldn’t be surprised if you’d get different answers.

DoreenMichele 4y ago
The US is a mostly monolingual "country of countries." They are called states because they were envisioned as separate nation-states who shared an army for purposes of self defense. The original charter was a sort that historically never really worked anywhere and it was failing to provide funds, iirc, for paying for defense. So they gave the federal government more teeth and it became some weird beast of a sort the world had not seen before. And here we are, with this strange beast still behaving strangely all these years later.
userulluipeste 4y ago
It's true that there is no similar city advertisement anywhere in Europe, at least nothing on a level close to New York. Funnily, that doesn't prevent however some of the employers to sometimes try presenting their locations (say, Amsterdam or Zürich) in the list of benefits. "Depending on the country you’re from, you’ll likely say that your capital is some kind of hub for industry _xyz_" To narrow it down a bit, count only the places having a significant population. It's harder to make that claim for capitals like Ljubljana or Reykjavík.

ck425 4y ago

> I imagine in Europe, it's probably Paris and London that draws both French/British and foreigners. It's not as true in the UK. The salary differential between a medium city and The City isn't as big so while there's definitely more opportunity and higher pay in London it's wiped out by higher costs of living. Lots of people still move there because they like the lifestyle or to climb the ladder faster but if you're content to be a solid well paid professional there are lots of smaller (but not necessarily small) cities with plenty of opportunity, better work life balance and affordable housing.

simonebrunozzi 4y ago

Ok, but then why not Toronto?

otoburb 4y ago
Since New York City has more opportunities and larger scale compared to Toronto the question boils down to a career efficiency and potential future leverage. If you're going to have to relocate and bust your ass working anyway, then why not take the shot at making a larger impact and trying to reap more rewards in the larger and more prosperous city.

wolverine876 4y ago

> Lots of Americans dream of either LA or New York, depending on their industry. I was going to post the same thing. What the OP describes is the same in much of the US. > Even Americans get kind of brainwashed that their local culture is inferior and everything is better in New York (and California) because that's where so much of our popular media originates and is set. There is something to it: People who are ambitious, confident, and talented tend to want to be around similar people - it gives them opportunities to do more - and around other resources such as financing, leading organizations in their industry, etc. The motivated ones tend to go to NY, etc. So the talent level and resources are generally greater. Seriously, what would you tell a highly ambitious, talented coder in a small town in the middle of Nebraska? Stay where you are? Even in the days of remote work, that seems insane. > Though I wish we did a better job of fostering diversity of views from other places even within the US. Agreed.

DoreenMichele 4y ago
Seriously, what would you tell a highly ambitious, talented coder in a small town in the middle of Nebraska? Stay where you are? I'm trying to make a different point than people seem to think I'm making. I have absolutely no idea how to clarify that in comments here. I'm trying to sort my thoughts on the topic elsewhere, which likely means a blog post that likely won't be seen by over 30 people.
- wolverine876 4y ago
  Sorry if I misunderstood! I'd be interested in grasping what I'm missing ...
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - DoreenMichele 4y ago
    You said you would be interested: https://butterflyeconomy.blogspot.com/2022/05/place-cutlure-context.html https://butterflyeconomy.blogspot.com/2022/05/place-cutlure-...

throwoutway 4y ago

Ralph Waldo Emerson called New York City "a sucked orange" (He did not like NY). Once I’ve visited it, I also did not like it. I don’t get the appeal