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Why don't you move abroad?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- lambdadelirium 2y agoBecause my country is more based
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- hshshshshsh 2y agoTo people who are considering moving abroad you should do it. Don't let nationalism stop you. You were randomly born in your country. Choose your country. Don't let randomness and some emotional baggage control where you want to live. You have a finite live. Make most of it.
- Parae 2y agoLet me guess, you're from EU or USA ? Nationalism is not what's stopping most africans to move abroad. I'm lucky I was born in France so I don't have to bother with visa refusal like all my cousins in Algeria.
- hshshshshsh 2y agoI am from India.
- dyauspitr 2y agoIndia is orders of magnitude better than most African countries. At the very least it’s safe and you can make a living. Indians actually move back to India after living in the west which doesn’t happen with Africans all that often.
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- logicchains 2y agoThe average GDP per capita in Africa as of 2024 is around $2400 (https://www.statista.com/statistics/1300864/gdp-value-per-capita-in-africa/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1300864/gdp-value-per-ca...), in India it's around $2700 (https://www.statista.com/statistics/263776/gross-domestic-product-gdp-per-capita-in-india/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/263776/gross-domestic-pr... ). A difference but certainly not orders of magnitude. Africa has some really dirt-poor places but so does India. The homocide rate in Africa is higher, around 13/100k vs 3/100k in India, but that's still less than the homocide rate in most south American countries, such as Brazil with 22/100k.
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- Parae 2y agoLet's not forget here that Africa is 10 times bigger than India, 5 times bigger than Bresil and twice as big as Russia. It's a very disparate continent. Algeria and DRC, the two biggest countries in Africa, have very little in common.
- dzonga 2y agoAfrica is too big to describe at once. Though in the context of africa, you can paint trends. e.g in Nigeria most professionals hardly earn $500. Now compare to zimbabwe - the same professional earns 2x-4x the nigerian wage. Yet Nigeria has higher gdp per capita. so yeah gdp per capita or gdp per capita ppp - might really reflect the african dynamic.
- dyauspitr 2y agoYou’ve got to look at PPP because India is dirt cheap to live in. For instance India has a PPP GDP per capita of around $12,000 whereas Nigeria is around $4500 or Uganda is at $2500.
- n_ary 2y ago
- Parae 2y agoSince 2021 [1] it's easier to come to France as an Indian, that it is as an Algerian, or even worse, as a Nigerian or Palestinian. [1] https://www.immigration.interieur.gouv.fr/Europe-et-International/Les-accords-bilateraux/Les-accords-bilateraux-relatifs-a-la-mobilite-professionnelle https://www.immigration.interieur.gouv.fr/Europe-et-Internat...
- Xenoamorphous 2y agoI don't think nationalism is what's most people considering moving abroad are thinking about. People who move abroad usually leave everything behind: family, friends, etc. Yes you can come visit regularly, but what was previously a daily or weekly thing now becomes yearly or bi-yearly in many cases. Second it's the language barrier: moving to a country where you don't fully master the language (sometimes far from it) is really hard, too.
- lotsofpulp 2y ago> People who move abroad usually leave everything behind: family, friends, etc. In the US, most people I have met who immigrated came via chain migration, with family members sponsoring other family members’ visas. And things also supplemented by family members in those families immigrating via student/work/spousal visas.
- vegabook 2y agoYou were anything but “randomly born in your country”. You are most likely the latest branch in a sedentary tree rooted both geographically and culturally for centuries, and without that tree you certainly wouldn’t exist. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t travel, perhaps plant a new tree, but the idea that you were born randomly is obviously false.
- hshshshshsh 2y agoFrom your point of view you were born randomly in a universe in a random country to random parents. Yes. There is a story once you were born. But as far you are concerned you could have been born as anything in any Universe. There would always be a story backing it up.
- amiga386 2y agoBut you are not a tabula rasa. You are made of a genetic code inherited from your parents, which strongly determines how you look and your body can do. You were clothed, fed, raised, cultured, taught by your family and others in their geographic area. The self has a heritage even if the self refuses to accept it. You are your parents' child and not someone else, for the same reason you are also a human, a hominid, a mammal, not a fish or a tree.
- hshshshshsh 2y agoIf I am made of genetic code, why do they say I die and no longer exists even though the body remains?
- amiga386 2y agoYour genetic code shapes who you are and how you appear to others when you're alive. If you're alluding to the existence of some transcendental self, can you at least accept it is inseparable from your corporeal self?
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- foo_foo_can_do 2y agoI think this is a very popular view, which inspires a lot of people to go abroad or try out something like digital nomadism. Ultimately most return home after the experiment. People are deeply rooted in culture, in communities, and don't even realize it until they have gotten over the novelty of a new context and are faced with the true depth of difference, and difficulty of becoming rooted once again. The only transplants I've seen really succeed are the ones who had a shit time in their own culture or family, and can genuinely leave it all behind and take in the new culture eagerly.
- felixarba 2y agoNationalism is not the thing stopping most people. It's your friends, family and the feeling of belonging. This is culture, not nationalism. I lived in Canada for 10 years before moving back home. I had a great life in Canada, fulfilled things I quite literally never dreamed possible, but I didn't belong. I lived my life between vacations, just waiting for the time that I can go back home and spend time with family. I realized this is no way to live life.
- david-gpu 2y agoYeah, people who have only spent a year or two abroad so not understand the consequences of staying there permanently. Estranged friends and family. Aging and dying parents. Feeling like a foreigner in your country of origin (reverse culture shock). Your own children, at the end of the day, belong to a foreign culture rather than your own. Etc.
- bartvk 2y agoThis. Big chance you'll lose all of your friends, and family ties will suffer greatly. One of my friends moved from Europe to Australia. I think I'm the only one that visited him.
- Aeolun 2y agoI mean, you should kind of expect that if you move to the other end of the world?
- david-gpu 2y agoIt is one of those things that sounds "obvious" when somebody points it out to you, but I can tell you from personal experience and from several other people that when you are in the midst of moving abroad you have lots of other things in your mind and, frankly, rose colored glasses on. What you find online tends to be the many people who spent a year or two abroad talking about what a cool experience it was, not long-term immigrants publicly admitting the downsides of their past choices. It is a very common feeling that is rarely spoken about outside of immigrant communities. If you pay attention to the comments, you will find that the people who only talk about the positives of moving abroad either haven't done it, or did it but they went back to their country of origin. Where are the long-term immigrants --typically with spouses and children-- talking only about the positives? And for the many who return... if living abroad was so great, why did you move back? Why don't you tell people about that as well?
- eesmith 2y agoDo you really consider family connections and decades-long friendships to be "some emotional baggage"? This essay was on someone who had the opportunity to live abroad (US, Japan, Sweden) and decided to live in India. The essay answers the question of why he, personally, has decided to not move abroad again. The reason? "I think people should live where they are the happiest", which for him is family and friendship - or what you might describe as "emotional baggage."
- gsich 2y ago>Don't let nationalism stop you. You were randomly born in your country. No I was not.
- gwd 2y agoLoving the place and culture where you grew up because it's yours is no different than loving your own family because they're yours, or loving yourself because you're you. Far from being problematic, being connected to a sense of identity is as human as being connected to your family. Loving your country doesn't prevent you from loving other countries, nor does it even mean thinking your own country is the best. That said, spending some time abroad (as OP has done) is a real benefit. I never realized how very American I was until I lived abroad. It gives you a different perspective on your own culture -- you can love your own culture more accurately, seeing both its strengths and its weaknesses in a different light. Nothing wrong with moving back home afterwards though.
- apexalpha 2y agoWell for what it's worth I am actually pretty fond of my ' emotional bagage', usually refer to them as Family though.
- weatherlite 2y ago> To people who are considering moving abroad you should do it. Or not. What kind of general advice is this. It depends on so many factors - your age, marital status, how close you are to your family and culture. For many people, I think for the majority even, unless they live in a war torn area then staying put makes a lot of sense. > Don't let randomness and some emotional baggage control where you want to live Yes family and culture is an emotional baggage and we are emotional beings, we are not robots. Most people care to a certain degree about those things.
- hshshshshsh 2y agoIf staying makes sense then stay. If you want to move then move. My argument is don't let random beliefs and emotions stand in between.
- weatherlite 2y agoYeah family and culture are not random beliefs and emotions for most people as many commenters here said. I think you have a very rare outlook on this that isn't right for most people.
- jollyllama 2y agoThis is the path to atomization.
- pluc 2y agoBecause visas. You can't actually move anywhere (well, at least in most of Europe) without a job to sponsor you.
- goykasi 2y agoAlso, money. It is not exactly cheap to just move to another country -- or another state in a lot of cases.
- JumpCrisscross 2y agoAlso, money. You can generally live anywhere if you drop some cash into the till.
- ponector 2y agoBut anyway you need a work to sustain your life. If you have enough money to not work - visa is not an issue then, just pay for it.
- pluc 2y agoThere's a vast difference between having enough money to sustain yourself and dropping 100k-200k on a piece of paper.
- viraptor 2y agoThere's a number of countries with some form of "has needed skills" visa. There are also options of paying for one. Job sponsors are not the only way.
- lzzzam 2y agoall you said is valid for me as well! I am an italian guy coming from deep south. After many years working far away from home, friends and beloved ones I now settled in south again working remotely I prefer to have much less money but be close to people I love
- lancebeet 2y ago>Though secretly, it was to give hope to the students who were defeated by the education system and told “You can’t study Computer Science, because you didn’t know Carbon has a radioactive isotope.” Forgive me if I'm being elitist here, but this seems like a strange example of outrageous admission requirements. I would have thought knowing about radiocarbon dating (which I'm assuming this is a reference to) is common knowledge (I believe it's in the standard curriculum for grades 7-9 in my country), so it doesn't seem like a completely unreasonable test question. If this is an example that the author uses from his or her own experience, it seems stranger still. >Every evening, my brother and I would sit in front of an oil lamp and study, mostly maths and science.
- jefftk 2y agoIt reads to me like this was on the exam for getting into the CS program in particular, though. Which makes it sound like IIT has dealt with the very large number of students who want to study CS by trying to limit it to the overall academically strongest students?
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> sound like IIT has dealt with the very large number of students who want to study CS by trying to limit it to the overall academically strongest students? It might also be a check against rote learning.
- DanielHB 2y agoI am Brazilian and people from US and Europe are completely clueless about the level of competition at the end of high school in those kind of countries (Brazil, China, India). He is talking about college entrance exams. "vestibular" in Brazil, "gaokao" in China, the JEE (Joint Entrance Examination) in India. Those are the keys to upper middle class and they are guarded jealously. In my case to get in CS at a top university in Brazil there were 30 students applying for each spot in the Major in that year. It is often used as a measurement "X per spot" for different majors to say how hard it is to get in. Some majors like Medicine can reach 200/spot. And trust me since most people have to pay to get those tests the less prepared students don't even bother because they know they won't pass. A lot of people also go for an easier-to-get-in major than the one they want hoping they can do an internal transfer after getting in (people apply for Pharmacy major in order to transfer to Medicine for example). Pretty much all majors at the top universities have at least 5 per spot, even the useless ones (which won't get you a job either). It is grueling, it is not uncommon to see people crying in the hallways after the exams and occasionally suicides directly linked to the exams. There is such a glut of graduates and such a lack of jobs that unless you go to one of the top schools you won't get a good job or you will have to endure years at bad jobs to get experience before moving on to a good job. Oh yeah, also student loans? Forget it, you have to pay for yourself, so hope you live close to the uni or daddy can cover your living costs. At least in Brazil (and I believe in China and India as well?) tuition is free at the top unis.
- dijit 2y agoit’s amazing how much of the story mirrors my own. Autodidacticism and tech were also my combination of escaping generational poverty, and I had to be the first person in 2 generations to leave the country at all in order to do it. It hopefully strikes at a hint of irony that I am british. However, unlike the author, I did not have a strong familial connection. I miss my homeland but I have no wish to return, the living conditions for the lower classes or even the middle classes is so low that I see no way of living a comfortable life. I do still get bouts of homesickness- even after 10 years of living abroad. It takes a lot of strength to really identify what is important to you, I’m quite sure that the author is content to understand that he is a success to all those around him and in the wider world- and that confidence will be something that he carries for the rest of his life. Fair play to him.
- zkldi 2y agoI'm in the same boat. Where did you move to?
- dijit 2y agoFirst, Finland to work at Nokia.. until the Eloppening[0]. Now I live in the south of Sweden, across the bridge from Copenhagen. [0]: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2011/feb/09/nokia-burning-platform-memo-elop https://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2011/feb/09/noki...
- ninalanyon 2y ago> bouts of homesickness- even after 10 years of living abroad. After nearly forty years in Norway I have no wish at all to return to the UK to live. Every time I listen to BBC R4 I hear some horror story about poverty or poor health. 6 million people (almost 10% of the population) on hospital waiting lists, pre-school children having such bad teeth that they have to have them all removed; that's just a sample from the last two days. I do enjoy long holidays there as a tourist though because there is so much visible history. And it's warmer than Norway in the summer!
- DanielHB 2y agoI also have a lot of things in common with the person in the article, as a Brazilian living and working in Sweden I can relate a lot to the things he is saying. However I feel the main thing that made me move away from Brazil was not status, income or "success". It was the realization that no matter how "successful" I was my life was still going to suck. Working in IT in Brazil means living in São Paulo and that is like living in SF, except all the bad parts are 10 times worse and a bunch of extra bad things on top (mainly crazy high air pollution levels and traffic). On top of that work culture in Brazil is terrible. Even if I am "well off" (but not well off enough to stop working) I would still need to live in a cage in a São Paulo high rise enduring 2 hours of traffic every day and going every where by car. No amount of maid service, take-home delivery or stay-at-home wife (things you can get if you have a good job in Brazil) is going to make up for that. I moved to Sweden in 2016, so things have changed a lot (remote work now being more common, work culture in the new wave of Brazilian startups is a lot better from what I hear). But now I have grown roots in Sweden and have no plans to leave. I don't have a car, 80% of my trips are done by bicycle.
- misja111 2y ago> But I was told on day one Twitter orientation to “Walk fast”. Drugged homeless people approached me, one guy tried to hit me while waiting to cross the street. WTF, is this really the reality of living in San Francisco?
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- dyauspitr 2y agoI was there a few months last year and this seems like nonsense. To me it seemed like all the homelessness was restricted to a few streets like in skid row.
- chrischen 2y agoTwitter HQ was in the middle of one those streets.
- p10jkle 2y agoThe twitter office is on Market Street, so this is totally plausible
- sethammons 2y agoWhen I first visited in 2011, near the Moscone Center, I saw dozens of homeless and a naked guy in a biker hat while heading to my hotel. Human shit and drug needles on the sidewalk. Last year, I am not sure I saw anything, but I was closer to the pier. It did stink like sewage on a couple of streets and nobody seemed to care.
- TimK65 2y agoIt's worth noting that San Francisco has a long tradition of public nudity, so the naked guy probably shouldn't necessarily be included here, unless there was another reason to do so.
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- katamari-damacy 2y agoI did, to France, along with my wife, who was born in the USA where her family had immigrated from England in the 1670s (deep roots but was totally fed up with school shootings, homelessness, and poison in our food and water). Also, our 11 year old daughter, who had a very bleak or very boring future in the US. Also, our cat, who had to be vaccinated. We sold or gave away everything except for some stuff we needed to keep that is in storage. The house went on the market just before we left. I don't wake up every day feeling mad that we're supporting a genocide and starting WW3. That whole terrible psychic load is gone. I was pushed out of a well known firm for posting on social media in support of Palestine. Once my freedom of speech was assaulted, I had no reason to be in the U.S. I had immigrated to the US (from London/UK) in '88 and watched the U.S. get worse every passing decade. The upside of having been in the US is the good qualities of the people who built the country and carried it on their now-tired shoulders. We still have very good friends who have no desire to leave, and we respect their choice. But for us, it was time to move on.
- johncoltrane 2y agoBecause I actually like it, here.
- 0xEF 2y agoBeing in the US, my career is unfortunately the center of my universe because I rely on having it to afford literally anything else. The system here is one build on dependency, and just like in any abusive relationship, they make it very, very hard for us to leave. Our lives are about our jobs, so things like healthcare and taxation are all inextricably ties to our employers. It's not long before you start to realize you are sort of stuck with this unless you have people elsewhere or want to roll the dice on an open visa for a year in a place like Albania, hoping that in that year you get set up enough to either stay or go somewhere else. Debt is another factor. If you're born in the US, odds are you have accrued some debt, be it student loans, credit card, housing or auto loans, etc. this requires you to have a job offering a wage that can (barely) keep up with paying off said debt. Keep in mind debt is an industry here, so once you're in it, you're in it unless you are lucky enough to have been born into some level of moderate or higher wealth. Oh, and income? Yeah, you need to know to how code to get a remote job with the flexibility to work anywhere in the world. Maybe you get lucky with a sales job, but for that you need to be bilingual. If you grew up in the US, you were not encouraged to pursue either of those skills until very recently. Couple that with your competition in a global job market is going to be a lot steeper that what you might find in a domestic market. If we take a Moon-eye view of the US, it's almost as though a system has been created intentionally to keep people stuck there. Many of us would love nothing more than to experience the world beyond our borders, but by the time we are 30, we are so shackled by this system that it leaving for anything more than our allotted 2 weeks annual vacation seems like a crazy risk.
- askl 2y agoWhy don't you move abroad?
- 0xEF 2y agoI am not sure if you are making a joke, sorry. If so, well done. Otherwise, if I did not do a good job of explaining, I can elaborate further on any points that are not fully understood. This is something my wife and I have been considering for years, even prior to America's new experiment with fascism, but there are intrinsic barriers aplenty unless you have a very specific skill set, money, or want to do the Peace Corps thing. Despite what the global community may think about US privilege, it is not so easy for us to just leave.
- TrackerFF 2y agoFor some, home is where the heart is. I've lived in 11 major cities around the world for the past 25 years, but in the end I moved back home to my rural hometown, in my home country. Remote work made that possible. I make probably 20% of what I could have done in high-COL areas like the Bay Area. But I have a fantastic work-life balance. Make good money, relative to my peers. Clock in 9, clock out 4. Get to spend lots of time on my hobbies, never work any weekends. Live in a peaceful place with zero crime, everything is a 5 min walk from my home. Hiking trail is practically 50m from my doorstep. Family and friends live close by. I did spend some time fighting FOMO of not living in a big city, which held me back from moving home - but COVID kind of accelerated that decision. With that said, I always say to younger people that they should try to move out in their 20s-30s, see the world. I've never met anyone that regretted on "traveling too much".
- david-gpu 2y ago> I've never met anyone that regretted on "traveling too much". And yet you eventually decided that it wasn't for you and you chose to go back home. There are pros and cons to all possibilities, whether it is staying put, traveling as a tourist, or immigrating in a foreign country. People rarely grasp the true costs of immigrating until it is too late -- I've seen several remarkably similar examples.
- viraptor 2y agoThey didn't say they traveled too much. Deciding to stop something doesn't mean you overdid it.
- david-gpu 2y ago> They didn't say they traveled too much. Indeed, that is my point: their actions did not march their narrative. They eventually realized that it wasn't all that great and corrected course. If being abroad was such a universally positive choice as they claim, they would have remained abroad.
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- gkanai 2y agoGreat storytelling. I worked in open source for a decade (at Mozilla during the rise of Firefox) and Mozilla hired many from their OSS contributions to Firefox. Its not an easy path, and it pays to specialize in an important niche, but it can be done. Finding orgs that support remote work even when management changes- that's the challenge.
- keiferski 2y agoA lot of people that have moved abroad focus on how supposedly terrible the place they came from is, but I think one of the most underrated aspects is that you think more about your origin country and what it means to be an American/Frenchman/etc. - more than you normally would, had you never left. There’s something about being outside of a thing that makes you consider it more, and see it more insightfully. That is also probably why Fitzgerald wrote Gatsby while abroad in France. To me Gatsby is pretty much the quintessential American identity novel, and having been an American living in France (in the past, not currently), I feel like I understand the novel and “what it means to be American” more.
- poszlem 2y agoThis is absolutely true. There is a Polish-Danish singer who moved to Denmark when he was 5 years old. He returned to Poland at the age of 28 and created a song called "I hate you Poland" that explains this very concept. I'm not sure how well the lyrics would translate, but they address this issue ("here" means abroad, "there" refers to Poland): I hate you, Poland I can't help it I hate you, Poland Because you have power over me I count long months I don't know how many in total I'd like to return, but I can't Because I can't love you There, I was annoyed by stupidity Poverty and misery, young and old Here, I'm annoyed that I have everything I could ever wish for Maybe someday those will understand Who left the country long ago That there, poverty is real And wealth here is just pretend I'll tell you if I dare Because it's a very silly topic There, Sunday mass irritated me Here, I'm annoyed that there isn't one Here, pedants annoy me There, slobs annoyed me Everything got mixed up And I don't know what I... feel! I hate you, Poland I can't help it I hate you, Poland Because you have power over me I count long months I don't know how many in total I'd like to return, but I can't Because I can't love you I resent your heritage Still alive within me Because you are primitive And I am a primitive Someone wanted this Someone had this in mind There, I became a degenerate Here, I'm becoming a patriot! I noticed the same thing, the more I live abroad the more I love my home country. Then when I come back I hate and resent it again and miss my home abroad.
- keybored 2y agoI could never imagine asking someone when they are moving abroad with the assumption that they will at some point. Doesn’t matter where they’re from.
- nordiknomad 2y agowell, below points are not matching somehow : -------------------------------------- Just like many Indians of my generation, I spent my childhood in a single bedroom rented house. Every evening, my brother and I would sit in front of an oil lamp and study, mostly maths and science. ----------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------ My father has been a software engineer since the 90s and my brother is an absolute rockstar with computers. We didn’t have cartoons in TV back in our childhood but had our hands on keyboard ever since I could possibly remember. --------------------------------------------- So you operated the computer / keyboard using oil lamp ?
- rakejake 2y agoYes, "generational poverty" seems like a very strong term for something like this and is definitely incorrect contextually. The family background seems squarely middle class to me, nowhere near poverty.
- jimberlage 2y agoMy understanding is that Internet cafes are/were more common in India.
- bicepjai 2y agoLike this HN breakdown on inconsistencies :)
- orkohunter 2y agoPoverty has many meanings. The State of Uttar Pradesh in India where I am from used to provide less than 8 hours of electricity per day when I was a child. Oil Lamp is for the times when lights were out. Inverters and battery lamps came very soon. The whole story is spread across my teenage years and of different times. Thanks Sherlock.
- forinti 2y agoI've had this lingering regret of not moving to Europe when I was young and nobody depended on me, but I am also sure that I would have had to endure racism and xenophobia there (although I do have a European passport).
- graemep 2y ago> I am also sure that I would have had to endure racism and xenophobia there (although I do have a European passport). Depends where in Europe - not just country but area. I moved back to the UK seven years ago and have lived in several places since and I have had one incident of overt racism - a dodgy door to door salesman I turned away called me a "Paki". I rarely even feel that there is any underlying feeling of racism. A lot will depend on who you are and where you live - there are more racists in generally bad areas. Its not as simple as big cities are better either. I live in an edge of town area with a village feel and a predominantly ethnically English population and its very friendly.
- tim333 2y agoI'm told by an Indian friend it varies quite a lot by country. He found Paris racist but London not.
- gtvwill 2y agoCurrently looking at moving overseas. Live in aus and the place is politically an authoritarian corprotocracy with unaffordable living even on a decent wage. Looking to get out. We don't need much and are both fairly handy (in all forms of life) so we are considering a run down property in Europe. We could literally buy a dump,do it up and go off grid with solar and still come out ahead for 50% of the price for a avg crappy property in aus. It's absurd. I just want somewhere to live and grow some food. It's near impossible to do in aus without working like a slave and being massively in debt.
- graemep 2y ago> authoritarian corprotocracy with unaffordable living even on a decent wage. Sounds like much of Europe. People emigrate TO Australia for similar reasons! Its probably a lot easier and lower risk to move to a different part of your own country. No visa required, you know the language and legal system.
- dpeckett 2y agoYeh nah mate, I'd recommend moving to the middle of nowhere in Aus over a low cost region in the EU. You really want to be in a long term growth environment (even if you're starting off at the bottom) than some decaying, economically deprived region. There's no free lunch in the western world. I'm an Aussie living in a relatively low cost region in the EU, I moved here for career and networking/ecosystem reasons. That aspect of the move have definitely paid off in multiples but there's no doubt that QoL is significantly lower here and the tax rates on income are double what you are used to (a lot goes to social programs that as an immigrant you have limited entitlement to).
- locallost 2y agoFrom personal experience it's not an unusual arc. I've experienced it myself and heard from others, and it goes like this: you first move abroad and let's say you're happy, you enjoy some things that are new to you. But after a while, a couple of years pass, and you start getting the urge to go back, and it gets greater and greater. Disillusioned is too harsh of a word, again personally I don't think anything is essentially wrong in the country I live in now, but maybe you just realize it's not really yours. There's no place like home. The one exception here is that this person was unhappy at the first stop in San Francisco, but otherwise in other places yes.
- kabes 2y agoArticle resonates with me. I'm Belgian and moved to work in SF in 2016. I really hated it and it took me a long time to admit this, because it felt like failure. I moved back 2 years later and the upside is that I now appreciate Belgium, my friends and family here way more. Before I was just focused on moving away to what I thought was a better place.
- ponector 2y agoBelgium is a nice rich country. Almost no-one there is asking question "Why you don't move abroad?". That is the question to the people in poor countries, where one can move to the rich country and feel massive improvement in quality of life.
- anal_reactor 2y agoI live in the Netherlands, so I'm really holding myself back not to make a joke about Belgium being bad. I recognize the text author's struggles. I live in the shit area, and when my parents were visiting, they saw drug addicts. I personally witnessed a shooting once. I have almost no friends. Despite having learnt the language to B2 level, I have zero connection with local culture. But you know what? In my home country nobody's waiting for me either. I know this sounds cheesy, but I think that in some way I'm just different from most other people, and no matter where I go, I'll always feel lonely and disconnected. This sucks, but the flipside is that I can follow the money and comfort of life without feeling like I'm sacrificing anything. I'd love to temporarily move to the US, but definitely not permanently. I have noticed that almost all people I am on friendly terms with have a story "I grew up poor but now I'm rich", and obviously, citizens of the world's richest country won't be a good match here.
- Aeolun 2y agoThere’s a running joke amongst foreigners in Japan that if you have issues in your home country, coming to Japan isn’t magically going to fix them for you. They’ll just come along for the ride, and now you get to deal with those on top of having to deal with living in a foreign country.
- TheChaplain 2y agoSmall life-tip from someone who lived in multiple countries over the years. The golden key to is to learn the language at least to conversational level, that will make your access to society and connecting with people tremendously easier. Next and quite important is to adopt their culture, that will without question make most welcome you into their hearts. Still accept the fact that you will always be the foreigner, for when push comes to shove, you are the outsider, especially in difficult situations like conflict.
- trash_cat 2y agoHere is the answer from the article: Family.
- jwrallie 2y agoI can relate to the 12h time difference. It is really tough when connecting with people from back home. It also makes it really hard to go back in emergencies. I did however choose to stay living abroad. As I married a local and had kids, I created a bit of my own family here too.
- trash_cat 2y agoHere is the answer from the Article: Family
- rakejake 2y agoAs an Indian who also moved back a couple years back, I do agree that most people don't think about what "they" want, and whether it is possible to achieve it without moving. I know I didn't when it was my turn to move abroad. The pandemic and all the time spent indoors gave me a of time to think about it and allowed me to finally pull the trigger. But a few points: * The magnitude of shit some people are putting up with for visa-status is mind-boggling. Their entire life is oriented around visa-status, to the point where I would think they should do the research on whether their quality of life will be improved back home due to the lower stress, even with the much lower salary and the growing pains of a developing country. * A lot of people have successfully FIREd and then come back to live what I call the America Return Quasi-Suburban life - basically a copy of the McMansion life of the states inside a gated community in one of the major cities. * New grads nowadays don't try to move abroad immediately (at least in the top-tier colleges). They do get good jobs and are paid very well, considering both historic trends as well as the purchasing power of the average Indian. * There is a ton of FOMO and moving abroad is still a very strong sentiment, even among people who make more money than what I was making back when I worked in the states in a MCOL city. Considering the extremely poor management of most Indian cities (at a civic admin level) and the bling of social media, I expect this feeling to persist well into the future. * Indian start-ups and venture are more short-sighted (in terms of path to revenue/IPO) than US venture. AFAIK no company in India has the equivalent of a Goog funding 20% projects or a VC like Thiel willing to fund research ideas. I don't think it is a money problem (going by the amount of money being pumped into quick-commerce or quick-anything) but a culture problem and also the people funding the start-ups. Again, I hope this will get resolved in the future but as of now, India still bleeds most of their higher-science and PhD crowd to the US. The Indian PhD scene is quite dim, with funding issues and what-not. So your contingent of PhDs who go on to start-up is not gonna happen here. * OP here came back because he couldn't miss being close to family and close friends. There is a strong contingent of immigrants who can't stand living with or even close to family. For them, the visa and distance barrier is a plus.
- DanielHB 2y ago> Their entire life is oriented around visa-status That was the main reason I didn't even try to move to the US. Had plenty of visa-stress in Sweden with a work permit and helpful employer.
- roncesvalles 2y agoI think OP is exceptionally lucky in that he still has friends and family in India. It's very different for me — most of my childhood friends have actually moved out of India, and I can't stand my extended family. Maybe it's a socioeconomic thing. OP's experience may be a combination of having a good situation to go back to, and not really fitting in with American culture. And although you could argue that American friendships are not as deep as ones in the Old World, some of that is just the reality of adult friendships.
- graemep 2y agoMy family are Sri Lankan (and I was born there), so I have experienced much the same as the author - Sri Lanka has a VERY high emigration rate, and even more so among the affluent. There have been genuine reasons for people to leave though (civil war, corrupt and incompetent government, a major economic crisis) and even so I think many people hugely over-estimate the gain from emigrating. Pay might be lower but so is the cost of living, and all that emigration of skilled people means that if you are skilled your skills are in demand, etc. I grew up mostly in Britain. People here a whole lot worse. They talk as though the country is some kind of disaster and a terrible place to live. The economy is apparently a disaster (ignoring little things like low unemployment), we have a cost of living crisis caused by the country doing so badly (apparently inflation is not a problem anywhere else) and our economy is doing terrible (which it is compared to the US, and even more so compared to much of Asia - but not compared to other big European economies).
- pier25 2y agoI'm from Spain and have been living in Mexico for 15 years. Spaniards favorite hobby is complaining about Spain. They live in a bubble and don't realize quality of life there is one of the best in the world. Whenever I go back I'm marveled even by simple things like roads without pot holes which are everywhere in Mexico.
- svilen_dobrev 2y agoin 1998, being 30ish, i moved from east europe to oz. Many friends already did that, so i tried too. Took like 2+ years of pingpongs, until oz granted me visa. People asked me why moving out. i said: to see how it is like - Living elsewhere. (i was thinking only geography then, but.. happened culturally it is even farther). They did not accept that as answer. Fiancee came (after 18 months instead of 3, thanks to usa bombing belgrade). We stood in oz further 1.5 years. Got a newborn baby.. and Then decided to call it over and move back home - kids needs dense society to become a person, and there wasn't much of it in oz. Or so we thought was the reason. People asked me why moving back. i said: to see how it is like - Going back. They did not accept that as answer. 10 years later, 2012, one day i went to oz again. Trying to fullfill that then-paused dream. Took me 3 months to grasp the new (harsher) reality - which was actually an uncovered unglittered same old one - and one day, after watching Sacrifice by Tarkovsky, abandoned the oz-dream alltogether. It's not worth it, it's really like living upside-down - for me. Or inside-out.. Cultural differences are staggering. Moved back home. (same) People asked me why. Answer - i am choosing where to live, by my standards. Not somebody elses. After being to quite few places@continents.. would try only 1-2 of those. The rest.. aren't for me. People would nod. Maybe we all got wiser.. My advice to young people: go around the world early enough. Check Different places.. Culturally. Find what your values are. Decide where you fit best and want to be. Who to become. May check Hofstede's cultural dimensions [0] below - but remember some values stay, some change, and you do not know which, beforehand. Values are like a skyline.. the further you go, the more you see and understand which is really high/low and which is just a hill/puddle. A friend told me that there's an inscription on some Amsterdam bridge which can be translated as "coming back is not the same as staying". It is really so. And.. Money are the lubricant, NOT the fuel. Wish/motivation is the fuel. [0] https://www.theculturefactor.com/country-comparison-tool https://www.theculturefactor.com/country-comparison-tool
- poszlem 2y agoComing from an Eastern European country to the UK, I was told by many colleagues who had also moved there that people in the UK are very difficult to befriend (make friends, not acquaintances), as if it were part of English culture. "They are just like that," they would say. I made many friends with other immigrants from all over Europe. This suggested that the English were somehow uniquely challenging to befriend. What I realized later in life is that this couldn't be further from the truth. The actual situation is that when you move to another country as an adult, most people your age already have established friendships from school and earlier life. They don't "need" a friend as much as you do. This applies to every country. The reason I got along so well with other immigrants was that they also "needed" to make friends, as their childhood friends were all left back home. I'm not saying this to invalidate what the original poster was saying, but it's definitely something to keep in mind when you move abroad - it will be HARD to make true local friends and you will have to work for it.
- munksbeer 2y agoI'm an immigrant to the UK and I agree with you. This sort of thing gets said about a lot of countries, you will hear the same thing said from British people who move to Australia or NZ. I've been in the UK 20 years now and I don't have a lot of British friends, even now. I moved when I was 27 years old. The friends I have are from common interests and work. I was lucky enough to meet one great friend at a workplace who loved rugby and skiing and socialising, like I do. We spent a lot of after work nights getting drunk in pubs, and we played rugby and went on skiing holidays. I then met a few of his friends, some of whom I've now become very good friends with, all these years we're still friends. But I can count these on one hand. I don't resent it, though I do lament it. It's just that bonds tend to form early in your life and it becomes a lot more difficult later. On the other hand, it was easy to make friends with people from my home country because you have something in common and you are all looking to make friends. And it's easy to network, because you just need one connection to get into a social circle.
- incomingpain 2y agoAs a Canadian, where would I go abroad to? We do have our first ever illegitimate prime minister; found guilty of major civil right violations. Seizing bank accounts without court order or any due process. Arresting people on charges of mischief for words said online. State media willing to publish extreme lies to justify the government's illegal behaviours... It's reasonable to wish to leave Canada; but generally speaking its the rest of the world seeking to move to Canada. Australia? Lots going really well for them. I do have family in WA. Their government debt is good, economically still a powerhouse, despite government's efforts to kill their domestic industry. At least in WA, their driving laws are some of the dumbest ive seen in the world. 1km/h over the speed limit and you get a maximum speeding ticket? They have roaming speed trap cameras? Speed limits adjust multiple times in under a km. Speed limits are artificially low to produce ticket revenue. The only place ive ever been pulled over and forced to blow a machine. Nanny state problems big time in australia. Australia's gun laws eliminate the consideration of ever moving there. Finland, norway, czech, switzerland, estonia, lithuania, look like great options, but language barrier concerns. But worse... you folks have a nutjob neighbour to the east with nukes. I currently live out of reach for everthing except their ICBMs, im not moving into range. It would seem to me the only place for me would be to move to the USA. Right off the top, I'd never move to any stop and identify state. Which eliminates most good states to live in. Do the same again for constitutional carry. Texas, Idaho, Wyoming, missippi, are still options. Long story short, it seems Texas is the place to go.
- red-iron-pine 2y agoIf you think Trudeau is a problem then you sound like the type who won't do so well in Europe. As a MAGA type I'm sure you'd do alright in the US. Moving for Constitutional Carry is insane.
- incomingpain 2y ago>If you think Trudeau is a problem then you sound like the type who won't do so well in Europe. As a MAGA type I'm sure you'd do alright in the US. Moving for Constitutional Carry is insane. As I said, I very rapidly ruled out moving to Europe. I could have gone deeper and ruled out even more eu countries using other factors. As for moving for constitutional carry. It's not that im moving there for it, I know the majority of states have it already and im rapidly disqualifying all states which dont have it. California would be idiotic to live in for countless reasons; but i can make my job easier by ruling it out quickly via constitutional carry. I likely would not carry, or quite rarely. But constitutional carry is a fantastic measurement tool on how good the state is; how up to date on science they are.
- Justsignedup 2y agoI'm over 40. My fiance is disabled and not white. What country is gonna take me.
- bicepjai 2y agoThis is what I think, the story in general matched anyone who studies or works abroad. There is lot of inconsistencies in the writeup as pointed out in the comments. Even though OP says he is not an introvert, it feels like he is.
- djaouen 2y agoAside from a few trips, I've lived in different parts of NY my whole life. I don't really feel the need to move, except as an escapist fantasy :\
- pks016 2y agoI deeply resonate with the author. I'm planning to move back after my PhD. Not sure what job would I get! But I'm sure I don't want stay in a foreign country for the rest of my life.
- lsferreira42 2y ago'm Brazilian, and here, many people, especially in the tech field, dream of moving to other countries. The main focus is usually Europe, due to our closer ties with Portugal, or the USA. Being Black and hearing stories about situations involving racism (because I'm Black, and that's a very important factor to consider when thinking about moving) and xenophobia has only made me never want to leave here. I live far from central areas, working remotely, and I can't understand what another country could offer me that I don't already have here. That said, nowadays, I always advise young people to stay here so we can develop our tech industry and not go abroad to be mistreated and make foreign companies richer!
- miguelbemartin 2y agoLove to hear your history, thanks for sharing it.