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Sorry for them- after I got laid off in 2023 I had a devil of a time finding work to the point my unemployment ran out - 20 years as a dev and tech lead and ful
by AIorNot 10mo ago
Sorry for them- after I got laid off in 2023 I had a devil of a time finding work to the point my unemployment ran out - 20 years as a dev and tech lead and full stack, including stints as a EM and CTO
Since then I pivoted to AI and Gen AI startups- money is tight and I dont have health insurance but at least I have a job…
- wickedsight 10mo agoCome to Europe. Salaries are (much) lower, but we can use good devs and you'll have vacation days and health care.
- klardotsh 10mo agoMoving to Europe is anything but trivial. Have you looked at y'all's immigration processes recently? It can be a real bear.
- nothrabannosir 10mo agoIf you have a US or Japanese passport and want to try NL: https://expatlaw.nl/dutch-american-friendship-treaty https://expatlaw.nl/dutch-american-friendship-treaty aka https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DAFT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DAFT . It applies to freelancers.
- wickedsight 10mo agoYeah, I'm in NL, so this is my frame of reference. Also, in many companies English is the main language, so that helps.
- AIorNot 10mo agoInteresting thanks!
- kergonath 10mo agoYeah. It is much harder now than it used to be. I know a couple of people who came from the US ~15 to 10 years ago and they had it easy. It was still a nightmare with banks that don’t want to deal with US citizens, though. As Americans, getting a long-term visa or residency card is not too hard, provided you have a good job. It’s getting the job that’s become more difficult. For other nationalities, it can range from very easy to very hard.
- trinix912 10mo agoYeah it depends on which countries you're interested in. Netherlands, Ireland, and the Scandinavian ones are on the easier side as they don't require language fluency to get (dev) jobs, and their languages aren't too hard to learn either.
- throwaway2037 10mo agoDo you count Finland? I heard that Finnish is very hard to learn.
- nxor 10mo agoFinnish people are probably nice when people try to learn their language. Hahaha. Can't say that about the other places.
- SoftTalker 10mo agoMost Scandinavians would rather speak English than listen to a foreigner try to speak their language.
- nxor 10mo agoStrictly speaking, Finland is nordic, not scandinavian. And their language is entirely different. I was under the impression Fins and Estonians are happy when people try to learn. Am I wrong?
- nicbou 10mo agoI made a career out of understanding this. In Germany it’s quite feasible. The only challenge is finding affordable housing, just like elsewhere. The other challenge is the speed of the process, but some cities are getting better, including Berlin. Language is a bigger issue in the current job market though.
- komali2 10mo agoCounter: come to Taiwan! Anyone with a semi active GitHub can get a Gold Cars Visa. 6 months in you're eligible for national health insurance (about 30$ usd/month). Cost of living is extremely low here. However salaries are atrocious and local jobs aren't really available to non mandarin speakers. But if you're looking to kick off your remote consulting career or bootstrap some product you wanna build, there's not really anywhere on earth that combines the quality of life with the cost of living like Taiwan does.
- Rover222 10mo ago+1, Taiwan is a great place
- johnnyanmac 10mo ago>However salaries are atrocious and local jobs aren't really available to non mandarin speakers. You make such a hard bargain. >there's not really anywhere on earth that combines the quality of life with the cost of living like Taiwan does. Tempting, but I think the last thing I need for what little work I can grab is to create a 14 hour time zone gap.
- alecco 10mo agoThe tech sector in UK/EU is bad, too. And the cost of living in big cities is terrible for the salaries. They are outsourcing just as much as US Big Tech. And never mind the slow-mo economic collapse of UK, France, and Germany.
- 0xy 10mo agoTaking a 75% pay cut for free Healthcare that costs 1k a month anyway doesn't math. Not to mention the higher taxes for this privilege. European senior developers routinely get paid less than US junior developers.
- johnnyanmac 10mo ago>free Healthcare that costs 1k a month anyway Well, which is it? >Not to mention the higher taxes for this privilege. Rampant tax cuts is how we got here to begin with. I don't think the EU wants someone with this mentality anyway.
- groundzeros2015 10mo agoIt would be worth it mathematically to be unemployed in the US for up to 3-5 years in hopes of landing another US job.
- jimbokun 10mo agoWhat's the unemployment rate like? I'm not sure the claim "we can use good devs" is true from the perspective of European corporations. But would love to learn otherwise? And of course: where in Europe?
- AIorNot 10mo agoThanks - my wife and I actually have a long term plan to shift to the EU Applied to quite a few EU jobs via LinkedIn but nothing came of it- I suspected they wanted people already in EU countries Both of us are US Citizens but we don't want to retire in the US it seems to be becoming a s*hole esp around healthcare
- johnnyanmac 10mo agoMaybe one day, but your game industry isn't that much better than ours. Wouldn't want to move overseas only to still have the studio shut down.
- averageRoyalty 10mo ago> 20 years as a dev and tech lead and full stack, including stints as a EM and CTO > Since then I pivoted to AI and Gen AI startups- money is tight and I dont have health insurance but at least I have a job… I hope this doesn't come across as rude, but why? My understanding is American tech pays very well, especially on the executive level. I understand for some odd reason your country is against public healthcare, but surely a year of big tech money is enough to pay for decades of private health insurance?
- Aurornis 10mo agoNot parent commenter, but in the US when someone’s employment doesn’t include health insurance it’s commonly because they’re operating as a contractor for that company. Generally you’re right, though. Working in tech, especially AI companies, would be expected to provide ample money for buying health insurance on your own. I know some people who choose not to buy their own and prefer to self-pay and hope they never need anything serious, which is obviously a risk. A side note: The US actually does have public health care but eligibility is limited. Over one quarter of US people are on Medicaid and another 20% are on Medicare (program for older people). Private self-pay insurance is also subsidized on a sliding scale based on your income, with subsidies phasing out around $120K annual income for a family of four. It’s not equivalent to universal public health care but it’s also different than what a lot of people (Americans included) have come to think.
- AIorNot 10mo agoAs CTO I wasnt in a big tech company, it was a 50 person digital studio in the south my salary as was 275k at the highest point in my career- so I never made FAANG money
- amrocha 10mo agoThat’s 1% money. At that point the issue isn’t how much money you made but what you did with it.