Comment by AIorNot
3 months 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…
> 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?
Not 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.
As 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
That’s 1% money. At that point the issue isn’t how much money you made but what you did with it.
Come to Europe. Salaries are (much) lower, but we can use good devs and you'll have vacation days and health care.
The 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.
Moving to Europe is anything but trivial. Have you looked at y'all's immigration processes recently? It can be a real bear.
Yeah. 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.
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If you have a US or Japanese passport and want to try NL: https://expatlaw.nl/dutch-american-friendship-treaty aka https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DAFT . It applies to freelancers.
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I 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.
Counter: 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.
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Thanks - 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
What'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?
Maybe 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.
It would be worth it mathematically to be unemployed in the US for up to 3-5 years in hopes of landing another US job.
Taking 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.
>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.