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
Just imagine you are planning a night out with friends. As someone who grew up in a small town, our options were very limited. You could go to the movies, the bowling alley, or go to someone’s house. If you wanted dinner, there were only a few restaurants serving a small variety of cuisines. It would be impossible to do a different thing every night for more than a week or so.
In a big city, you could do something different every night and not run out of different things to do for years. You could eat a different restaurant every night, eating a completely different cuisine each time.
If you are simply counting things to do, a city is ‘superior’.
I get what you're saying and agree to some degree. But at the same time, i think it's actually the last line ("if you're simply counting things to do") that I would personally quibble over as the sacred metric of what's better than the other.
Maybe some people don't really care about having ten gazillion different restaurants and would prefer at least three solid parks/hiking trails you can't get around some big cities? Maybe some folks would be more than happy to trade going to the theatres with having a home with 5+ acres to raise a chicken farm or other critters on, or if not that then at least the privacy and the minimal light pollution.
Some trades that people are willing to make kinda aren't so obvious.
> / decency / civility
That hasn't been my experience in small towns recently, unless you happen to fit in well with the people there. There's a highly aggressive paranoia and acting out.
> functional municipal government
They are almost powerless, IME. How small a town are you talking about?
Just goes to show it's all subjective.
Few American cities were founded > 200 years ago. None were founded more than 1565 (United States), and the oldest dates from 1502, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.
That said, what a New Yorker visiting small-town Europe is probably referencing is the contrast between NYC and Small European Town. The specific town will likely be largely interchangeable with numerous others of similar description.
By contrast, a small town in the US or Canada largely resembles some of the less-distinguished suburbs of NYC itself: same language, same government, same mass media, same history, same chain stores and franchises. Far fewer people, however, and a much smaller economic and cultural ambit.
Even for small towns in which there is some distinctive culture ... it tends to be a single motif which dominates the entire town, rather than the melting pot of a major metropolis. Marfa, TX; Silver City, NM; Santa Fe, NM; Asheland, OR; and Napa, CA all have distinctive cultures, but it tends to be all-of-a-type.
Exceptions tend to be smaller college towns, for obvious reasons, but even here, the odds for highly-diverse communities tend to be lower than in larger cosmopolitan cities. And you can climb far up the major metro region and still find fairly stultified culture --- Chicago, IL, wears its "second city" moniker as a badge, but you'll still find there's some real edginess there about it if you press a bit or scratch beneath the surface. (The fact that it's third by size, and that Los Angeles also evinces a somewhat similar attitude toward New York doesn't help.)
I mean, NYC has a ton of culture but it's a young city.
I disagree with you premise.
And if it's not what I managed to communicate effectively, I can assure you it is not at all my intended meaning.
Which would then falisify your own premise.
But I’d argue NYC has more culture than say Edinburgh, Scotland despite the later having a far more extensive history.
Contrast though US cities of roughly comparable population (506,000 for Edinburgh), say, Sacramento, CA; Kansas City, MO; Mesa, AZ; or Atlanta, GA. Two of those are also state capitals, roughly matching Edinburgh's political status.
Remmeber that size was another key factor. Again, not sole, but key.
Global cities ratings gives additional ratings and bases for same:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_city
GWAC ranks Edinburgh above all of the US cities, save Atlanta, which is just above it. Mesa and Sacramento are not ranked.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globalization_and_World_Cities...
I went on to start my career on the east coast over 25 years ago, and then the west coast (Boston / SF / SEA / LA). I'm now back in a Midwestern monoculture community because of family. It's not an easy cultural adjustment if you've acclimated to something that's not monoculture.
In my case, the appeal of large city blended culture is that (1) I can find my tribe much more easily and (2) the tribes all have to get along because there's no dominant tribe enforcing its norms on the others. (There's obviously generalization in this statement, but I'd argue that relative to a monoculture community that these things are more truth than not. SF, SEA and others have plenty of challenges, but IMHO it's in part because they've become monocultures, or at least tech has become the dominant tribe and asserts its will on other cultures.)
If you enjoy living in the monoculture you occupy, there's no reason to leave. Visiting or temporarily living in blended cultures will not feel better to you, as it causes more stress than where you came from. But it's very presumptuous to assume that others would find living in "flyover" country better than the life they currently lead.
The conformity is kind of the point and makes it better for the rest of us.
I really don't care if you want to live an limited life experience and assume it is the only possible way of life. But when you start telling other people that they must live like you want them to because they want to live in the same area you do is just too much to take. It doesn't truly affect you other than you have to accept something you don't agree.
> And there it is! We only want ourselves to be comfy, but nobody cares what effect it has on anyone else. Just as long as everyone conforms to your way of thinking.
Can you please lower the rhetorical temperature?
> But when you start telling other people that they must live like you want them to because they want to live in the same area you do is just too much to take.
There's plenty of cultural orthodoxy in cities as well, it's probably just more agreeable to you.
What are you referring to? In large cities, you can think and do what you want and nobody will much care or notice unless you force them to.
I do care what effect it has on others. I want say 80% of people to be comfy. Often that involves imposing norms on the other 20%. There’s lots of norms that (1) a majority like and benefit from that (2) break down if you don’t enforce them on the minority.
Unrestricted individual choice can affect others by changing market conditions and creating what in economic terms you’d call a race to the bottom. That’s the logic behind OSHA regulations and the minimum wage, for example. You can apply the same logic to social and cultural issues.
And it's completely unnecessary - in fact, people do very well living in freedom, as you can see in most places (by population) in the free world. No societies have been more successful, and it's not close.
You’ve got the causation backward. Freedom from social conformity is a luxury wealthy societies can afford. Western countries, including America, became rich at a time when they were still quite rigidly conformist. And some of the most conformist, such as Puritan New England were the most prosperous.
It’s also worth observing that those same societies are now literally dying out. Post-Christian Europe literally has to import people from societies with rigid social norms—among others, strong social pressures to start families and raise children—to take care of their elderly.
(I have plenty of criticism of racism and other discrimination in the US. It certainly isn't ok and I am going to help fix those problems.)
> Post-Christian Europe literally has to import people from societies with rigid social norms—among others, strong social pressures to start families and raise children—to take care of their elderly.
They need immigration in that respect (and so does the US) simply because of birth rates.
Immigrants have come from those societies to the US (and certainly parts of Europe) for generations. Some are too old to give up their old ways, understandably, but their children embrace freedom and those are the people of the US today.
And again, do you cede to me the power to make you conform to what I want? Why should anyone cede it to you?
You’re erroneously conflating collective freedom and individual freedom. The US was founded on religious pluralism, which meant different religious groups coming here to be free from persecution back home, usually due to politics. For example, the Puritans left because they believed England was insufficiently committed to the Protestant Reformation. But that didn’t have anything to do with individual freedom within those groups. Many of the groups that came to America, like the Puritans, were regarded as extreme and fundamentalist back home: https://paulspassingthoughts.com/2017/01/17/an-examination-o... (“In 1637, the general court of Massachusetts passed an order forbidding anyone from settling within the colony without first having his orthodoxy approved by the magistrates.”).
> They need immigration in that respect (and so does the US) simply because of birth rates.
What causes the low birth rates in those places and the higher birth rates in the places immigrants are coming from?
> Some are too old to give up their old ways, understandably, but their children embrace freedom and those are the people of the US today.
Sure, the kids become socialized into the culture of individualism—that just means that the society is unsustainable without continuing to import people from those societies with more traditional and conformist culture. Put differently, post-Christian Europe is sustainable only through population arbitrage.
All those people are coming to the US, not vice versa!
Sometimes. But we've also found it necessary to have laws governing road traffic, and pollution, and noise abatement, and fraud, and robbery. That's because humans often focus narrowly on their own desires when making decisions unless they're compelled, under pain of fine or imprisonment (which aren't always effective), to take others' interests into account as well.
It is easy for someone who is fairly close and doesn’t have to adjust much to say that the cost of conformity is worth it for the gain.
The 'rest of us' being people outside the monoculture? Things aren't so good there.
Conformity limits people's freedom, often greatly, often in very fundamental ways. People can't chose their religion, sexual orientation, politics, interests, career, etc. You are free to chose conformity if you like, but the problem is that conformity is forced on others.
But my question remains: why are you this way and why do you think it's a better way to be than the majority? What factors external to the conformist group contributed or influenced you, if any?
For the record, I, too, have fled regions and communities, both physical and virtual, where I was a deviant. I asked myself these questions and I have answers if anyone were to ask. I'm just curious what answers others have come up with, and whether they have ever asked themselves those same questions. I'm also curious if others have found their own answers lacking and how that is handled.
They are overwhelming, brutal, oppressive experiences of millions of people. Not bland, but poison to the people and our society.
> why are you this way and why do you think it's a better way to be than the majority?
I think this majority is non-existent - there is just too much variety. And regardless, I don't care about some 'majority'; I don't make choices for or against them - not in response to them at all. I am what I am, I live the way I want to live, the way that suits me best (which is probably most 'efficient' in many ways, including economically, matching me to resources, needs, etc.). Why would I live any other way? In fact, that attitude puts me in the majority in the US.
The whole argument smacks of another attempt by reactionaries to encroach on the freedom of others, now trying to force conformity to what they want. I'm sure they wouldn't want roles reversed!
Though one who's proved quite hostile to other cultures and practices.
For me conformity has always just been boring and restricting, and I consider it an all around negative. I like to try new things, and I live to experience as much of what life can bring as I can. So I find the idea of artificially restricting ones options on how to dress, sing, what to eat, how to dance, what to make of art, what stories you can tell, how to make love, how to play, how to express yourself, what to talk about, who you can be with, what games are allowed, what you're supposed to do on Sunday morning, etc. just an all around negative. It feels like a choke hold on my life, which is the most precious thing I have, so restrictions on the extent of how much I'm allowed to live and experience seem completely unreasonable and oppressive to me.
But I'm a pretty confident and courageous person, I don't have anxieties, and I enjoy getting out of my comfort zone and trying new things, learning, discovery, are all things I'm drawn too. I know people who aren't like that, have more anxieties, so I never really thought that for them maybe conformity was like a relief, a way to take out a source of stress of the unknown with clear strict rules and conventions that they can rely on.
Restriction of choice can likewise be welfare maximizing. People’s brains aren’t fully developed until 25. Which is remarkable if you think about it. People spend a third of their lives walking around without all their faculties. And even after that most people have trouble making good decisions. Not just dumb people, but nearly everyone. Why are there fat doctors and nurses? Rigid social norms can help people make better decisions, especially the people who need the most help with that. Again, there is a reason individual choice is emphasized almost solely in societies rich enough to afford letting people make mistakes.
So when you say "rest of us" here you're coming from a society that's on the edge of survival?
That's a context I definitely wasn't thinking. I'd assumed based on the conversation we were talking about cities vs small towns in relatively well established countries.
Honestly, I'm not sure I buy your hypothesis though, even if I think of struggling countries, feel you'd have to back it up with more reasoning and data. I don't really see how conformity would help. It still seems to me like it's just an obstacle, all innovation or attempts at change or trying new or different ways are shut down and repressed. If the current way of life isn't yielding the kind of outcome needed to lift them above that edge of survival, continuing to strictly enforce and being against anyone trying to go against it seems counterproductive to me.
I'm not saying you get rid of law and order. But I don't see the benefits of say banning certain type of medicine, foods, dances, music, art, social interactions, love making, natural selection of a mate, methods of trade, methods of construction, etc.
> there is a reason individual choice is emphasized almost solely in societies rich enough to afford letting people make mistakes
I feel you might have the cause and effect reversed. It could just as well be that there is a reason societies that emphasize individual choice are often the ones to become prosperous and rich.
Alternatively, perhaps there is a dominant culture in major US cities and you simply don't feel pressure to conform (because you're already conforming). Imagine someone expressing support for traditional values, police, Israel, etc or expressing criticism of BLM, Roe v. Wade, "soft-on-crime" policies, etc in a major US city--that person would definitely feel pressure (if not harassment) to conform to progressive politics. Hell, in my major US city, I feel chafed for not believing that cars are a completely unmitigated evil, and I'm sure there are a whole lot of areas where I don't feel chafed by the dominant progressive politics.
Boy, where do you get off?
>can't believe that there might be people who want to live another way
As it apparently goes for you as well. The fact that someone that would like to live outside of the city, but not want to adopt the "small town limited life experience while--knowing--their way is the only way". Anyone coming from other experiences is always a threat to these small towns so they are labeled as outsiders and always treated suspiciously instead of welcoming like they like to preach.
My guess is that this attitude is where:
>In small town USA, the local culture usually is inferior.
Big cities often have people from many different cultures, including small towns, which is neat, and interesting things can happen when different perspectives collide, but, for the most part, cities just operate under the generic mass media American culture.
But, in my experience, people living in rural areas rely on their immediate neighbors for more than those living in larger developments. This is conducive to the development of a strong local culture, and outsiders who move in expecting the mass media American culture will likely not feel welcome.
Having lived a variety of places, I personally prefer the rural culture (at least here in Vermont), but I would not say big city culture is inferior...just different.
A tip: if you say a person's culture is inferior, they probably will not see you as worth listening to.
This might be true for some people in large cities, especially the wealthier and the transplants from other places.
However, poor people in cities have a huge sense of community. They rely on their community a ton, and everyone works together to survive. The neighborhood is the community, and it is much like a close knit rural community, only compacted into a smaller city neighborhood.
I think they would find neighors very welcoming - even the toughest cities and neighborhoods are mostly friendly people - but the culture would be unfamiliar and the newcomer would have to adjust.
> it may be easier to travel to an area of the city with more generic culture where they do feel welcome
I'm not sure where that is in many cities, other than suburbs. You can't escape the richness of large cities.
Sure, I agree, with emphasis on the newcomer adjusting.
>I'm not sure where that is in many cities, other than suburbs. You can't escape the richness of large cities.
To clarify, I just mean locations that attract people of a wide variety of backgrounds. That is not to say those locations are 'un-rich' or anything. I just mean that interactions there are governed more by mainstream American culture than by anything specific to that city or neighborhood or the people involved.
I would say it's the opposite. Cities are their own worlds and cultures (many, many cultures per city); they have the critical mass to ignore mass media. Mass media doesn't understand or address the richness of life in cities; it's for the suburbs.
But I certainly agree that mass media does not understand or address the richness of life in cities (or anywhere else).
Yes, I agree that many perspectives are omitted.
> mass media does not understand or address the richness of life in cities (or anywhere else).
It captures the suburbs pretty well, IMHO.
Also, he says he came from a small town so I don't think it is fair to characterize him as a coastal elite.
I'm sure he came from a small town and perhaps the "Dylan is a coastal elite" take is inaccurate (I'm also not sure that's what the parent is suggesting), but the following seems pretty unambiguously elitist-there's no more charitable interpretation that doesn't flout reason.
> In small town USA, the local culture usually is inferior.
I have not travelled all over USA to have a taste of every possible small town, but the ones I did visit that had monoculture often also had a very 'conform to us or leave' type of vibe.
Much better phrased than I was able to do it.
>I have not travelled all over USA to have a taste of every possible small town, but the ones I did visit that had monoculture often also had a very 'conform to us or leave' type of vibe.
With the size of the US, even traveling within the US it is still similar everywhere you go. An interesting bit about Europe is that you can visit totally different culture with a few hours travel by train. I can travel the same distance and still be in my same state, so traveling to new cultures is difficult. It's just a unique state of things, not a claim of better/worse
I agree, and I love this about Europe, but what you're experiencing is monoculture at national scales. You have large regions with single dominant cultures (as opposed to a Europe that is a uniform blend of every culture). I also suspect this is key to Europe's minimal inequality--it's a lot easier to get things done when most people have similar values and when people are willing to conform to the system there's obviously going to be much less inequality (they're not working against the system).
We just look at Europe and say "guys, you're just white, leave it be".
However, I think some of your conclusions are either mistaken or not thinking about the consequences.
For example, small towns that have a single culture are great if you feel a part of it. However, even many people who are born and raised in the monoculture do not feel a part of it. For example, if you are LGBT, or even just have interests outside the monoculture. In a city, everyone can find a group they can connect with; in a monoculture, that isn’t the case.
Secondly, your last sentence seems to imply that cities are more dangerous than rural areas. However, if you look at the data, that is not the case… people in cities have a lower mortality rate than people in rural areas: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-07/rural-urb...
If you think of culture as art, food, tradition, dancing, music, games, etc. I feel many small town simply don't have a lot of it. Its not just about diversity, there's just not a lot of culture to experience, they don't always have their own music, or art scene, they don't always have their own unique foods, or games or way of dancing. And their tradition are often just standard Christian traditions.
I don't think this is anything bad about the people of any small town, in my opinion this is more inherent to the fact that the town is small in itself. That religious organizations tend to have a bigger stronghold on small town making them more conservative culturally, which seems to hold back the culture from growing more unique. And that small towns often don't have as much financial means.
Sometimes it's also that you won't be able to participate or experience the culture of a small town if you're not in it already. While going to a big city it'll be in your face and there'll be festivals, and restaurants, and other places you can go and experience it first hand. In small towns sometimes it's all happening at people's homes and backyards, so you have to be in it already.
This isn't always true though, some small towns have great culture, but seems there's less of those. It tends to be towns that have retained traditional historical pagan cultural heritage, playing folk music, festivals, foods and traditions of yore.
Overall a lot of small town are very charming and can still have a lively and interesting culture. Suburbs on the other hand are just soulless in my experience. Even their architecture and design are copy/pasted and manufactured blocks.
Because different cultures are better at different things, so a mixed culture is better at more things than a monoculture.
The benefits of the small town american culture is that it is a mixture of cultures already from the immigrants that moved there a while ago.
The improvements are continuing over time as more and more cultures join in
Yeah we tried that for like 200 years. Fought a war over it. Didn't work out so great.
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-a...).
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.
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.
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.
senior engineers are not "easily pulling" that amount anywhere. that's way outside the senior engineer band at FAANGs/unicorns. you need to be at staff/principal level to get outside of the mid six figures, which is very hard even if you already have a job at one of those companies.
that said, I do kinda agree otherwise. if you are making $200k (typical senior at normal company, between junior/mid-level at FAANG) and are a remotely frugal person, it would take a very unlucky series of events to get to "broke". the risk exists, but from a strictly materialistic viewpoint, the increased upside more than makes up for it.
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.
I am not usually planning for worst case and i tend to be optimist, i have a working spouse and i make decent money, and my plan is to be buried here in the US, but if shit hits the fan, and i can no longer work, i will still have healthcare through wife. Even worse case i can always go back to turkey. It's hard but not impossible to make such life changes.
This statement is inaccurate for most people.
The salaries for H1B visa holders are actually public [1] and starting salaries for foreigners are more 100k to 200k and nowhere close to 7 figures.
Also the salary levels at FAANGs are mostly known [2] and you have to get very, very far up to even make 7 figures at a fang. An L6 (staff engineer) makes 500k total comp.
[1] https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=&job=Software&city=San+Fra...
[2] https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Amazon,SAP,Google&track=Soft...
L5 still make great money and it is a multiple of what you get outside of SV. Just inflating to 7 figures is a bit exaggerated
Edit: this comment from 6 months ago provides a bit of inside view on getting L6 at Google https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28965492
I know drastically inflated incomes is the lingua franca of online discussion, but "easily pulling 7 figures" is a bit much, don't you think?
I don't always plan for the worst case, I tend to be optimistic, and if something bad comes up, i improvise.
Also if you are a family and your spouse works, this is some sort of hedging for the scenario you mentioned.
Here is what it looks like. - I started working in 2012.
- I didn't come here married
- I married another Turkish woman a few years later, she couldn't work until she were able to get EAD which was probably around 2015/6. H1B spouses couldn't work at the time.
- We got audited for our greencard, and there were frictions in the process for whatever reason. It was no where near as bad as it is for an Indian - we were still able to complete it in about 2 years.
- During greencard process, she got EAD, it took a bit of time as a foreigner educated/non-engineer person find a FTE job. This meant she was on a contract job to build her US resume, and she had to renew every 6 months or so. It is fairly stressful for a person at the beginning of her career in a foreign country and you have to provide support. It also didn't allow us a backup healthcare in case I was out of work.
- I didn't get to 6 in 1-2 years, it took 4, and that was on the faster side at google. It could have been faster at FB, but that's not the point.
All of these are progression in life, nothing is given to you. You can't assume the worst case, because in the worst case everyone is dead tomorrow.
I took a bet to come to US(after a US school, on H1B). I didn't think of what'd have happened if i lost my job, i don't really stress over one of us losing job anymore. If it happens, we deal with it. We always have.
Risk and consequences of losing everything early on is much lower. You don't have expenses, you don't have dependents. You take a bet, and you start building a life. This is why I suggest everyone to do it as soon as possible if they want to leave their home countries.
You start reducing your risk in some things (by getting married) while you increase risk in some others (like getting a bad divorce etc), you add more financial stress if you have a kid, but you have other joys you add through it and so on.
This is not a me story, this is a story that's replicable for most people in FAANG jobs...
Once you are out, you are on your own. Not so in Germany.
Kinda. Healthcare is not provided by your employers, but by health care insurances. It is generally mandatory to be insured. The system is split in universal healthcare (payed as a percentage of your salary) and private healthcare (payed from your bank account). Anyone self-employed and earning above a certain threshold can opt to leave the government system and buy private healthcare (gives somewhat better treatment, most notably faster appointments at specialists, as they earn 3-5 times on a privately insured patient). When you leave an employer you remain in the system you were in before. If you were privately insured and end up on social security you will be moved to the government system and they will cover healthcare costs for you.
The issue is with "purchasing" insurance. a) you need money, b) what does the health insurance say when you wanna get insurance while having acute expensive health issues?
Getting insurance when you are healthy and have money is easy.
As a student for example it's mandatory to get insurance to be enrolled in university. Cost for students that are no longer covered by parents (above age 24 iirc) is close to 100€ per month.
A citizen of EU, coming to US, working and making good money, and somehow lose the ability to work. Could they go back, and continue to live reasonable life there without having to worry about things that they normally wouldnt if they haven't come to us in the first place?
I'm not trying to say going to the US is a bad choice, just that there are very sensible reasons not to go that are often overlooked by optimism and my personal experience will always remind me of that.
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.
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.
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.
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.
If needed, my email is in my profile.
This basically skips the daunting process that's H1B lottery.
What city is the best to find someone who is/has:
Open to new experiences and concepts (museums, art, dancing, music) <— literally the “openness to experience” on the big 5
High cognitive ability
Into meditation, yoga and exercise?
Somewhat into gaming and anime? (Optional)
Somewhat of a programmer or (game) designer/related (optional)
It's really hard to get that marriage green card though, you're looking at many months of paperwork on top of building a successful relationship and committing your life to someone. I think it'd be a lot easier to get a job at a big company in the US and come over on an H1B, or build a SaaS business wherever you live now
Generally, any big East Coast city. NYC, Atlanta, Washington DC, Chicago, and Boston would be top of mind.
The United States has an adult population of 258.3 million, so it's likely you'd find someone to fall in love with if you're really looking.
I have some experience here, I have a double digit amount of family members who came to the US to marry into my family, including my brother-in-law. With one exception they are all very happy marriages, the longest lasting 3 decades. There were some who were definitely were looking to marry Americans to immigrate, but the relationship is still real.
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.
* 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.
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.
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.
> The average number of weekly hours worked by full-time workers in the European Union was 37.1 hours a week as of the third quarter of 2021
Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1197097/average-working-...
> For those [Americans] in the typical age range for full-time work, the national average landed at 40.5, indicating that most employed adults work a 40-hour workweek
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.
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.
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.
https://butterflyeconomy.blogspot.com/2022/05/place-cutlure-...
Journalism is a hustle.
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).
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
That's called a nation.
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.
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.
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.