Going to have a hard time finding some goodwill when you refer to other countries as "less civilized". A tad hypocritical.
I suppose I should admit as an European that confidence in your own superiority is not solely and American trait.
It's significantly better to be a high earner in the US than almost anywhere else in Europe (in terms of capital)
> doesn't help the discussion
That's exactly my point. The discussion started to derail into "Who has more money?" like that's the ultimate metric. This just makes me sad but is pretty representative for the stereotypical US mindset. My point is there is a lot more to life than money.
Americans won’t admit it publicly but a big part of living in America is knowing what parts of America you shouldn’t go. And if you do have to go to or through those areas, you start to understand why so many people drive urban assault vehicles.
And that outside of your own retirement.
I’m currently on a US salary that is very generous. I don’t spend a dime extra because of those. It’s kinda terrifying I don’t know how they do it.
Actually, looking at it, if the person is 'independent', they'd pay another ~$10k or so on FICA, or have some LLC structure set up. Or they might be lucky enough to have an employer who pays for some/most of this 'fantastic' insurance... until they don't.
Perhaps in terms of raw dollars, there's some advantage, but there's an pervasive threat of "what if" scenarios that is hard to shake for a lot of folks.
If you are working independently yea it may be more expensive, but (unfortunately) so few people work independently so it’s an edge case not really that valuable here. Though worth noting providing a way to untie healthcare from employers and still make it affordable so that you can more easily start a company is a good idea.
It’s really difficult to do good analysis here. If you were in Ohio making $190,000 your family is automatically in the top 10% or so. If you worked remote you could buy a house outside of a major city for your salary equivalent, or in a city like Columbus for 2x your salary with some fantastic public schools.
Also a nitpick while I think you get much more efficient and cheaper healthcare with the government running it, at the end of the day it’s never free so you have to actually compare taxes to premiums to get a fair assessment of cost.
This 1000 times. I don't think we'll see a meaningful change in my lifetime, but it's an existential burden that we, collectively, have had for generations. So much so, really, that hundreds of millions of people seemingly can not envision meaningful change.
The constant "just get a great job with great benefits!" refrain irks me to no end, and demonstrates a privilege that people often deny exists. Even if/when I can get that "great job with great benefits", I still only have it at the pleasure of the employer. I grow old? You're gone. Employer makes bad decisions? They "take responsibility" by letting me go.
The notion of having access to health care, regardless of my employment status, should be such a basic thing to grasp. If I'm unemployed for a year or so (illness, family issues, whatever), having to upend specific doctors/medicines/hospitals/treatments because "insurance change" is life altering for many. Seen it myself in dozens of personal connections over the years. Want to change jobs? Whether abusive working conditions or just need to be with family? "Can't do it... I need my health care... the only doctors that take my health care are in this area...". Or... "I won't have health insurance for 6 months if I take that new job".
There's 1000 different examples I could find why "employer/insurance" connection is bad, and very few I can think of that are good for all parties, yet, we continue in this mess.
> but (unfortunately) so few people work independently so it’s an edge case not really that valuable here.
I know a growing number of folks doing this, and many more who would love to, but ... "health insurance" keeps them tied to "employers".
argh...
Maybe an idea there to start an independent business owners healthcare association or something that redistributes profits via lower premiums or something? How the hell do you start something like that?
You've generally always been able to buy health insurance independently. I started... 14(?) years ago. The ACA, well-intentioned, was hobbled from day one, and my $220/month high deductible plan has morphed in to a $1300/month plan which is still high deductible ($14k/year), has fewer options, and ... well... some pregnancy services will be covered (cis male here). You want a 'low' deductible? You're looking at probably $2k or more for 2 adults. And yes, I know health insurance has an age component - I'm years older than I was then too. $3k/year in exchange for taking on some risk (higher deductible) makes some sense. But base price of $15k/year in health insurance, plus another $14k/year in deductibles means this is essentially catastrophic only, but not really priced as such).
It's all region-based, and even where I'm at, I get measurably fewer options because I live 2 miles over a county line, and 'no one' insures out here. It got worse for several years - I know in NC, there are ~100 counties, and I believe there were more than 30 at one point who had only one insurer even selling health insurance in those counties.
Also.. FWIW, I didn't take it as you didn't care, but yes, freelance workers are generally overlooked, even as the ranks grow. They just tend to be growing on the lower-end of the spectrum - rideshare drivers, door dash delivery, etc. Much easier to just ignore growing segments of society while we pride ourselves on our ability to "get a better job with great benefits!". I'm not in a position of having to choose food over medication, but having to decide between medication or surgery today over funding retirement savings? I've been there, as have some friends of mine. Yes, it comes across as a bit privileged, but privileges are all relative.
The tax rate for my income bracket in the UK is 45%, and while federal income tax is 39.6% I still have to pay state and city taxes on top of that which works out to be about the same.
However I get free medical care in the UK, affordable college tuition (10x less than the US at least), maternity leave, great public transit, I could go on. What does the same amount of taxes paid get me in the US? I’m not complaining about having to pay taxes, but sure would be nice to get something back that isn’t military.
This statement is meaningless without specifying the brackets or providing an effective tax rate for a certain amount of income.
https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/taxes/federal-income-tax-...
https://www.gov.uk/income-tax-rates
The 45% income tax rate is for 150k GBP, which is $167k. The top bracket for US federal income tax starts at $578k/$693k at a 37% tax rate.
People here are talking like the difference between US taxes and EU taxes is 20% or more, when in reality it’s maybe 5%
UPD: looked at the tax wedge, the US vs UK looks pretty similar to me- which supports my point. Germany looks a lot higher, but they have 100% free tuition and I am not familiar with the rest of the benefits germans get.
Also, lol at UK public transit. Horrifically expensive - probably more than a single digit % of total income if you actually have to commute anywhere on a regular basis.
In the US, that sounds like a need to either ruin your finances/live/pension/etc. In most places of Europe, not so much.
An American doesn't have that privilege.
The delta in wages from my home country to the US, after taxes, could pay for private insurance for 5 families.
It's unfair, as all short takes are, and it saddens me to see my friends who live there, who are at no fault for the mess they are in, suffer. I fear the coming mid-terms will only make things worse.
US wealth is a joke.
Developers are already very well off no matter what country they live in, and I'd wager that "normal" people in the US are not far wealthier than people in Nordic countries for instance.
Coz like… it’s not hard to spend trillions of dollars when you charge $5000 for a tablet you can buy in Australia for like… $20.
A lot of people hold the belief Healthcare in the US is bad because it callously refuses to spend money on people. This is not the case.
When you remember that those funds were largely deducted from someone's paycheck, it has a real impact on those workers and it's important not to dismiss all the hard work that did go into supplying those funds.
That's not to say that there are major structural issues with how Healthcare is regulated in the US, primarily related to how those funds are spent
I don't know if it is better, but it is certainly a different problem, which matters if anyone is interested in understanding or fixing it.
I think it is important to understand the problem specifically there are a lot of patients dying of treatable cancer who would benefit from a health care system that functions better.
As for labor laws, the US does far better than it seems. Easy to fire also means easy to hire too, as the risk taken by the employer is also far lower. And the stronger the protections, the higher the slack, showing in unemployment. Very few European countries have the unemployment rates of the US, and the ones that do get there via a lot of temporary work, which has about as many protections as US work. And even with those protections, you still see Spain and Greece at well over 10% unemployment, while the US is under 4.
The easiest is basing Medicare spending on patient benefit in terms off quality adjusted life years.
I think it is a common misunderstanding that European countries maintain lower costs via price caps. In actuality, most don't limit the sale price, but control how much they are willing to pay for a drug, device, or procedure. This means that a product has to be substantially better to command a substantially higher price. More treatment with slightly worse products means much more benefit overall. Similarly, it puts some downward pressure on the price of new products because they have to compete with cheaper but less effective ones.
Also it has been proven many times by many people that if US were to transition to single payer insurance system, it would actually decrease the spending. No one claims it is easy, but there is absolutely no reason for the US insurance system to exist under single payer, that would be just setting piles of cash on fire.
It's also worth noting that many countries with single pair still have a supplemental insurance market for premium coverage not included.
We should work out a deal where we continue to provide their security, and they provide our healthcare. Even Stevens.
Having said that, the US healthcare system is very efficient at extracting profit.
https://randomcriticalanalysis.com/why-conventional-wisdom-o...
That said: tying insurance to employment is evil. I’m a New Zealander and our healthcare system certainly has its problems too.
The US should grow up and stop it with these bicameral partisan pissing matches.
Both the US centre right and alt-right parties are equally responsible for putting US citizens taxes directly in the grubby hands of middlemen who fail to deliver outcomes.
Trust me, the unemployed life in third world countries, and even in second world countries, is far more brutal than the unemployed life in the US, especially for unemployed big-tech workers who can find a new job anytime.
> unemployed life in third world countries, and even in second world countries, is far more brutal than the unemployed life in the US
The only reason Europeans (and Americans are Europeans), keep up the pretense is only in order to further the universalization of Anglo-American culture.
It sounds heartless, but it's the reality.
Edit: Sorry, this refers to a comment further below: Also, comparing this to the pandemic is kinda crazy, isn't it? It's one thing to have a global scale event effecting the lives of billions and another of just buying a company for way tooo much because you wanted to make a dumb joke about smoking weed.
America truely is a heartless, dystopian society...
I've worked in both the US and various EU countries, while the higher salary is certainly enticing, it's also a trap; When shit hits the fan, you better have been saving. In Europe, the money I make is money I get to really use, because the rest is taken care of for me.
I wonder where this happy country is. In Germany it is already a common knowledge that relying on state for your retirement is a sure recipe for poverty in the old age.
Is it? I'm living in Germany since so many years and nobody told me this. They send me estimates about the money I'd be getting when retiring regularly, and while it'd mean downsizing, I'd not be poor with the amounts named.
These high pension values are also quite sure to be unsustainable for the government, as the workforce shrinks quite dramatically and people still get older.
Generally, people are advised to put some money for retirement on the side, if they can. If you are in a position to put some money aside probably try to do some research. "Geldanlage für Faule" by Sina Groß is a very down to earth starting place.
Seriously though, in Germany, you always get this sense that everybody seems to know what they are doing until ??it hits the fan and you realize all that time nobody had cared about what's coming.
I wouldn't bet on any of it happening, but predicting the future is always hard.
You're right in that employers restrict hiring as much as possible, what tends to happen here is you get a 1 year contract with the option to be taken on permanently, and these contracts don't have all of the insurances. Taking a permanent contract here is seen as a serious commitment to the company, so most people who just want more money in their bank account at the end of the month choose not to take permanent contracts and take the risk themselves.
If I saved for these things myself in the US, I would've been netting less than I do here in Europe, despite my US salary being 100k higher. A lot of people live way beyond their means with all these things considered.
Salaries in Europe are much lower even when all the salary and benefit related expenses (so called "gross 2" salary) are taken into account.
That's why Twitter didn't start there.
For 100000 USD it's actually a bit higher than for 100000 EUR.
However, as another commenter said, income tax is not the full story - far from it. There are other taxes that you have to pay. Also, while social security comes out of your paycheck, it's considered taxable income in France for the purposes of the income tax. Also, social security is usually insufficient, so you usually have to pay for a separate insurance. Which, you guessed it, isn't deductible from taxes.
As far as a company's concerned, if the employee costs 100 EUR "fully loaded", they only get around 55-60 EUR in hand. Also, when comparing with the US, don't forget that VAT is at 20-25% depending on the country. And, at least in France, VAT is levied on some taxes (yup), like for example electricity and gas.
[0] https://www.forbes.com/advisor/income-tax-calculator/califor...
[1] https://simulateur-ir-ifi.impots.gouv.fr/calcul_impot/2022/s...
US is around 25% whereas France is 45%
So imagine your the next unicorn? Would you hire like crazy in Europe?
Modern Switzerland is much of a socialist state. It’s lost all the things that made it a great place for business. Zurich is still a small tech hub for startups but mostly services and finance. Labor is usually hired in US or elsewhere.
About the only place in EU that's pro-small business is Italy. It still has some 50% of the GDP from companies less than 50 employees.
If you're on a permanent contract, there's a minimum legal notice that depends on years served and your age. So it's not "6 months", it's a variable amount of months. It may be as little as 0.5-2 months if you've worked there for < 5 years. If you're not on a permanent contract, the notice is: BYE.
As for "75% for 2 years", that's not the employer paying you, it's the state. Unemployment benefits. Where both "75%" and "2 years" are lacking some crucial details. It's max 75% of a fixed cap. So if you're a high earner, you might only get 25-50% of your previous salary. Further, you'll be intensely pressurized to find that new job, where you need to supply weekly evidence of job interviews. You can't just take a holiday for 2 years. By the way, you paid for the above yourself, directly from your payslip.
As for "50% indefinitely", this is state wellfare. Which is absolute hell. You don't easily qualify for it and you're even more pressurized to find a job, any job. You'll be closely monitored and you can't own anything of any worth. So if you were a highroller owning assets before, get ready to be stripped naked. Next, you'll have the social stigma of being a leech. Have this on your resume, and its goodbye career.
I'm honestly pissed about the inaccuracy of the poster.
So you can just retire after being fired?
> In Europe, the money I make is money I get to really use, because the rest is taken care of for me.
That's certainly not universally true in Europe.
Not in my country (in Europe). You get unemployment benefits for 2+ years that is a percentage of your salary up to a certain level. The maximum you can get is around $40k USD, which can be difficult because you probably have a mortgage and other expenses that were calibrated to a much higher salary.
You are also required to actively apply for jobs, and you may be required to take a job application course. I think you can even be assigned to a job interview if you delay. It is not intended as a "free" paid vacation. I think that even in some cases you are theoretically required to take any job anywhere in the country even if you have to move, but I haven't heard of anyone who had to do that. I assume they look at your social situation (family etc.)
After 2 years you are placed into a different type of program where you don't get a fixed amount, but you get money according to what the local government decides you need. That means you would need to sell your big house and move to a cheaper appartement if you want to get any support. If you had any savings, you would probably have to spend them before getting any assistance.
No, definitely not in "Europe" in general (well, according to sweaty you can in some parts of Europe, although I have my doubts).
Very rich people and large companies, generally.
I support a modest minimum income provided by the government, but 50% of salary indefinitely is insane, it only makes sense if everyone is low paid.
I still feel like I must be misinterpreting something here, because I can't imagine even the leftiest of leftists thinking this sounds fair. That's basically just UBI except the rate is set for each individual based on whatever the high-water mark of their lifetime earnings were at any point?
But this is not paid by the company, right? Where in Europe do companies have to pay you 6 months for firing you?
That's not true, there are minimum periods for which you must continue to pay the employee after notice their contract will be terminated, but I'd be surprised to learn of any country where it's illegal to prevent the employee having access to the building, confidential documents, etc.
Cf. 'gardening leave'.
And I'd surprised if there were many countries where you couldn't prevent an employee who had been notified they were being let go from having access to systems, documents, etc.
Edit: I'm not comparing current situation to pandemic. I am trying to make a point referring to a past event.
In australia you cannot hire for a redundant role for I believe 9 months? If you do you must rehire the people made redundant or face big fines.
Its actually great, skilled people can choose their priorities and how they want to setup their lives and career (stupid immigration policies and bad stuff coming out of it notwithstanding).
I prefer something in between - ie Switzerland. Salaries higher, taxation lower, some middle ground on social security - ie easy to fire people, usual 3 months notice by law, but social system will give you 70% of your salary (up to an OK limit) for first year, you just need to keep doing the job hunt. It means you are not shit-scared if you take a mortgage for example, you don't need to have such a massive reserve like in US. And of course top of the world healthcare that cost very little (sickness, accidents are 0 if you work/retired) and cca free top notch education including best universities.
Just a few examples: Automotive manufacturers, Siemens, ASML, Several arms manufacturer, Airbus just to name a few.
In addition, at least where I am, there are a million small companies (a few hundred employees) who deliver to customers around the world and, I assume, at market prices.
It's a balance and probably one of the reasons we lost out on the digital race so far.
If it makes you feel better people in the US don’t have massive reserves either. They just gamble and hit up credit if things hit the fan, even at FAANG salaries.
At this point we have no idea what kind of severance package Twitter will be offering. I think it's likely that what you're saying is pretty much what they're going to wind up with - that is, Twitter will push them out the door, but with a check equivalent to something like 60 days of pay plus like continuation of benefits. Of course, I don't know this for sure, but neither do you, so there's no point in condemning or praising them yet.
Knee-capping the dynamism of youth is a current consensus of the European system.
And if they're not?
Twitter has some profits last year first time. I am not saying it was perfect company. But the deep deep financial trouble it is in now is because of leveraged buyout motivated by politics (stick it to ennemies) and ego.
Side note, but the fact that people will "be fine" based on their level of economic usefulness - and, indirectly, linking their value as a human to their ability to be productive - is what keeps me up at night thinking about what happens when automation outclasses all of us
If we reach some zen state where truly all has been automated then we’ll have UBI (or some dystopian hellscape) so I don’t worry about it.
I’ve always struggled with programmers who feared automation and wrote shitty, complicated, buggy code happy that they had “job security.”
I go to sleep wishing for the day when I can automate everything away.
Also, there’s tons of one person businesses you can run if you automate workflows.
You're also missing that programming isn't the only sector that's going to be upended by automation. Basically every job market is going to be affected by the end of the century.
>If we reach some zen state where truly all has been automated then we’ll have UBI (or some dystopian hellscape)
In the States at least, the resistance to any form of socialism is so strong that I have no faith UBI has a snowball's chance in hell.
>there’s tons of one person businesses you can run if you automate workflows.
and when literally everyone can do it, competition will be brutal. When the stakes are "make it or end up homeless", and everyone is desperately trying to run their own business because corporations don't need to hire anymore, we're in deep trouble
Actually, in some sense, more people have servants, just that they are part-time: cleaning services, people who keep track of your schedule (executive assistants, but for normal people, can't remember the word).
When Microsoft Word automated away secretaries, it also raised the level of quality to be what was formerly available only at professional printers, so people spend the same amount of time, but now the expectation of quality of output is higher.
There can't really be widespread unemployment due to automation, because then labor costs would decrease and handmade goods would become more affordable, so people would start doing that.
Isn't this pretty much a description of the US manufacturing sector over the last 40 years?
I've been sitting here trying to suss out why something about saying this outside the context of a job interview feels so cringe to me. Best I can figure is that it's two things. 1.) Having that thought as a central part of your inner life implies that you have a very limited social life. 2.) The lack of worry about your own well being - "we'll have UBI or a dystopian hellscape, oh well" - feels almost ... subish in a sadomasochistic sort of way. Like you're bottoming for the economy (not that there's an issue with bottoming, lol).
If you owned your own business it wouldn't strike me this way, but if you're just a programmer at a company you don't actually get to work less by automating things, you just get to work on different stuff. But if you automated everything you'd just be tossed aside and reap no benefits. Wishing that on yourself is just.... so strangely pathetic. I know you didn't mean to sound pathetic. You probably consider it cool or heroic (in a nerdy sense) to talk about how much you want to automate everything.
Sorry to derail like this. I'm just fascinated by my revulsion and trying to untangle it.
I’ve never actually ended my day wishing for automating everything. But it is an ideal that I would like.
I wouldn’t be tossed aside from automating my own business as I own it and no one could toss me aside. There’s not a requirement that I have an employer.
So I don’t think automating all my work away means I won’t have a purpose any longer. I think it will lead to more interesting and meaningful work.
I could be wrong but I’ve automated hundreds, maybe thousands of processes over the years for various companies and it’s always led to me working on more interesting stuff.
I don’t think it’s cool or heroic, whatever that means, just part of fun problems that I get to solve.
My lack of worry is based on not having any control over the situation so instead focusing on other things. It’s just a reductive analysis that lets me think I don’t have to worry about it.
In the extremely small chance that it is possible to automate everything so that there’s no more work, I don’t have control over it. In hellscape mode, that sucks and is not fun. In UBI mode that’s great. Either way, it’s not affecting my decisions today. I certainly don’t wish for the negative outcome or relish it’s potential.
I think your revulsion may be due to misunderstanding some of my motivations.
> The majority of people who earn more spend more.
You don't need a Prolog engine to compute the conclusion...
What I'm saying is that is difficult to live "bellow my means" when it comes to, well, living, which means having a roof on top of my head. I don't want anything fancy, just a safe enough area, decent amount of space and decent amount of transportation options. I'm of course willing to pay for all that, the problem is that there are people who are willing to pay even more, which leaves me with two options: either compete against those other people, which, like I said, makes the "live bellow my means" moot, or, the second option, to compromise on my housing/living arrangements (choosing to live in a less safe area, giving up on access to public transportation, choosing a studio apartment instead of a one-bedroom thing), which is less than ideal (because housing is a basic thing in one's life).
Based on my experience in a 2nd tier SV company I believe this to be true
The guys has proven that his word doesn't mean a thing.
Don't take everything Elon tweets at face value
> There seem to be 10 people "managing" for every one person coding
Take this literally, not as as a ration. - each SWE in a product team has an EM, Dir Eng, VP Eng, PM, Director Product, VP Product, ...
They do not own datacenters, AFAIK.
Most people fired from Twitter will find a new job without problem and if they can't, is their problem, not mine.
In a down economy, human resources and artificially underutilized and many competent workers with solid financial discipline will still find themselves in financial trouble.
If your argument is an ad hominem, ok so.
Also, civilized societies have come up a long time ago with appropriate social nets that mitigate the hurdle of unemployment.
And our food is vastly superior.
It’s fine: you can find anything you want.
But you have to suffer posh places and step markup.
I just want some decent unpasteurized cheese.
Joke aside, I was more thinking of culinary traditions.
Like cooking things from the season, from scratch and eat it with other human beings around a table.
US friends: that when I look at you like barbarian : when you shovel food in your mouth between you desk and break room.
Get a table, look at your food! Talk to another human about his food. Share food and diner time.
No, it was pretty clear you were a smug Frenchmen from the start
Your version of "civilized nation" means socialist state that provides free healthcare often fraught with long wait times, terrible quality and no choice. Healthcare industry working with state to make sure there is no accountability and corruption running rampant. My version of "civilized nation" means private industry providing cheap healthcare with market forces enforcing affordability and quality.
We’re established that all life are equals and each humans deserves rights.
Not out of kindness but because it yields more cohesive and resilient societies.
All places are civilized in one way or another, more in some aspects depending on the locality .
In my books, Démocratie in Switzerland is more advance that anywhere else in Western Europe for instance.
But more robust social nets would help shield workers and their families from hick up in supply chain or markets. Preventing unwanted ripple effects.
If that make it socialist, so be it. That word has lost most of its meaning from me. Let’s talk policies and not political classification.
It's great to see the fat getting cut and hopefully more companies follow suit
But you can't have the boom without the bust, and shrinking bloated companies is a thing that has to happen one way or the other.
Also, the Twitter layoff in particular has had about as much advance notice as anything I've seen. It's been clear for months and months it was going to happen. Plenty of time to get yourself in order or get out first.
And, shouldn't need to say this, unionize!
Some here have perhaps been victims themselves, for relatively mild things (I'm not talking about the really egregious cases where cancellation has been justified!).
If you live by the sword, things may turn around at some point.
Watching twitter ban dissenting doctors and scientists reminded me of Hannah Arendt and the Eichman trial: "The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution"
And this from a NYT movie review:
"Arendt concluded that evil in the modern world is done neither by monsters nor by bureaucrats, but by joiners. That evil, Arendt argued, originates in the neediness of lonely, alienated bourgeois people who live lives so devoid of higher meaning that they give themselves fully to movements. It is the meaning Eichmann finds as part of the Nazi movement that leads him to do anything and sacrifice everything. Such joiners are not stupid; they are not robots. But they are thoughtless in the sense that they abandon their independence, their capacity to think for themselves, and instead commit themselves absolutely to the fictional truth of the movement."Being at home seems indeed scary comparing to dying in a hallway of an overloaded hospital
Being weeks away from deportation is unimaginably terrifying.
That's your mistake right here - making long term plans while being on temporary visa. Just assume that you're here for a few years to make money, and then need to go back to your home country. That's the idea behind H-1B visas anyway.
Just to be clear, since H-1B (or visas with similar restrictions) are the only path to permanent residency for people of many countries, this attitude is tantamount to "we don't want any immigrants from ______, period".
The idea behind h1b is to bring people to this country to work in useful and productive ways. Telling people to get the fuck out after a few years of work (even if they've spent 8-10 years in school here prior to that) is heartless and definitely not good for the country.
Specifically, in a temporary way. H1B is not an immigration visa, it's a temporary working visa, for which duel-intent is acknowledged (it's legal for an H1B holder to intend to get and apply for a green card.) But at the end of the day, an H1B visa is still a temporary work visa, not an immigration visa.
Tell me, which decade of your life would you be OK with throwing away this way? Your 20s? Your 30s? Get back to me on that.
By the same logic college students should never date, as they may move somewhere far off after graduating.
Sadly, while there is surgery that takes away your ability to procreate, there is as yet no surgery that will supress your ability to fall in love or to live a normal life.
So even if an immigrant comes here with the same stupid mindset you are displaying, and tries hard to never fall in love, it may happen anyway.
I don't know if I've read a more unempathetic statement on HN. Perhaps you are a happy lifelong bachelor, and can't relate to any other point of view. That is the only case that would make me understand where you're coming from, for if you have ever actually experienced love, you would understand the hypocrisy of your view.
btw No H1B is just 6years, thats just paperwork, all employers know this & workers know this & us gov knows it too because you commonly file for a GC near the end of that term & use it to further your stay. the problem parent post is facing is that us immigration rules are unclear and adhoc in many cases & folks in the pipeline end up suffering for it mostly.
Well, if you ignore reality of your situation because you are high on love hormones that's on you.
BTW. I'm not even from US, I live in central Europe, I spent a year in the US for one of the projects I worked on, didn't last, so I came back. You might say that I also fell victim to "unclear and ad hoc immigration rules", except they aren't ad hoc or unclear at all: if your intention is to immigrate to the US then H-1B (temporary worker visa) is not even the right visa type for you, you should apply for EB-3 instead, from the very beginning. So, to sum it up, original poster is trying to game the system, and bitching about the fact that the system is hard to game.
EDIT: Another problem with China and India is that combined they have population 10x that of the US. That's why US puts limits on number of immigrants from there (via wait times), otherwise the US population can easily double or triple in the next decade, leading to a lot of problems.
you mean getting married & starting a family? Even bloody monks who take chastity wows are not immune from carnal desires but you want some poor immigrant to be better than a monk because you waived a legal doc? btw thats works out great for illegal immigration in US.
> if your intention is to immigrate to the US then H-1B (temporary worker visa) is not even the right visa type for you, you should apply for EB-3 instead
Yet most GCs happen either H1B or asylum path. its because its designed that way. BTW I have been through the process so keep this BS to yourself, H1B is dual intent. And OP was not trying to game the system the system is poorly setup, surely your solution to a jobloss could not be just up & leave. especially when the rules are not clear (hence the needed to be clarified).
>..China and India is that combined they have population 10x that of the US..
nope, India's population is 4x of US. and agree there are per company h1b quotas BUT if US wants to limit the number of immigrants then they should stop issuing APs after H1Bs 6 year and force workers to go back. thats totally fine, but what US does is worse because they are stuck in a limbo state (I personally know many such people) waiting for GC to become current at some arbitrary date. And while this happens they have little leverage over company so they get treated like shit with subpar pay. So USCIS should either come up with a better plan to resolve the backlog or invalidate APs. they wont do that because employers dont want that.
Oh and BTW if they dont let workers become permanent residents then they should return all the SS & medicare taxes they took from paycheck as that is just plain theft.
edit:formatting
I agree with the above assessment that your posts are simply heartless.
Do you have different feelings about people who are laid off by the machinations of centi-millionaires?
Sounds like he’s trying to cut to profitability to me… after spending 44 billions dollars.
Also I’m sure you didn’t have this intention, but your comment made me think about East Germany. When the wall came down, there were all these state owned companies that had to be sold, something had to be done with them. They could not produce enough income to maintain the workforce that they had. This really upset a lot of people and they lost their jobs. It was not their fault, it was the fault of the state and the structure of the company.
Twitter apparently is quite bloated, and for the company to survive and succeed it needs to cut costs, or go out of business.
Germany could’ve easily just closed all of those companies in the east and laid everyone off, but they did their best to sell them so that people could still be employed.
Obligations shouldn't be one way, they should be mutual. If you want an ironclad employment security, etc, etc, you should also accept to be bound to your workplace until the business hires somebody else to do your work who is as qualified to do your work as you are. And if you think that your obligation is only to work well until you decide to quit at the moment of your choosing... then you should also accept that this moment might be chosen by your employer.
In at least some of those cases, it was a matter of livelihood and financial security for the people who were banned, too.
People make mistakes but they also correct them and there’s no reason to believe individual Twitter employees were callously nuking accounts, much less at the scale where it’d justify being dismissive about thousands of people losing jobs they were performing satisfactorily.
That includes financial planning and money set aside for these types of events.
For those who are cheering this on - good thing its not you getting mauled by tigers in the gladiator pit, huh?