retiredcoder

Adding to the GP, in the context of the USA, US Border control officers can still deny the entry of a visa holder traveler based on whatever.

Also, members of visa waiver program can also be denied entry. That’s just like any one country.

I have seen the same stationary overlook on other fields and always blows my mind that people involve would get away with that.

So, I cannot speak how easy/hard is to collect debt abroad but I do know that it is possible for prospective employers to query the credit history.

I have recently applied for a job in the finance industry in Denmark, the institution did poke into my American financial life. That also happened when I worked for banks the UK and Wall Street.

She wouldn’t take the bill as far it is concerned legally (as far as I know and dealt with medical bills myself).

She might get mails and phone calls but the collection agency will not go after her assets, well unless her dad has assets in the USA.

The story lacks some details but if she contact the hospital and negotiate based on that, they would likely reduce the bill. Is this moral or not that’s another question, but I agree that she had few options before asking people for money early on. Specially when making 200k.

The problem to me looks here

> The ER bill was about $50k and she decided that the best way to pay it was by creating a GoFundMe campaign before she even tried to negotiate with the hospital or fight it with the insurance.

For me it sounds like she could have done more on her own to solve this problem before “socializing” the solution.

PS: Yes, healthcare is broken but at the end, she as a resident knows that and when someone comes to visit it is her responsibility to advise or buy a travelers insurance. It is not that expensive.

It is somewhat limiting the fact that in our industry, challenges related to social and human factors are either dismissed, denied, or taken under negative tone. Social sciences and political philosophy could really benefit how we treat ourselves daily, in my opinion. However, it seems that if it is not “technical” is dysfunctional.

PS: I am not saying that’s my take from your post, just something I observe in general. Heck, even I use the term political to signal dysfunctional work. :/

My time in college also taught me a lot on groups. It soon became clear that an A team is very volatile because of egos and motivators are hardly the same. Every time we had groups bigger than 2-3, there was drama and/or resentment. I wish I knew more about people and project management at that time but times were also different..

That happens a lot, specially in places selling healthy snacks.

I used to work for one of them at certain point and the secret sauce was mostly using tons sugar and/or salt to increase sales. Unless one puts a lot of effort (which can be quite expensive when running a business), healthy food doesn’t sell well.

And that’s reinforced by advertisement over and over again.

While there are so many fun activities not involving alcohol. Seems like most of team building events nowadays boils down to pretentious dinner plus drinking to celebrate?

Moderation and diversification seems to be a good hedge for a healthy portfolio.

That and also cooking more at home, be in contact with your food is a way to eat simpler and for me that is key.

I find that there is much more smoking (including indoor) and drinking in Denmark than most of any other place I lived, or maybe I am just older now and can’t the hangovers are much longer??

True, specially when management is much more invested financially in the company than rank and file engineers. That happens a lot in European startup scene from my observations (as equity comp here isn’t that appealing for most of ICs)

Mine: Being a tech lead with a lot of people management involved.

Changing jobs is very stressful for me. I have put up with a lot of BS to avoid that stress, can seem to get better but worse actually.

It can get worse, when the managers are the ones who wrote the legacy and still are actively acting as individual contributors themselves instead of empowering their own people

genuinely asking, why would not be justifiable? That is tax on personal income and capital gains just like any other.

Actually it is very disfuncional for me to be in a company that communication skills are ahead of technical.

I have been in this situation and tried to remember what was going on while I wrote the questionable code. It frequently came down to a day full of interruptions and context switching. Also motivation plays a tremendous role, I know that whenever I have to work on a code base I don’t understand and don’t want to have anything to do with it long term, it ruins my ability to focus.

I am coming back from vacations next week and have 2 PRs to finish (couldn’t merge before because they are high risk), I am antecipating a lot of pain just to pick them up where I left off... I would rather do my tax returns instead lol

Denmark, but that’s another discussion around lunch in the office. I personally don’t take it as a benefit.

Your points are balanced and reflects quite well what I look for.

I usually have the mindset to be in everyday of the week 9-5 and that’s how I start my week.

But realistically, as the week progress, life gets in the way, I stay late one day in the office, wake up a bit late, etc. So by end of week I am always getting in around 10:30 or just working from home. Also, as honest as I can be, I deliver much more and don’t see my job as a burden/stressor if they grant me this autonomy. It is funny but my wife much rather have me 9-5 because I work less hours this way.

Nordics are the same. I might be wrong, and hope to be, but most of IT is still running few generations behind.

Lol, that is pretty much one of my past employers. They set a daily stand up everyday at 9:30am, so flexible time means I can arrive anytime before that..

One day I missed a stand-up because my wife was pregnant at the time and I wanted see our first baby MRI. The CTO sent me a nasty slack message in the company phone (which they claimed as a benefit “we give you state of art iphones!!”)

Also, there was catered lunch, which I sort of dislike and went out for lunch by myself sometimes. It was also frown upon, they want me to be in the office for the working hours.

I didn’t last long. In my subsequent job I made sure to pick just for the flexible hours since compensation in Europe, well st least where I am, doesn’t vary enourmously across companies.

Yes, I have seen that in one of my past job. Most of the political attrition came from managers of other divisions that required face time and perception of dedication.

OTOH, I also worked for an investment bank and there it was made clear, in my first day, that different people work different schedules so don’t assume productivity is sitting in your chair 9-5. I think it all comes from communication and clear expectations.

We have the chance to participate in the US too, now to what extend it is effective, I don’t know.

For example, even in big cities like NYC, there are public meetings about the projects, etc. Yet, I still believe that past certain point, people just stop either caring or not having the energy to follow thru the whole process.

Just a side note, it might sound pedantic but after living in Scandinavia, one thing I noticed that the expectation of “participation” during the decision making is not same even here. I bring this up because somewhat it contributes for more or less polarization and inefficient processes, I’d say.

For the competency and powerful the public administration, I think part of that it is really hard to compete with the private sector in the US, unless for prestige or political capital.

As trust goes, I am not sure if it is any different than most of countries in Europe except maybe Scandinavia?

For international best practices, at least in my subsection within IT, the US is the main driver for it. Most of people I talk to in terms of regulation see the US as its own jurisdiction but it is not like things there don’t make sense from a regulatory stand point, but they are just different?

Anyways, those are just simple observations.

I sort of believe that past a certain scale, a leader will have to be political to both get things done and maintain decision power. Even, if everyone agrees in one goal, which is impossible, the execution is rarely an easy division of labour.

That’s what I ask myself. I‘D guess all those challenges exist elsewhere too but at different scales?

I can only agree with her answer.

When I compare (software) projects amongst different locations I worked at, things vary so so much. Making those comparison somewhat misleading at best.

I don’t see how comparing the costs between systems that have so different requirements, labor markets, legacy infrastructure, regulamentation agencies, can help much but I am not an expert on this subject by far.

I’ve been in similar situation and it was really hard to be effective in product / high level planning meetings because it is easy to be blindsided. At the time, I was still an youn engineer in a big co, so I just thought it was my lack of technical experience, but in reality it was nothing technical to it but BS politics.

What boils down to is that people who have any extra data access privilege will have the lead.

Most of the insights will come from aggregate data, so I think companies could work around privacy concerns but I am no GDPR expert.

Back in my days in academia, there was a saying “if you have the trace, you have the paper”.