Given the only images many of us have of Turkey is the Western press what can you tell us are the biggest misconceptions and misrepresentations of living and doing business in Turkey.
We moved to Turkey from San Francisco to continue working on our startup
91–100 of 190 posts
Re: We moved to Turkey from San Francisco to continue working on our startup
#92I'm looking to move to Bodrum from NYC for many of these same reasons :-) Turkey has a lot of potential to be a remote work hub.
Turkey is run by a near-dictator and is right next door to a country in the midst of a civil war; it certainly doesn't look like a safe place to move to.
Re: We moved to Turkey from San Francisco to continue working on our startup
#93As an outsider, at this point I have no idea why anyone would want to do a startup in SF. I mean, obviously, all the connections and resources are nice, but you are literally burning investor money on $5k/mo rent. That's absurd. Rent out a house in Austin, Texas for $2k and each of your co-founders can share a room. There's investors and as deep a talent pool as you'll ever need unless you're GoogleAmazon and you nee…
I assume it's a bit of inertia. Everybody wants to be there because everybody wants to be there, so the constant pool of individuals that didn't yet get the memo keep the wheels turning.
The bubble might already be deflating though.
Re: We moved to Turkey from San Francisco to continue working on our startup
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
This seems like a stretch. I saw my fair share of empty subway cars which contained within them an unpleasant surprise when I was there last month. Not conclusive, but “at all” is a very strong standard.
I'm not saying there's no homeless people, there are. But the SFO phenomenon of open drug use, screaming disruptive people, and street level encampments isn't something you see really anywhere in the five boroughs, excepting maybe a few errant overpasses or very industrial areas of Hunts Point or similar.
Yeah, same in Boston. We definitely have homeless people but they are usually polite-to-the-point-of-deferential to passers by — the complete opposite of SF.
Re: We moved to Turkey from San Francisco to continue working on our startup
#95I'm a startup founder living in San Francisco, currently in Istanbul, Turkey, for a half work trip, half hiring. First of all the same caveat applies: if you want to live in Turkey, you have to know Turkish. Turkey is closer to France than Thailand in terms of tolerance for English, tourists get a pass, but otherwise fiercely protective. If you're not a visitor, you are expected to know at least basic Turkish or be a…
> If the country recovers and ends up being a more livable place, I do suspect Turkish engineers' willingness to move to even Berlin will likely drop commensurately. After yesterday's vote, we're on a good path for this to happen :-)
Baby steps!
Re: We moved to Turkey from San Francisco to continue working on our startup
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
When you have nothing else to live for you are more likely to turn to such escapes. The correlation is pretty strong, even though it isn't a strict cause-effect relation. Yes of course people who own a house do drugs. Some of them destroy their mind to the point they can no longer keep their house.
The simplest hypothesis is that drug use and mental health lead to homelessness. And if that's the case, then the problem isn't housing costs (though high housing costs are a problem, just a separate one), it's that people have addiction and mental health issues.
The problem with your simple hypothesis is that the data doesn't back it up. Drugs & alcohol account for 15% of the reasons for homelessness in SF, and medical issues/illness account for 7%[1]. The data shows that housing costs and financial instability are the largest causes of homelessness in SF.
[1] http://hsh.sfgov.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/2017SanFranc...
Re: We moved to Turkey from San Francisco to continue working on our startup
#97I keep hearing that SF spends so much money on the homeless, but I don't see that to be the case. NYC spent $3.2b in 2019 [1]; they guarantee a bed for every person, every night, etc. If SF wants to solve the issue, look to NYC, and open it's checkbook. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-22/nyc-doubl...
Hold on a second. NYer here. Yes, we spent a lot of money on the problem. But we did not 'solve the issue.' Not even close. Our problem doesn't seem as bad as SF's (perhaps just less visible due to more clearing), but we still regularly have human feces to deal with, train cars trashed, people screaming/disturbed, etc.
I think it's key to remember the difference, albeit overlapping, between homeless and emotionally-distressed. You can be homeless and nobody would know -- living in shelters, working a job, etc. You can also have a home and appear, as far as we're all concerned, to be homeless, by begging on trains or acting in other anti-social ways.
Re: We moved to Turkey from San Francisco to continue working on our startup
#98I can't even work in SF. The time wasted to drive to work kills me, I can't get desensitized to all the homeless shitting on streets, stabbing themselves with needles, talking schizophrenically in a dead language, every time I go grab a coffee or lunch in a cheaper area, it's like watching animal slaughter every day. Quality of life definitely much better in Mediterranean city I live today.
Homelessness should be illegal.
Homeless encampments are illegal in NYC. But on the west coast there is this strange idea that you should be allowed to set up your tent wherever you like.
Re: We moved to Turkey from San Francisco to continue working on our startup
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oversimplifying here, but the homeless probem arises due to high housing cost and poor health care system. In addition to fighting the symptoms (which is already being done ok-ish), we need to fight the mentioned root causes. Unfortunately, the health care problem goes back to CA or even on a national level. Often times, mentally ill or people that lost their jobs for another reason become homeless, and from there th…
I dunno. As someone who lives in NYC where we really just don't have the same problem at all it's pretty clear there are some policy reasons involved too.
(A) It's cold
(B) Our cops are super aggressive with the homeless. I mean, technically that can be described as "policy", but probably not the way you meant it
I used to volunteer for an annual winter round-up, where a bunch of volunteers would get vans and go looking for homeless and try to get them into shelters. We did this on one of the coldest nights of the year, trying to prevent people from dying in the chill. We had no problem finding shit-tons of homeless folk, with the caveat that unlike in other cities I've been, they put a little effort into hiding from the public eye.
This was in the outer boroughs.
Re: We moved to Turkey from San Francisco to continue working on our startup
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
Where do you live now?
Split, Croatia. Weather is equivalent, smaller city, lots of foreigners, and a growing IT industry. For a foreigner it's also very easy to just come and live in Croatia, they give staying permits to anyone who comes to just live and spend money (not work) but after you find work, getting an EU blue card is a piece of cake.
Re "weather is equivalent": I was curious, so I plugged the comparison into Weather Spark to see: [0]. Split is warmer in summer, colder in winter, a bit more humid, and moderately less sunny in the summer. It's very similar, but also a little bit different, and I find this site to be super useful in nailing down the differences.
[0]: https://weatherspark.com/compare/y/80692~557~1098/Comparison...