111–120 of 168 posts
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NYC is the only place in the US I was actually impressed by, and if I was a single guy with no family I could consider living there. Everywhere else I traveled was meh.
Where did you go though? I mean it's kind of a huge place.
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I was actually just looking at this and our benefits in AU seem to be A$3000 a year allowance towards a private plan. That doesn't seem like a lot, but maybe it's enough.
I'd be inclined to bank the 3k/year and insure yourself - PHI in Australia is a borderline scam and half the time you'll end up in the public system anyway.
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Market St in SF is what most Australians see when attending conferences. The homelessness, human waste, open drug use, and visibly serious mental illness is pretty confronting for anyone not used to it, and that's at daytime - it gets significantly scarier at night if you make the mistake of walking back to your hotel. I've never understood why all the hotels international guests stay in are in by far the worst neigh…
It's grodey and depressing but hardly a "war zone".
It honestly feels like a scaled down version of the slums you see in South Africa butting right up against typical suburban homes.
Do you know what is a real shame? This statistic doesn't really correlate with the highest quality output. Most of them who stay put in Australia never really get to put their skills to good use. Our digital landscape is quite conservative & somewhat arguably boring, consisting of mainly traditional finance/banking & insurance - and we all know how these companies work internally (digital as a cost centre). Don't get…
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There are plenty of places that aren't California that still pay double or triple the salary that devs make in Australia
that's cool but you can't fix all the problems in usa with triple salary. > healthcare > unlimited homelessness, in one day in la i saw more homelessness people then in my entire life in australia, this was only eclipsed by san fran. now i get why devs are leaving california, i wouldn't raise a family there. > gun violence > political instability > terrible pre-12 education system. > general shitty american populatio…
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US FAANG health insurance is better and cheaper than (Australian) Medicare, which doesn't cover dentists/therapists/psychiatrists/etc. Universal systems are of course better once you're too sick to keep your job. Also, Sydney's cost of living and housing crisis is apparently even worse than SV, though I don't understand how that's possible. We're very dedicated to making housing expensive here.
Dentists are covered by Medicare and are basically free (bulk billed). And Sydney doesn't really have a housing crisis anymore than Manhattan does. It's just that people want to live inner city without having to pay for it. You can find plenty of reasonably priced property if you go further out.
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Where exactly is this war zone in California...? Growing up in the sticks I'd heard so much about it and had hilariously low expectations when I went out for an internship, but then I found out that it's a fucking amazing place. I swear there's got to be a decades long campaign to make outsiders think the place is terrible in an attempt to keep density down. Honestly, I'd be perfectly happy if so. Don't want my parag…
> Where exactly is this war zone in California...? No idea how universal these things are in all of California, but nearly every Australian that visits LA and a few other areas come back with stories about hearing gunshots from the hotel, accidentally ending up in a seedy/crime ridden part of town or something similar. This is very alien to us and more in line with what we'd see on the news from Somalia. Statistics l…
Do you think it's possible they're mistaking gunfire with fireworks? There are plenty of fireworks here.
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Looks like (from a quick googling, may be something I'm not taking into account here) violent crime is actually more common in Australia than in California. Australia 692 violent assaults per 100k [1] California 430 assaults per 100k [2] So, you'd also be trading more of a rare really bad thing for less of a relatively common bad thing. 1 - https://www.osac.gov/Country/Australia/Content/Detail/Report... . 2 - https:/…
An obvious flaw is that it's comparing an entire country to a singular (and disporoprotionately wealthy) state. If you expanded the rate to America in general the violent crime rate is around 800 per 100k, and if you reduced "Australia" to "New South Wales" then you also see a similar drop - but the site doesn't provide an easy to consume summary. The web app doesn't seem to support direct linking to query results, b…
California has a much larger population and twice the economic output of Australia. It seems much more reasonable to compare Australia to one state than to compare it to the entire US.
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> They lack ambition because the base quality of life is just so damn good. Do you really see this as a negative?
Well, I see some of my friends who just chill and make 400k for some FAANG and living pretty sad and pathetic lives. They are content with mediocrity. They have good jobs and make good money but will never earn great money and will never have great jobs. However, they are happy and content, which is more than I can say. But then, sometimes I think I am the sad one, because I always want more and will never be happy w…
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What are the differences in W/L balance and culture between SV and Sydney?
Apart from Sydney having almost perfect weather and being one of the most stunning cities in the world there are the political aspects. Free healthcare, basically no gun crime, far less polarisation, more family friendly, far less homeless, a more successful multiculturalism environment, strong societal bonds i.e. we were able to get most of the country to agree to large scale lockdowns and mask wearing. Mateship and…