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Ask HN: What is your story of immigrating to another country?

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41–50 of 180 posts

Re: Ask HN: What is your story of immigrating to another country?

#41
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the main differences you see? How would you describe the local population? While statistic indicators are very high compared to most other countries, horror stories can still be heard ("this office showing lack of common sense" etc.). Have you identified sources of high cultural production - or does it seem a land to you, say, "focussed on business but dismissing other factors"? Very interest for practical r…

I don't even know where to begin on differences. A big one is how much more orderly basically everything is, from government processes to condition of the streets. Overt politeness is more common. People are generally more relaxed to the point that it annoyed me for years. I attribute this to the lack of any concept of 'hustle' and not being worried about dying in poverty. I think a huge amount of the American person…

Yeah, I don't think the idea of not being within 20 steps of a beer makes a country 3rd world. Sorry, but that's pretty insulting to actual people living in poverty.

Then again, all in all it's pretty privileged to be able to have such a sheltered view of the world, so good on ya.

Re: Ask HN: What is your story of immigrating to another country?

#42
post #33
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I didn’t speak the language at all, but western civilization is oddly similar even if the details are different. Never heard Japan being referred to as part of western civilization before.

I think that's just the good old ambiguity of the English language, I read it as: western civilization being oddly similar to Japanese civilisation (I'm a British native, but I don't claim to be any kind of arbiter of the English language!)

Ah, that makes a lot more sense. Thanks.

Re: Ask HN: What is your story of immigrating to another country?

#43

Moved twice - once to the USA, 30 years ago, from Eastern Europe. US is a perfect place to make [more than enough] money (and enjoy some, when not at/with/connected to work), while strong / well fit educationally, psychologically and physically, in a country where jungle capitalism shrunk social safety to nothingness. So make sure you don't need it. After 30 yrs moved out of the USA, to France, to enjoy the financial…

I'm curious why you didn't just skip the step of moving to the US since in France et. al. you don't need money, so why bother making it in the jungle hell that is the US?

Re: Ask HN: What is your story of immigrating to another country?

#44

Partner would have been happy to stay with me in the UK but I was blown away by the beauty of Scandinavia when I visited, and am so glad she relented. Average quality of life in the nordics is massively better than the uk. It’s not even close! Wages are lower in absolute terms but not qualitatively and we probably couldn’t afford to move back to the uk and have any semblance of same standard of living. We are now tra…

> Wages are lower in absolute terms but not qualitatively and we probably couldn’t afford to move back to the uk and have any semblance of same standard of living. We are now trapped in a utopia and happy about it. Can you give some example of improvements that you would need to pay for in the UK? I'm interested.

Most of the time, it's the paid maternal leave and free/cheap child care, and this equation usually never works out in favour for anyone who doesn't have children.

Re: Ask HN: What is your story of immigrating to another country?

#45
post #24
post #10

For reference, I’m from the Netherlands. I didn’t have any plans to emigrate until my friend introduced me to a small company in Japan that was looking for an engineer. I applied, but was rejected, so I thought that was that. Then a few months later I got another email. Their initial hire didn’t work out and now they wanted me to join. I worked remote for about a month while we got the visa process sorted (apparently…

> I didn’t speak the language at all, but western civilization is oddly similar even if the details are different. Never heard Japan being referred to as part of western civilization before.

When I visited I remember going through some gardens and read some history of a emperor who prioritized integrating western civilization practices.

I think it was this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meiji_Restoration

This included finding knowledge in western civilizations and innovating on them, as well as wearing suits or hats I think. This is in relation to the industrialization era as well.

Re: Ask HN: What is your story of immigrating to another country?

#46
I grew up in a large town (technically a small city) of ~75k people, and moved to a city of 1.5m people (Dublin). I hated how claustrophobic daily living felt but I enjoyed the large city benefits, so I started looking around for 500k cities with programming jobs and settled on Edinburgh.

I moved here with my partner 8 years ago. We were both just finished university when we moved so we were starting fresh no matter where we moved and both had jobs lined up when we moved. It took us probably 4-6 months to line everything up, and moving was literally buying a £19 ojr way flight and a trip to the local job center (as we're Irish were unaffected by the brexit rules). We love it here, and it would take some life changing events for us to move.

Re: Ask HN: What is your story of immigrating to another country?

#47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't even know where to begin on differences. A big one is how much more orderly basically everything is, from government processes to condition of the streets. Overt politeness is more common. People are generally more relaxed to the point that it annoyed me for years. I attribute this to the lack of any concept of 'hustle' and not being worried about dying in poverty. I think a huge amount of the American person…

Yeah, I don't think the idea of not being within 20 steps of a beer makes a country 3rd world. Sorry, but that's pretty insulting to actual people living in poverty. Then again, all in all it's pretty privileged to be able to have such a sheltered view of the world, so good on ya.

Ha! What are you talking about? That comment was in response to a question about differences between the countries.

The USA is a 3rd world country because we allow people to literally and figuratively rot on the street. There are many others of course...

Can I assume from your aggrieved attitude and uncharitable reading that you're a fellow American?

Re: Ask HN: What is your story of immigrating to another country?

#48
post #10

For reference, I’m from the Netherlands. I didn’t have any plans to emigrate until my friend introduced me to a small company in Japan that was looking for an engineer. I applied, but was rejected, so I thought that was that. Then a few months later I got another email. Their initial hire didn’t work out and now they wanted me to join. I worked remote for about a month while we got the visa process sorted (apparently…

Japan was known to have low salaries in tech. Has this changed nowadays?

Re: Ask HN: What is your story of immigrating to another country?

#50
post #28

Swiss living in Colombia for a bit over 5 years. There is not that much of a path or sophisticated plan to it. I was tired of Switzerland/Europe and wanted to try different things for at least a while. I have travelled Latin America extensively before and had a short list of potential countries/cities. After that it was basically a couple of months for finding a job I'm exited about and winding down obligations and c…

>some things are quite exhausting.

Mind giving some examples?

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