261–270 of 349 posts
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I've never heard of any big tech co fully subsidizing healthcare. I pay ~$160/week between health/vision/dental
If you subtract $8320/year from a big tech salary, I'd wager you'll still find yourself quite handsomely compensated.
Then move if you don't like a social government... You do understand that USA rich people living of the life's of the poor? No proper health care etc for people cleaning their flats or flipping their burgers...
America has always been a make it or break it place with most people not making it. I'm not saying it's right, I'm just pointing out that has been our schtick for hundreds of years. It's the land of opportunity, not the land of guarantee.
Absolutely.
> most people not making it
By any metric, there's at most a handful of countries where the median person is as well off as in the US. I struggle to say that most people aren't making it here; or if they really aren't, then not making it in America is better than making it in most other places.
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And yet you do not hear of normal people in the EU going bancrupt over medical expenses or not taking an ambulance because they cannot afford it. Funny, isn't it?
But you do hear a lot of them complaining in different ways about how they are oppressed. I won't even give citation apart from [1]. So nope, not funny. [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=protests+by+poor+people+in+e...
In comparison, when the French Fifth Republic was founded in 1958, the life expectancy was about twenty-two years shorter than it is now. One would think it's reasonable to raise the retirement age a little to fit that.
Many are going to start their own startups and the seeds for the next Cambrian explosion are being cast today, just as they were in 2001–2003 or 2008. That said not all Big Tech employees can deal with the hustle required at a startup.
When layoffs happened in the past, they were laying off old school enthusiasts because the companies just weren't working. Now, they are laying off people that went into tech because it seemed like easy money. It's not the same caliber of tech person.
The market is still incredibly strong for SV caliber devs, and I see no signal it's going to slow down. If anything, it kept compensation for engineers from cratering by propping up the stocks.
[0] https://interviewing.io/blog/2022-layoffs-engineers-vs-other...
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-24/tech-layo...
[2] https://www.computerworld.com/article/3690309/about-those-te...
[3] https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2023-03-0...
[4] https://techreport.com/news/3493451/microsoft-layoffs-ethics...
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> No proper health care etc for people cleaning their flats or flipping their burgers... That seems FUD. There are safety nets like Medicaid, Obamacare subsidies and EMTALA for poor.
41% of U.S. citizens carry some sort of medical debt, and 24% are considering bankruptcy to solve a medical debt issue. https://www.debt.org/bankruptcy/statistics/
Your source shows ~375k to 2m non-business bankruptcies filed per year over the last twenty years, not all of which is primarily due to medical costs (but there appears to not be a definitive source of data on this), out of a population that went from 282m to 331m over the same time. So 0.1-0.7% of the population files for a personal bankruptcy every year for any reason, which is a far cry from one quarter of the country being on a brink of a medical bankruptcy.
Everyone knows healthcare costs are problematic in this country; no need to resort to hyperbole. Let's stick to the facts.
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41% of U.S. citizens carry some sort of medical debt, and 24% are considering bankruptcy to solve a medical debt issue. https://www.debt.org/bankruptcy/statistics/
Thank you for posting this. This is both staggering, and also highly informative. It's clear this is crushing the US middle and lower classes. I've seen a recent trend in churches, where they use their excess funds to buy people's medical debt out of collections and forgive it. It's the best thing I've heard in a long time. I also have been recently battling with Blue Shield of California (but they're all bad). They…
Blue Shield of California had a net loss of almost a billion dollars in 2022[0]. Should they do the reverse in that case and put their excess loss by putting more people in medical debt?
[0]: https://www.blueshieldca.com/en/home/about-blue-shield/corpo...
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> No proper health care etc for people cleaning their flats or flipping their burgers... That seems FUD. There are safety nets like Medicaid, Obamacare subsidies and EMTALA for poor.
It's reality, not FUD. Emergency rooms not being able to turn you away when you have a heart attack isn't healthcare. Healthcare includes being able to go to a doctor before you get to the point of emergency for preventative care.
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> In France, apparently you can go on unemployment for 2, up to 3 years to start a startup. With up to 80% pay. Then why does France have such a low rate of new business formation (5.3/1000 people) - https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IC.BUS.NDNS.ZS?most_rec... Or as another indicator, number of tech startups per Million is 234 for the US, while only 24 for France - https://www.startupranking.com/countries
3 things: - the culture is not the same as the US. French people tend to be very financially risk-averse - the VC eco-system in France exists but it is trash - people who have the skills to create startups in France tend to do it outside of France because they will have access to better capital/labor markets (for example, DataDog and Docker both have french founders)
Interesting, given the number of people who claim that better social benefits in the US would encourage more startups and other business formation.
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Even with best-in-class health insurance in the US, one "gotcha" leaves you with an unpayable bill. Usually, your company provides health insurance. Health insurance != health care. Larger companies (I assume this translates to tech) will also usually have a clinic on-site for smaller things and it's heavily subsidized or free. None of this prevents you from 6-figure debt for something like a difficult, but largely b…
Most insurance plans have an out of pocket maximum, no?
I don’t understand what the opportunities for startups are these days. Anyone know? I feel like the world doesn’t need more saas companies or otherwise you’re doing a chatgpt api company.