I deeply resonate with the author. I'm planning to move back after my PhD. Not sure what job would I get! But I'm sure I don't want stay in a foreign country for the rest of my life.
Why don't you move abroad?
181–190 of 206 posts
Re: Why don't you move abroad?
#182For some, home is where the heart is. I've lived in 11 major cities around the world for the past 25 years, but in the end I moved back home to my rural hometown, in my home country. Remote work made that possible. I make probably 20% of what I could have done in high-COL areas like the Bay Area. But I have a fantastic work-life balance. Make good money, relative to my peers. Clock in 9, clock out 4. Get to spend lot…
In the bay area, most people I know only work in the office three days a week (working sparingly on the other two days) and they come in at 10am and leave at 3pm. Never work weekends etc. Crime is low in South Bay. Most amazing trails and mountains right near home for hiking, riding, and driving. All of this while making enough to buy a house and go vacationing. COL is completely dwarfed by the pay. West coast work e…
You might have a serious amount of selection bias going on. People in SV definitely work much harder than those in NYC. I routinely had to work at 2AM and had many coworkers who were doing the same.
We'd show up at the office at 9-10AM and then work until 6-7PM then go home and work more and work weekends as well. It was very common from small seed stage to FAANG. PIPs, stack ranking, and backstabbing psychopaths wouldn't be commonplace in SV if it wasn't for all the H1B indentured servants.
Re: Why don't you move abroad?
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
India is orders of magnitude better than most African countries. At the very least it’s safe and you can make a living. Indians actually move back to India after living in the west which doesn’t happen with Africans all that often.
The average GDP per capita in Africa as of 2024 is around $2400 ( https://www.statista.com/statistics/1300864/gdp-value-per-ca... ), in India it's around $2700 ( https://www.statista.com/statistics/263776/gross-domestic-pr... ). A difference but certainly not orders of magnitude. Africa has some really dirt-poor places but so does India. The homocide rate in Africa is higher, around 13/100k vs 3/100k in India, but th…
You’ve got to look at PPP because India is dirt cheap to live in. For instance India has a PPP GDP per capita of around $12,000 whereas Nigeria is around $4500 or Uganda is at $2500.
Re: Why don't you move abroad?
#184For some, home is where the heart is. I've lived in 11 major cities around the world for the past 25 years, but in the end I moved back home to my rural hometown, in my home country. Remote work made that possible. I make probably 20% of what I could have done in high-COL areas like the Bay Area. But I have a fantastic work-life balance. Make good money, relative to my peers. Clock in 9, clock out 4. Get to spend lot…
> I've never met anyone that regretted on "traveling too much". And yet you eventually decided that it wasn't for you and you chose to go back home. There are pros and cons to all possibilities, whether it is staying put, traveling as a tourist, or immigrating in a foreign country. People rarely grasp the true costs of immigrating until it is too late -- I've seen several remarkably similar examples.
He never said he regretted it?
Re: Why don't you move abroad?
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
The tomorrows you is a different one than the todays you. Going abroad for a few years changes your personality in a good way. The mission is complete. You can go home now.
> The mission is complete. You can go home now My wife and children are foreigners; "moving back" would mean uprooting them. Also, I have lived abroad for so long that my country of origin feels foreign at this point, in what is called reverse culture shock. You reach a point where you are a foreigner wherever you are. I'm not saying that it's all been negative; far from it. But I can't universally recommend people t…
>You reach a point where you are a foreigner wherever you are.
I left the US in 2009 to move to Singapore. After 14 years in SG, I moved to Australia. During my time overseas, my accent has picked up hints of Australian. When I go back to the US, one of the hardest things for me is being asked "where are you from?" I get the same question in Australia. The lack of belonging is tough.
Re: Why don't you move abroad?
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems odd to me that you are speaking as if your choices are not decisions you have to own the consequence of. You get married, you have kids, you made those choices but refuse to acknowledge that.
> It seems odd to me that you are speaking as if your choices are not decisions you have to own the consequence of. You get married, you have kids, you made those choices but refuse to acknowledge that. Where did I refuse to acknowledge that, exactly? Our choices indeed have consequences. And it is popular to paint "moving abroad" as a universally positive experience, so I want to counterbalance that with information…
You are blaming the place as the issue when the reality is your choice to get married and start a family is what holds you to a place. That would apply to lots of people regardless of where they live. Painting this is a con to moving abroad isn't really, to me, not obvious. I get married to someone with family ties in a geographically disparate place to me, I should not be surprised that we will have pulls to our family.
When was the choice to get married and have kids not an obvious choice with consequences. That happens when you get married and have kids in the city you grew up in all the same as it does if you find a partner abroad. It's not abroad that I read as your issue, its your marriage and family keeping you in a place. That's obvious.
Re: Why don't you move abroad?
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
But you are not a tabula rasa. You are made of a genetic code inherited from your parents, which strongly determines how you look and your body can do. You were clothed, fed, raised, cultured, taught by your family and others in their geographic area. The self has a heritage even if the self refuses to accept it. You are your parents' child and not someone else, for the same reason you are also a human, a hominid, a…
If I am made of genetic code, why do they say I die and no longer exists even though the body remains?
Your genetic code shapes who you are and how you appear to others when you're alive.
If you're alluding to the existence of some transcendental self, can you at least accept it is inseparable from your corporeal self?
Re: Why don't you move abroad?
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Working in IT in Brazil means living in São Paulo It absolutely does not. Porto Alegre and Recife are 2 large IT centres where there's plenty of good jobs from large corporations to small startups. Florianópolis also had small but workable one though I don't know how it's evolved in more recent years. Salaries are certainly better in São Paulo but so is the cost of living, and for many the quality of life can be a…
There are a few good opportunities in both Porto Alegre and Recife, for sure, but most jobs are mediocre at best. If you have any sort of ambition (technological or financial), you should get a government job, start your own business, or move.
From what I can tell, most jobs are mediocre at best anywhere.
Re: Why don't you move abroad?
#189well, below points are not matching somehow : -------------------------------------- Just like many Indians of my generation, I spent my childhood in a single bedroom rented house. Every evening, my brother and I would sit in front of an oil lamp and study, mostly maths and science. ----------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------ My father has been a software engineer since…
Poverty has many meanings. The State of Uttar Pradesh in India where I am from used to provide less than 8 hours of electricity per day when I was a child. Oil Lamp is for the times when lights were out. Inverters and battery lamps came very soon. The whole story is spread across my teenage years and of different times.
Thanks Sherlock.
Re: Why don't you move abroad?
#190As a Canadian, where would I go abroad to? We do have our first ever illegitimate prime minister; found guilty of major civil right violations. Seizing bank accounts without court order or any due process. Arresting people on charges of mischief for words said online. State media willing to publish extreme lies to justify the government's illegal behaviours... It's reasonable to wish to leave Canada; but generally sp…
If you think Trudeau is a problem then you sound like the type who won't do so well in Europe. As a MAGA type I'm sure you'd do alright in the US. Moving for Constitutional Carry is insane.
>If you think Trudeau is a problem then you sound like the type who won't do so well in Europe. As a MAGA type I'm sure you'd do alright in the US. Moving for Constitutional Carry is insane.
As I said, I very rapidly ruled out moving to Europe. I could have gone deeper and ruled out even more eu countries using other factors.
As for moving for constitutional carry. It's not that im moving there for it, I know the majority of states have it already and im rapidly disqualifying all states which dont have it. California would be idiotic to live in for countless reasons; but i can make my job easier by ruling it out quickly via constitutional carry.
I likely would not carry, or quite rarely. But constitutional carry is a fantastic measurement tool on how good the state is; how up to date on science they are.