Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Help. I need to go away from here

news.ycombinator.com

41–50 of 105 posts

Re: Ask HN: Help. I need to go away from here

#41
As people mentioned, as an EU citizen, you can move to another European country (much easier than moving to the USA).

Since you are a student, you may want to enroll in the Erasmus Programme [1] and use it as a stepping stone.

Also, I'm curious to know where you are in Italy. Does it make sense to move to bigger cities like Milano or Roma? You'll have a better chance to meet like-minded people in a bigger city (for instance, there is a Python meetup in Milano [2]). If this makes sense, you may use this a stepping stone before moving abroad. (bigger cities are also good to meet people from other countries living in Italy, as they may help you with contacts, etc)

[1] http://www.erasmusprogramme.com [2] http://www.meetup.com/Python-Milano/events/160502642/

Re: Ask HN: Help. I need to go away from here

#42
You can go to the US with a J1 visa until you finish your studies but it's hard. I would suggest finding something in London or Berlin first. There is also lots of remote work too. Personally, what I did to get out of there is creating an online identity (github, LinkedIn) and after a while you will start receiving offers. I'd also recommend applying to the hiring threads here on hn. That worked pretty well for me in the past.

Re: Ask HN: Help. I need to go away from here

#43
I didn't read all the other comments here but being an MsC. student from Switzerland that graduated recently, I can try to give you some hints. Since you started your studies 3 years ago, you most likely did not yet start your Masters degree. I would recommend you to apply at some other good university in Europe (maybe England or Switzerland) since getting a visa will be much easier. We had plenty of foreign students at the EPFL. My university also had pretty good connections with universities in the US (I did an exchange year at CMU for example). If you want to directly go for a startup, I have read that Berlin has quite an active scene in that respect. Switzerland has basically not much to offer in terms of interesting startups (although you can get very good support from universities and even the government, as far as I know). Feel free to contact me if you have any questions about studying in Switzerland.

Re: Ask HN: Help. I need to go away from here

#44
As a fellow Italian who's recently moved to London (from Milan) and managed to escape the 9am-6pm cycle, let me summarize my last few years with these tips:

- Get into freelancing. It's gonna be hard, you won't get rich with it (at least in Italy) but it's much less stressful.

- Find some nice remote work on oDesk/Elance/whatever, possibly long term. I found a great client USA-based which I've been working with for the last 18 months, and it's still going well. Try to do some consulting work for a local company a few days per week to have a comfortable income. I was being paid 7€/h as an employee, and 27€/h as a consultant afterwards, in the exact same company)

- Make yourself necessary for the clients you're working with.

- Move. London's a great idea, it's more expensive than Italy but not so much as one would think (compared to Milan for example). You however _need_ to be fluent in English, if you don't want to work as a waiter as many Italians here do.

I hope this helps a bit. PM me if you wanna talk about it.

EDIT: grammar

Re: Ask HN: Help. I need to go away from here

#45
post #36

I have a completely different story: I spent 4+ years abroad and I wanted to go back to Italy so badly that I found a remote job. If you look through my history you'll be able to find a blog post that tells the story. I'm more than willing to tell you more if you want and maybe hook you up for an internship.

Do you have a link to you blog post? I'm super curious about your story. I can relate to you wanting to go back to Italy; it may not be the best place to have a startup (bureaucracy, etc) but it can be a fantastic place to live in! (I spend a couple of months in Italy every year, and I always can't wait to come back!)

Re: Ask HN: Help. I need to go away from here

#46
> apply for a job/internship in the U.S

Definitely apply for a job in the U.K. It's like the U.S., only smaller, nearer, and entirely straightforward for an Italian to get a job here (I assume you are Italian living in Italy. Otherwise, maybe its no easier).

Also, don't despair! You've got plenty of time. If you get a good job that is too easy, then focus on enjoying your passions, then finding ways to get paid for them.

English university: I wouldn't bother. If you've got a degree that's enough. Getting more coding experience and knowing what you're interested in will make a master's more interesting and useful if you do decide to get one.

Re: Ask HN: Help. I need to go away from here

#50
Disclaimer: co-founder of a company called Phusion who started the company in his final year of graduating CS... in Enschede, The Netherlands (a city you might have never heard of before, and that I wanted to mention just to underline that it's possible to create a company pretty much anywhere thanks to the internet).

I think what you're struggling with is more of a mentality thing. I used to think I was trapped like you (but then took a macbook to the knee ;-)), but figured out there were a few things I could do about it:

- Complain about it (i.e. stating the obvious) which would not solve my situation.

- Move to the states to found the company there, which would not solve the situation for future generations.

- Try to deal with it somehow, and try to contribute our little share in the hopes of cultivating a local tech industry.

We chose the latter, because we're the adventurous type I guess and would love to see NL get on the map when it comes to tech startups. Even though this arguably has made things a lot harder for us than they needed to be, we learned a lot by doing it this way. The absence of like-minded people was especially hard for us: startups tend to take a lot of time to set up and can be pretty lonely if you don't have people around you that are going through similar stuff as you are. We eventually found a precious few of them in Amsterdam, with whom we regularly have coffee with up till this very day. Now, Italy is a lot larger than the Netherlands so I suspect there are more startups there as well; you just need to find them, perhaps this post will contribute in finding them.

Unless you're on an applied university, from my experience, programming isn't really taught at CS at university level. Instead, the focus is put more teaching you "a way of thinking" and it assumes that you'll pick up things like programming in languages like Python/Ruby, and learn about REST on your own time.

I believe you might have enrolled into university with the wrong set of expectations: during my entire CS curriculum, I've only had 2 programming courses, but they were focussed more on the paradigms than elaborating syntax; the latter things were assumed trivial and had to be figured out on your own time.

It's easy to get caught up in things that an "environment" is doing wrong, and to lose sight in what it does right. Personally, I can't imagine living somewhere else at this moment in my life than the Netherlands for example, where we have pretty good healthcare, affordable universities, and so forth. If you're unable to come up with a list like this, then it might indeed be a good idea to consider moving to another country for a little while and see if the grass is indeed greener on the other side. Shouldn't be too hard as an EU citizen right? :)

Post reply on HN