311–320 of 1001 posts
> There's not much firms can do to hold onto employees Well, they could always offer more money. Sometimes I crack myself up.
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Regular travel insurance != health insurance. It will basically cover you getting stabilized and shipped back home but then you're on your own. (And lost travel deposits.)
Don't even bother with the travel insurance, pay for health care out of pocket in another country. Travel insurance is only needed for traveling in America for the reason you stated.
That said, I've only purchased travel insurance maybe a half-dozen times out of probably hundreds of trips.
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> Maybe it's more of a European thing to do. Yeah, for Americans it means buying health insurance which is quite a lot more expensive than what you get from your employer.
You are not getting health insurance in most European countries unless you are working or registered as unemployed and remain at disposal of the local job centre. And the whole meme that a 65% tax rate +25% vat on most products on top of it (I am in Sweden) is somehow worth it financially because "fReE HeAlThCaRe" is laughable.
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You can’t really just compare average salaries in different metros, because there’s major selection bias. The average engineer in South Dakota is not the same as one in San Francisco. Less talented workers tend to heavily flow towards low COL markets, because they’re less to achieve a high enough productivity differential to justify the high cost. This obviously isn’t true for every single case. But the typical engin…
Having worked in everything from backend systems for sleepy banks to hedge funds to the hottest pre-IPO valley darlings, anecdotally you are dead wrong. If there is any correlation at all it’s that the venture backed startups have a lower than average skill level.
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> Maybe it's more of a European thing to do. Yeah, for Americans it means buying health insurance which is quite a lot more expensive than what you get from your employer.
You are not getting health insurance in most European countries unless you are working or registered as unemployed and remain at disposal of the local job centre. And the whole meme that a 65% tax rate +25% vat on most products on top of it (I am in Sweden) is somehow worth it financially because "fReE HeAlThCaRe" is laughable.
Maybe it's more lax in the more worker friendly socialist regions like France or Scandinavia but in Austria you only get healthcare coverage if you work or are unemployed and registered as a job seeker which means staying in the country and proving to your local job center on a regular basis that you are looking for work.
Traveling abroad for leisure while unemployed automatically disqualifies you from receiving any healthcare coverage and unemployment benefits until you return.
Doesn't mean there aren't people cheating the system and taking vacations abroad while receiving unemployment but the rules are strict and being caught cheating is really bad for you.
Also doing courses on your own dime during unemployment, that are not on the job center's curriculum, like a boot camp in data science, automatically disqualifies you from unemployment benefits during that period. I tried explaining to my case worker at the job center that a data science certification gives me the opportunity for a better paid job afterwards and I need the unemployment benefits for that period and her response was "sorry sir, that's the law".
Yeah, the system is extremely stupid and archaic in some cases here and if you're an ambitious high achiever it can screw you over sometimes more than it helps you.
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I learnt of this sort of thing only after I moved to the UK, where it's traditional for wealthy and middle-upper-class kids to take a long break between college and university - a habit that probably comes from the times of the "grand tours" of continental Europe in XVIII and XIX century. I've met people who do it on a 6-months basis - 6 months travelling, 6 months earning. They don't make much, their career is somew…
Its pretty common for ordinary middle class kids - and remember in the UK a degree is three years not the US four years (or even longer in Europe) Bit harder now post Brexit though
Im quitting and not looking for another job. Gonna use the savings to take a gap year, or a couple, work on some stuff I want maybe. Maybe more involvement in OSS is coming too? I've never had a gap year, it was all school, then immigration, work, university, more work. Any holiday time you fly back home. I kept hearing its not unusual for people in the west to take gap years, so thats what Im doing. edit: thank you…
>I kept hearing its not unusual for people in the west to take gap years, so thats what Im doing. You hear a heck of a lot more about it on HN than happens in reality. Maybe I don't hang out with the trust fund crowd enough but I don't know ANYONE who's taken a "gap year" where they weren't doing something for ~40hr/wk in order to make a buck. I know a few people who didn't jump right into career stuff after college…
Most the advice is quite the opposite (and I would agree with them). To me, this really shows just how toxic the control is across the labor force. Job mobility is about the only vote or voice you have if you're in the labor force and if empty positions can be readily filled, you have no voice. The only reason things are interesting now is because the mass layoffs and turnover haven't been well stagged due to the pandemic so labor has more leverage. When true unemployment returns to norms, positions are largely re-filled, and attrition begins to follow traditional rates, the voice of the labor market voting will their feet will again fall on deaf ears and your voice will again disappear in the noise. It would take another global catastrophe to change this balance and give labor a voice again.
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How is this a scalable approach to everyone in the society? Someone has to work to produce food. Someone has to work to produce electricity. Until we can automate everything, most people have to work and contribute to society (unless you choose to be self-sufficient - grow your own food, produce your own electricity etc.)
> Someone has to work to produce food. Only 1% of the workforce in the US produce food. That feeds America and some other countries. > Someone has to work to produce electricity. Again, you need really very few people to make electricity.
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This is the important question. At my previous job the results of internal surveys would have these fairly high numbers, like 20% of employees don't think they will be here in a year. But if you looked at the previous year's numbers, it was something like 18% or 15%. And the previous year's actual attrition was closer to 5-8%. So perhaps you could extrapolate if you had the attrition rates combined with survey data,…
I am more impressed that people would confess to thinking of leaving their position to an internal survey. I have no confidence that a company sponsored survey will be confidential and 'worrisome' results would not be shared with my direct management.
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>Im quitting and not looking for another job. Gonna use the savings to take a gap year, or a couple, work on some stuff I want maybe. Maybe more involvement in OSS is coming too? Unless you have some serious FU money saved up, I'd strongly reconsider. A "gap year" as an adult can make you radioactive to potential employers. And that cash goes quick when there's none coming in. Trust me I know. It's alluring to just w…
> A "gap year" as an adult can make you radioactive to potential employers. I'm not sure where you got this idea in your head but it is demonstrably false in tech right now. I took a gap year after getting fired from an extremely toxic company. I didn't want to rush into a new role right away after such an awful experience. Once I was ready to go back it took ~1 month to go from starting my search to signing an offer…
I wonder, realistically, how many people out there actually get to be "pretty picky after my previous experience"?