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Ask HN: Would you go to Iraq for a year and be paid $200k?

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Re: Ask HN: Would you go to Iraq for a year and be paid $200k?

#71

Post by dustingetz »

thesethings wrote: post #16

Pretend the salary is the same in both places, and judge the decision just on the experience factor. (I say this because for a variety of reasons, you could make that much money in the States as a reasonably curious, skilled person. You read Hacker News after all :D You know all about salary ranges, entrepreneurship, affiliate programs, Parrot Books, and Adsense. I'm not saying we all make 200K, we just all know abou…

200k in iraq is 200k in your bank account when you come back. 200k in the US has to pay for your life.

Re: Ask HN: Would you go to Iraq for a year and be paid $200k?

#74

Post by khafra »

setori88 wrote: post #56
organicgrant wrote: post #2

I think you've already decided. Do it.

I honestly think those who clicked up, have no direct or indirect experience of war. If you had the slightest iota of experience you would be writing a comment like this. War could possibly be the most crude type of expression a human being can display. If you wish to experience such experiences, by all means head on out and do it. For those cooped up in school, playing video games, a war zone is not a form of gap ye…

War is hell, but an IT contractor isn't going to experience much of that hell--there'll be exciting moments when someone unfriendly gets a mortar close enough to lob a few shells into the base, but the stress of waiting for the next such attack isn't like going out on a helicopter and shooting farmers in rice paddies.

Re: Ask HN: Would you go to Iraq for a year and be paid $200k?

#75

Post by khafra »

colinplamondon wrote: post #21

If there's a 3% chance of a mortar landing near you, is that worth it? Honest question. A lot of folks would risk their life for a 3% chance at any significant amount of money. Personally, I wouldn't- I would rather keep my 'risks of dying' to things like mugging (.05%/day), bus crashes (.005%/day), and dying in a nuclear holocaust (.00005%/day). Just a matter of how much risk you're cool with.

Tangentially, where do you get actuarial numbers like that, and is there enough data to build conditional probability tables (something like "if you motorcycle 15k miles/year, your chance of dying from an accident rises 300%, and your chances of dying from a heart attack drop by 15%")?

Re: Ask HN: Would you go to Iraq for a year and be paid $200k?

#77

Post by spoiledtechie »

blasdel wrote: post #31
Zev wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't DC have one of the highest murder rates in the country? Whats to stop you from getting shot or into a bad car accident in Washington D.C.? Point is, theres always going to be a risk, regardless of where you happen to live. Might as well go somewhere interesting (and make a good bit of $ while you're at it, in this case).

I'm a DC native, born and raised. For starters, almost all that violence is between subsistence drug dealers in areas of the city and PG County where the poster is unlikely to even drive through. It doesn't involve the yuppies at all, and it's a fraction of what it was in the mid nineties before gentrification kicked into overdrive. Furthermore, he said he was in "Washington DC area", which is code for the wealthy su…

live in the fairfax area...

Re: Ask HN: Would you go to Iraq for a year and be paid $200k?

#78

Post by spoiledtechie »

mattwdelong wrote: post #15

It's fairly easy to say that I would do it, especially without being in this position. Really, I think you would have to evaluate your current situation. Do you have other job offers, or a current job? How do those jobs weigh in comparison? The fact that you are asking us leads me to suggest that perhaps you want to go and people are trying to convince you otherwise? If that be the case, then I suggest you do what yo…

you are right on people telling me no and not to do it. Im looking for non biased opinions..

Re: Ask HN: Would you go to Iraq for a year and be paid $200k?

#79

Post by isleyaardvark »

plinkplonk wrote: post #70
pclark wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine your perspective changes a lot if you're out there on the ground.

"I imagine your perspective changes a lot if you're out there on the ground." Very true, when your country is invaded and your friends and family shot/raped/jailed/killed by the invader's mercenaries, your perspective probably changes very fast! Anyone getting in actual combat will experience perspective change no matter which side he is on I guess. It is a bit harder for the rest of the world to sympathize with the…

We aren't there to "uplift" them. We're there to stop safe havens for terrorist groups from being set up by the Taliban, a group that was formed in and supported by Pakistan.

If America was taken over by a group that violated human rights like the Taliban, that was refused to even be recognized as the legitimate government by the overwhelming majority of nations in the world, and was the subject of binding UN sanctions, yes I would sympathize with the invaders. But that's just me.

Re: Ask HN: Would you go to Iraq for a year and be paid $200k?

#80

Post by rdl »

johnyzee wrote: post #63
rdl wrote: post #37

I am a defense contractor; I've worked in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait, etc. since about 2004. 1) $200k is pretty weak, even for today (it's gone downhill overall). If you can get a secret (basically, us citizen and not a felon), and have decent tech skills, you should be at $200-350k. 2) It's not tax free. The FIRST ~$85k is tax-exempt, which saves you about 18k. You then pay taxes at the normal 27-36% rates above that…

Upvoted for the information, but your fantasy of "putting bullets into bad guys" while working for the U.S. army is pretty sickening. Outside of military, nationalist propaganda, you are most likely fighting someone who is defending his home country against invasion and occupation. The 'good guys, bad guys' thing is a little uneducated. Sorry for the interlude.

There is a pretty wide gap between the actual bad guys who must be killed (Al Qaeda, other transnational terrorist groups, and the hard core of the insurgencies in many countries..the people who go around blowing up schools, chopping off hands of those who vote, etc.), and the majority of the enemy (who are purely mercenary foot soldiers, or common/pretty criminals, or some kind of tribal/ethnic group).

The ideal outcome is to separate the really bad guys and let tier-1 US units go after them (kill or capture; with kill being the most common outcome), while using politics and economics to reduce the number of the second category, convert them into either peaceful civilians or members of the security establishment in the country, etc.

Saddam, Uday, Qusay, and the other leaders: kill or capture Top-level baathists: prosecute using local courts Iraqi soldiers, local tribal militias, etc.: Bring them into the IP/IA/etc.

That's been the (successful) strategy since ~2006.

(I was actually AGAINST the Iraq war, because it was a distraction from going after Al Qaeda globally)

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