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Optimal Employment

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123 pointsprimodemus103 comments

If you're disciplined about it, English teaching in Japan / Korea is also a decent option, depending on whether you end up with better deals. (Humming a few bars: JET salaries in this prefecture are $45k per year post-tax, rents are subsidized in this town to $80 a month, and the Japanese equivalent of the social security tax which your employer is paying ~10% of your salary to is 100% yours when you leave.)

That said: generic non-JET English teachers have it kind of rough (worse salaries and conditions), people's enjoyment of their time is all over the map (depends on who you are and where you end up), and English teaching is notorious for having few forward paths out of it.

In Japan, consumptions taxes are very low (at least compared to Europe, I am not too familiar with comsuption tax rate in the US). If you don't have a family, you often don't need a car thanks to a great public transportation system (never driven a car in 7 years since I am in Japan), which is a lot of spared money as well. Food is expensive, but restaurants are cheap (you can find a lot of restaurants with good, healthy meals, for a price not higher than Mc Donalds).

As for the - of Japan (compared to western Europe): the health system which is borderline scary in terms of service and quality, and the housing. Unless you can afford the expensive stuff, most housing is really low quality (no acoustic/heat isolation, etc...), without mentioning the obvious size issue.

That's really surprising on the health care front. I think many westerners (myself included) think of Japan as a paragon of efficiency and effectiveness in nearly everything.

Can you elaborate on what's wrong with the system?

I haven't lived in Japan, but my understanding is that it is bizarre. For instance they don't do organ transplants at all. period. none. They also visit the doctor 15 times per year on average, which means they go to the doctor when they are not actually sick, so the doctors are in the habit of not actually treating anyone.

Japan may have the highest life expectancy of any country in the world, but Japanese people in the US live about 5 years longer on average than Japanese people in Japan.

...Japanese people in the US live about 5 years longer on average than Japanese people in Japan.

2 years longer, not 5 years.

http://minorityhealth.hhs.gov/templates/browse.aspx?lvl=2...

http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&met=sp_dyn_le...

Of course, it's hardly clear that this effect is caused by health care. Most studies with good controls show very little relationship between variation in health care and health outcomes. (To measure the effect of lifestyle factors on health outcomes, you need a few hundred people for clear results. To measure the effect of health care on health outcomes, sample sizes of thousands give you muddled results.)

They do transplants, but the rate is extremely low - mainly due to no donors: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6156925.stm

I've not had personal experience with this although I go to Japan relatively frequently, but I remember reading a scathing review of the Japanese health system, I think it was in the Lonely Planet. I'll look for it when I go home. I was also surprised since due to the general efficiency of everything and longevity of the people I was expecting the system to be amazing, but they painted a truly scary picture of it.

First, for a foreigner, there is obviously the language factor, but that's a given wherever you go in a country where you don't master the language.

Whenever I went to a doctor for relatively minor things, they wanted to give me some pills. Generally, I got the impression that they just want to treat the symptoms rather than fixing the actual cause of the issue. Dental is so scary that I have never been there: people I know who went for minor things had to battle not to get their tooth removed for the most benin infection. Treatment of orthopedia also "looks" scary, although I don't have first hand experience with it: you see quite a lot of people, young people, with significant issues. I don't know the explanation for that (lifestyle being a huge factor obviously, it would need a real statistical study to actually know something there).

The only times where I was under the impression I had someone who knew what he was doing was when I went to a university hospital, but I don't have easy access to that anymore.

It is also extremely unpersonal, but I am willing to concede that's mostly cultural.

i've also heard that JET experiences were all over the map. for example, i know one guy who spent most of his time cleaning.

on a slightly different topic, do you have any thoughts on the availability of non-teaching positions for people who don't have business fluency? i know there are some, but the bulk of jobs for foreigners are clearly in language and cultural instruction.

That actually isn't correct: the bulk of jobs for foreigners are in factories. Assuming we scope this to "licit jobs a middle class American would actually consider doing", illiteracy is about as big a barrier to gainful professional employment as one would expect. The exceptions are English teaching, service work at particular bars/etc, and doing weddings as a fake minister (orders of magnitude rarer than teaching).

In particular, so help me, I was ready to kill interviewees at a Japanese megacorp who expected to be placed as engineers despite total inability to read a design document or discuss technical topics. ("No! It is not kawaii that you cannot describe what the black boarded algorithm does in Japanese. No! Knowing the word "kawaii" is not worth points on your application.")

good point, i forgot about the factory work. although, thats the case for most first world countries, really.

i imagine there's a good bit of fanboy culture creep in any job that allows foreign applications. does a megacorp software position not require N1?

I only officially have a 2kyuu, although that is mostly a function of never organizing myself to take the 1kyuu exam. Our company required only "advanced proficiency in written and oral Japanese", and due to process defects that I will not go into, that filter was not rigorously applied until frustratingly late in the pipeline in some cases.

I know of some engineers in Tokyo who I would guess have actual ability closer to "exactly sufficient to pass 2kyuu". Never met anyone below that working in a professional capacity.

Hmm...I would say my experience has been the opposite, and in Tokyo, 2kyuu is rather closer to the high end of the spectrum.

When I first came to Japan, I basically didn't speak any Japanese, but managed to get a job as a software developer in Tokyo. There are lots of companies (especially in the financial sector) that value English over Japanese here.

Or you could work for an American company in Japan where they work in English. For those who want to write software in the middle of Shibuya, my team and a couple others at Amazon are hiring :)

the difficulty there (as it relates to this article, at least) is whether or not they'll sponsor someone's visa. it seemed difficult for a friend of mine to find something that would.

If you are a desk jockey, the best jobs in Japan are with foreign financial firms like Morgan Stanley. They pay a lot, you don't need to know Japanese, they hook you up with housing, you don't have crazy Japanese hours or crazy American finance hours, and the hiring standards are a lot looser than their US or UK equivalents.

Here's the thing though. You're way better off earning your money in a place with a high cost of living.

There are lots of things that cost the same regardless of where you buy them. New cars, flat screen TVs, plane tickets to Thailand (and 6-month winter climbing trips to Thailand), and pretty much everything else besides housing all cost the same everywhere.

With that in mind, your best bet is to find a job in LA/SF/NYC then dig in and find the absolute cheapest way to live while you're there. My personal angle was to take short (3-6 month) contracts in LA and find cheap rooms for rent while there. You can save up a ton of money in a short time, then head back to whatever low cost place you prefer to call home.

So to modify the author's idea, instead of setting up shop in Oz full time, go work in LA for half the year. Using his numbers you'll save the same as you would working an entire year in Australia. Then go back to Australia and spend the other half of the year doing whatever you want.

End result: you spend the same, save the same, and get an extra 6 months off work with which to improve your surfing.

Sorted.

There are lots of things that cost the same regardless of where you buy them. New cars, flat screen TVs

Not really true. You're ignoring local taxes, import tariffs and other markups. I nice car costs at least 3 times as much in Norway as it does in Germany for example. A lot of countries have tariffs on electronics meaning TVs and computers can cost up to twice as much you'd pay in the US.

You're right. I wasn't thinking about crossing borders when I wrote that. Within the US, it's essentially true. Comparing US to Europe or anywhere else and it's all over the map.

I guess that's just another variable to throw in when working on your arbitrage strategy. Personally, I'd opt to take that contract job in Oslo if it were an option. Given how much they charged me for beer when I was there, I can only assume the wages must be nice and high!

Wages in Norway are quite flat compared to the US. The low end wages are much higher and the high wages are lower. If you're making $20-30k in the US you'll earn a lot more in Norway. If you're making around $100k you'll probably make the same. If you're earning over $200K you'll probably make less.

Wages usually depend on supply and demand in the local market, unless your niche is so specialized you personally compete globally (in which case you're probably earning a lot more than $100K). I'm not intimately familiar with Norway, but I'd bet heavily that a $100K job in the Bay Area probably would not translate to a 570K NOK salary. Healthcare, pension and cost of living differences also make it hard to compare.

Depends on your propensity to consume all your in the short term. If you aren't too worried about quality of housing and want to maximise the amount of freedom you can enjoy on holiday then living (relatively) cheaply and working at high rates is a sensible strategy. If you can't live in LA for less than $23000 per annum and prefer to spend your cash on nights out on the town, the lower costs of living in some cities will be more important to you than the wage differential, especially given tax bracket advantages.

There's also the option of working remotely, but then you'd know better than me about that anyway...

You just hit the real way to work it.

I'm bootstrapping at the moment, so every morning I make the arduous telecommute to Southern California and bill out at my SoCal rate. A fella can bank away several years worth of beach runway in a short period that way.

I think that LA/SF/NYC is not the optimum location in you strategy. I remember seeing an analysis somewhere comparing salary/cost of living and size of city in the US (I tried googling the original article but came up empty).

Basically if you start in a little village then move to a small town your salary rises faster than the cost of living and so you end up slightly better off financially. Then if you move to a larger town you're slightly better off again. And so on as you move up in city size.

This relationship holds except for at the very top, where the curve flattens off and drops slightly. You're actually slightly worse off in the banner cities like LA/SF/NYC.

In other words you, as an individual, are paying a premium to live in those places. The sweet spot in the curve financially is the next tier of cities down. I suspect this curve might have some degree of regional variation and might be different in other countries too.

I love the idea of bars in the Australian outback coming to be staffed exclusively by rationalist aspies.

FWIW, I attend the Less Wrong/Overcoming Bias NYC meetup regularly, and while there are maybe a couple borderline aspies (and I do mean maybe), most of the regulars are far from it. The NYC group may be atypical, but our "sex, drugs, and rock and roll" factor* is pretty high, and I'd say the emotional intelligence of the group is above average by a decent margin.

*Of course, I'm being metaphorical here, since this is written down and all.

"G'day mate. What'd you like?'

"Some amber would be ace!"

"No, are you aware of the caloric value of beer and the negative effect on longevity found by a recent JAMA study? Here, have some nice red wine."

I am highly amused that the colloquialisms applied are exactly opposite to reality.

I got them wrong? Are you sure? I looked them up in an Australian dictionary, and amber was supposed to mean beer, and ace mean great.

Nobody would ever order an "amber." Beer is always ordered by brand name, and by size. In Victoria and Tasmania, beer is usually served in a half-pint glass called a "pot." Beer bottles are usually called "beakers." In every state, Foster's is by far the most popular beer. There are usually other unpopular regional beers available for old people and sheilas, but the national love of Foster's goes so deep, you risk starting a fight if you try ordering something else.

So in most of Australia, you'd want to say something like "Cheerio Mate, beaker of Foster's willya?"

Ah. :( Thanks for the explanation.

Umm? Fosters? Really???? The only people who drink Fosters are the English.

I do not know a single friend (yes, I'm Australian) who drinks Fosters. I don't even recall if many of the bars/pubs here in Brisbane even have it on tap.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fosters_Lager:

  "While popular in many countries, particularly where it 
   is brewed locally, Foster's Lager does not enjoy widespread
   success in Australia."

Shhh.... you're ruining the joke.

Ha! The trouble with the joke is only Australians would get it!

Alternate data point:

I make 90k a year.

+$5,000 net income (after taxes, healthcare, and 6% contribution to my 401k)

-$1,400 for rent (pertty high)

- $400 for food

- $120 for car insurance

- $200 for gas

- $200 for internet, TV, and cell phone

- $200 for electricity

That leaves me with $2500 a month that is discretionary. That's $30,000 a year. I save $2000 a month.I play with the remaining $500.

Give me an extra $10k and get me to the $100k number and it would be pure discretionary for me.

I live in CT, so it isn't that cheap. There are certainly places in this country with lower rent. And moving to NYC probably would only up my rent to $2,000 which wouldn't really change the numbers becasue I'd dump the car insurance and gas. (No car payments because I paid cash for my car 2 years ago).

And as an added data point: living in silicon valley isn't much more expensive either. You can rent an apartment for 1400 [1]. State income taxes are a bit higher, but you'll also spend a lot less on gas :). Otherwise it's pretty similar (unless you want to live in the swanky parts of PA)

[1] http://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/apa/pen?query=&srchTy...

You might save more money in NYC, even. 1,400 will also get you a 2 bedroom an hour commute from Manhattan (Ozone Park, Forest Hills), or a one bedroom with a 30 minute commute to Manhattan (Astoria, certain parts of Brooklyn).

Where's the best place to find a place to rent in NYC? And how would I tell if it's a relatively safe neighbourhood?

Craigslist, as the answer to both questions.

You can tell the safe/desirable neighborhoods by getting a good neighborhood map (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Manhattan_neighborhoods) and paying attention to which neighborhoods CL ads lie about being in (for instance, in Brooklyn, it's common to see ads for apartments that are physically in Gowanus saying they're in Park Slope or Carroll Gardens instead).

Thanks! Are there any neighbourhoods that I really want to avoid?

Yes. YMMV as to which those are, though. Safety-wise, just do a little research before heading somewhere, especially at night (to get you started, in Brooklyn, don't go to East New York, Brownsville, and large parts of BedStuy).

I've gotten my last couple places on craigslist and been happy. Look for apts that are truly 'by-owner.' Plenty of them do exist.

Astoria is relatively cheap (as noted above) and safe; other nearby neighborhoods in Queens can be even cheaper, if not quite as safe (Sunnyside, Long Island City), and if you are commuting to midtown (or in my case, not commuting at all) you're looking at <30m.

IMO, Brooklyn apts tend not to have the same value, taking safety and commute time into consideration, but plenty of people would argue with me on that point.

I live in Ozone Park and like it a lot. Rent is $1150 for a one bedroom.

Interesting, and I think people should definitely consider "off the beaten track" opportunities like this more.

But for most of us here... it doesn't account for the fact that you're working as a bartender. I don't know about everyone else, but I want to enjoy and be fulfilled by my work. When I'm building awesome software I loose track of the workday... slinging rum for 8 hours a day sounds like some terrible purgatory.

And from anecdotal evidence, I don't think there's nearly so many great income arbitrage opportunities in the high tech sector.

I think you are undervaluation the benefits of being a bar tender.

Granted you are not writing software but after the first couple of weeks you should be able to start hacking/innovating new drinks and since you properly became a software developer because you like creating new things, this should give you some of the same feeling.

But an additional huge plus: unlike being a code geek, being a bartender is not a low status job and there is going to be a lot of females around - combine the two and you should have a relative easy time getting laid (and plenty of chances to practice).

> hacking/innovating new drinks

Not that this can't be fun, but my ambitions are a bit higher.

> being a bartender is not a low status job

I'm pretty sure being a software developer is a higher status job than a bartender. Of course being a bartender can be more fun for the "partygoer" demographic - which, I suspect, has a narrow intersection with the LessWrong or HN demographic.

I'm pretty sure being a software developer is a higher status job than a bartender.

I'm pretty sure you are wrong, at least if we take ability to get laid as being an indicator of status.

I don't think most people would consider that a very important indicator.

What, really? You don't think that that's a significant part of why being a rock star counts as a really high-status job? Not all of them make a tremendous amount of money, but pretty much all of them can get laid on any given night.

i think most (non-computer) people would consider that the reason for achieving status in the first place.

Status is a combination of desirable things - Money, power, sex.

Bartenders have somewhat more access to sex. But they have less money than a software developer, and less potential for power (there's no ceiling on being a developer - you can run your own business, and potentially become extremely influential. If a bartender gains that much influence/power and owns their own establishment, it becomes disingenuous to continue to call them "a bartender").

Furthermore, this aspect of status is irrelevant when a person is in a long-term relationship, which at some point in their lives most people are.

On the contrary, having a status is a great way to keep your long term relationship going.

By that logic prostitute is a high-status job...

I didn't include all the obvious caveats in my post - it applies only to men, and to getting laid with attractive women.

So yes, a male prostitute with an attractive client base is a very high status man.

(It doesn't work for women, due to the key/lock principle: "A key which unlocks all locks is a very good key, but a lock which is opened by many keys is a very poor lock." Not politically correct, but true.)

Our definitions of high status seem to be quite different. Which is fair enough, considering how subjective that term is.

Next time you're out and you meet some interesting new people, tell them you're the bartender at the hottest club / bar in town.

Compare their reaction to the one you see after you tell them "I'm a computer programmer."

I stopped telling people I was a computer programmer a long time ago. It KILLS the conversation. It's not 1998 anymore. Now I either tell them "I own a software company" or "I do special projects for legal/finance/whatever industry". The difference in how people open up is tremendous.

It's not my fault people have preconceived notions about what I do, but I'm not going to be a social victim of their ignorance. Other professions do this all the time. Insurance salesmen and accountants say "I work in finance." People who sell light bulbs and toilet plungers say "I own a distribution company". Do you think they tell people they "sell toilet plungers" at a cocktail party?

If you're a bartender at some crappy bar full of derelicts I doubt you'll get a great reception, so if you're going to tack on "hottest club/bar in town" to bartender, the equivalent version for programmer may be "Apple/Facebook". That may get you a few "Ooooh"'s from the interesting people.

Maybe I'm missing something, but what if I want to work as a software engineer?

Spending the rest of life as a bartender or receptionist doesn't seem like a good prospect, regardless of pay.

And if I ever have the chance to go back to work as a software engineer, the years working as a bartender or receptionist won't help.

Or maybe I just don't like money that much.

I think the problem with most software jobs is that's where you spend all your mental resources. I tend to think about work projects a lot outside of business hours, and it takes a lot of work to stay on top of your game in the industry. This is fine and well unless you want to do real research in your spare time. Especially when you get older and have other responsibilities, it gets very difficult to find contiguous blocks of time when you are fresh.

Or if what you do at work qualifies as "real research".

I highly advocate people going to work or travel abroad for a year or two, but it's important to note that this article is specifically recommending going to work in the Australian Outback. I've been to Australia and it's a lovely place with lovely people, but living deep in the Outback also means relative isolation, dust, and probably more boredom than you're expecting. You'll be at the mercy of the mix of long-term travelers in your location at that particular time, which might be good or bad.

Some folks (like myself) much prefer living in a bigger city with access to music, art, cuisine, culture, green space, and limitless people.

Though that's not to say you can't enjoy living in the Outback--lots of people choose to live there and love it--but just be aware of what you're getting in to. There's a reason one place pays so much more than the other!

Exactly, and Aussie cities are VERY expensive to live in. Sure wages are higher, but Sydney especially is one of the most expensive and congested cities to live in in the world.

I like the article for the added perspective of going elsewhere. But, like recent anti-tax blog posts I have trouble believing a $6-figure salary is that bad. No way you only have 4k of disposable income. How is that calculated? Even in NYC you do not need to spend 30k a year on housing like his percentages would suggests. People should stop trying to describe the plight of the 6-figure earner.

Depends where you live. Also (as you state) it depends on your spending habits. $100K in Fargo is a lot different than $100K in Manhattan.

If the Millionaire Next Store is correct, you're likely to spend more if you live in a nice neighborhood (keeping up with the Joneses).

I notice this myself. A coworker who lives in very nice neighborhood has a BMW. I drive a 14 yead old vehicle and live in a "down scale" neighborhood. So our roughly equivalent salary is going to seem much different to him (money is tight) vs me (lots of disposable income).

I think the author tried to justify those figures by way of "Keeping up with the Joneses" and the societal pressures that come with 6-figure salaries, but I agree with you that the numbers are not particularly optimistic. It seems like one of the basic assumptions he makes is that people in this income bracket buy nice things and big things.

When I was a teacher, earning a low salary (even by teacher standards), I still had over $10k of disposable income. I can't imagine that'd go down at all if my salary tripled or quadrupled (thereby bringing it into the range he discusses).

Not quite. In his comment posted at 31 January 2011 09:44:16PM, he explains:

I'm presenting what happens by default in both options, not one optimized and one non-optimized option. What you discovered here is that, the plan to save money in the outback is robust and succeeds by default, while the plan to save money in the US is fragile and fails by default.

That's flat-out cheating. In one plan, you are willing to act like a rationalist, in the other you are a sheep. That's a useless comparison. The relevant comparison is "rationalist in the US" vs. "rationalist in the Outback".

For instance, the US rationalist has an easy solution to the keeping-up-with-the-Joneses problem: Don't. I've had great success with this. It's not that hard. While there is always a dick waving contest going on somewhere in a neighborhood it's really quite easy to opt out, and for the most part nobody comes and chases you down; the dick wavers simply classify you as a loser and you decline to correct them. QED.

That whole post is rationalist fail; he knows the forms, but he isn't dancing the dance. It isn't just another brand of marketing to slather over your preexisting point or desire. Well, actually it can be used that way just like any other good thing and this is far from the first self-proclaimed rationalist I've seen to fall into this trap, but hey, we all do it somewhere. We're all still human, no matter how hard we try.

I don't think it's cheating. It's recognizing that you are only rational some of the time, and attempting to bind your future irrational self to the rational decisions you make right now.

I view his plan as being similar to not purchasing ice cream while you are dieting - if you were perfectly rational, you could rationally choose not to eat the ice cream in your freezer, but why give yourself the temptation to be irrational?

I must concede it is possible I'm simply having a hard time feeling what it is like to be so compelled by your neighbor's purchase of a stupidly expensive car that you must purchase your own stupidly expensive care in response. No sarcasm. I've never been that responsive to peer pressure, and from the very youngest I remember my response to the peer pressure culture was to simply leave the culture entirely in spirit, if not physically (though if I had realized that I could have I so would have). This is not normal.

... still, I really do find it hard to believe that you are so weak willed that you would do such a non-optimal thing, but you are willing to fly all the way around the world, where, I might add, such temptations will still be present even if they aren't quite as pressing. This whole argument, if it's going to apply to anybody, sure strikes me as sailing through a narrow window at best, while proclaiming the window to be far larger than it actually is.

I agree. I don't make much money for what I do (then again, I'm only now at 5 years experience), but I'm able to save/freely spend 40% of my pre-tax income.

I can buy most of these points, but it seems to ignore that people have subjective preferences for some cultural environments over others, so the Q/A answer citing Australia's education and secularity doesn't necessarily answer that question. Presumably not every intelligent person will subjectively find Australia's culture versus the US's culture either a win for Australia or a tossup; some may prefer American culture. Some people may also place utility on things like "living in my home country, where I don't feel like a foreigner"; though of course other people may consider living in another country to be an inherently positive experience.

I'm currently an American living in Denmark, so clearly I don't think it's impossible for the utility functions to work out that way. =] But it's not just a matter of weighing the income, the expenses, the commute times, etc.; living in Copenhagen is subjectively fairly different from living in, say, Boston or Los Angeles, and I could imagine some people putting very large positive or negative utility scores on that difference.

"Presumably not every intelligent person will subjectively find Australia's culture versus the US's culture either a win for Australia or a tossup; some may prefer American culture. Some people may also place utility on things like "living in my home country, where I don't feel like a foreigner"; though of course other people may consider living in another country to be an inherently positive experience."

Fair point. I'd like to add, though, that even within the United States, there's a lot of cultural variation, adn even among larger trends there are quite a few smaller pockets. I find, for example, that I'm happiest in big-ish cities in the Midwest, but only when I can engage with the arts scene and a little bit with the tech scene.

What I mean to say is that I think you're right in that the author does not offer any qualification for those points, but will also say that living in Perth or Darwin is likely to be very different from living in Melbourne, if for no other reason than location, demographic, and the purposes that people have in being there.

You can keep your job bartending in the outback.

I live in the expensive-to-live-in Boston area. I have an hour commute each way. Sometimes I stay late nights. And on days like today the option is either burn vacation time or telecommute because for my own safety's sake there's no way in hell I'm taking the T and the bus in this blizzard.

But... (and this is the clincher) I program robot submarines for a living. I'm a significant contributor to the code that navigates and controls AUVs around the world -- Australia included. In short, I get paid to do something awesome. If I were still stuck in the webdev ghetto or doing enterprisey bullshit for banks, I'd be on the first plane outta Logan as soon as the snow clears. But the sheer ass-kickingness of my job -- and the doors of opportunity this experience will give me later -- keep me firmly anchored.

And I think that's entirely rational.

Ditto...but Seattle, and my toys have wings.

Yes, please, rational people: leave Seattle. Terrible, terrible place. No good at all. Wet, gray, the people are mean. Shoo!

Working abroad always appeared to me as something hard at the very beginning, especially for a Russian, especially in tired of immigrants Australia. I don't know, maybe it's all biases from my family members and friends.

I'm 19 yo (minus one week), not so bad programmer (a lead developer of a small outsourcing firm with some "CTO" responsibilities for 2.5 years). All my attempts to find a job abroad (in USA especially) and leave the country left me thinking what I should save up some reasonable amount of money and be ready to show something impressive in my portfolio (or get a degree, which I can't even afford now whilst having no desire for spending four or five years doing something useless in cheap and easy college):

1. I've often been asked to be interviewed in person - its more than 500$ for a one-way ticket, plus some money for bed and breakfast, plus getting a visa isn't cheap and simple adventure. Okay, 20000$/yr is a "wow!" salary in Sankt-Petersburg for 18-25 year olds, do your math

2. I've been told that employers abroad don't like to hire foreigners because there're too much responsibility required by the law

3. And [as I've been told, I've read and I believe] due to these problems it's too simple to end up being a "janitor" developer in some heartless corporation just because visa doesn't allow to just walk out looking for a better job, and neither do living expenses.

I only applied for developer jobs, though. Maybe bartenders have more luck.

I don't know if it's really because of some division of the world or due to my narrow-mindedness and cowardice.

> I don't know if it's really because of some division of the world or due to my narrow-mindedness and cowardice.

Mostly division in the world. If you're on the inside of the first-world gate you can hop on a plane and get an instantly approved visa to almost any other first world country. They all have these reciprocal agreements. The article's strategy relies on this --- a US citizen is pre-approved for a 1 year working holiday, unless they've done something substantially wrong.

For people on the other side of the gate, the situation is completely different. Visa applications are expensive and slow, and governed by arbitrary rules and senseless bureaucracy. The message the governments send is, "there's plenty more just like you. We don't care."

As noted in the comments, the major problem is that he compares the "rational" strategy of moving to the Australian outback with the "default" strategy of having a US job and spending the statistical average on housing, food, etc. But if you're assuming a highly rational person, the second strategy has loads of room for optimization: you don't need a McMansion, a new car every 5 years, or to engage in status games of conspicuous consumption with your neighbors. With a relatively small amount of planning and discipline, it's easy to save lots of money earning $100k/year in the US.

You said it exactly right. If you're single (even in NYC) it's easy to save lots of money making 50k a year.

And if you pick wisely, you can keep doing it after married. :)

Most young people with 100,000$ a year jobs are not in it for the 100,000. They're in it because it leads (if they are successful enough) to a 250,000$ job in a decade or two.

US$16500/y transporation costs? What are you doing, buying a new car every year?

Also, "Companies pay professionals more based on their abilities and their age as opposed to their actual years of experience"? Who would want to work for a company like that? Would it even be legal?

Ignoring more subjective points, like the appeal of living in the outback vs. a city or of having a "no responsibilities" job.

> US$16500/y transportation costs?

That's the cost to fly to Australia and back, plus the cost of the Visa. For day to day transportation, the OP explicitly said he'd walk to work.

i think you're misreading. $16,500 is what the post states are transportation costs in the US. $4000 is the stated cost for AUS, which is more reasonable considering a flight.

i think 16.5% is probably off base, but not that far off. closer to 10% when you consider payments, gas, taxes, insurance, etc..

Here's an additional data point. My 2009 transportation costs in St. Louis, MO.

($220 car payment * 12) + (278.04 gallons of gas * $2.25 avg/gallon) + ~$175 property taxes + ($5 daily parking * 20 working days/month * 12) + (~$90 insurance/month * 12) = ~$5720

This excludes licensing costs and parking tickets, which probably add another ~$200. It also excludes maintenance. For example, new tires added another ~$400 this year. And you've got to change your oil.

I commute only 6 miles each way, drive a cheap, fuel efficient car, do some of my own maintenance, and live in an area with low tax and gas rates, so I don't think it would be hard to spend at least twice what I do.

Edit: added car insurance.

> I commute only 6 miles each way, drive a cheap, fuel efficient car, do some of my own maintenance, and live in an area with low tax and gas rates, so I don't think it would be hard to spend at least twice what I do.

Your fuel costs are less than $700/year. Your car cost is $2650/year.

It's easy to spend a lot of money on a car, but it's rarely necessary to do so.

If you commute 6 miles a way, 2 ways a workday, 20 workdays a month for 12 monthes a year on 278.04 gallons of gas, you're getting 10.35 mpg. This is not good mileage. I suppose it's more likely that your daily commute is a small fraction of your total travel.

For the opposite extreme, I live in Manhattan, where $1248/y gets me unlimited subway and bus. Add a few hundred for visiting friends and family scattered around the country. Yes, I'm paying about $30k/y for a (rather nice) one bedroom apartment, but that's my only big expense.

Has anyone here had experience working in Australia (or as an expat in another developed country) as an actual software developer?

I do enjoy what I do but I'd love to be able to see a different part of the world while I do it.

I worked in Japan for 3 years as a technical translator and the better part of 3 years as a software engineer at a large software consultancy. Software engineers do lots of things, but theoretically the main reason I was there was to develop software (mostly Big Freaking Enterprise Java web applications, for universities, and software which supported the development of the same).

I would be happy to talk to you about that experience at length. The capsule summary is that I cannot recommend working for a Japanese megacorp as a means of broadening one's horizons unless one has the very specific desire to learn about Japanese megacorps. The work/life balance works out such that -- even if you enjoy software development very, very much -- you will likely have insufficient time/energy/health to see much of Japan in your rather few non-working hours.

That's the impression I've gotten from a lot of people who have worked in Japan. It isn't really an option for me anyway (since I don't know the language and wouldn't have too much of a reason to learn it) but it is certainly interesting how incompatible many people find Japanese workplace culture with American workplace culture.

Trades are booming in Australia. I've been traveling in Australia since January. I meet loads of tradesmen from places in Europe who come down here because the wages are high and there is a lot of work. My sister's husband is a builder, and his friend are electricians, and they do as well or better than any salaried programmer in Silicon Valley or New York. The electrician in particular makes about double what I did, and I was making well over $100K a year.

Regarding being a bartender in the Northern Territory: The advice in the article is pretty good if you are in the USA and under 30 and don't have any prospects in the USA. The wages are pretty good for most types of seasonal service work.

One downside the article doesn't mention, is that I think you can only do this visa once. Thus, it's not really a long term career plan.

There is a reason why people endure higher costs of living to be in locations of higher population density. I'd also like to see the same cost benefit analysis over a 5-10 year window. I guess the alternative US scenario mightn't be much better.

Bartending: a part-time job that provides the lazy with easy access to alcohol and a stable social life where the only requirement is to have passable looks and the ability to show up, stay awake and not steal (too much). It looks like fun, but it's a very dangerous occupation if you're thinking of actually doing something with your life post-booze dalliance.

The fact that someone would promote dropping out to live in the outback serving beer to a bunch of tourists is insane. To back it up with tax-reimbursement math is ludicrous. Working as a slave for more than one tourist season should dispel any rational thinker of the notion that they're better off scraping by on minimum wages than working at a real job. To be successful in the real world, you need to acquire domain experience, competent skills and build lasting relationships with people who also work in your industry, not to mention developing your talents in order to have access to higher-paying/rewarding employment. All of them take time and none can be done while you're picking your nose at a tiki bar in Florida, Thailand or Australia.

Don't kid yourself. Work is hard and there are no easy way about it.

I upvoted this by accident (meant to downvote), so I might as well respond:

  > The fact that someone would promote dropping out to live in the outback
  > serving beer to a bunch of tourists is insane.

I know several career bartenders who love mixing drinks and the social aspect of being behind the bar. What's insane for you is absolutely heaven for them. Quality bartenders can make fantastic money, but let's discount that and say that, for some folks, being happy with their job is more important than how much they earn doing it.

  > Don't kid yourself. Work is hard and there are no easy way about it.

You yourself say that bartending for tourists during the busy season is so horrible that you can't survive one season before bailing. That doesn't sound easy, but if you love bartending, it's not so bad. Similarly, some of my clients are hard to work with sometimes, but I love developing software, so it's not so bad.

tl;dr: grow up and learn that there are valid viewpoints that differ from yours.

>tl;dr: grow up..

I'd liked your post up to that point.

At least the parent post to that one knows they got someone's attention.

I think Abbie Hoffman once said, "If you ever raise someone's hackles, then you've struck gold!"

I think he means that bartending is easy in that it doesn't consume your life (unless you're an alcoholic).

I mean no disrespect to bartenders in any way, but it appears to be a "clock in and check out" job. Clock in, do your n hours by rote, and clock out.

All's I'm saying is that it must be a great job if a foreigner can just walk into your country, apply, become employed and live happily ever after for the season without competition from the locals or the authorities. What a country!

Like our very own migrant farm workers here in the United States I guess, or if you're really ambitious, in Oz: http://www.workstay.com.au/backpacker_harvest_jobs.htm

The original premise only works if you meet the following conditions, aside from being young and smart like the guy said:

1. You're taking a gap year between education and/or work to see the world and gain some [travel] experience. 2. You never intend to return to that lifestyle after your year is done and have a plan to a normal lifestyle of continuos employment that doesn't involve taking money from those temporarily impaired by alcohol. Because most people in the world are sober for the majority of their lives and drunks don't have much of a long tail and if you're halfway smart and ambitious you'll tire of them in short order.

The post author uses bar-tending as an example because somewhere, someone decided that it was a sexy job (Cocktail, anyone?) that could someday lead you to owning your own place by the beach meeting fancy people of the desired sexual orientation while you party on your time off. Very few bartenders can do that unless someone buys the bar for them or they have two or more partners.

My response to that is that it's a lazy-man's job where you're just a cog in the wheel of a drug-dealing enterprise and get paid only after the liquor distributor, bar owner and permanent staff, and in the case of the US, paid only by the patrons through their generosity in the form of tips as a reward for being able to stare at your t&a while they slip into their daily haze. You are a sexually stimulating device that can open beer bottles. The ones that can't stimulate any more get jobs at the airport/hotel lounge where they can use their brains even less while being protected by their union. Those who work sporting events are neither.

I prefer the fruit-picking example as it makes more sense to the uninitiated.

Also, all growed-up software engineer here making six figures year after year who will never again pour a drink or throw a bum out of a bar or wear a uniform to work.

The greatest satisfaction I have ever derived from a job was found washing dishes at a main street diner during my late teens. I worked long hours, which grew progressively longer, as my coworkers quit and the owners didn't bother to replace them.

I made a poor wage, and my hands were absolutely destroyed by the constant immersion in hot water and the metal scratch pad I favored. I had little time for my intellectual pursuits, and there was certainly no future in it.

But I really enjoyed the low-key meditation that was possible, given the repetitive nature of the tasks I had to perform. I liked the interaction with the waitresses and the cooks. I liked going home from work after a ten hour day and knowing that I was done, that there was no technical debt I'd accrued during the day, no nagging concern as to whether I'd done the job right or whether the performance of a particular system would be adequate. I was secure in the knowledge that I was the very best dishwasher in town, as borne out by the fact that I was the only person who could work a Sunday lunch rush alone.

Now I have technical debt, nagging concerns, impostor syndrome, and exclusively male and professional coworkers. I like the money, of course, and I like the idea that I'm producing something. But if I didn't have ambition - if I didn't have goals to live up to, or a better world to build - you bet I'd be right at home washing dishes.

Of course, bartending might be hellish compared to dishwashing, but I doubt it.

I've said a few times that if making pizza payed more than $10/hr, I'd go back and do it. I derived a lot of enjoyment from doing something really well, and a little bit of diversity in my environment was nice. There was a similar post here a while ago about a guy who was a lumberjack, so he could go home and hack all night. He didn't want to get burned out on development, and switching it up kept him fresh.

Something is wrong about the author's numbers here.

The Consumer Expenditure Survey the author cites says the 25-34 year old that spends 37.1% of their salary on housing is only making $58,946 per year, NOT $100,000 per year.

Whether intentional or not, the survey is being misrepresented to the benefit of the author's argument.

Good catch. There are a few other bits that bothered me as well.

The employer's contribution to retirement is counted as a gain in Australia, but the employer's matching Social Security contribution in the US is ignored.

It also assumes that a car is absolutely necessary in the US. I live in the Bay Area, and I haven't driven my car in any material sense in 4 months (by choice).

Regardless, it's pretty obvious that one can earn six figures in the US, but choose to live within the means of a bartender in an Australian tourist trap. Which provides more disposable income?

There are other troubling inconsistencies as well. But I decided to stop there. I only want the author to go back and fix his numbers, I don't want to write the article for him.

Without a doubt, this whole thing is a poor abuse of statistics. It doesn't take a genius to figure out you can make $100,000 and keep a lot in the bank by living like someone who makes $30,000. Which, by the way, there are quite a few of those people in the United States.

I'm ethnically Chinese. The thought of going go the outback to serve beer to a bunch of racist Australians (I think someone in this thread described it as "tired of immigration" LOL) for a pittance is about as appealing to me as slicing my face off with a cheese grater.

Ans as far as teaching English in Asia goes ... this must be a SWPL thing because to me it just sounds like a giant waste of time.

I'll stay in California and work at my six figure tech job. Thanks.

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