alexawarrior23

What they are getting at is the concept of "fiduciary duty". Executives appointed by a board or partners in a partnership must act with fiduciary duty, which generally means they have to act faithfully to the wishes of the shareholders. BUT, the shareholders can specify any values they wish. They don't have to be maximizing shareholder value, they can be to pursue environmental goals, or social improvement, or anything they so chose.

In modern publicly owned corporations, most shares are actually held by intermediary banks, and votes are done via proxy. Most shareholder resolutions fail, and votes are given to those who most claim to maximize shareholder value. It doesn't NEED to be this way, but this is the way it is now. But it could be different.

America is one of the few countries in the world where a majority of the population lives in the suburbs, in single family homes and large apartments, with almost universal automobile ownership. It is designed this way, by both the federal and state government through prioritizing highways over passenger rail, and local governments by prioritizing local roads and parking over public transportation and pedestrian and cycling paths. Largely this has the support of the population who prefer prioritizing automobiles.

You lose a lot when you make these your priorities. You lose the magnificent airport of Singapore, the railways of Japan, the cycling paths running across the whole of the Netherlands, the twisting trails linking villages together in the Alps. You lose a lot of social venues and social cohesion.

But you also gain something. You gain something almost unique in the world, which is the ability of the majority of the population (especially outside high CoL areas) to own their own house, a real house, earth to sky, with four walls to the winds. Often with its own garage, often attached, allowing you to pass directly to your car without touching the elements. You get space - the tremendous space - that feeling of infinite possibilities that hits you when you first step out of the airport of an American city, squalor and all.

"Germany, like much of northern Europe, is a high-regulation society, but it’s also high-trust"

I've lived in Germany a long time, and while it's a wonderful place, I can tell you a lot of people who want to get out, who are tired of being trapped in their tiny cold apartment worried if they can afford heating more than just their bedroom or (the decadence!) the entire apartment. The kind of freedom you feel in a country where you can just drop everything and move to a different coast and find a job and speak the same language, you can't do that here, at least not with a tremendous number of barriers to cross. And don't even get me started on dryers.

"I like to live here, but the reality is we are rapidly falling behind the rest of the world in liveability (sic)"

Livability as defined by world rankings, no, American cities won't match up. Even NYC's public transit is a joke compared to much of the world. But livability as defined by, somewhere I have the freedom to live, to own, to dream... the USA might just be the place.

You must be aware of a different Seoul then I am. I've looked at moving there and asked my Korean friends. "Fully furnished, two-bed room apartments in central, well-connected areas of Seoul are <$1000 per month" does not jibe with anything I have seen, ever. Please send me the property link because I'm obviously looking in the wrong place.

Exactly, I suffered this landlord abuse while working abroad. Apartment was delivered back to the landlord crystal clean and 100% intact. Then they took my entire deposit and billed me around 12,000 EUR. I even had pictures to show that I had done no damage, but you can imagine how foreigner vs native testimony works in these kinds of super-racist countries. I managed to leave before I had to pay the bill, but I still lost my full deposit. Apparently this "fleece the foreigner" is a well known tactic in some countries.

Well then I guess the lawyers I hired in country were all lying to me? As long as I didn't overstay my visa, didn't stay more than the required time for physical presence test tax liability (typically 180 days), and didn't work for firms inside the country, I was legit.

Please let me know if I was given bad legal advice, because I don't want to get thrown in jail in the future.

What's interesting is in my neighborhood I've seen growing inequality at the ground level over the past 20 years. We are an old neighborhood of decaying middle class housing still occupied by the elderly remnants of long-term owners. As the elderly move out they are replaced by one of three possibilities:

1. A large immigrant family moving in with one family to a room, sometimes sublet to several families, with no maintenance being done and the house falling apart.

2. An upper middle class family typically with Teslas moving in and doing a full remodel of the house.

3. An upper class family tearing down the old house and building a 6,000-10,000 sqft+ mansion for the husband, wife, and zero to two children.

In the first case above, the poorer section, city services, roads, shopping continues to decay, with ever more liquor stores, massage parlors, pawn shops, tire repair, and used auto lots. This is by and large the largest area and population of the neighborhood.

In the second case above, roads are repaired, a few new restaurants, but largely a decaying infrastructure. A large area but not as big in area or population as #1.

In the third case above, all new roads. New full rebuilt shopping. A new school. A new public library. The smallest area by far, but once you enter it, it's a different world. Literally one side of the street is nightly robbery dilapidated midrise, and the other side behind the walls with their own police force are new mansions that start at $3m.

Note what's missing from the above: the middle class. They don't exist here. They die off and are replaced, largely by the lower class. I've seen this happen on the ground, over the years. Inequality at the ground level. And it's still going on: absolutely no new building or improvements for the poorest, a little renovation for those with salaried jobs, and continuous rebuilding of luxury mansions for the upper crust.

Doesn't seem sustainable from the Piketty perspective. I only hope it can be resolved peacefully. I'd even be fine with we all get new things but some get nicer ones than others. But this, you get the same thing, worse even, every year, and we get more and more and more, doesn't fit well with human sense of decency.

Three generations of wealth is a common belief, but the research doesn't bare it out. Try 28 generations.

https://qz.com/301150/this-is-the-proof-that-the-1-have-been...

As long as your source of income is entirely outside the country, which it typically is, then in most cases you're fine. You're essentially just like a travelling investor. It's earning income from within the country that you can't do legally without a visa.

So I've got to prove I make $70k a year, and then put down a $7500 deposit on a small apartment that costs me $1800 a month in a crappy part of Seoul, and get insurance and a bunch of other things, and then I only get to stay six months, and if I extend it it's only up to two years? No thanks.

When will the demographic time bomb racial supremacist countries learn that people want to ACTUALLY IMMIGRATE to countries? Become a part of the society and live their the rest of their lives? Like you can do in Canada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, USA (if you get off H1B).

Too little, too late. Sit back and watch their population pyramid implode and enjoy the popcorn.

I was never a "Principal Software Engineer" until two years ago. Both hires were from an online job posting, one on the company site itself. Both jobs were government contract companies but salaried roles. And salary is it, no stock or end of year bonus. Both paid about half of what a MAANGA job would pay for the same role, but still far more than other similar remote roles, and a bit better than the senior software engineer roles.

I've also applied to all the standard tech companies over the years, but have never once received an interview. I don't really blame them, I'm not some stellar candidate, but I still do it just in case I get lucky. I've had colleagues who couldn't debug a program to save their life (I know because I did it for them) making several times my pay now at the name brand techbro places. I also know some very good devs I worked with at these companies too. I can't say there is anything different about them on average than anyone anywhere else I've worked, so don't give up if you really want to work there. One guy I know finally made it in after nine years of not getting in, and is getting a huge salary, and major recognition for his work, and promotions, so it can happen, just like winning the lottery happens.

Outside the super-compensated roles there often are a dearth of people applying with both 10+ years experience AND competence in the requested tech stack. That being said, the interviews are totally a crap shot. I've had ones where I aced every question and they passed on me. I've had others where I didn't know a lot of what they wanted but they were sufficiently impressed to give me an offer.

Stop thinking about actual ability to do anything and start seeing it for what it is, a game, or better yet, a gamble. You just keep rolling the dice and hope something lands.

For myself, in the current environment over the past two years it's been taking 6+ months of looking constantly doing 1+ hours of applications and interviews daily before I received one or more offers. No cover letter, but spending money on recruiters reviewing and recommending changes to my resume, and applying like a madman at literally thousands of positions on job boards and directly with the company. Have gotten ghosted, gone through five rounds only to not receive an offer, all the normal stuff you hear about.

Generally I've been receiving maybe one or two HR callbacks for every hundred or two hundred applications. Of those HR callbacks maybe half I make it past the tech screening to the first interview. Another half or less I get to a final round. So all in all I've been doing a few hundred applications over several months for a single offer.

If I was really desperate, which I was in the past dotcom and 2008 crash, I would take one of the horrible W2 contract roles that pay barely above McDonalds wages. I've had these sustain me from going homeless for up to a year before I could get something more in line with a regular salaried job at more typical engineer pay. But I'd take those jobs in a heartbeat if I had no other job lined up.

Note I just went to state school with a bachelors, have no top tech companies in my record, am well over 40, and haven't really achieved anything other than getting back up on my feet after getting repeatedly knocked over by downsizing and offshoring.

Good luck, and don't give up. If the Irish can achieve independence after 800 years of subjugation, it's a reminder even in a tech down economy we can find our place in the sun too.