190 karma · joined March 14, 2020
First of all, $80-100k isn't considered a high pay in the Silicon Valley, but rather an intern salary. So $100k for a remote job is a reasonable ask, even at an early stage startup. In my experience, most of the small startups don't conduct interviews with an algorithm gauntlet like FAANG (or is it MANGA?) companies do; there could be some of that stuff, but not exclusively, and you're of course allowed to communicate that it's not your strong suite. The market to hire good developers is so tough right now, that smart companies are willing to cut you some slack on the "formal" knowledge part if you're able to prove you can be an asset in the "real world" for them.
In my experience, the biggest pain points in hiring Europeans are the time difference, bad English skills, and cultural differences. This varies a lot by company, so take it with a grain of salt, but here's a breakdown of these three things:
1. The time difference is what it is, so you might be required to work in the evenings with some companies. If you live in the Western Europe and work for an East Coast company, the time difference shouldn't be that big of a deal, as you can have a comfortable overlap in your afternoon and their morning. Eastern Europe to West Coast, on the other hand, is a 10h difference, so you might expect to work the late shift.
2. Language skills can be practiced. In your case, I'd say your written English is perfectly sufficient, but in case you're shaky on the spoken level, it might be wise to sharpen your skills there. You don't have to be on a native level, not even close (and Americans in general are used to immigrants and different accents and whatnot), but you don't want it to be a clear weakness either. As long as you're able to understand others and communicate your thoughts in a clear manner, you're good.
3. What I mean by cultural differences is that many European cultures lack the sort of self-promotional and positive aura that comes naturally to most Americans. If you ever visited the US, you know what I'm talking about. US employers aren't necessarily accustomed to reading people who aren't good at this, so it might throw them off. Being able to relax and smile and get past the usual small talk takes you a long way.
It might be easier to get into a company where there are other European remote employees already, as "offshoring" for the first time can be a scary thing for a small startup, especially if the candidate doesn't tick off all boxes.
Trust is required to make cryptos work too. Yes, a blockchain is "immutable", as long as the network isn't hacked w/ e.g., a 51% attack in Bitcoin's case. However, the price of Bitcoin isn't really anchored to anything, i.e., there's no natural demand for it like there is for fiat currencies (since people must pay their taxes in fiat), so basically, only the collective trust and hope of people is making it valuable.
In addition to that, current cryptos are lacking in either decentralization, efficiency, or both, nevermind the various decentralized applications that operate like any traditional company, which you'll have to trust in order to use the app. So as of now, a truly decentralized and efficient blockchain network is only a dream.
I'm not saying fiat currencies are without problems though -- they very much aren't. The regulation is problematic, but the bigger underlying issue stems from the expectation of infinite growth. Money in the modern economy is basically debt, whose interests are paid off with newly created debt. This cycle works only if the loan money is, on average, invested profitably, i.e., (in very rough terms) the GDP rises along with the money supply. This is difficult to begin with, but since compounding interests grow exponentially, it means that the GDP should rise exponentially too, which, since exponentially growing curves approach infinity relatively fast, means that the planet is fucked due to exponentially growing demand of energy and natural resources.
When it comes to protecting your assets from inflation, I suppose investing in companies that pay good dividends and are able to cover the inflation in their business model should be a relatively safe bet, as they continue to provide a steady cashflow. If you think the inflation is here to stay and you want to take on more risk, you could take out a loan and leverage that by investing it, as the inflation should cover the interest.
Note that this is NOT financial advice -- I'm anyway not qualified to give that, so take this only as food for thought.
I use FF (dev edition) as my primary dev browser, and it's made a lot of progress on DX. Chromium has a smoother experience overall, but FF is not too shabby nowadays.
https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/quarterly-bulletin/2014/q1/m...