tibiahurried

I have many friends who work in biotech and tech, most of the research is done in USA. Only minor research is done in EU. Same with tech.

Generalists can easily adapt. Adapting is key for survival.

Once more, this simply shows how weak EU is and how much it depends on the USA for survival: defense, science, tech.

The entire EU was only able to produce one vaccine: also UK is not in EU anymore, and AstraZeneca is a British-Swedish.

It does not come as a surprise. In decades, they haven't invested any significant money in research and tech, but austerity.

Thousands of EU engineers and scientists moved to the USA to never come back.

EU is now paying an high price. And given their inability to reverse this trend, they will always be at the mercy of other more developed and advanced countries.

Tried Kotlin, honestly I was not impressed. Tools (maven/gradle) wasn't as straight forward to setup as one would have expected. I am not impressed with the language itself and I had issue with conflicting libraries and kotlin versions.

I switched back to modern Java and did not regret it.

Java is catching up at a fast pace, I don't think Kotlin will ever replace Java or see mass adoption.

Unfortunately Europe pays for its inability to develop a strong tech echo system, so no matter what, Europe will always depend on US for any tech related product, there is no way out, but negotiate.

> Apps have added a lot more value to my life than BD ever has.

This thinking will never take humans on Mars! Someone must work on hard, expensive problems.

Human race does won't move forward with a chat but with the hard work of scientist, engineers etc ...

You nailed it! I never bought the "family" argument. Fully agree with you. Work is work. We are not family. I don't get it when I see people let go, writing extensive blog posts on how awesome the company "family" was yada yada. They let people go .. it means that they are only "family" for as long as it is beneficial for them. Real families don't work that way.

So for younger folks out there. Don't drink the cool-aid and don't buy into all these family/social bs. Always think about your interests first. And be ready to move on when your work is no longer beneficial for you.

what makes the difference is:

- your boss is influential (politics)

- you are lucky enough to work on a high impact/ high visibility project

- you play yes man with your boss and please them

- how long have you been with the company and the political connections you have made

... quality plays a very small role in promotions ...

In all the organizations I have worked for, I expected a promotion within the first 2 years (to then leave on the 3rd anyway :) ).

When that did not happen, I simply left and got a salary increase and +1 level anyway.

If you are lucky enough to work in a high demand field (like tech) and you are good at it ... you are pretty much in control.

Qualified people that get s*t done are always in high demand, just make sure to always be on the top and keep sharpening your skills ;)

I am sure you will when you will end up working in a huge organization with intricated and heterogeneous projects/teams interdependencies.

You will soon experience:

- dependencies hell due to transitive and conflicting dependencies

- one back-incompatible change in some obscure library end up breaking some other unknown service that happens to transitively depend and it

- the entire codebase will become a mess due to inconsistent code styles and formatting because hey we are developers and we can never agree on anything. Thus each team lead will have its own opinion

- each team will have to maintain its own CI/CD jobs

- heterogeneous builds: maven, node, sbt, webpack, etc ...

the list goes on ...

All (or most of) this mess is solved by centralizing the codebase in a monorepo.

> Burning out as an early stage start-up employee

I was an early employee in a start-up, I worked hard and got caught in all the startup distortion field/changing the world/impact kind of bs. The CEO kept saying for years that next year they will go IPO. Eventually I left no one gave a s..t , the company never went IPO.

The only positive thing was that I learned a lot of things because I had the chance to work on a lot of projects.

So make yourself a favor, stick around only for as long as it benefits you and your resume. But don't stay a minute longer founders won't give a s..t when you leave and you will never become rich anyway.

I later joined a big public company, amazing work-life balance, higher base salary , stocks, bonus, amazing 401k.

Bottom line, startups is overall bs. Don't buy the hype and if you do always keep in mind your own interests.

I agree. I think in US you pay a lot of taxes to get pretty much nothing in return. You have no universal healthcare, students have to make huge debts to be able to study, there is no maternity leave, no support for childcare, seriously there is basically no welfare whatsoever. Not to mention property taxes (at least in California) that are outrageous.

And if you get seriously ill and lose your job you are pretty much ... done! oO

> these kinds of comments are stereotypes, nothing more There is nothing fashion about my comment. We clearly come from different lifestyles. I see comments like yours when I talk to young tech professionals, who are not married, no kids no strings attached. Yes, you can make a living in SF.

Usually, they have no idea what it means to leave the office (no time for nerf gun and beer) rush to the school to pick up your kids etc ... Or, they shut down the swimming pool classes because the teacher can't afford to live in the city. Or, they shut down the daycare for the same reason. I see completely the opposite kind of comments when I talk to tech professionals with family and kids.

> My SF condo is new. You have probably missed that I have also classified "new condos" quality as crap. See "Even the quality of the new "luxury condos" is crap" And yes, I did live in some of these fancy new condos. They are overpriced because SF, but don't call them "luxury". I know what luxury looks like and they are not even close.

> cost of living isn't that different, at least if you don't have kids... Right.

> Compared to NYC or Europe? Compared to the fact that given the amount of money gravitating around the bay, the current state of public transportation it is just ridiculous. I have used the muni/bart/caltrain for years and I know what I am talking about. I know what a good public transportation system looks like and the bay area is well far away from that.

> SF traffic is nothing compared to Los Angeles I did not specifically say SF traffic, but Bay Area traffic. More and more families and professionals are moving out SF, this means they are now commuting from east bay, south bay, etc ... and the traffic is ridiculous. I have also friends commuting south bay from SF .. it is hell.

> I've been working at the same place for a decade and enjoy it. Good for you.

> Aside from the fact that buying a house in cash is not necessarily a great idea Yeah, let me rephrase that. What I really wanted to say was that you can probably afford a much bigger downpayment (~50%) and have a very very low monthly payment compared to Bay Area where nowdays you are looking at ~$300.000 downpayment and ~$5000/$6000 monthly payment for the next 30years for that crappy ~1.2M old house 2bed 2bath in some not fancy neighborhood.

No thank you. I know better places where I already know I am moving when I am done here.

Buying a house and settling in the Silicon Valley/SF/etc... does not make any financial sense whatsoever. They are all pretty much overpriced, crappy and old. Even the quality of the new "luxury condos" is crap. Seriously, take a closer look at the quality of the windows, walls, doors, floor, everything...it is all paper thin cheap stuff way overpriced. Not to consider taxes, earthquake and fire insurance.

Cost of life, school, pre-school, daycare etc, they are all crazy expensive. Public transportation is nearly non-existent. Traffic is insane. People who live in SF wake up at 5.30am/6.00am to catch the bus and commute to the Valley oO. They spend at least 2hours if not more a day in traffic.

The only thing that imo makes sense is to move there, save as much money as possible. Maximize your 401k and pension plan contributions. Don't work in scrappy startups for a low paycheck and stock options (most startups are doomed to fail or will never go IPO) but prefer instead bigger companies or close to IPO ones that have a good 401k matching plan, bonuses, incentives, and higher base salary.

Get a new job every 2/3 years, so that you can increase your salary quickly + signing bonuses.

Do this for ~10years and then move to a normal place where you could buy a super nice house in cash and then work remotely.