What a joke. I moved from europe (eastern europe but still eu) to the us after my parents died in a hospital because of the incredible quality of “free healthcare” which didn’t want to pay for their treatment and often forgot to feed the in the hospital.
If I had the money I made in the us then I could have maybe put them in a private hospital. You’re only as free as how much money you have in your pocket, nothing else matters.
Hey! I’m currently an ml engineer and my dream is to be ceo of a mid size company one day. Do you have any advice for how I can move into that direction?
No advice but I can share my perspectives. I happened to be at the right place at the right time to start a company and be an early player in a new technology that created a multi-billion market that didn't exist before. I happened to have the cross-trained in the right combination of skills and showed up at the right time. Skill alone wouldn't have been enough.
Try to be forward thinking about what trends might be coming. It used to be easier to do this but now everyone hops on trends quickly so it's harder to maintain a head start.
I'm looking at my next venture right now and I'm mostly focused on the overall macro picture surrounding the growth prospects of an industry. Things like population dynamics are playing a bigger part of how I see opportunity. The best CEO won't accomplish much in a dying or flat industry.
Ignore people who say "X is saturated". Everything is saturated. What matters is if the market is going to grow.
Now I'm more focused on wealth deployment and preservation and trying to focus less on building new things. Building is where my passion is but it's high risk and I don't need to be taking risks anymore.
Really appreciate The time you’ve put into this! I have no wealth or anything like that, so the road for me will definitely be to work like a dog for the next 10 years and hope someone wants to pay handsomely for what I build (honestly even being a senior at faang I’ll never escape the middle class paying income tax). Afterwards I’ll move to a lower tax/col country snd live like a king
I did the opposite and found the us much better. Pay and opportunities are infinitely better, people are friendlier, having a car is much easier and more convenient.
The first points are salient. The last point is interesting, since a car is generally much more required in the US, yes it is easier and more convenient to have a car in the US, as well as a buttload cheaper, but life without a car is (generally) a lot less easy or convenient.
I think it depends on where you live. If you live in New York, LA, Chicago, Seattle a lot of the big cities have such horrible traffic I can see the want to get rid of your car.
If you live in a place like Austin Texas and work from home, like I do. Having a car is a delight. I can go in any direction and bring my stuff I can get stuff from the store and bring it home. I've lived without a car in New York City, there's a lot of downsides to that. You don't have the freedom to just go to IKEA and get a something.
True. But if we're talking software engineering, everyone posting here is probably "privileged" in that regard.
Let me just take this moment to say, holy shit what a fascinating time we all live in and what a happy accident it was that I stumbled into software engineering in this particular era.
I'm not aware of a recent time in history when you could get what amounts to a doctor's salary without the lengthy schooling, rigorous training, certification.
The capital owning class are gunning to eliminate these salaries. "You will own nothing and be happy" is not something they just reserve for the lower classes. The future is hard to predict but don't rule out these outrageous salaries being gone in a decade or two and the market being much more middle/lower middle class type jobs.
I don't doubt you're right. The last three decades have been a "worker's market" for those of us lucky enough to have stumbled into a trade that Corporate desperately needed the services of.
I am doubly fortunate to be ending my career in this field. I have no idea what the future holds for those still in the field. It may well become a narrow path you need to hew to.
What if you get that salary precisely because this field is free of the sort of inefficiencies and government regulation that drag on healthcare and doctors.
If you're not lucky enough to be among the privileged, moving to Europe is impossible unless you have inherited citizenship (which is itself another kind of privilege).
Living in America is by definition a privileged position. Largest military in the world guarantees either the country survives anything or the world undergoes nuclear Armageddon (and even then the tax man is still coming to your door).
Really? I was under the impression that even the average person living in a poor European country (e.g. Moldova, Belarus, Kosovo) has a worse quality of life in most ways compared to, for example, someone living in a rural trailer park in Mississippi (an especially poor state) making minimum wage. What are some notable examples?
Funnily enough, if you want to talk about LA and SF and NY, all of those places have free healthcare for the poorest citizens as well as paid family leave.
And there are absolutely places as bad if not worse than skid row in the European Union. e.g. Romani ghettos. Are we talking about the REALLY poor poor people, or just ordinary, say, 10th-percentile-level poverty? Are we comparing Skid Row in Los Angeles to Fakulteta in Sofia, Bulgaria? Or are we comparing poor trailer park minimum wage life in Alabama to poor rural minimum wage work in Romania?
And of course all this assumes "normal" full time salaried wage work for a large corporation, unless you want to add in seasonal labor or subsistence agriculture or running your own business or family-owned business work or unpaid internships or apprenticeships or contract work or gig economy work and whether any of those count as poor and whether it counts to say they do or don't have certain benefits under what conditions.
Also, just checking, but are we counting US territories (e.g. Puerto Rico)? That might change my opinion.
That's just moving goal posts. European people are still European even if they're not EU citizens. Compare New England averages to European Union averages if you want a fair assessment - you'll find that not only are New Englanders making more money, they also have equivalent or higher quality of life than many EU countries do.
It's not, I just didn't specify it because for me it's logical, I highly doubt OP wants to move to Belarus, but yeah go ahead and pick the absolute poorest and least likely countries anyone would immigrate to when they say "Europe" and tell me about moving goal posts ...
"average", "money", yeah sure, the average american probably make more money. And yes you're right, the poorest Americans make more money than the poorest Europeans, but money isn't all. Otherwise nobody would ever complain, they'd be as happy than Norway, which is obviously not the case. https://fee.org/articles/the-poorest-20-of-americans-are-ric...
If quality of life = being able to afford material goods then sure, but I guess that's were Europeans see the world in a different way. I'll take min wage, job security, healthcare, free education, more vacation days, paid sick leaves, paid parental leaves, guaranteed minimum incomes, &c. If you're a min wage worker in the EU you have a much less stressful life than in the US, it's not even comparable. They're at least half a century late in term of social/workers right
> I highly doubt OP wants to move to Belarus, but yeah go ahead and pick the absolute poorest and least likely countries anyone would immigrate to
If we are comparing sub-territories then, why on earth would OP want to move to Mississippi? Or LA? Or NY? If OP moved to, say, New Hampshire or Vermont, not only would they make more money but they would have some of the highest qualify of live anywhere on the planet.
> If quality of life = being able to afford material goods then sure
New England states have similar labor / worker rights to the EU; Massachusetts has something close to universal healthcare (although not exactly, then again every country's version is different), CT has paid family and medical leave, New York has free community college, all of New England is LGBTIA+ friendly at the legislative level, etc.
> but I guess that's were Europeans see the world in a different way
I am Albanian and my family moved here when I was 6 months old. I am not defending America for nothing, I know what we left behind. You can claim that living in Germany, France, etc. is better but that is like saying buying a house in Beverly Hills is better than buying a house in Compton. Obviously rich countries are always going to be better to live in regardless of what treaties or unions they sign. The beauty of the United States is that you can get comparable quality of life results in certain areas while having military protection everywhere.
Respectfully, this is HN, and most people who are looking on this thread for advice are indeed privileged. I don't think it's an unreasonable default assumption.
I moved from Europe to the US, and so have a lot of other people who aim to become rich. In europe most rich people inherit everything, mobility to upper class is basically non existent. Here it’s Very much possible
How did you make mor? i worked in Sweden and my compensation was 4x less than it is in America. Unless you got extremely lucky or were much more senior it’s impossible, case in which you would have made far far more in the us anyhow
For multiple reasons (scarce supply and large demand of visas, unfair stereotypes, etc) international hires need more objective criteria to stand out, even if it's just window dressing
You are much luckier and more of a “survivor” than any of them I feel. I also work at Faang, but only graduated college last year and only make 200k a year, barely. I will never reach your income at a job with where the stock market is at now, and how much the competition increased, you rode the wave all the way to the top of the corporate slaves pyramid.
So I’ll quit next year to start something because otherwise I’ll never become anywhere near rich with my income.
I am not entirely sure your premises are correct, but it certainly boils down to personal opinions so no point in debating.
Just for fun, I went back to my 1040 tax statements for the first three years of my career, about a decade ago: $35k, $65k, $89k.
The fact that you are starting with $200k is fabulous and not to be taken for granted imho. If you are able to put the majority of your after tax savings in the market, compounding over a decade might surprise you even if we are at an all time high.
$200k is a lot, but it doesn't really go far in the bay area if you don't want to cohabitate.
That being said, people have done more with less under similar circumstances, and thinking $200k is not enough is harmful. I used to make $130k, then I made $90k, and now I make $300k and I don't feel any different, even though I once thought it would make me happier. I don't regret focusing on my career, but I now spend time doing things that make me happy instead of working all the time.
As the saying goes, "you can afford anything, not everything." it's important to determine what brings you most joy. For me, it's being able to buy meal kits so I don't have to worry about cooking (save time).
Of course, saving / investing money is important too.
If I had the money I made in the us then I could have maybe put them in a private hospital. You’re only as free as how much money you have in your pocket, nothing else matters.