Doreen, what jobs do men with similar to your skills get? What skills do you work on to improve your chances? Do you believe you have expressed well enough to the requiter your willingness to contribute and help move the organization further?
On a side note, I come from a place where we had communism and as a consequence women in science are marginally a majority (the country is Bulgaria). The vast majority (80%) of the IT reqruiters here are female and despite of that they still target, interview and hire 90% of the times male candidates. I really wish I could tell if the cause is prejudice or merit, but I can't.
What we won't tell you is that many investors have realised that the price will fall freely if the supply can't be limited in demand drops. And they are now seeking to gain control over as much of the circulating supply as possible.
Come to Eastern Europe, your student loan money is enough for a whole new life here.
P.s. honestly, I don't understand how ppl who are so hoplessly indebted are not migrating here. Bulgaria offers very cheap life with the opportunity of doing business with the EU and the US. Why work 24/7 when you can enjoy a good life in a place where the local people and economy need a foreigner to lead them in the business and globalizing world?
It is not so easy to immigrate to Eastern Europe from outside EU/EEA. I don't know about Bulgaria in particular, but typically in order to move to another country, either permanently or temporarily, you need to show that you have a degree in an in-demand major, a job offer from a reputable employer in the country, and an official assessment showing that you will not negatively impact the labor market, e.g. by taking a job a citizen could have done. You can't just pack your bags and take a plane and expect to be allowed to work in the country of your destination.
Every election season, many people in the US say "If X is elected, I am moving to Canada." Then they check the immigration department website [1], realize it is going to take multiple years and thousands of dollars for them to navigate the immigration system, and even then there is a high likelihood of failure. So most promptly give up.
The bureaucratic difficulty of immigration is not the only issue dissuading potential immigrants. Language barrier, cultural differences, loss of one's professional network, the possibility that one's education and experience wouldn't be acceptable to the employers in the destination country, family and friends, etc. also play a role.
I am sure many consider moving to Easter Europe, but few end up going through with it.
Because 80% of people (at least Americans) live <50 miles from their birthplace. People don't like to move. There's a lot of hurdles moving. I know I moved across country (west coast to the south) and there is still a big culture shock after a few years.
I'm considering moving to the east-coast near a mentor of mine. Land is cheaper (when compared to the Northwest) and it's in Zone 5/6 which is pretty good for growing.
From my experience, having some sort of a support structure to move into greatly lessens some of the problems. One of the biggest challenges in moving is finding that new support structure. And I guess this also is highly dependent on how social you are to begin with.
- The overwhelming political nature of everything here. It is "free-market is the solution to everything or you're a socialist" mentality. The Moore race is a good example of this. The only thing worse than a Dem is a pedo. I'm moderate right, for reference. (maybe some of this is just the political climate of the times)
- Bible belt and churches around every corner. Religion is much more common place, and I definitely get weird looks if I mention that I don't go to church.
- Everyone is big. I mean the obesity thing here is common and I'm shocked at the amount of fast food and all meat diets people do. This can lead to some bland food, though there is also some really good food. Great BBQ here.
- There is much more casual racism here (I'm white, but it is enough that I notice it when I'm not looking for it). Lots of confederate war flags and for some reason people keep telling me that the civil war had nothing to do with slaves. I don't know why people keep bringing that up in discussions that it isn't related to. These things also pop up in the frequent political discussions that I can't seem to avoid.
- Finding friends is hard. Part of this is just moving to a new area, part of it is cultural differences. I expect this to be a challenge for anyone that is moving not into a big area or into a job/school that you have a lot of peers. You'd be surprised how many friends you have because you sit next to them for hours a day.
- Everyone is extremely nice. This isn't really a bad thing, but it is surprising. People will go out of their way to help you.
And there are just cultural norms and vernacular that are strange to me. I'm also in a small town, so that definitely plays a factor. But it isn't a hick town either. I can't escape the feeling that I'm a foreigner. And I think that feeling of being a foreigner is off-putting for a lot of people.
You feel like a foreigner in your own country, speaking the same language, growing up with the same TV programs as everyone else. Now imagine how would it be if you moved to another country entirely.
If the former is cultural shock, the latter is a multi-story Tesla Coil to the face :)
Maybe you should believe them. If you want to feel at home, you'll need to adopt some definitions that are compatible.
They say the confederate war flags are fine. Well, if it isn't racist to them, then it isn't racist to them. You won't fit in until you accept that. There are actually black people with that flag...
Based on your non-southern culture, you're reading something into the actions of other people. You are using an incompatible cultural context to make judgements about other people. They aren't unaware of this, which is why it keeps popping up. You are giving off some sort of vibe, perhaps disgust, and they can see it. The only fix is to adopt the cultural definitions of those around you.
Racism in the south is more obvious than racism elsewhere, but not more common. All across the north and west you can find tokenism and low expectations.
The appearance that everything is political is partly just the times, but also partly because you were unaware of it in your former location. Political opinions in your former location were just the norm that you'd always known, so you didn't really see them. Now they stand out. To see the other side of this story, how things are in fact political outside of the south, read through this lawsuit:
https://www.scribd.com/document/368688363/James-Damore-vs-Go...
This. I "retired" to Bulgaria last year for 6 months and lived lavishly: restaurants, beach/mountain vacations, travel, shows, massive apartment, etc and found that my cost of living was 1/10th what I paid in San Francisco for less than half the luxury.
I'm only back in the US now for a limited time. I've done the math and found that I need a few more years of work to live in Bulgaria full-time for the rest of my life.
Curious about how it's worked for you. Why did you pick Bulgaria? How serious have you found language and cultural barriers to be? As an American (my assumption), how hard was it to open a bank account? Etc. Tnx.
Bulgaria is a NATO member and hosts 4 joint military facilities with NATO forces (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulgarian%E2%80%93American_Joi...). The NATO pact treats a military attack on one of its members as an attack on all of them (including the US).
Only a small percentage would have jobs they could take with them / work remote. What would they actually do in Bulgaria or for it? And this is looking past language barriers.
I say this as someone that had a wonderful trip there and like the country and people quite a lot.
I've seriously considered it, but my family is the primary reason why I haven't pulled the trigger. I have Scandinavian roots on my Dad's side and would most likely try to utilize that.
Because they don't understand. A common refrain about the story in the U.S. of LaVar Ball, the impetuously famous basketball dad, is that it was a huge mistake to send his kids to play in Lithuania.
It's a classic example of "worldly" Americans going to the Louvre and being "cultured" but not having the depth of understanding that Eastern Europe is a wonderful, beautiful place. It's just not as well-kept and poorer so they turn up their nose.
I think there's plenty of room to critique LaVars choices while staying purely within the confines of basketball. The difference between skill level, exposure, and compensation is quite stark between the US and anywhere else. He could send his kids to go live at the Louvre and it's still be a dumb basketball move.
Actually, Lithuania fields a very good national team. When highschool kids (in Melo's case) are now having to adapt to the pro level, it can only benefit him.
The horrible thing about generalizations is that they are so painstakingly accurate sometimes, and they hit so close to home that people hate them. Americans are hilariously uncultured. Do software engineers tend to be socially awkward? Yes. Try to understand the world for what it is or live in perpetual cognitive dissonance, your choice.
Generalizing it as "most" is definitely not a sign of a realist's view. Most of them reap profits from low wages and the open EU market. Others get oversized government contracts funded by EU funds and a large part of them do it with corruption. Finally there are some but not that many "no-go" markets which are a special interest of the local and Russian oligarchs and their lobbying kills the competition.
Romania did a relatively good job in their judicial reform, but Bulgaria lags behind a lot on that.
That may be valid only if you're able to raise good money but the tech investing culture is quite underdeveloped here. The startup scene needs several bigger exits to make the investors greedy and curious about it and also construction/private property yields huge profits right now, so the tech startups are not the spotlight catcher.
Without making this sound ridiculous -- sometimes it just doesn't make sense to do tech. If I can make crazy returns investing and/or building property, you should probably be doing property and not tech. EE is probably a good place to be in terms of property investing at the moment.
The cult of and preference for private and premium health care services in Central/Eastern Europe are going to backslash terribly in couple of decades. Everything works well as long as the only contributors and users of it are young, healthy, employed people. Then those private health providers and insurers will simply disappear or bankrupt, and people will end up with disintegrated public healthcare if only they will be eligible for it at all.
The current state of things is not perfect, and the private healthcare probably has indeed the inherent problem you're describing, but it is also maybe the only thing that keeps the bulk of our medical doctors from emigrating to richer parts of Europe.
AI and data are the new oil, so beware folks - when the peasant workers are no more needed, you may want to watch out for the dictators trying to take over the ship.
