I also live in Europe (Germany & Austria) and what you're saying is 100% true. I like Europe, but I really miss the positive everything is worth a shot attitude in America.
Everything here is no, no, no, why would you do that? It's so demotivating, and G-d forbid you make a tiny mistake! Long term I also don't see how this place won't just keep getting poorer... unless there is a major attitude adjustment in the near future.
Also, everyone just tries to dunk on everyone with petty status games like owning a fancy car... as if that's the ultimate achievement in life... really lame & depressing.
It's the main reason I would like go back home tbh. There are a lot of problems in America and a lot of things are okay here, so it's hard to say where it's really worse, but I just don't understand why they always need to have these negative attitudes all the time... it costs nothing to have a positive attitude...? Maybe I'm just too stupid to understand.
I'm an "expat" living in Germany and am also thinking of moving to US/CA for the sake of living in a different environment that is more can-do, even if I don't end up starting my own thing.
I keep trying to convince myself that day-to-day life in Germany is great, e.g. low cost of living, low crime, etc. but I'm wondering if I'm just comparing to the worst parts of what I hear about the USA on the internet. It's a large place anyways.
i.e. what if I moved to a reasonably priced city with a similar crime rate, get a reasonable amount of insurance. Has anyone done that?
There's a lot of things I love about living where I do, but if I could get Dutch urban design in California I'd look very closely at moving back. I also worry about the strength of US democracy, but Europe isn't immune to backsliding here either.
Yeah, all the productivity improvements could be used to make everyone's lives better, but hey, some people really need yatchs, cars they can't really drive, multiple houses and more.
Your parent is one of the few successful ones, whose niche paid off. You don't hear about the vast majority of researchers & scientists, all smiliarly talented and motivated, where at least in their lifetime, their research didn't payoff.
For the average person, the expected value of staying flexible and having decent breadth, is way higher than betting your entire life on some tiny niche.
I think a lot of people are in a similar position but not as open and honest about it. I feel refreshed reading it, rather than that it’s something to be embarrassed about.
Edit: better english
To grandparent's defense - I find management genuinely essential and quite impactful.
It's a rare occurrence that developers on their own can communicate well with any kind of stakeholder. It might be anecdotal, but I find a high correlation between best technical and worse communication skills. I've seen people, who might be seen as typical 10x developers, cause they were so productive, be extremely bad with speaking about development in general. I've seen product owners literally gnashing their teeth in anger, but holding it up, since the guy really delivers - despite the bad "style".
Also, seeing already quite a fair share of stakeholder meetings... The part about style couldn't be closer to the truth. The non-technical people act, as if they didn't hear "99% percentile uptime is so so" or anything similar - at all! What they do hear instead are the speaker's emotions. They want to feel secure and good about going forward.
I've seen big budget moves based mostly on that: how well the project was sold to them. Technical merits were irrelevant. Whole teams disbanded, despite being quite productive, because someone got management excited about the new thing (also completely inapplicable to the problem at hand, but with good marketing: e.g. AI, cloud)
I find the grandparent just frank. It aligns pretty well with my anecdotal experience. I also think managers should be well compensated, since so much is at stakes (whole team, departments).
The knock on management from a lot of folks I’ve talked to is that managers end up working harder for less money — this is actually the case at the line manager level, but if you can get past that things improve quickly.
Personally, I think it’s a suckers game to look for meaning or purpose at work. I’m there to do a job, get paid, then use that money to find my own purpose. If you want to use work as your creative outlet, great — but you’ll probably be frustrated.
I don't see life slowing down, maybe after some natural or man-made disaster wipes out half the population and most modern infrastructure, but until then, I only see things getting faster.
HFT is the perfect example of the benefits of being fast, literally by trading faster, not necessarily better, billions in profit are made. In other fields, first-movers often have a massive advantage, AWS for example.
Just look at Europe, things are slow and rather relaxed here... and as a result they've missed out on about the last 3 generations of technology.
I think many people won't be able to keep up, but the future of evolution is probably people who can sit still for days on end, just consuming information non-stop, with the ability to react very quickly as soon as the information signals opportunity for a reward. Some sort of really autistic apex predator stuff.
Ironically, even though computers can do so many tasks faster and better than humans, one would think we could all relax and let the computers work, but instead the trend seems to be, that we constantly have to be even faster in the remaining fields where computers are not yet superior.
The result of for-loops and automation hasn't been that humans no longer have to rush around doing mundane tasks, but rather that now we have to rush around writing for-loops and fixing all the bugs introduced by rushing... and so it continues...
I'm sorry, Europe has missed out on the last three generations of technology? I live in Europe and have visited the US. My impression has been the opposite.
When I was visiting (5 years ago):
- The trains didn't work
- People printed out google maps instructions instead of using a network connection because data connections were bad/expensive
- I had to sign my name to pay with a card at gas stations. I couldn't use an electronic payment card, only credit cards worked.
Now these are just examples off the top of my head. In my home country of Finland, the trains work, internet and utilities work (we don't have blackouts), payment is usually done by NFC for small amounts, card readers (with pin) for larger amounts.
If you're talking about industrial technology, I don't have enough information to compare. But I would assume Europe has better manufacturing. After all, Germany makes all the cars that end up in the US.
After all, Germany makes all the cars that end up in the US.
I just pulled up a list of the top 25 selling cars in the US and there are 0 German brands on that list. Plus most of the 'German' cars sold in the US are also made in the US.
Using physical checks/cheques to pay for rent what means that you need to physically go to a bank, or send it via post. It takes days if not weeks to clear
Lack of same day/instant money transfers between bank accounts so everyone uses paypal which is not a real bank and it can block your money for 180 days for their "investigations"
If you feel poor at 1.5x the local average, imagine how the pople making 1x that or below must feel.
BTW, why do you feel poor if you don't mind me asking?
PS: I'm also a dev in Austria now. You can reach out to me for a post-pandemic coffee if you want, would be cool to meet another dev. My email's in my profile. Cheers!
I mean, immigration is never a long-term solution.
Immigrants will soon be facing the same issues (high housing, high education costs, lower wages).
I reckon in about 20-30 years the arbitrage opportunity to immigrate to Western countries will be eliminated, it already is much reduced compared to 30 or 40 years ago. QoL in Western countries will be lower, and higher in the rest of the world.
I often think of a documentary I saw about Somali refugees who came to America in the early 2000s (sadly I can't find it anymore.) They ended up moving back to Africa because they hated life in America. Working two terrible minimum wage jobs just to pay rent and food. They made no friends and had no free time or money.
They were happier living in a UN funded refugee camp spending time with friends and family.
I think the only way Western countries have any chance of reducing the falling QoL is space exploration, but I don't think their is enough energy and motivation.
It's like, no, some places really are just filled with assholes.
Maybe in America it's still true, but there I also feel like it's changing for the worse as well.
Not many friendly people walking around this planet anymore it seems.