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rt4 posted:Really? I feel like I've spent most of my career around self-hating people who could find ways to justify any horrible decision made by the company people whose job is to be the company or that lick boots in hopes of climbing the ladder don't count
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Jul 23, 2020 13:53
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Inacio posted:i still dont know anyone who *likes* open plan i like my open plan office more than my previous place where i had my own office with a door 
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Jul 23, 2020 13:56
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You can't put up a softball like this with that custom titleBlinkz0rz posted:i like my open plan office more than my previous place where i had my own office with a door Inacio posted:people whose job is to be the company or that lick boots in hopes of climbing the ladder don't count
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Jul 23, 2020 14:18
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One negative about working from home, I will miss the free gifts from vendors that showed up in the office a few times a year. I got some honey and a mug once, on a random day in the fall. It’s a good mug.
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Jul 23, 2020 15:13
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I'm sure with the money you save Not commuting you can buy your own mug  Listening to people on speaker phone, people having meetings and not closing the door, cellphones vibrating etc... It's all the worst
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Jul 23, 2020 15:22
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Blinkz0rz posted:i like my open plan office more than my previous place where i had my own office with a door I was going to say this. The 3 people on the floor with offices don't see a problem with an open plan.
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Jul 23, 2020 15:56
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Jose Valasquez posted:You can't put up a softball like this with that custom title someone gave me that title for suggesting that it's tough to manage a team comprised of all junior engineers and that fully remote might not be the best environment for that specific team composition Hughlander posted:I was going to say this. The 3 people on the floor with offices don't see a problem with an open plan. i don't have my own office right now (well, when we're back in the office at least) i just like the open office layout and the space we have, that's all
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Jul 23, 2020 16:11
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leper khan posted:The people who have to pay for floorspace. Eh, most C levels want an office and would rather dump everyone else in a mosh pit of musical chairs and no personal space.
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Jul 23, 2020 18:10
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kloa posted:Eh, most C levels want an office and would rather dump everyone else in a mosh pit of musical chairs and no personal space. executives at a company worked at joined everyone in the open plan after a move to show solidarity / we're just like you guys they didn't last a month, and had glass cubes put up to work as offices. extra thick, sound dampening glass, of course. the VPs and CEO straight up stopped coming for a while until the offices were put up lol what a shocker.
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Jul 23, 2020 18:14
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That sounds awful for everyone involved, wtf
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Jul 23, 2020 18:34
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it was. i hated it. bright overhead lights, noise from people typing, tapping their feet, chatting, phone notifications, things being dropped on the ground, elevator noise, espresso machine noise, stairwell traffic, standup meetings at desks when they were being lazy, interruptions from coworkers, and so on. i changed desks a few times over time so i got a taste of all of those. i pretty much had to wear headphones all day and have music drown it out but hey, they were paying less for floorspace and they got their little zen cubes so they didnt have to put up with any of it! god i love working from home
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Jul 23, 2020 18:43
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Old saying: show me an executive who proudly has their desk out on the open plan, and I will show you an unbookable conference room within 25 steps of that desk.
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Jul 23, 2020 18:51
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Blinkz0rz posted:someone gave me that title for suggesting that it's tough to manage a team comprised of all junior engineers and that fully remote might not be the best environment for that specific team composition But it's trueish? I am learning that my Juniors need more oversight remote than when they were going in to the office (with other Junior engineers, but still). Weird that the hardest thing to learn is when/how to reach out for help that not having a crutch sitting next to you exacerbates.
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Jul 23, 2020 19:16
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FMguru posted:Old saying: show me an executive who proudly has their desk out on the open plan, and I will show you an unbookable conference room within 25 steps of that desk. Oh, you met my VP of tech, I see. (or as we like to call him, "the LVP")
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Jul 23, 2020 19:33
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https://twitter.com/theonion/status/1116772995203129346?lang=en
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Jul 23, 2020 19:35
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Inacio posted:how's nz for software development (and more specifically, if you know, web dev)? FWIW I've found that you'll want to have both a "push" (reason to leave current location) and a "pull" (reason to want new location) for moving. It's a long and arduous process - especially if you have pets. Biosecurity is a big deal so it's $$$$ to bring a dog or cat over. I'm specifically in Wellington and it's been pretty great. Pay is about 30% less than what I was getting in the SF Bay Area, but it's still better than London (lol) and is still like 2x-3x median salary territory locally so the money goes a lot further. And as an added bonus I'm out of the Bay Area. In terms of local dev community it's much smaller but people generally know their stuff, and it's actually kind of refreshing going to meetups and stuff because they're way more pleasant/low-key. People don't generally treat their job as an identity and will actually have lives outside of work. The main thing to figure out is the visa. In our case we happened to have 165 points of the required 160 for the Skilled Migrant Category Resident Visa without needing a job in advance, but that made the application itself pretty stressful since it's more thorough than for a work visa, and with our low points margin every component of the application needed to meet their standards or else the whole thing would fall through. The above link has other options that don't require as much up-front investment, for example depending on your age and country of origin you might qualify for the Working Holiday Visa which would basically let you trial living in NZ without a lot of up-front investment (other than upending your life to move overseas obviously). A common route is to start on a work visa and then upgrade to resident later. In practice it's common for companies to be willing to sponsor a work visa here since that process typically only takes a few weeks or so (in normal times) and there's no fixed quota or anything to deal with, though it'll regardless be a subset of companies who will do it. But it's a small country and there's a lot of specializations where experienced people just don't exist in significant numbers, so places can genuinely be pretty desperate and willing to wait a few weeks for a visa to be processed to get the right person. Auckland and Wellington seem to have most of the software jobs, with others in a distant third, and between the two we liked Wellington a lot more since it's got a great cultural scene and lacks Auckland's sprawl. But if surfing or slightly less earthquake risk are priorities then you might prefer Auckland instead. In terms of actually finding a job (once borders are open again), a reasonable strategy is to first book a flight and then tell a bunch of recruiters when you'd be in town for interviews, and can mix them with some regular vacation time to see how you'd actually like the area. But the reason for having the booking before talking to recruiters is that it shows them you aren't yet another flake that's "thinking about it". In my case I had used seek.co.nz and ended up with a rare case of an independent recruiter that wasn't useless: I applied for job X that I didn't quite line up with (they liked me but wanted lots of graphics experience that I didn't have), then the recruiter had job Y in the pipeline that was in very close alignment to my experience in distributed systems. PS: It's illegal in NZ to give immigration advice without a license so I can't really go into specifics in terms of what your situation might be, and that's with good reason since the options can indeed vary greatly once you get into the details. In our case we just went directly to the Immigration NZ website and got everything we needed from there, without needing to hire an immigration lawyer or anything. In my experience every interaction with NZ government is pretty much as straightforward as possible within reason.
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Jul 23, 2020 22:51
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To continue the theme, are there any devs from EU in this thread? The wifey and I are considering moving there at some point, and I'm a citizen so no visa needs (she could apply for residency through me). We were considering London for a bit (my company has an office there and it would be easy to jump) but then Break-shite happened. And then Corona. So, no thanks. Another option we looked vaguely into were Berlin (I know, I know,..., but I still like the idea), coastal Portugal like Porto or Lisbon (probably a big cultural and language barrier to start our lives over, but friends who visited/lived there love it), and Dublin-ish (closest to where we wanna go culturaly, language, wife spent a lot of time there) but were a bit discouraged by real estate prices there. Of course, all of these considerations are post-vaccine. Not moving anywhere until I can peek at least 5 years into the future. All and any info on any of those would be great, if you have it. I'm genuinely curious about my (currently) pies in the sky.
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Jul 23, 2020 23:38
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kayakyakr posted:But it's trueish? I am learning that my Juniors need more oversight remote than when they were going in to the office (with other Junior engineers, but still). Weird that the hardest thing to learn is when/how to reach out for help that not having a crutch sitting next to you exacerbates. Yeah, it is true. I just got dogpiled by a bunch of folks who couldn't accept that some employees need more oversight and direct assistance and hence the title.
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Jul 24, 2020 00:21
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gbut posted:To continue the theme, are there any devs from EU in this thread? I moved to Berlin after about 2.5 years of working in the industry; this was 2017. I got a lot of interest, and two quick offers for around €45k, which is significantly less than I'm making now, and I'm not sure how typical it is. the benefits all seemed great for someone coming from Canada. the lifestyle is great, although it's almost impossible to find a place when you arrive. I dunno, anything specific you want to know? e: should specify that I moved back to Canada. I'm making more now, not in Berlin.
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Jul 24, 2020 00:43
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I've heard in the past about the German references system, so how much is that still a thing, and does it apply in Berlin, at least re: IT jobs and foreigners?
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Jul 24, 2020 05:58
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I don't immediately know what you're referring to. I got the job I took through a personal reference but I was also offered another job with no prior connection.
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Jul 24, 2020 07:00
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Makeout Patrol posted:I don't immediately know what you're referring to. I got the job I took through a personal reference but I was also offered another job with no prior connection. I was referring to Arbeitszeugnis (https://englishjobs.de/info/the-german-reference-letter-system/), but you answered it for me in a way. I doubt it's still much enforced by startups and the like, especially if they are hiring from other EU countries or from further abroad. I'm just curious if it would make it difficult to apply to larger companies while living in Germany. It took me a while to get used to the American model of employment after moving here, like negotiations, the at-will, and the way salaried overtime is sometimes exploited, so I'm trying to figure out what I need to learn about the German system. All my friends living in Berlin are in the non-profit sector and/or artists (of course.)
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Jul 24, 2020 12:30
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gbut posted:To continue the theme, are there any devs from EU in this thread? I've managed devs and dev-likes in a couple EU countries. Be prepped that the salary will be SIGNIFICANTLY lower than in the US, especially if you're looking at Spain or Portugal. My experience is the work-expectations are lower though, way less likely to get pressure to have people work OT or have crazy on-call schedules. That obviously depends on the company though. Job market seems considerably tighter in most EU countries than the US too, but again that probably depends a lot on skillset and such.
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Jul 24, 2020 15:44
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I’ve been doing the expat thing in Scandinavia for a few years now. It differs per country but generally work permits for skilled professionals are pretty easy if you have a company sponsoring you. In my case the visa is a “tied to the employer” thing but in a much safer way than the US scheme. For example if I were fired I’d get a few months notice/severance and am allowed to stay and job hunt for another three months after that runs out. Moving between jobs is fine and usually just means the new company putting their name on your form. The longer term residency/citizenship is very different per country (Sweden being the easiest) so that’s worth considering if you’re planning that far ahead. Getting a job from overseas is possible but it’s a lot harder if you can’t make an in person impression. Bigger places would consider flying you in for interviews from elsewhere in Europe, not sure about the US. Hiring right now is obviously much slower but otherwise the talent market here is small so lots of places are happy to look externally. Lifestyle and work culture is good, English is well spoken by everyone, and there is a good mix of corporate enterprise and small to mid startups to choose from. Standard vacation is five weeks a year, lots of places give six, everyone has unlimited sick leave and free healthcare.
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Jul 24, 2020 23:41
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I've also gotten the impression that Swedish is pretty easy to learn among Scandinavian languages if you already know English, with Finnish/Estonian off in a separate group of languages entirely fake edit: 
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Jul 25, 2020 03:04
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yeah, american devs thinking about fleeing their sinking ship really need to understand and internalise how drastically higher their salaries are compared to the rest of the world. sure, americans have to pay for things (healthcare) out of pocket, but even accounting for that you earn substantially more
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Jul 25, 2020 04:00
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It ain't all about money. I want to live in a functioning society.
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Jul 25, 2020 04:52
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This. Would easily live on half if I had healthcare that wasn't tied to my "at-will" employment. I might even try to do my own thing. Having a family in the US is kinda terrifying, tbh.
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Jul 25, 2020 05:23
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yeah, and i certainly understand that. i'm just warning you that you will need to prepare for, at leaston paper, significantly lower compensation it'd probably be more useful to compare dev salaries with the average cost of living in your target country. comparing them to your current pay will likely deflate you a little and remember that house prices are hosed everywhere within all demon cracker anglo nations, and probably elsewhere too
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Jul 25, 2020 05:29
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I often hate my stupid racist island and its crap pay (compared to USA salaries) But have to remind myself I still get free health care and a whole host of other benefits and securities and still get paid more than all my friends. At least for now anyway, Boris is trying his damnest to gently caress it all up.
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Jul 25, 2020 10:37
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Y'all must really like your little island, otherwise I can't see why people continue to accept such low pay despite having a major financial hub Right There. Seems like if you swim across the river thing there to the land of frog eaters, or down to ze germans you can double your salary pretty much immediately.
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Jul 25, 2020 11:18
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British people are not good at learning new languages, it's why we forced everyone to learn ours.
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Jul 25, 2020 11:26
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They don't bother even learning all the British languages.
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Jul 25, 2020 15:07
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redleader posted:yeah, american devs thinking about fleeing their sinking ship really need to understand and internalise how drastically higher their salaries are compared to the rest of the world. sure, americans have to pay for things (healthcare) out of pocket, but even accounting for that you earn substantially more My wife and I are anchored to our current location in the US because my step-daughter has visitations with her father (who will never leave his little home town no matter what). But, once my daughter is 18 and off to college (another four years), my wife and I are planning to leave this frigid land of snow and ice for a new location. With our travels in the past, we've decided that Ireland is a prime candidate for us. Salaries are, of course, much, much lower there. Housing (around the cities, anyway) is more expensive. But, with what we make now, it is trivial for us to invest for retirement and build significant equity in our home. It is our hope that once we sell our home and reinvest it in a smaller home overseas, the lower salaries won't matter so much because our primary expense (housing) will be greatly reduced by eliminating a mortgage. But, money aside, it is all about an improved lifestyle for us. We're tired of rush-rush-rush all of the time, and we're willing to trade money sitting in a brokerage account for actually enjoying life by just sitting on the front porch and sipping mugs of hot tea with a couple of dogs nearby. Right now, it is Saturday morning and I am answering mails and taking care of work housekeeping tasks that I haven't been able to get to this past week in the ~50 hours that I worked Monday through Friday... I've researched the job market for embedded systems jobs in Ireland and they are quite promising. There are a number of jobs there that fit within that domain, and the requirements are laughably low compared to the inflated requirements for a US job. We're talking 3 years experience for a senior embedded developer position (usually more like 7 to 10 with a masters degree in the US), and about 7 years for a director-level position. My PhD makes the visa/residence process super easy. Hell, I could even ping a university and probably get a lecturer position for two years until permanent residency kicks in. With only 5 million people in the country, finding an experienced professional in a more niche area like embedded systems is a difficult prospect at best. It is my opinion that the older you are, the more that a move to another, less lucrative country with higher quality of life makes sense. Go ahead and burn yourself out while you're young and make the big bucks. But, once you've done that for a while, you'll find that chasing the next dollar just isn't as fulfilling as it once was. Work a decade or two, make your money, and then take the opportunity to enjoy a slower pace of life. Develop some hobbies outside of the office, and stop feeling guilty for not working every second of your life. It isn't fair to you that many US employers place unfair expectations on you, but too many software developers just accept it as the price of admission and make it a part of their way of life.
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Jul 25, 2020 15:20
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Inacio posted:i still dont know anyone who *likes* open plan I do, but only if I have headphones and a team I can convince to never tap me on the shoulder when I’m wearing them, and I fully acknowledge that I’m an extremely weird outlier. Having to actively separate myself from my environment makes me feel more focused. (And in fairness, I’ve never measured whether I’m actually more focused. I just feel that way.)
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Jul 25, 2020 15:51
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My current thinking is that NZ is PST-5. If NZ opened a WFH Visa type I'd gladly pay double taxes to work 5am - 1pm
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Jul 25, 2020 17:26
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redleader posted:yeah, american devs thinking about fleeing their sinking ship really need to understand and internalise how drastically higher their salaries are compared to the rest of the world. sure, americans have to pay for things (healthcare) out of pocket, but even accounting for that you earn substantially more at my company what a lot of devs would do is work for a time onshore, and then move to a different country, but would keep the onshore salary. the best developer I ever worked with moved back to canada and was making $400 an hour working from his farm, but the company was locked into using him because their product was based on an esoteric technology and he was a world expert in it, so it was definitely a result of poor management.
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Jul 25, 2020 19:13
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Hughlander posted:My current thinking is that NZ is PST-5. If NZ opened a WFH Visa type I'd gladly pay double taxes to work 5am - 1pm FWIW with DST moving in opposite directions on both ends, it becomes PST-3 for the other half of the year Also NZ taxes for me are roughly in the area of more than fed but less than fed+CA. This isn't accounting for healthcare and no-fault accident/disability insurance being included
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Jul 25, 2020 19:58
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Progressive JPEG posted:FWIW with DST moving in opposite directions on both ends, it becomes PST-3 for the other half of the year Well now they just need a visa category that lets me keep my US job and get out of this hellhole. Like I said I'm pretty sure they'd need a literal "Working remote for a US company" class Visa.
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Jul 25, 2020 22:31
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Progressive JPEG posted:This isn't accounting for healthcare and no-fault accident/disability insurance being included FML, I have to pay for the highest insurance rate in the country because I have to pay for no fault myself over here. And you *have* to have a car in the US (another surprise as I kinda knew, but I had no idea of the magnitude) except maybe in some 10 sqare miles of east coast and SF. No wonder 60% of the cars in Detroit are uninsured. E: obviously a euro-baby over here, but seriously, this rugged individualism is not working out for me. I grew up in communism, and this is... different. gbut fucked around with this message at 00:48 on Jul 26, 2020 |
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Jul 26, 2020 00:28
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