pthomas551

India is a regulatory nightmare. It's more likely to be Tokyo or Seoul. Maybe Sydney but from a geographic perspective Australia isn't exactly ideal.

Yep, an obsession with (the appearance of) "hard work" and "frugality" combined with hardcore nepotism is the Midwestern way.

SLAs and maybe even company politics. Incidents are politicized at a lot of companies. Even if the official rhetoric says "when it comes to incidents we don't blame people and there are no politics" the reality is often the complete opposite.

Maybe this is true if you are stuck with roommates, but given how terrible most open offices are now the bar is pretty low for home to be better.

My home office in my small 2br city center apartment has a better monitor than the one at my open office workstation, I can listen to whatever music I want, no BS small talk, and I don't feel like there are eyes on me constantly. Plus, commuting sucks no matter where you live, most city dwellers don't live within walking distance of their offices.

I do like the opportunity to socialize w/ coworkers from time to time but 2-3 days/week in office is more than enough for me.

Yeah, but in Google's earnings call yesterday they said that the situation is stabilizing.

FB mainsite is on the decline...in the US.

Globally it's still going strong.

Based on what we've heard from Google yesterday, and FB's Q1 results just now, it looks like the much heralded ad crunch is turning into not much more than a speed bump.

You're making a sweeping assertion with zero evidence to back it up.

One obvious counterpoint to this argument is that this recession was not caused by markets realizing that many publicly listed tech companies actually had no market and no path to profitability.

Also, non-tech companies took on a large number of engineers in the late 90s to address Y2K - many of whom got laid off afterwards. Not an issue here.

Was it really that hard to predict the Internet? SF authors picked up on it almost immediately.

not sure Westerners are in a place to criticize given that we love to thoughtlessly appropriate Hindu/Buddhist imagery all over the place in our culture

personally I love this aspect of Evangelion because it makes me examine my own orientalist biases

Yeah, illegal cannabis growers are known for using incredibly toxic pesticides. Another reason to stick with licensed dispensaries.

The thing is as startups mature and become enterprise level shops, they need people who know how to work with enterprise software. Guess who has all the experience with that? Yep, the people with 10+ years experience. My company is hiring very senior devs like crazy right now for exactly this reason.

Plenty of women in hijabs in rural Minnesota these days. Depends on the town but in a lot of places it's no problem at all.

It's a bit easier as an expat because there are lots of other expats also looking to meet people. Very freshman year of college type vibe in my experience. Your problem becomes less making friends, and instead ensuring you make the right friends. There are a lot of dodgy characters in expat communities.

Yeah, written English corresponds to spoken English more than in a lot of other languages, where the vocabulary and grammar can vary considerably between the written and spoken word.

Yep, it's extremely mistaken (but very American) to assume that American preferences on writing style prevail in all other languages and regions. To take one example, in written German the passive voice is often considered better style, whereas in contemporary English it's the exact opposite.

IMO, unless you really need to live in China for whatever reason, you should focus on starting a career in the States and getting an expat assignment in China. You will have a much more comfortable lifestyle and have something at home to go back to if things don't pan out.

Yeah I'm no CCP supporter but sick of the bad takes on this. China has no national credit reporting system and it's very difficult to enforce civil court judgments across city/provincial lines. "Social credit" systems are mainly intended to help with this problem. The person in the article is in trouble for not paying his debts, not political activity or having the wrong friends.

I'm sure the CCP would love to use social credit as another tool of repression, but for now they're having enough trouble getting a normal credit reporting system going.

More like the Taiping Rebellion...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiping_Rebellion#Death_toll

Shen Yun is run by Falun Gong, which is a Scientology-like cult. Their followers may be heavily oppressed in China, which is wrong, but it's still a cult. We're not talking about traditional performers who fled during the Cultural Revolution or something.

Lots of people today travel faster than 220mph between LA and SF; they take airplanes. The point is to take pressure off the airspace because it's already close to capacity, not to mention the visibility issues at SFO that mess things up all the time. And of course flying is terrible from a CO2 emissions perspective.

(Not) looking forward to CA millennials turning into NIMBYs when they inherit properties with super low Prop 13 tax assessments. Passive rental income with minimal property taxes is a hell of a drug..

Well that and your labor market power is maximized in places where there are many potential employers. If you put down roots in a one company town, they can just tell you to go pound sand when you ask for a raise or promotion. Also, being in a place with lots of employers is a hedge against layoff risk.

Having a project in the city database means little until shovels get put in the ground. Plenty of zombie projects are on the books in my town. Even if the project is active, it often takes years to get all the permits.

I am divided on this. On the one hand straight up age discrimination is definitely a thing. A surprising number of startup types don't even know it is illegal so they are completely explicit about it.

On the other hand, companies who engage in age discrimination are probably shit companies, so are you really losing out by them not considering you?

My experience in the US is that Thai restaurants are the best bet for Hainanese chicken rice. It’s not on the usual Thai restaurant menu so any place offering it is probably doing so because they have a passion for the dish and/or their Thai clientele demand it. Greatly missed chicken rice until I figured this out.

Have you been to Saravana Bhavan downtown?

Uh, I’m not Singaporean and don’t live in Singapore any longer but good guess.

You must have taken Uber more than a few weeks ago because it’s been shut down since late 2018. If you don’t believe me open up the app on your phone and try to book a ride between two points in Singapore.

Not really surprised that they haven’t completely removed all the marketing from their site, it’s not like Uber is renowned for attention to detail.

Yeah, it’s clear you’ve never lived in Singapore. Lots of important places are inadequately served by transit including major universities, many major embassies, important employers, the best food centers, and many of the popular Western expat neighborhoods. Want a bit of nature? Hope you like a 30 minute cab ride to the Pulau Ubin ferry terminal, which is also not served by transit. Want to go out for drinks? MRT and most buses stop at midnight. Maybe it’s only a 10 minute inexpensive cab ride home for you but your Singaporean friend probably lives in an HDB in a more remote area and is going to have to go a lot farther and pay a lot more.

Oh yeah and even if transit seems like it’s in close proximity, many of these areas are seemingly designed in the most pedestrian hostile way possible. What looks like a 10 minute walk can easily be 20 minutes once you factor in absurdly long pedestrian signal times and having to go over overpasses etc. And the average temperature is 30-32 degrees, it feels like 35 when humidity is factored in.

Easy for you to say “take Uber” but Uber left SG last year, it’s now Grab which is a much worse experience. And good luck getting a Grab or a taxi during anything approaching peak hours, or when it’s raining. Do you commute by cab every day where you live?

Where is there Ethiopian in Singapore? When I lived there I had to go up to Bangkok for my fix.