As someone who is a law abiding citizen in the Netherlands, I am jealous.
The entire story is basically no different to any other person who works there way into IT other than he’s an ex-Con and in the US it’s hard for them to usually get jobs.
I have about 1 to 2 years of work experience while I was studying. These study programs took 8 years of my life (and are supposed to take 9 years if you study it in a normal fashion).
Despite that, I can't even get the attention of any company in the US and it has been a dream to work at Google (I started applying since 2015), but they never respond with a coding test. In most cases they don't respond at all, at other times it's a rejection.
So yea, I'm jealous. I'm happy for this guy that he got such a great turn in his life. But I'm also jealous. Why can't I get such a turn in my life? I'm doing my best.
And it's not enough. And that's a painful message to see and it's mostly because I can't work in the US. Silicon Valley privilege is a thing. I want to be there, I have the skills to be there but I can't, because I'm not an American and I basically need to be a lot better in order to be flown over with a H-1B visa.
I know what I do have (living in a western European country with a relatively good social system), and I'm grateful for that. And I'm sad that there are amazing programmers who don't get the chances that do serve themselves on a silver platter for me. Some amazing programmers get shit pay by virtue of the country they're in, and they can't easily be recognized and get out. And I wish they'd be capable of making a $100K as well. Nevertheless, I am still jealous (and grateful and happy for that person, I feel all of it more or less at the same time).
Just having a few degrees and minimal work experience probably isn’t going to be enough to break into the US market in many cases, you likely would need to be known as an outstanding expert or have some special skill to help justify issuing a Visa for you (e.g. the O-1 Visa). I’d suggest focusing on distinguishing your career within the context of the EU and if you still have the US as a long term goal look carefully at how best to get there. (Some others who have accomplished that probably have better advice, of course! As a natural born citizen I’ve never had to worry about this personally, but I assume I might face similar challenges if I wanted to move to the EU to work.)
I appreciate the tip of the O-1 visa and how to potentially get there. And I also appreciate that you state it very clearly that US companies did not choose for this fate either.
The last time I gave an interview almost 70-80% of the work was done in the US and they are throwing some unimportant work to their captive in their outsourcing destination.
I have 13+ years of IT experience. Most of the good jobs are filled internally by some kind of favoritism and the crap jobs are floated to hiring websites. The level of technical work is a joke. Most of the companies try to hire my experience level people for junior positions(4 years exp) because the cost is low or tell to go to management.
I see my friends in Silicon valley doing interesting jobs and yes, Silicon valley privilege is a thing. The American dream is a thing.
By the way we do not even have a social system to speak of. So lucky you!
In what (perhaps small or big) way do you think others could help?
I hope that we can eventually have a social system for anyone. I hope AI will take care of this with good political leadership (one can hope).
However, even the Dutch social system isn't a heaven. It's good, but not heaven.
Good: I have success stories from family members who got their hearing back after a 15000 euro's operation that they got for free-ish (and 25+ years of being almost deaf, so there was a waiting time but also the technology needed to be there). Other family members who got a stroke got access to government housing or free personalized medical care.
Bad: I know one troubled person who is kind, but has a very very troubled mind. I'm honestly surprised this person isn't dead. The list includes almost freezing to death and being on your way to starve to death. And that's only what I know, and I know nothing. For the truly troubled mind, the Dutch social system doesn't work at all. Since all of my family is working/middle class, I wonder what goes on in the lower class families and the Dutch social system. My guess is: it's even worse.
With that said, the "being significantly helped" to "almost death on the street ratio" in my family is about 3 to 1. And since I know almost nothing, I daresay that ratio is a conservative negative estimate in my particular family. Fortunately, most of my family is simply fine.