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Step 1: Move to SV.

I'm sorry, I'm Australian and studied and worked in Australia. I spent 4 years in SV, and now founded a startup in Europe.

Even after the Covid issue has played out, I'm convinced SV will still be where a passionate technologist can optimize their impact and lifetime earnings. There's just nothing that can compare to being surrounded by so many smart people who share your interests.

I've heard stories about the dotcom crash, and how it was awesome because everyone who had no business being there left. You just had the geeks that wanted to build stuff for the sake of building stuff, and it turns out there was still plenty of money floating around after things got going again.

Europe has laws which makes hiring people risky and expensive. And even if you do become a top earner, expect to pay 50% in taxes (+ 25% VAT). It's hard to fathom individual engineers would be able to save enough to have the sort of financial freedom to bankroll a company while still in their 20's.

But don't worry, there are government grants for you! Just be prepared to spend 1/3rd of your time dealing with paperwork and hourly reporting of what you did on a day by day basis, all for 50k here, 40k there. I feel these grants are designed to be demoralizing and the startup equivalent of unemployment benefits. And then you realize that almost all R&D in Europe, from startups to multinationals, is subsidized by EU funding schemes and mountains of paperwork.

Don't underestimate how good SV has it with the "I like you and your idea, here's $1m and come back next year and tell me if it worked".

</rant>

> Step 1: Move to SV.

What about...

- I don't want to move to SV, I'm not that young anymore.

- I don't want to move outside my country, or

- specifically to the US and SV, which are not a particularly good place to live in anyway, or

- even if I wanted it, entry to the US is stressful and not that easy, or

- I have friends/family ties where I live, and those are important to me

There's plenty of reasons why your step 1 is bad advice for a lot of people.

No pain no gain. If the US and SV opportunities aren't a type of gain that's compelling to you then of course you dont need to worry about it. But if they are, then you need to make your own luck by making those sacrifices. Things about family ties and wants and stress are all part of the work you put in to make your own luck.

Being American is a pretty great gig, for all the stuff you keep hearing on the news. There's a reason silicon valley is silicon valley, New York is New York, and so on. Theres a lot of luck that comes from being here. My parents left behind their entire support network in india to set out on their own, navigated the complex immigration process (granted, easier 20-30 years ago than now), and made those sacrifices, and it more than paid off. And I got lucky by just getting to be born here. Things like "you dont want to move outside your country " are completely valid, and part of why american immigration works is because immigration is such a hard thing for people to do (leaving everything behind) that it self selects for the people willing to make those sacrifices.

The one valid one you mention is the difficulty of immigrating. That can be a straight up barrier in the way of a motivated person that would be a useful addition to this country and should be removed. This is the country of immigrants. We should keep that part of our culture alive.

> No pain no gain. If the US and SV opportunities aren't a type of gain that's compelling to you then of course you dont need to worry about it

There are many reasons why this might be out if your control, beyond visa requirements. Maybe you have dependents your can’t bring with you (sick or elderly family for example), or maybe your SO has a job that’s hard to move. Or you have a family and can’t afford the crazy SV rent for a place large enough.

I was replying to the bulk of the comments in the post above, which were along the lines of not wanting to go because of age/liking hometown etc, and specifically mentioned at the end that there are valid barriers to consider, including one in the original post about the complexity of immigration. There are true barriers in the way, my disagreement was with the ones listed above.

I disagree with your disagreement about the barriers, namely:

It is false that the US is the ideal place to live in (or to temporarily migrate to if you're in tech). It is false that, all other things being equal, one should prefer to live in the US. The US is not the default place people should aspire to live in, not even people in tech. Even within the US, SV is not the best place to live in. Living in some place means much more than just working in trendy tech companies.

For a lot of us -- I'd say the vast majority, outside the HN bubble -- the US is not a particularly interesting place to live in, even if there were no immigration barriers. Which there are, anyway.

The U.S. is absolutely not the ideal place to live in. However, it is the ideal place to aspire to if you want to make a lot of money without being born to an already wealthy family. (Wealth of course being relative, because you need some wealth to immigrate nowadays)

Money, and opportunity for their children to earn money, is the reason so many people have immigrated to the U.S in the past century.

Money isn't everything, but you can sure buy a lot of freedom with it. Of course, nothing in life is risk-free, and making money is no exception, and the U.S. is unforgiving when it comes to those who come here and fail.

Ok, that’s fair enough. I don’t disagree, I just think that it’s often out of your control (which it sounds like you agree with too).

I do agree with that. If its out of your control, its out of your control. I see that as the difference between "want" (I dont want to leave) and "can't" (I cant leave). Living in a community of immigrant families and a city of immigrants here by NYC has colored that perspective for me since I'm surrounded by people that went through hell for a better life, including my own family. I personally am of course incredibly privileged that I get to just be born here and have the opportunities that come with being an American. But my own family has been uprooted 3 times within my own lifetime so far moving around the country to pursue better opportunities before winding up here, and that pales in comparison to what others have gone through. If you can't you can't, but if you don't want to, well, selection bias, but I'm surrounded by the people that did anyway.

Understood, but if the first step of advice is "move to SV", that right there is unhelpful to the majority of programmers. It cannot work as a piece of general advice, and for most people it's also unattainable and/or undesirable.

Yeah definitely, its not good as a general bit of advice, but it could be helpful as a specific bit of advice to a motivated person down on their luck. If your luck is tied to geography, see if theres a way to move to somewhere with better luck. Whether it's a different city or a different country.

Sounds like having priorities that go beyond making money or having career success. Nothing wrong with that, but it may be something to make peace with.

Yes, of course. To elaborate, most people (outside the HN bubble) have these priorities, they are good priorities to have, and these people work in tech. Therefore, advice starting with "move to SV" applies only to an extremely small subset of programmers worldwide, and as such, is not very helpful.

If the career advice is "ditch everything in your life, become magically younger, live in a country you don't like, ditch friends and family, and generally live for work, and then you'll maybe succeed at having a tech job", that's... less than useful. Maybe if you're young and starting.

Someone who is reading this conversation will benefit from being told that moving to the Bay Area, New York, Berlin, Sydney, Amsterdam etc. for a couple of years is possible. Maybe it's not you, and that's fine. In general, though, helpful advice is about choosing the right side of a trade-off, not a panacea.

It's more than "maybe it's not you": it's not most people outside the HN bubble where SV is the mecca and everyone wants to join a US startup. Yes, there are trade-offs involved in every choice (except age, of course: that's not a trade-off, you cannot choose to become younger and be picked for low-wage trainee job positions that are only offered to young people), but I don't get why we're so fixated in such specific trade-off options.

In the spirit of the article, which warns about optimistic people arguing for unrealistic paths, I'm just warning that "move to SV" is not, for most people, reasonable advice.

Now, you may argue that for people reading HN, there is a larger subset which do aspire and would benefit from moving to SV. I won't argue against that. But I thought the spirit of the article was not about providing career advice for such a small subset of tech-minded people.

To sum up, this proposition is false for most people (and not just me): "everyone passionate about technology should, all else being equal, strive to move to Silicon Valley and work there, because that's the best place there is".

In a discussion about career advice, saying "move to where the most and best paying jobs are" is absolutely good advice. It may not work for everyone, but that advice applies to far more people than 'an extremely small subset'. It applies outside of tech too.

And then you realize that almost all R&D in Europe, from startups to multinationals, is subsidized by EU funding schemes and mountains of paperwork.

Couldn't agree more with this point. Also atleast in my experience they are there so just few people can be employed without much real pressure to produce real results... As long as paperwork is completed the results don't matter much.

> expect to pay 50% in taxes (+ 25% VAT)

Don't forget the tax prepayments that might be 1.33x of your previous taxes, i.e. you pay 100k in taxes for one year and for the next year you need to prepay 133k.

In Europe? I've never heard of anything like this.

In which country is that?

Belgium would be a good candidate.

I can second that sentiment in Canada as well - I'm not even aware of what the good paying jobs would even be - there's none with FAANG fame, and every job has a hard wall with a laundry list of 5+ years of experience with a dozen web technologies that you can only climb over with the appropriate connections.

As a canadian, I disagree with how strict you’re describing the issue to be. There are a fair amount of big and well established companies that are not going to penalize you for lacking the five years and connections. With that said, they’re almost all in Toronto, but that’s a different issue ..

Yeah, I didn't want to get too regional, especially when it seems to be a single exception (possibly Vancouver as well?). As I understand it Toronto is almost like a different world, especially when compared to Western Canada, like using New York or Silicon Valley to describe all of America.

> Let me stop you right there. Maybe that works in SV but in most of Europe(the world?) you aint getting in to any well paying job at a big tech company without a degree from a prestigious university or previous experience at equally big and famous companies.

I did exactly that though, I joined Google in Europe a few years ago.

Google Europe in which city?

I moved to Zurich.

How do you find life there?

From some acquaintances who moved there to work in tech I heard integration/dating/making friends is very difficult as a foreigner especially if you come from $UNCOOL_COUNTRY and the real estate market is terrible, with cramped and expensive apartments in a poor state and buying is even more difficult if you're not a swiss citizen which is a difficult citizenship to get.

Vast majority of people rent in Zurich. I lived in multiple countries (US, Australia, Europe - Germany, Austria and more) and apartments in Zurich are better maintained than anywhere else I've seen. You can find cramped, if that's what you want, but there is plenty large apartments - bigger than US or Australian apartments. E.g. looking at our corner of the city, there are 2 bedroom 85 - 120m2, 3 bedroom 120 - 160 m2 places. In Sydney, we had a 75m2 2BR with tiny bedrooms and it was a typical apartment there. If you want to live in a house, Zurich is the wrong place, you'll probably need to commute.

Language is a big issue with integration. It's not that people don't speak English or High German, it's just that to truly integrate you need to speak the local language.

And learning a dialect without an accepted written form, and thus no textbook to speak of is not easy.

If this is the case Zurich sounds exactly like New York (other than the difficulty of buying property for non-citizens). Might just be the feeling of alienation that arises from living in a big city as an outsider.

Zurich is a city of 300,000 people or so, New York is a hundred times larger.