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Comment by atweiden | Hacker News Reader

I left the US pre-pandemic for a country that eradicated Covid, and couldn't agree more with the author's decision to leave.

Particularly if you're in your 20s and fully remote, I'd highly encourage you to look into Australia or New Zealand's working holiday visa.

For fans of E.Asia, the Taiwan gold card [1][2] may be of interest.

[1]: https://notebook.wesleyac.com/taiwan/

[2]: https://notebook.wesleyac.com/taiwan-gold-card/

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A nitpick, I'm living in one of these countries that "eradicated Covid" and the frankly obvious truth is they didn't, their borders were completely open for months after covid was detected and spreading like fire, and they never adapted the widespread testing and mortality classification regimes like the US did.

Which country are you talking about?

It's unclear if you're criticizing the US (borders being completely open for months), or if you're praising the way it handled the pandemic

I also have a gold card. I encourage every high | special skilled person to apply for it. the process is pretty straightforward. Taiwan needs foreigners. And for an afrikan guy like me who lived in the US before, it's a blessing. only downside to Taiwan is the language. But it's highly developed, cheap for most things and nature all around. I right by the beach and my rent is way less than I would've paid in the US

Having been under lockdown (or more broadly hard restrictions) for at least 9 months of the last year I've come to the opposite conclusion, I would like to be a dual national of the USA just to take advantage of the idea that I can vote with my feet when it comes to state governance issues. If I don't like lockdown policy, I can move somewhere that has a lighter touch (like from NYC to Miami which I know a lot of people have done).

In the UK (especially post-brexit), NZ and Australia it feels like being trapped. Travel is restricted both internally (sporadically) and externally and the regional governments have more or less the same policies, so I don't see anyway to vote with my feet here that doesn't come with a high cost.

How do you find the timezone change if you work remotely for an American company?

I work in my company's main timezone (US East coast). But my observation is that the (few) people we have on the West coast need to adapt to fairly regular 6am or so meetings and those in Europe often need to work into at least the early evening. It works although IMO being at all synchronous starts to get hard with more than a 6hr difference.

I worked East coast time from the Mountain time zone, with colleagues primarily in the East Coast, Europe, and India.

The 6am meetings were a constant feature - complicated by the semi-annual daylight saving time dance.

Indian coworkers shifted their work day a bit later (helped a little with traffic!). Europe definitely preferred the mid-afternoon meetings, rather than flipping them by 12 hours. Adding anyone from Oceania would be difficult...

I’m not the OP, but I have a similar situation. I’m on the west coast and work for a company based in the UK.

For the most part, it’s a minor annoyance that any problems I have or questions I need answers to are a 24 hour turn around, but otherwise I get my work done and deliver it and they get it the next day. If you’re on top of things, it’s not too challenging.

Working into the evening is a thing and evening meetings (American time) generally go unattended.

Annoying.

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