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gigatexal

What I did:

Check who’s hiring in X on HN.

Apply.

Realize the company is located in Hamburg, Germany.

Get hired.

Move.

Enjoy life in a stable, wealthy, European country.

View on HN

I'm also enjoying life in a stable, wealthy, European country. It just came to my mind, recently, that affording a decent house (not flat) in this idealized European country of mine is still quite hard as long as one is an employee. Comfortable life starts when one works for himself (not freelancer, but owning a small company).

Except unless you plan to buy a house in a town in the middle of nowhere, of course! Those are quite cheap.

I thought US house prices were insane until I saw what houses are going for here. It’s crazy. But we have consigned ourselves to apartment/rental living for our stay here. In fact we love our apartment so much here in Wilmersdorf so much that we’d love to buy it but the going rate for such a place (85 sq meters, 3 rooms, 2 baths) is >500k euros and only rising.

Did you move from US? What is the process like?

I did, yes. I moved with my wife and two dogs and most of our stuff to Hamburg.

The startup paid for the flights, the visa fees (if any, I don’t remember), the container to put our crap in (it was a logistics startup so they knew how to do this rather well), and prepaid for an AirBnB for 3 months for us to find housing.

We had hang ups in getting my wife recognized such that we could get on the more lucrative tax schedule of tax class 3 (one earner). The Germans are sticklers for the details but common sense prevailed and our paper work was finally honored and we got a blue card which means my visa is tied to my working and making a minimum amount.

We live now in Berlin and absolutely love it here. We don’t interact with the government much so maybe that’s why but all-in-all it’s awesome out here. I don’t worry about getting shot or anything like that.

Did you worry about getting shot in the US?

Yes. In Portland where I lived we didn’t make enough to live in the nicer parts of town so we lived in the north east near Gresham and crime was a problem out there. Lots of gang violence.

My comment was a bit flippant. But it was something I thought about from time to time. Here not at all.

Well, for some additional anecdata: I've been mugged/attacked twice as much in Berlin (where I live) than I was in Detroit (where I grew up).

I think perhaps the perception of risk in the US is blown way out of proportion due to the media frenzy around shootings, which are still pretty rare overall in the US. If you consume mass media, you will generally overestimate the risk by several orders of magnitude. (This is, for example, why many Europeans believe the stereotype that the US is so dangerous, when the vast majority of it is actually much safer wrt violent crime than most large cities in Europe.)

If you were afraid there, you should be afraid here. (I personally don't think you should be afraid in either place.)

I could hear the sirens and the shots in the backyard of my house. :/ though my perception of their frequency could be biased.

I’m sorry to hear you were mugged and twice, too! That’s crazy. Not crazy that crime happens just that it blows away my thesis that I’m more or less free from having to think about it living here in Berlin.

I did have a fancy road bike I bought in Hamburg stolen. But I think that’s more or less me being stupid.

Ridiculous statement. The homocide rate is so much higher in the US. Hard to believe anything you say.

It's much higher in about five specific counties in the US. The vast majority of the US has less violent crime overall (guns, plus everything else) than most large cities in Europe. For a simple example in Berlin you get pepper sprayed by stick-up kids, whereas in the US mountain west there isn't much mugging at all (due to the fact that a mugger is about 50/50 to get a wallet or a bullet in response).

The mistake is to think of the US as uniform. Most of it is extremely peaceful.

Lowest homicide rate in a US State is 1.5 in Maine, average is 5. Germany has 0.9 on average.

In general poverty (which is more common in the US) leads to violence and other crimes. Bringing weapons into conflicts usually escalated them and leads to worse outcomes.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_terr...

As a fellow east Portlander who stayed in Berlin a couple Summers ago and absolutely fell in love with the place, I really appreciate the story and applaud your successful relocation.

Germans complain a lot about the government and lengthy procedures because they mostly haven't experienced what its like in other countries. Stickler for details but if you get those right everything is smooth and swift and no one asks for under the counter money or sends you away just because they don't like your face.

thank you for your detailed response. I have some family in Germany and have thought about trying something similar, so I love to hear others' experiences.

>Move.

Ah, the pre-covid days. Nowadays you might as well say "move to Mars".

Wow, surprised by the downvotes. I'm genuinely curious to know if this sounds absurd to HN commenters. Are people really starting jobs abroad and relocating in these times?

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