How about instead of taking the easy way out and preserving your wealth you stay in the US and take up your generational responsibility and figure out how to fix the situation that you and your fellow citizens have created?
"Yeah guys, I got enough blood money now from ad targeting people in the US, so to clear my conscience I can come give you guys a hand to fight the evil guys I had no issue with when they were paying me big money, but only IF you pay me 50% of what they pay me."
How about thanks but no thanks. We don't need this kind of fake virtue signaling "help". Enjoy your money somewhere else.
Edit: sorry I sound so mean, but it's how I feel.
y'all are extra spicy on this topic seemingly.
EDIT:
> We don't need this kind of fake virtue signaling "help"
i wasn't virtue signalling anything - that's why i said money is still an important part of the calculus. i was literally just curious if there were such accelerated pathways for SWEs...
They all do ads. Apple is about to add them to their Maps.
https://advertising.amazon.com
https://advertising.netflix.com/en-us
> then posturing like a anti-FANG freedom fighter for 50% cut, which might rub some people the wrong way as being a by hypocritica
The only place I was posturing was in your imagination. I guess you're salty about FAANG salaries in the US (and that's what has you tilted) but I was literally just asking about comparable salary and accelerated immigration pathways. The comment is very short - I don't know where you're getting all of this content from.
My 2 cents.
It's not about "someone in my company is running some kind of ads service" but that you and your colleagues collectively have had a net negative impact on free societies all over the world.
Nobody is jealous about FAANG salaries if you need to step over unconscious homeless people on your way to work, fear about healthcare, university tuition and that your kid might be shot at school.
100-120k net is considered quite a good salary and is unattainable even for most as a contracted employee. You do get benefits like healthcare and pensions which work differently. You can get higher rates if you are good at marketing, but then you need to insure your unemployment and pension yourself as well.
My latest info on Silicon Valley compensation (Google, Netflix, and Twitter) was that 400k/year gross before tax and RSU was typically achievable with even higher regular occurrences. 50% of that is still way over what you typically find here. (Switzerland excluded but all prices are inflated in Switzerland.)
For example safety is not guaranteed due to extreme homelessness and easy access to guns, so you have to pay more for gated communities and security/concierge. You need to privately pay for healthcare and also pay off debt from university tuition, both is much cheaper in EU. If you have kids, you have to pay for private schools.
Then all over the US the infrastructure is so extremely bad that you don't even have sidewalks and you need to take a car to get anywhere, with really bad public transport.
If you want to just emulate European lifestyle in the US you really need to spend a lot of money.
Even a lot of Europeans today are not having the envied European lifestyle right now. Things are getting worse here too, so you also need to spend out of pocket and have a very good paying job, just to get the European lifestyle that was the norm 10+ years ago with an average job.
And it's only gonna get downhill from here with the increase in defense spending that's gotta come from somewhere, the stagnating economy and increasing CoL, the ballooning retirement and welfare timebomb, etc.
If you make 50% of US FANG wages, then you'll probably be fine, but most people don't.
And there's a lot of places in the US (excluding the major cities) that don't have those issues you mentioned and where you can live a pretty chill and safe lifestyle too if you're a skilled worker on a decent income, similar how there's cities in Europe that have a lot of poverty, crime and failing infrastructure as well where you need a good job and skills to get out. It's not as binary as you try to make it be.
FAANG is Facebook(Meta), Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google(Alphabet) right?
Facebook and Google are heavy on ads, Amazon has ads all over their shopping experience and in their video product; AWS isn't connected with ads though, Netflix has an ads tier in their video product too, I opted out of Apple so I don't know what ads look like on their products but I think they have a small ads product?
I'm not quite sure why the negative responses to your offer though. Sure, it's a bit mercenary, but it's an offer. Personally, I don't think it's really about personnel though, recruiting FAANG employees to Europe wouldn't generate European FAANGs; Europe needs to look at the business conditions that spawn these kinds of companies and see what they can change to encourage the kinds of companies they want. Why did Apple survive while early computer companies from Europe all folded and also where have all the European handset makers gone; where are the online megaretailers for Europe and why didn't they consider selling their surplus computing resources; why haven't Euro television companies developed a cross border streaming service; maybe something about search engines, maybe what stopped Europe from playing in the search engine wars before Google became dominant; bonus non faang question, why did Europay merge with Mastercard.
Yep, this. We already have enough local FANG level talent, talent is not the problem in Europe.
What we don't have is:
1) the printing press of the world reserve currency so that VCs backed by our central bank can keep spending the fake money we print on tech gambles while the rest of world absorbs our inflation as if it were gold, and
2) the world's biggest military to nudge (enforce) our products and services on the rest of the world to ensure our hegemony
And we can't do that since we can't even kick Russia's ass right now after 4 years, let alone stand up to the US hegemony and enforce our will over them, so we'll continue to be dependent on them.
> How about instead of taking the easy way out and preserving your wealth you stay in the US and take up your generational responsibility and figure out how to fix the situation that you and your fellow citizens have created?
This feels even more bitter than if you had written "I am bitter over the success of the US tech industry."
SV took workers from all over the world because these workers were extremely skilled and cheap. They didn't compete with Americans for jobs because there were simply not enough Americans with the needed skills.
Foreign tech workers need housing but they don't own land and can't vote in your elections, so the fact housing is bad is 100% on US citizens.
2. There are plenty of Americans with the skills. I know because I went from never having written any code or having any technical education to full time employment in SV in under a year.
3. Housing issues are 100% the fault of the local US citizens and their idiotic policies, but immigrant tech workers absolutely do own land and I know several who do. Plenty of them vote because they are now citizens.
>immigrant tech workers absolutely do own land [...] they are now citizens.
>Housing issues are 100% the fault of the local US citizens
Man, I wonder when the realization will kick in.
- Are zoning laws affecting only immigrant born population from buying, or simply everyone moving to SF for work?
- If the locals are preventing the foreigners to buy housing via zoning laws, then how did those immigrants manage to buy housing like you said?
- And once immigrants become citizens and homeowners, are you saying they don't vote for the same zoning laws that protect their housing investment just like the natives?
How can I have a productive discussion with someone who doesn't know or refuses to acknowledge the reality of housing supply/demand and resulting gentrification?
Gee, if only there was a city in the world that's a big tech hub and we could study the effects on its housing market and citizen who don't work in tech and how they're impacted.
>is one of t many reasons why SV is in the US and not in Europe
I've been to SF and I'm not sure I want the issues I saw there over here.
And to correct you, SV is what it is due to the WW2 and cold war military electronics industry rooted in government spending brewing there instead of being bombed to the ground like Europe, plus the financial engineering leavers of the US FED being able to print virtually gold and use that virtual gold to buy everything they ever need to win including foreign competitors and suppliers while offloading the resulting inflation burden onto the rest of the world, or use trade restrictions and military force as the second option to block any potential rising competitors that threaten the existing hegemony.
When you have a US passport, FAANG on your resume and 6-7 figure net worth, I wouldn't dare complain about difficulty in immigration.
Most of the people I know have lived in at least one other country for several months, while most of US citizens not once in their life have left the USA and don't even own a passport.
Though the commenter mentioned working at a FAANG, so maybe they're far more culpable in this situation than the average person. If that's the case, I'd have to agree with you.
It's not generational responsibility. Everyone has at least some responsibility to defend the democratic values, traditions, and nation that have enabled them to live freely and peacefully.
For someone who has greatly benefited from the opportunities the nation afforded them, it's insulting for such a person to behave as if they possess no responsibility to defend the values, tradition, and nation that enabled them to succeed.
It's hard for me to escape how strongly I feel about this. As a European, I don't wish for such sorts of people to immigrate here. They can go back.
If one must point fingers, a better target is those actually in power.
Because IIRC in one comment you complained about double taxation for US citizens when living abroad and here you suddenly play the immigrant family card.
It's hard to accept your victim role when you've been personally profiting off a FAANG company.
Truthfully, as a European, I don't want people immigrating here who feel no responsibility to defend the democratic values, institutions, and nation that enabled them to live freely and succeed. Quite insane.
That is how the US was screwed up in the first place - the internal inequality and gentrification created all the problems the US is in today, including the social conflicts. People like him are literally helping to export those problems by exporting the misery to other countries.
This is, of course, stupid. You're arguing that if a tyrant king comes around, all of his neighbors should work tirelessly and for free to make sure the tyrant king's subjects remain under their control, so that the tyrant king still has materiel to invade you with. Most people are not in a position to individually resist or rebel against the system. Revolution is a collective concept, and the fish rots from the head. There's no causal link between denying someone a path to emigrate from their hellhole and them actually fixing their broke-ass society. They just wind up becoming a tool for that society to throw at you.
Think of every society like a building made of sentient bricks. If the bricks decide to leave, the building falls apart. But if the bricks are prohibited from leaving, then the building remains standing. Even if America doesn't actually restrict people from leaving (in fact, Trump kinda wants that), offering them no place to go is about the same thing as not letting them leave.
And, to be clear, the rot didn't start with Trump. It started with neoliberalism and the destruction of America's welfare system creating a permanent underclass of scammable peons. That same rot is present in much of the EU for the same reasons. America just succumbed to it first. You're watching a preview of what will happen in your country soon if you do not take immediate corrective action to fix the problem.