As someone living in Tokyo, I can only say: Too bad that earthquakes and tsunamis do not define the way how nuclear power plants are built, though....
629 karma · joined February 26, 2016
http://www.journaldunet.com/business/salaire/paris/departeme...
http://www.monster.co.uk/jobs/search/?q=lead+developer&where...
London is an amazing city if you can get a good job, otherwise, it can be quite hard to live there.
On the other hand, when I lived in France, everybody loved the fact that I was making the effort to try to speak French.
YMMV
Some time after, I chased a girl to Japan, the best decision I ever made.
If you want to be fair, compare American cities with European cities. In Barcelona or the center of Copenhagen, there are not free parking spaces. And I can assure you that there are not the traffic issues that you are mentioning in your comment... It's quite on the contrary, actually.
This not a really good analysis.
In Europe, the state is responsible of guaranteeing that the basic Human Rights are protected for all of its citizens. Than includes the right to education, health care, proper nutrition, shelter, security, etc. In general, the state does not intervene in private matters as far as this does not jeopardize the former. It's for a reason that laws about same sex marriage, soft drug legalization, etc. are passed in Europe decades before than in the US.
In this case, with its puritanism, UK is closer to the US than to West Europe.
Some years ago, I changed my career from Linux System Engineer to Web Developer (Rails and JS). I know that the fact that I was building HA clusters some back then has 0 relevance with the job I am doing now, but it is hard for me to just delete this from my résumé, to leave more room to explain what I am doing now.
One of the things that surprised me the most the first time I visited the US was one particular conversation with a sensible, well educated person. She literally told me:
"I don't care if someone is not able to pay to a medical treatment. If that person didn't plan well their life, is their mistake. I am not going to pay the medical costs for them."
Of course, this is just one person, but my feeling is that this a predominant way of thinking in the US.
Do you have a degree in some engineering and speak Japanese? You can get your visa in about 2 months. Actually, if you are a programmer you may not even need Japanese.
People who are dating use them a lot. Because flats are usually quite small, it is sometimes more convenient to spend the night in a love hotel than going home. Married couples use love hotels from time to time in order to be able to make sex without having to worry about the noise, or about a kid interrupting.
The most important for Japanese society is convenience! ;)
The problem is not homlessness, some people can choose to live out of our society rules and I don't see any problem about it. We also built a society that has failed to many people, I can see how someone could prefer to roam freely rather than having to work 80 a week to be able to afford a shitty life anyway (ask people who serve food).
So what need to be addressed is not homelessness itself, but the causes that bring people to homelessness against their will:
- Mental illness (including depression)? Subsidised healthcare for those who cannot afford it. - Addictions? Subsidised treatment and a reinsertion program. - Done something wrong in the past? Forgiveness. - Young person without studies? Subsidised education.
Being European, I see in the American mentality this kind of way of thinking like "if he is poor is because he is lazy and didn't work hard enough, so he deserves to be poor and suffer".
I think that in the first world countries we are rich enough to ensure that the human rights of all our fellow citizens are protected.
The level 2 programmer knows that the tomato is a fruit. The level 3 programmer knows that it is not a good idea to put it in a fruit salad.
At the end, all they will see is a bearded man staring to the front. May they be able to see me naked? Well, probably, but I honestly don't think that they will make a lot of money by selling my naked pictures... My wife tells me that I still look good, but I suspect that she is being nice to me.
What would scare more is that they manage to capture what is on my screen, or install a keylogger, or activate the microphones to hear my conversations, or that they access my hard disks and steal data, including my private keys.
Hey, but putting a sticker on your webcam is a way to show how 1337 your are!
I prefer not to have to bother removing stickers every time I want to do a Skype call.
Besides, why people don't use linters?
All the good Japanese engineers are already working for a big company and they are not likely going to change to a smaller one. For Japanese workers, security is usually the priority number one.
So yes, if you have a degree in STEM, it's really not that hard to emigrate to Japan. To know Japanese would open a lot of doors, but it is not mandatory if you have a good CV. Also, anybody can get a decent level of Japanese with two years of study.
On the other hand, you can probably make much more money in California, or even in London than in Japan. And also, the work-life balance in Japan is practically inexistent. When you sign a job contract with a Japanese company, they assume that you are giving your entire life to them. You are allowed to go home to sleep and bathe, but just because they are kind with you.
So yes, Tokyo has interesting things, but is not as amazing as we thought it would be. Also, there are no punks... everybody obeys like robots.
Well, now is the future, I live in Tokyo and my work involves "hacking virtual realities" and "artificial intelligences"... And I must say that it is quite less exciting than what I thought.
Also, if you want to use iPhone, you must get a contract with Softbank.