jypepin

- Where do you live? SF -> Amsterdam

- What's the biggest sacrifice you had to make (i.e. pay, housing, friends, etc.) I was shocked when my HR department told me our salaries would pretty much be cut in half. I was also furious because I was going to be working remotely for the same team, doing the same work and would bring the same value. We still did it, and honestly, I felt richer over there. Housing is much cheaper both renting and buying. Groceries felt like no matter what we'd buy, it'd be 20E. Even after 3 years we'd be surprised at how cheap it is. Activities, restaurants, etc are all much cheaper too.

We left a bunch of friend behind obviously but made friends there. Like most expats, mostly other expats through work and not a lot of locals.

Weather sucks.

No amazon and it sucks not to have it when you are used to buying everything and getting it the next day. Also, probably because of the amount of countries there are, buying things online seems to be shipped more often from other countries and the delivery times are usually longer.

- What have you gained? As mentioned, despite /2 our salary, we felt much richer, much more comfortable. When we quit our jobs we felt comfortable not making a lot of money because even our mortgage there was cheap. Working for a US tech company still put us way above the average income. Also, like in most of EU, great healthcare and other benefits.

Amsterdam in particular is great for biking/walking, it's truly a very nice city except for the terrible weather. We still talk about how we miss our lives there, but would never move back because of the weather, especially compared to the bay area.

I think the TLDR of our experience was that EU was just more chill, more comfortable, a bit broader in terms of culture, less grind less work. I was so happy about where i'm at in Amsterdam, and as soon as we got back to the US, something, I'm not sure what, made me get back on that hedonic treadmill and grind again for more more more and more.

I'd recommend it :)

Sid came to the office and talked to us about some strategies Gitlab used for remote work, timezone differences etc.

Not only the talk was very helpful, Sid was an incredibly clear communicator, calm and humble. He really seemed to be a great leader and someone it must be nice working with.

I think here they are mentioning value based, which means that instead of being given X amount of shares/rsu over 4 years, you're given "the equivalent of $X" at the begining of each years. So after 1 year, of the stock doubled in price, you will effectively receive half the amount of stocks (still the same $ value tho).

https://www.youtube.com/user/kenjialt

Also JS dev: Look, I've built another tool!

Every year looking at his solutions for advent of code [0] brings just so much learnings. Strongly recommend.

[0] https://github.com/norvig/pytudes/blob/master/ipynb/Advent%2...

We're currently in the process of building a house and current lumber prices (because of covid mainly) are definitely impacting costs, to the point that it's one of the first thing that both our architect, and then builders mentioned.

Everybody involved in the trade have mentioned the idea of waiting an extra year before building, mostly because of lumber prices.

Looking at crime rate rankings [0], SF is pretty low compared to other US cities both in terms or violant crimes and property crimes. What am I missing?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...

CPI 10x'ed since 1950

I guess the integration with Find My app would be pretty convenient but probably not worth the price difference?

[0] https://www.thetileapp.com/en-us/store/tiles/sticker

The switch(true) format was the closest I got to it, which I personally don't like compared to a clean if/else or early return.

There's probably some performance differences between if/else and switch (I haven't checked) but it probably end up being what's your preference / what standard code style you want to enforce on your team.

From my experience there are 2 approaches to freelancing. 1. work hard and hustle, get larger and larger contracts and eventually make a lot of money (>faang level).

2. work little, use freelancing websites, make a little money paid hourly but with low stress, work when you want, stop when you want etc.

This might work for you if you don't care much about money and care more about your time. Also flexible enough to decide to work a bit more during specific period (say winter) and then take a few weeks/months break when you care to (summer).

If you are wondering why Paypal never asked for your passport, it's probably because you eventually linked Paypal to another KYC-compatible entity, such as your bank (by linking your bank, sending money with your credit card, etc).

I assume in the case of bitpay you would only link your btc wallet which in itself doesn't offer KYC verifications.