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Pollyanna
Mar 5, 2005

Milk's on them.


Infinotize posted:

Many places in Europe are extremely isolated and insular and that often overlaps with xenophobia and racism. Japan and a lot or most of east and southeast asia are super conservative and xenophobic and racist. Japan and Korea are 2 of the most misogynistic countries on earth and are suspicious of any dark skinned people. To a degree that's because the populations are ethnically homogenous. So while they may be more liberal or progressive in other ways they have large blind spots.

Good poo poo But Only For Us

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Pollyanna
Mar 5, 2005

Milk's on them.


like at this point I’d be surprised if Japanese people could make friends with foreigners

Notorious b.s.d.
Jan 25, 2003

by Reene

Pollyanna posted:

Good poo poo But Only For Us

this is the credo of so many countries

denmark and sweden both have "far right" parties that 100% agree with their center-left parties on every issue except that all non-danes / non-swedes should probably be murdered / expelled

Notorious b.s.d.
Jan 25, 2003

by Reene

Pollyanna posted:

like at this point I’d be surprised if Japanese people could make friends with foreigners

sure

lots of people keep pets

Notorious b.s.d.
Jan 25, 2003

by Reene
germany's "far right" party is largely made up of ex-communist party members

again, their core issue is "expel and/or murder foreigners." it's not about policy, it's about ethnicity


edit: oh yeah france, too. and the uk. starting to wonder if there are any rightist parties in europe that have a policy position more cogent than "gently caress $ETHNICITY"

bob dobbs is dead
Oct 8, 2017

I love peeps
Nap Ghost

Notorious b.s.d. posted:

germany's "far right" party is largely made up of ex-communist party members

again, their core issue is "expel and/or murder foreigners." it's not about policy, it's about ethnicity


edit: oh yeah france, too. and the uk. starting to wonder if there are any rightist parties in europe that have a policy position more cogent than "gently caress $ETHNICITY"

no no no, its "gently caress ¬$ETHNICITY", you forgot the negation

FMguru
Sep 10, 2003

peed on;
sexually

Notorious b.s.d. posted:

this is the credo of so many countries

denmark and sweden both have "far right" parties that 100% agree with their center-left parties on every issue except that all non-danes / non-swedes should probably be murdered / expelled
ive seen it called "herrenvolk socialism"

Sereri
Sep 30, 2008

awwwrigami

Notorious b.s.d. posted:

germany's "far right" party is largely made up of ex-communist party members
that's not true at all unless you mean voters instead of members even then it's a stretch

Notorious b.s.d. posted:

again, their core issue is "expel and/or murder foreigners." it's not about policy, it's about ethnicity
this is entirely true

PokeJoe
Aug 24, 2004

hail cgatan


Anyone work a fully remote job? Pros and cons? Salary worse? Bad expectations or schedule?

Notorious b.s.d.
Jan 25, 2003

by Reene

PokeJoe posted:

Anyone work a fully remote job? Pros and cons? Salary worse? Bad expectations or schedule?

pro: it's a job

cons: literally everything. no real feel for politics. contributions less valued than local staff. weak communication. more likely to be fired, less likely to be promoted. poor morale. failure to shower.

Notorious b.s.d.
Jan 25, 2003

by Reene
i hate working with remote staff

i hate being remote staff even more than i hate being on the other end of it

Notorious b.s.d.
Jan 25, 2003

by Reene
also let's get fundamental: the economics don't work

why on earth would i pay an american $100k to work remote in kansas when i can pay a similarly competent brazilian or hungarian or romanian like $15 an hour to get exactly the same outcomes?

the only thing that justifies your bloated american wages and standard of living is the high-bandwidth communication between you and the business stakeholders

as a remote staffer you're just an unusually bloated line item, easily changed out for someone cheaper

FlapYoJacks
Feb 12, 2009

Notorious b.s.d. posted:

pro: it's a job

cons: literally everything. no real feel for politics. contributions less valued than local staff. weak communication. more likely to be fired, less likely to be promoted. poor morale. failure to shower.

Huh, the opposite for me.

I travel once a quarter to HQ, have a really good feel for politics, my team has excellent communication, I’ve been promoted twice, I have great moral and a great schedule.

The shower thing is true though. :v:

Notorious b.s.d. posted:

similarly competent brazilian or hungarian or romanian

lol.

Notorious b.s.d.
Jan 25, 2003

by Reene
you won't know how bad your feel for the politics is until something goes wrong

don't know who's swimming naked 'till the tide goes out

champagne posting
Apr 5, 2006

YOU ARE A BRAIN
IN A BUNKER

Notorious b.s.d. posted:


why on earth would i pay an american $100k to work remote in kansas when i can pay a similarly competent brazilian or hungarian or romanian like $15 an hour to get exactly the same outcomes?


try this and revert to us about how it went

Pollyanna
Mar 5, 2005

Milk's on them.


I had bsds experience when I did remote it sucked and I got let go like 2~3 weeks in

Notorious b.s.d.
Jan 25, 2003

by Reene

Boiled Water posted:

try this and revert to us about how it went

i've worked with remote teams in budapest and kiev and as far as competence and english skills go, everything was 100% fine

what sucked was
a.) they were remote
b.) timezones

there's just not that big a difference between a farm league programmer in kansas and a farm league programmer in ukraine. foreigners are not magically stupid because they weren't born in the u.s.a


p.s. you can ameliorate factor "b" by looking for teams in south america.


edit: kiev not minsk, getting my post-soviet states mixed up

Notorious b.s.d.
Jan 25, 2003

by Reene
hell half the regular posters in yospos itself are not americans

do they strike you as insufferable knuckledragging morons because they dare to stay in their home countries?

FlapYoJacks
Feb 12, 2009

Notorious b.s.d. posted:

hell half the regular posters in yospos itself are not americans

do they strike you as insufferable knuckledragging morons because they dare to stay in their home countries?

This is disingenuous and you know it. Nobody is saying their morons. However, the time zone differences, the language differences, and the cultural differences are all a pretty big deal in a lot of situations.

Some of the best programmers I know are from other countries. Heck, I am going to Belgium in February to meet up with them. But I wouldn't trust a company to competently hire a full team of foreign programmers and manage them properly over somebody who is at least in the same timezone with the same culture as us.


:rolleyes:

Captain Foo
May 11, 2004

we vibin'
we slidin'
we breathin'
we dyin'

if you're going to listen to nbsd, 1) don't
2) go back in the thread for mononcqc's takes

feedmegin
Jul 30, 2008

FMguru posted:

ive seen it called "herrenvolk socialism"

One might even call it 'national socialism'

the talent deficit
Dec 20, 2003

self-deprecation is a very british trait, and problems can arise when the british attempt to do so with a foreign culture





my last job i was full remote and it was everything nbsd said. when i started my manager and 4/5ths of my team were remote and it was fantastic, but as more devs who went to the office every day joined it went downhill fast

also i used a colombian offshoring shop to get a mobile app done and if i ever do a startup i'm hiring 100% south americans. they were amazing. way better than "native" devs

Progressive JPEG
Feb 19, 2003

Notorious b.s.d. posted:

sure

lots of people keep pets

lol

Progressive JPEG
Feb 19, 2003

romania has a bunch of really good programmers as a result of a huge investment in cs education starting 30 years ago

many left for higher paying jobs but there's a disproportionate amount of talent still there

having first in world internet speeds doesn't hurt either

Notorious b.s.d.
Jan 25, 2003

by Reene

ratbert90 posted:

This is disingenuous and you know it. Nobody is saying their morons. However, the time zone differences, the language differences, and the cultural differences are all a pretty big deal in a lot of situations.

not sixty plus thousand dollars a year big

i get paid the big bucks because my butt is in a chair in a conference room when someone wants to talk to me about requirements. that's it

it's not because i am a brain genius or because the american business culture is impenetrable to non-americans

Notorious b.s.d.
Jan 25, 2003

by Reene

Progressive JPEG posted:

romania has a bunch of really good programmers as a result of a huge investment in cs education starting 30 years ago

many left for higher paying jobs but there's a disproportionate amount of talent still there

having first in world internet speeds doesn't hurt either

all of this is equally true for kansas or minnesota or whatever, but it will cost you 2x to 3x to employ people there

which is why remote jobs tend to go to romanians and columbians and not minnesotans. it just makes so little economic sense to keep a remote office in a high cost of labor area

Infinotize
Sep 5, 2003

I am at a medium sized well known public tech co. I started in office and now am 100% remote. I am a little under a year into full time remote. It's good and i like it a lot. I was in a a big tech market city and now live on the edge of a small to mid market city.

My base pay went down 8%, internally HR uses "cost of labor" metrics to adjust pay. My stock comp didn't change so my effective pay change was way less than 8%.

So far everything is working out great, I also go to HQ once per Q or more, am very plugged into things, likely on track to a promotion this year. My team and dept is primarily at a single location so I am an outlier. My biggest problem is cabin fever, you have to have discipline to not roll out of bed and work without taking breaks and stuff. There is no commute which is good but sometimes I will go to cafes when I don't have meetings just for variety. Having to cook and clean up your own breakfast/lunch I found to take up comparable time to my old commute although it's a more controllable amount of time.

My cost of living is down although I lived like a cheapskate in my previous location so my expenses are actually similar, but my quality of life is wayyyyy up. Tbh I can't imagine moving back to a shoebox in some expensive place where we have an office unless my comp like doubled and i'm already a privileged overpaid keyboard pusher.

This is a truly great option for more senior people if you can find the right place. If your company is already toxic being remote will amplify it. I would not put a dev out of school or code camp mill on full time remote. But if you manage it well it works. It doesn't work by default, you have to put in some thought about how team comms and regular meetings work, which is probably why bigcos don't want to bother with allowing it. For the company, they get a slight discount and don't have to feed me or pay big city taxes for me and they get the same output from me, and if it's bay area they have to compete less with the 900 other cos fighting over stanford babbys who need 200k comp to afford a 4k/month studio.

American devs aren't overpaid, if goog could replace half its eng workforce with eastern europeans or indians and save billions of dollars it would do it, but there's a big difference between outsourcing a one and done product and having some foreign person or firm own and maintain things. The only limit on pay should be how much revenue you can generate. If a dev can generate 500k in revenue there is no reason she shouldn't be paid e.g. 350k+. If a dev in europe makes only €60k it's because 1 his company choices aren't that profitable 2 he lacks bargaining power 3 his market is suppressed because they can't all go work for american cos with obscene amounts of profit and or vc money.

Notorious b.s.d.
Jan 25, 2003

by Reene

Infinotize posted:

American devs aren't overpaid, if goog could replace half its eng workforce with eastern europeans or indians and save billions of dollars it would do it

google has tens of thousands of employees in india, on four different corporate campuses

and no they are not getting paid $200k a year like the on-shore human resources do. google can pay less, so they do. it's not rocket science.

edit: notably google opens entire campuses in remote locations. they don't really want remote employees. they want complete teams with high-bandwidth communication amongst themselves.

Infinotize posted:

. If a dev can generate 500k in revenue there is no reason she shouldn't be paid e.g. 350k+. If a dev in europe makes only €60k it's because 1 his company choices aren't that profitable 2 he lacks bargaining power 3 his market is suppressed because they can't all go work for american cos with obscene amounts of profit and or vc money.

it is always, always, always #2, in every country

google books an average of 1.2 million in revenue for every employee. you are not going to negotiate your way into a cool 900k a year just because google takes home 1.8 million for your labor as a software developer

(there are probably a few devs at google making those numbers, but you ain't gonna be one of them)

Notorious b.s.d. fucked around with this message at 00:26 on Jan 3, 2019

Arcteryx Anarchist
Sep 15, 2007

Fun Shoe
yeah I was going to say lots of big firms use the hell out of foreign labor; its why so many of them lobby so hard for 'immigration reform' and why they always speak of a 'worker shortage'

b0lt
Apr 29, 2005

Notorious b.s.d. posted:

i've worked with remote teams in budapest and kiev and as far as competence and english skills go, everything was 100% fine

what sucked was
a.) they were remote
b.) timezones

there's just not that big a difference between a farm league programmer in kansas and a farm league programmer in ukraine. foreigners are not magically stupid because they weren't born in the u.s.a


p.s. you can ameliorate factor "b" by looking for teams in south america.


edit: kiev not minsk, getting my post-soviet states mixed up

at my previous job, we had a bunch of contractors in ukraine that were excellent: perfect english, reasonably competent (better than most of my coworkers)

and then they disappeared for a month because they were in territory that got annexed by russia lol

Notorious b.s.d.
Jan 25, 2003

by Reene

b0lt posted:

and then they disappeared for a month because they were in territory that got annexed by russia lol

oh christ that's sad dude

qhat
Jul 6, 2015


Notorious b.s.d. posted:

edit: oh yeah france, too. and the uk. starting to wonder if there are any rightist parties in europe that have a policy position more cogent than "gently caress $ETHNICITY"

The only UK far right party that explicitly has these policies that I can think of that's even worth mentioning is the BNP, and they've been largely impotent for like a decade. Like I mean less that 1% of the population support them.

UK hivemind right now seems pretty focused on gently caress Europe, all of Europe, as it has been for the past millennia.

Notorious b.s.d.
Jan 25, 2003

by Reene

qhat posted:

The only UK far right party that explicitly has these policies that I can think of that's even worth mentioning is the BNP, and they've been largely impotent for like a decade. Like I mean less that 1% of the population support them.

ukip

qhat posted:

UK hivemind right now seems pretty focused on gently caress Europe, all of Europe, as it has been for the past millennia.

"gently caress europe" is very thinly disguised "gently caress $ETHNICITY"

what ukip is really mad about is that foreigners can come work in the uk without going through some humiliating process

Notorious b.s.d.
Jan 25, 2003

by Reene
i will remind you that that the euro-skeptic faction of the tory party was founded by enoch "rivers of blood" powell

qhat
Jul 6, 2015


Most of the hardcore ukippers are actually more mad that Britain isn't stamping on the testicles of poor people in other countries anymore. Most of them wouldn't have the balls to openly admit in public that they don't like the look of blacks.

Jort Fortress
Mar 3, 2005

PokeJoe posted:

Anyone work a fully remote job? Pros and cons? Salary worse? Bad expectations or schedule?

Hello. I'm remote for a large (200k employee) non-tech company in the US. My salary is actually really good for my city (Denver). I'm just under $120k + bonus, have a pension and solid PTO.

Pros:
- I work a normal schedule, have no on-call and things are very flexible as long as I get my work done. I go exercise, play guitar, run errands, etc. throughout the day.
- No commute, no open office. Working in an office always felt like prison to me. Being at home is 100% better for my concentration and happiness.

Cons:
- I guess you can miss out on promotions, etc? My team, manager and director are 100% remote and most of my department is spread across multiple states. It wouldn't matter if I was in an office or not, I wouldn't be involved in much "water cooler talk". I've worked for several other large companies and it was the same, most of us weren't co-located.
- Even if you're remote, you aren't truly "free". Sure I could move somewhere exotic like Hawaii, but if I get laid off I'm hosed. So I remain in a somewhat expensive city just in case.

I've been remote at 3 different companies and worked in the office for 2. I was paid a normal salary/benefits at all of them and worked mostly normal hours.

Arcsech
Aug 5, 2008

PokeJoe posted:

Anyone work a fully remote job? Pros and cons? Salary worse? Bad expectations or schedule?

I work fully remote at a company that is like 80-90% remote. we have offices, but teams are intentionally distributed even if they could be structured so the whole team would be in one office.

I probably wouldn’t work fully remote on any team that isn’t already >50% remote. being remote-first alleviates many of the cultural problems that you can fall into, and generally brings other advantages: all meetings are on zoom and recorded by default, nearly all team discussion is recorded on our issue tracker, mailing lists, or slack. there’s a team summit a few times/year to get some face to face time.

the team is distributed across the North America, South America, and Europe with a few aussies, one or two in China, and a few others in random places. this means that scheduling meetings is often a pain in the rear end and early in the morning (as early as 6am in the us, depending on your time zone) but working hours are very flexible and I’m never on-call overnight. this also means more things are done async rather than in a meeting, which is very good.

pay is probably not what I’d get in the valley, but gently caress the valley. I get to live in a nice place that has a reasonable cost of living and make >50% more in salary than I did at my last job which was on site at a local company, with waaaay better benefits, plus stock-based comp

I loving love it. you could pay me enough to go back to an office, but it would be at least double what I make now. that said, it’s not for everyone and that’s okay - a lot of people work prefer an office. read up on what makes people quit remote jobs and have a serious think about whether or not you could deal with it, and what helped other people. make time to see friends often, keep a schedule, make a separate space for working, all that Jazz. ask your interviewer hard questions about life working remotely at the company.

and ignore nbsd, a remote worker killed his family or something

e: also, basically everyone I work with is a fantastic human being, and wicked smart. my biggest problem with this job is that I have hella impostor syndrome

Arcsech fucked around with this message at 03:13 on Jan 3, 2019

Symbolic Butt
Mar 22, 2009

(_!_)
Buglord
actually you should listen to nbsd and just hire me :v:

4lokos basilisk
Jul 17, 2008


Boiled Water posted:

as far as i can tell from the china/asia thread in the grey forum being a foreigner in japan is second class citizen at best

expect also: regressive views on women

if you’re rich enough or some kind of foreign representative of something important (also rich), in which case you can afford to not learn the language or adapt to anything culturally, then it becomes a lot more tolerable because you can afford to live in the idealized pop culture japan that it presents to tourists

i wonder how much this will change as the demographic crisis deepens

here’s a nice read https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/03/abe-nippon-kaigi-japan-far-right

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4lokos basilisk
Jul 17, 2008


Arcsech posted:

I work fully remote at a company that is like 80-90% remote. we have offices, but teams are intentionally distributed even if they could be structured so the whole team would be in one office.

I probably wouldn’t work fully remote on any team that isn’t already >50% remote. being remote-first alleviates many of the cultural problems that you can fall into, and generally brings other advantages: all meetings are on zoom and recorded by default, nearly all team discussion is recorded on our issue tracker, mailing lists, or slack. there’s a team summit a few times/year to get some face to face time.

the team is distributed across the North America, South America, and Europe with a few aussies, one or two in China, and a few others in random places. this means that scheduling meetings is often a pain in the rear end and early in the morning (as early as 6am in the us, depending on your time zone) but working hours are very flexible and I’m never on-call overnight. this also means more things are done async rather than in a meeting, which is very good.

pay is probably not what I’d get in the valley, but gently caress the valley. I get to live in a nice place that has a reasonable cost of living and make >50% more in salary than I did at my last job which was on site at a local company, with waaaay better benefits, plus stock-based comp

I loving love it. you could pay me enough to go back to an office, but it would be at least double what I make now. that said, it’s not for everyone and that’s okay - a lot of people work prefer an office. read up on what makes people quit remote jobs and have a serious think about whether or not you could deal with it, and what helped other people. make time to see friends often, keep a schedule, make a separate space for working, all that Jazz. ask your interviewer hard questions about life working remotely at the company.

and ignore nbsd, a remote worker killed his family or something

e: also, basically everyone I work with is a fantastic human being, and wicked smart. my biggest problem with this job is that I have hella impostor syndrome

do you have a presence in Japan?

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