boonhet @ boonhet @lemm.ee

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2 yr. ago

The US has a higher salary ceiling, but about the same salary floor - at a higher cost of living (higher rent, lack of social safety nets, etc).

Knowledge workers are just appreciated a lot more in the US. Software engineers are the most ridiculous example because it's the one field where you don't need an expensive (in the US) education, but there's also doctors that can make hundreds of thousands a year in private practice if they're really good, senior partners at law firms who make hundreds of thousands partly because they're partners, not just employees. Etc.

The US also has tech companies that make a ridiculous amount of money, so they can afford to pay their engineers.

Oh and then there's the following joke (told in some different ways, so I googled it and modified to how I heard it from my day, an immigrant in NYC:

A big shot Manhattan lawyer calls up a plumber to come out to his home. The plumber takes a look and says, OK, I can fix it today, and it will be $800.

The lawyer raises an eyebrow and asks, how long will it take? The plumber responds, "well, I need about an hour round trip to the supply house for a part, and then it should take me about an hour for the repair"

The lawyer smirks and says, "two hours? For $800? Thats $400 per hour! I'm a lawyer and my hourly rate is $300 / hour!"

The plumber nods and says, "When I came to this country, I was also a lawyer."

Yes there's ridiculous inequality and that IS a bad thing, but a lot of people in Europe are simply not getting paid what they're worth. Like I said, it's not just the tax differences that are the issue, so it's not the European social safety nets costing us our income. It's pretax income that's so different.

Yup. It's kinda my conspiracy theory, but also, it's really not, it's like a public secret at this point.

They don't get these huuuuge golden parachutes for nothing. They get it precisely because they need to take the fall at some point, and if the fall is big enough, they might not even get a new job at a similar level.

It's a disgusting system, but I'm not trying to absolve CEOs of anything here. They very much know what they're getting into when they sign contracts for tens of millions per year in total comp, with generous exit packages. I'm just saying that's why companies won't replace them with AI, or even just cheaper proven leaders, any time soon, despite the fact that no CEO is worth the amount of money they make, in actual productivity.

I'm Estonian, we also have ID requirements, and an ID card is cheap. Passports aren't expensive either, but ID cards are more useful in day to day life.

The US is fucked. There's no standardized photo ID that everyone has to have. People only get passports for travel and the country is literally so huge and diverse you can travel more than most people have money to and see many different environments without leaving it. I reckon you could spend a year in NYC alone and not see everything there is to see. In 2006, 20% of Americans had passports, in 2011 it was 37%.

The most common form of photo ID to have is the driver's license. But some people don't get one. People also have social security cards, almost everyone has one, but that's not a photo ID.

Luckily they now have something called a passport card (pretty much just an ID card but allows travel to like Canada and Mexico I think?), that only costs 30 bucks to get. The actual book form of passport is 130 for application, and if you're an adult and it's your first passport, there's a 35 dollar acceptance fee, which all together is actually too much for some people.

They also have free voter ID cards which are nowhere close to free.

There's just a lot of bureaucratic inefficiency in the whole ID system in the US. It's fucked. If you're poor and can't get time off work to get a cheap form of ID, you might be fucked. If you don't have transport, you might be fucked.

Really, they should fix all this first and THEN mandate photo ID for voting. Right now it disproportionately affects people who have a hard time getting a photo ID, i.e poor people. Then there's the whole single voting day for in-person voting. It also disproportionately affects the working class - people who might have a hard time getting time off work. Wait, why is this an issue, your employer is legally mandated to give you time off to vote? Because in red states, in areas that vote blue, they only put one voting station for a whooooole bunch of people so you'd have to drive a long distance AND wait a long time in line. AND it's only 1-4 hours depending on state AND not all states have these laws.

The whole country is rigged to not let poor people to vote as easily as the wealthy, unfortunately.

Yeah, what's the new civilization's tech like? Bound to be more advancements than just travel speed. Do they have sufficiently fast FTL communication with Earth to keep up with the tech advancements?

I don't mind the availability of online features. I loved being able to lock and unlock my car from the app, and getting a reminder that it's unlocked - I HATE auto-locking cars, but since my Benz sent reminders, it never needed auto-locking. I wish it had remote start for winter, but that's technically illegal in the EU I believe, will just need Webasto next time. I'm pretty sure the same model (W205 facelift) had remote start in the US.

I also loved that if I didn't remember how much fuel I had left in the tank, I could just check it in the app so I'd know if I needed to plan for a fuel stop before driving somewhere (usually not, it was a diesel so 1200+ km range on the highway and probably 800 in the city).

I wouldn't EVEN mind the automatic emergency call sending GPS coordinates. But the active sending of my location and other data at all times, without the ability to opt out of any types of data, is what I hate about new cars. It'd be possible to just store location on the car and send it with the emergency call, or send when the owner sends an API request via the app, etc.

Software engineers in the US can get their total annual compensation packages in the millions at the very very highest levels, or in the 300k range for normal senior engineers who don't dedicate their entire lives to total comp.

We really get hosed here in Europe when it comes to software engineering salaries. It's not the tax rates either, there's just less money in the game.

My company was desperate to find a brand new dev straight out of the oven we could still mold to our sensibilities late last year when everything seemed doomed. Yes, it was one hire out of like 10 interviewed candidates, but point is, there are companies still hiring. Our CTO straight up judges people who use an LLM and don't know how the code actually works. Mr. "Just use an AI agent" would never get the job.

Yeah, particularly with CEOs. People don't understand that in an established company (not a young startup), the primary role of the CEO is to take blame for unpopular decisions and resign or be fired so it would seem like the company is changing course.

Supposedly the team left OwnCloud and forked it. So the value is that the OCIS team will be working on OpenCloud in the future.

Now tell your car manufacturers that people would like privacy, not always-online cars.

Not that the others are any better, of course.

And in a mirror you can only kiss yourself on the lips

Just get a Makita or some other power tool company that lets you use the same battery for your drill, mower and a bunch of other things. Make sure it's a reputable one where the ecosystem will be around a long time.

I don't think the general populace was particularly interested in buying 5000 dollar US made smartphones lmao

Digital Nas, the producer he's working with.

Yes, when there's an ambulance behind you, you take a parking or bus or bike lane. Hop a fucking curb if you have to. It's the one thing all the big ass SUVs should be good for in the city.

I mean he more or less did it at gunpoint. Do you not remember how hated he used to be? He would've been shot by someone eventually for sure.

It's what the shareholders care about though.

It's not out yet but there's a video of it being recorded here. You don't really see him in the video, could be fake too?

On the subject of those two anyway, I think Slimbook is just a Clevo reseller?

Not sure about Tuxedo

They often do. Apparently if you're a man in a heterosexual relationship, you're supposed to just take your partner for granted and not do anything to increase her pleasure, otherwise you're a dirty commie.

Not the approach I personally prefer, I don't want to be wondering "Hmm, is she with someone who does more for her right now?" when she's out running errands. But I guess rightwingers do have this strange cuckolding obsession, why else do they always mention it?