BSousa

If you are right, then his point about discriminating is moot. Seems more like he can't find a job he wants, and dismiss others that would be happy to hire him.

I can say: "I want to work in Haskel, making games for the Wii U, from home, for 3 hours a day only". No matter what my experience, I won't be hired anytime soon.

But they pay pennies compared to London. What you save on rent you lose on income.

I get a lot of recruiter spam from UK recruiters, but truth be told, don't think I've ever got an email where the minimum offered was lower than £45k for London while for anywhere else the maximum range was £45-50k

Quick question since you have a few kids. Is real Wyoming a good place for them in terms of school and future? (really asking, no idea as I live on the other side of the pond).

I work from home so I can move anywhere, and a more rural/calm place, earning less and having more time does appeal to me, but all the good schools here are in the city and I'm not brave enough to risk my kids future on my dreams of today.

I agree. I work remotely and do this a lot with team members, but when people suggest pair programming, they are (usually) referring to 2 seats on 1 keyboard kind of thing, which I hate and would probably quit if I had to do it on a day to day basis.

See, this is where 'different strokes' thing comes in handy. I HATE HATE HATE pair programming. If you tell me I have to do 1 hour of pair programming on a job interview, I won't go. Not because I'll get nervous or anything, I just don't like a few things about it, a couple:

a) I hate having people in my personal space I don't know well. It may seem I'm being an asshole, but I'm very very very very sensitive to smells to the point that I can't concentrate. Your cologne or just body smell will probably be my number one focus throughout that hour.

b) while I don't have OCD/am a germaphobe, again I HATE HATE HATE using a keyboard that isn't new or mine. The stickiness of the keys, the dirt around them... makes me go crazy.

I always carry my laptop to interviews with me nowadays to at least avoid B.

So, for me, a whiteboard is great (for some reason, I don't care much about a dirty board/pens) and I do amazingly well on them. I also do very well in public speaking situations so maybe I'm just comfortable at that kind of interaction/distance.

I think the best is to truly ask the person what they prefer. If they want a laptop, great, if a whiteboard, cool as well, I've done both both as an interviewer and interviewee, and noticed that as well, some people prefer a whiteboard, others a laptop. Give them what they are more comfortable with.

Sorry for the late reply.

I don't think you should stop posting photos from your trips just because you are 'afraid' you will be pissing off your friends. They can always unfollow you (or whatever FB allows you to do, I'm not big on social networks) if they find it 'offensive'. I just think it is a balancing act between sharing parts of your life, and sharing absolute numbers or boasting.

Anyone that knows me for more than 5 minutes, knows I'm doing well (I live in a nice place, in a very expensive area for example and I don't hide this), but at the same time, I avoid letting (outside of very close friends) people know how well exactly. I never talk about money or salaries or what not. That doesn't mean I won't invite them over for dinner/a swim in the pool just in case I 'piss them off'.

For me, StackExchange's 'reputation' is inversely correlated with that.

Don't want to attack the contributors, but honestly, the higher levels of reputation just either show me that he either has too much free time outside of work (valid, but doubtful) or they spend work time answering questions, which for me goes against the 10x productivity programmer mantra.

You move to Europe? ;)

I think there are two options that play in your favour:

a) be honest, but when they ask (and they will) why you are leaving the current company, say you know they are paying their employees way below market rate. This allows you to tell the truth, but points out to the recruiter you will not take you current salary + 5%

b) redirect the question to "While I make X, I'm discussing the move with other companies and have offers for X+Y". This accomplishes two things, puts a premium on you (other companies are already interested you) and lets the recruiter know how much they will have to offer you to accept their offer.

Of course, you need to be ready for the conversation to fall through at this point, but you should always be ready for that anyway ;)

I fully agree with that sentiment.

I have a lot of non-tech folks ask me about money (when they ask me what I do and if it pays well) and I always try to avoid giving numbers and go with a more generic 'I can't complain, things are ok/good'. I earn a lot (and I mean a lot) compared to non-tech folks where I live: 20x difference in some cases. I had a friend recently in a conversation mentioning that buying X (one of those cheap android tablets for kids) as a birthday present was 3 days worth of her work. In my case, it is less than 1.5 hours of my work.

I'm very happy for earning these values, and I try to give back when I can, pick up the bill here and there (enough to help, but not enough for people to resent it) but I know we developers are quite lucky with the luck of the draw we got in this little slice of time and IMO, we should be more considerate of others in these cases.

Things are better on the company/bureaucracy front. Not as good as US/UK where you can do everything online, but it is 90% there. As for the tax climate, corporate tax has come down quite a bit (and is quite low compared to rest of Europe) but personal tax is a pain.

I think the main issue with Portugal, startup wise, is the people. We (as a nation) are very risk adverse and scared. There are many logical reasons for that that I won't get into the details here, but on the technical level, our graduates are quite good and salaries/cost of living are low. A typical YC investment on a Portuguese company would probably give them about one year of runway without any further investment.

In a nutshell: Rails isn't shinny anymore. By migrating from (now) old Rails to new shiny Go, people can write these kinds of articles and pretend to be cutting edge and forward thinking.

I'm Portuguese so maybe I'm biased, but seems Lisbon is becoming quite an attractive startup hub where the cost of living isn't too high (compared to London/Paris/etc) and you have nice weather, people, good quality of life and lots to do.

If you are thinking of starting something and need investment, London is hard to beat, with Berlin coming up second.

Don't know of any research about those lamps specifically, but based on research from blue light devices use and what I know about our circadian rhythms, you will probably end up with sleep issues (difficulty falling asleep as well as low quality of sleep)

I started losing mine at 17 and I worked out/moved a lot at the time (played 2 sports + fun activities) so I doubt there is a connection there.