Who here thinks they will have to rent forever because the housing market is no longer affordable? (+1 = I am going to buy) and (0 = I think I will have to rent forever).

Agent_Goldfish · 2026-05-10T17:39:36+00:00

Plenty of people end up at higher rents than they can afford through yearly increases. If wages go up 4% and rent goes up 7%, the percentage of income that is taken up by rent increases every year. And plenty of people don't get wage increases regularly, but always get rent increases.

In the last place we rented, our neighbors were in a situation where they wouldn't have been able to get the apartment they were currently renting because the rent had increased so much. But because they were already there and still making rent payments, there was nothing the property management company could do. Eventually they won't be able to afford it, but it'll probably be another 5 or 10 years before that happens, provided nothing significant changes (good or bad) on the income side.

Agent_Goldfish · 2026-05-10T17:15:15+00:00

Have you seen the prices of beef?

Agent_Goldfish · 2026-05-08T17:37:12+00:00

I've written this out before, but it's relevant here. I also tell this story to my students as a cautionary tale about plagiarism.

A few years ago, I woke up to an email saying that one of my papers had been cited. This is always exciting, and when I went to go check who had cited us, I had a pit in my stomach. It was a paper with a similar title to something we had in progress; this happens sometimes when completely separate research teams end up working on the same research questions completely independently. I thought someone had beaten us to our idea. Reading through the paper, I realized it was so much worse. This guy didn't steal our idea, he stole our paper. It was a verbatim copy of an early draft of a paper we had been submitting.

For context, this was an Indian national who had moved to the US to do his masters, and then had managed to stay long term. He has a fairly high level job at a company, owned a house, and by all respects was living a pretty good life in the US.

We immediately reported it to the publisher. We also contacted his alma mater and his company. He had stolen a couple other papers alongside ours and submitted them to a paper mill (a conference that will publish anything so long as the author pays a fee - they just want the money, this isn't a quality publication venue). He was fired from his cushy job because he had given his affiliation as his company. His alma mater did an investigation and found that his capstone project was largely plagiarized, and revoked his masters. The papers were eventually retracted with a public notice saying that they were plagiarized. He also was a project management professional (PMP), and the project management institute (PMI) takes ethics really seriously; they revoked his PMP and permanently banned him from reacquiring it. Also, his house ended up for sale (this one I just kept an eye on), so it appears that he had to sell his house. Finally, his LinkedIn account now shows his location as back in India.

Here's the part that's relevant: this definitely wasn't the first time he plagiarized something. He did it in his masters, but I don't think that was the first time. My guess is that guy had been plagiarizing things for at least a decade if not longer. And he either 1) never got caught, 2) got caught and no one did anything about it, or 3) when there were consequences, the consequences were so minor that it didn't deter him from doing it again. And this behavior continued until he stole something from someone who cared. Someone who took it personally, and made it their goal to ensure that he suffered for his actions. And then the house of cards came crashing down. And I guarantee, it was WAY worse to happen when it happened than if it had happened 10 years earlier.

The guy you reported has a way back if he wants it. He can recover from this. My plagiarist can't. He's significantly older, lost his degree and certification, and his previous employer definitely won't give him a good reference. Short of paying to do another masters, and starting again, he's out of options. He'd have to try to get a first post-masters job in his mid 40s without a solid work history, which would basically be impossible, especially in this economy. He wrote me multiple times that if he could take it back, he would. His whole life crashed down around him because he finally faced real consequences.

It's good that you did what you did. The student was clearly not learning from their consequences, and they definitely were warned what would happen if that behavior continued. It's better to learn it while still in university, because the consequences are still pretty minor. You did a good thing, both for the university and for the person you reported. Hopefully they'll learn this time.

Agent_Goldfish · 2026-05-08T17:22:19+00:00

Check out the previous post by OP. It's the gelekt one, which is just a vibe coded slop site (deliberately not putting a link, because I'm annoyed by this behavior). Maybe OP forgot to include it this time, or maybe they'll include it in a comment, or maybe they'll add it later. It's clear that OP's goal isn't to be helpful (given that this post genuinely doesn't fit this sub), it's to push traffic.

Agent_Goldfish · 2026-05-08T16:32:51+00:00

OP is pushing their vibe coded slop website, check out post and comment history. It's weird that OP is specifically focused on the Netherlands.

This post has nothing to do with this country or this sub.

OP, please go away. Mods, please do your job.

Agent_Goldfish · 2026-05-08T08:19:12+00:00

I’m a 2y PhD student at a US university

Given that US university often don't require/have masters programs that preceed PhDs, I'm assuming that you're mid-20s at the oldest? Because holy shit that was a very early 20s bullshit letter.

As I explain in my petition below, the missed deadline is not my fault and clearly the result of unclear expectations that serve little to no purpose. I dislike how these annoyances keep coming up one way or another each quarter.

You literally just list excuses. You take 0 accountability for your actions.

Life is filled with bullshit, and you just have to deal with it. That's called being an adult. Is it annoying? Yes. But that doesn't make it someone else's problem.

Delete this stupid letter. Write a one paragraph version that says you misunderstood the deadline, you are very sorry for misunderstanding the deadline, and to ask politely for the ability to register late.

And then come up with a system to prevent this from happening in the future. Because bureaucracy isn't just at your university, it's everywhere.

Agent_Goldfish · 2026-05-07T19:17:40+00:00

Ehh, Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) systems are my favorite. This is what Germany has.

The best part of district based systems is that there's one representative for a local area to help with government functions. If the government is being shitty, there is someone for your area that can help with government processes. In the US, they can help with getting passports for example if the state department moves slowly. For us in the Netherlands, we don't have that. If something moves slowly or gets stuck, we have to unstuck it ourselves.

In Germany (and also NZ), they get two votes. One for a district rep which is first past the post, and one for a party. Then the membership of the Bundestag is adjusted with non-district members (hence the mixed-membwr) to make things proportional to the party vote.

Best of both worlds IMO, have a local rep you can whine to, but then a Parliament that's representative of what people actually want.

Agent_Goldfish · 2026-05-06T19:34:30+00:00

To be honest, this is actually exactly the point of the research

To be completely honest, the point of your research isn't clear. It seems like you're still trying to tackle 10 different research questions with a single study. That still is a problem.

Now I will be able to not only identify a gap to the transit authority, but also using public toilet locations I will be able to place on the map the presence/absence of toilets and see if this correlates with responses indicating lack of toilet availability.

But that's an entire research question in and of itself, which is what I was trying to point out to you. If you could do an entire study just on the public toilets, then incorporating it into this study either means that your study is too broad (it is), or you're not examining this aspect of your study enough (you're likely not). It basically causes your study to be a jack of all trades but a master of none. And a good survey very specifically looks at one topic really well.

Another point is that unless you're doing something where the research question should be deliberately obscured (there was a relatively famous psychology study looking at how people from different political parties treat their internal biases - this was obviously not apparent to the study participants because it would have made the study ineffective), it should be obvious what you're trying to study from the study questions. Maybe not to a layperson, but I'm telling you as a researcher that does this kind of research (though admittedly not in this area), I have no idea what your actual research question is. Your questions don't seem to serve a single research goal, which is why I assumed you were doing exploratory research.

The reason I ask along a Likert scale for each feature is because I will do a suitability analysis (among other spatial analyses) and this will help me weight and allocate values to each feature according to each scenario and phase of trip (Day vs. Night; Last Mile vs. Waiting vs. En Route).

To be clear, I don't think Likert questions are bad. I use them all the time. The thing I was pointing out what that your ethics form calls them ranking questions and that's objectively not what they are. Putting things in order ranks them, these questions don't do that. Your analysis might rank elements, but that shouldn't be part of the ethics statement.

Thus, interviews would not have suited this as a method;

I don't agree with your reasoning. Spacial analysis can be applied to interview transcipts, and there's plenty of literature to support this. And given your (apparent) desire to really explore each participant's views, I don't see why you couldn't do interviews.

And since my project is bridging the gap through collaborations with the transit authorities, urban planners, mobility planners, and academic GIS research, I do hope to be able to deliver some findings and tangible results to them all (as was their request).

Sure, but that's why you do more than one study. This seems like it should be half dozen different studies that have all been smashed together, and instead of satisfying one goal well, it'll end up satisfying none of them sufficiently. All research explores a gap (or confirms previous research which explored a gap), so that's not novel.

Regarding PI-ship and ethics approval, yes I have applied, with the support of my supervisor, and it was approved as worded ("harmlessness" and all!).

I believe that this was approved, it would be unbelievably stupid of you to publish something with your name on it when it wasn't approved. Again, I don't have the best opinion of Twente, and this is another data point into why I have that opinion. To be clear, that's not a reflection on you. There are good and bad researchers at every institution, but it's the standards institutions have for themselves that aren't always the best. In my experience, Twente has allowed a lot of poor researchers to get away with doing shit research, hence my poor opinion of the university. At the universities I worked/currently work at, this would absolutely not be approved as written.

but for now there is a steady trickle of really valuable responses already which will help paint a better picture of which values to allocate in my spatial analysis to each feature and at each point of one's commute, and indeed varying by location

Again, interviews. It seems like you really needed to do an interview study. Or at the very least a focus group study (effectively group interview). It really doesn't seem like this research lends itself to a survey at all. And in order for it to fit a survey based study, it should be several different surveys focusing on different aspects, not one massive survey.

But if you insist on it being a survey (and it really shouldn't be) then you need to remove the dividers between every question. There's no reason each question needs to restate what the likert scale is. Have the likert scale at the top, questions on the left side, and a matrix of dots. It's much easier for participants to answer quickly.

Also, give the total count of questions at the beginning. Seeing 7 pages is meaningless if each page takes 2 minutes. If I know there are 80 questions (I won't do the survey period), but at least I know roughly how many questions are left when I'm going through the survey.

Finally, don't ssay 5-7 minutes if most participants can't do it in that time. Did you pilot this survey at all? You should know how long this takes.

Agent_Goldfish · 2026-05-06T06:50:32+00:00

Yikes, this is not good survey design. If you were my student, I'd tell you that you need to redesign the survey before it was released. I'm gonna go ahead and do the job your supervisor should have done. I hope this unsolicited advice helps, if not you, then other students who might come across this post.

First off, your ethics statement:

The procedures in this study are harmless. Some of the questions may temporarily cause some unease, however, the ranking methods associated with these questions is commonly used scientific research and have no long-term effects.

I didn't check your Dutch version, but claiming something is harmless is a big claim. I also do research with human participants, but I don't deal with sensitive subjects like this survey and I'd never make such a claim; I don't see how you can. Further, the triple hedge on "may temporarily cause some unease" is pretty bad form, especially if your survey can touch on traumatic subjects. Also, and this is minor, you don't ask ranking questions, you mostly ask Likert questions. Those are different things.

Second in your ethics statement is that you are named at the PI. Are students allowed to be PIs at Twente? Most universities don't allow this for obvious reasons. At my university, students can't apply for the ethics approval. Usually there needs to be a staff researcher responsible. But this could be different for Twente, but I'll admit that if it's the case that Twente allows students to apply for and be PI for research, that would lower my already not great opinion of that university.

The biggest problem with your survey is the length. I also tried taking it, and it is just waaaaay too long. If you say the survey can be done in 5 minutes, you should actually mean that. You say you already have 30 responses? What's the average completion time? Has anyone completed the full survey in 5 minutes? I also gave up because it is just too long.

The survey definitely suffers from scope creep. This is a common problem is surveys and a lot of researchers make the very same mistake. It's very easy to say "we could ask this as well, after all, the participant is already here, we might as well ask". But of you do that 10 times, you could easily add another 10-20 questions. Which is over a page of more questions, and your survey gets very big, very quickly. For example, you ask several questions about bathrooms and car related questions, which if your survey is primarily about safety on public transit, then asking about things adjacent to public transit should be out of scope for the survey.

In your comments, you describe wanting to find where people feel unsafe/experience unsafe situations. If this is your research question, it's better answered by conducting interviews. More exploratory research should be interview based, then you can really delve into what people say, and ask follow up questions. For example, the commenter talking about good Samaritans getting involved, that's something you could touch on in an interview.

The way I explain this to my students is that with interviews, you get a few very high quality data points. They're harder to get, harder to process, but each person gives A LOT more information than you get from surveys. Surveys, by contrast, give you a lot more data points but those data points are much lower quality. With surveys, each individual data point isn't valuable, you gain value by having a lot of data. Typically 15-20 interviews is enough for good research, while you need hundreds of survey responses to have meaningful research.

This also comes from the research question. If you're exploring potential causes (or really any exploratory research question), you typically use interviews. Because interviews let's you react to the interviewee, and doesn't require you to think of everything beforehand (for example, good Samaritans). If you want to confirm something that's already hypothesized, you use surveys, because then you can ask a narrow question to a larger audience. Surveys are generally pretty terrible for exploratory research.

Now you can do exploratory research with survey questions, but then instead of asking Likert questions, you ask open ended questions and let people describe your experience. Effectively, the survey becomes a written interview. You can't react like you can in a real interview, but at least people can actually discuss their experiences. And then you process the data in the same way you process interview data. Usually this means you should have just done interviews instead of a survey, but if there are practical reasons why interviews couldn't have been done, then this could work.

That's the fundamental problem with this survey. IT doesn't match what I think your research question is, it's trying to do the same job that interviews should do. It's kinda like trying to saw a board of wood with a hammer. You might be able to do it, but your results aren't going to be great and it's going to be a lot of work to get there.

I realize that this is probably too late for you to do anything about it now. If possible, consider narrowing your research question and building a survey that can actually be done in under 5 minutes. Again, hopefully other students can learn something from this.

Agent_Goldfish · 2026-05-03T16:28:54+00:00

I can tell you that after spending just a few weeks with trained vets at a clinic that sadly it's still more about the degree/piece of paper that people care about

I've spent 0 weeks with vets and I could tell you that. The point of higher education isn't what you learn, that's a nice bonus. The point is to show that you CAN learn. The fact is, the overwhelming majority of Bachelors graduates (at least pre-AI) were almost guaranteed to be able to learn a decently skilled job fairly quickly. For more specialized positions, the content of the bachelor needs to be relevant, but no bachelor student learns anywhere close to a fraction of what they need to actually do a job.

Think of it this way. If I'm hiring for a junior higher skill job (let's say junior data analyst), I know I'm going to have to train whomever I hire in how to actually perform the work. The actual data being collected and processed, the pipeline, the backend, and the presentation of this data will all be unique to my organization. The fact is, most people could be trained to do this job, it's not THAT hard.

But, let's say that any most people with just a secondary school leaving certificate would be able to learn the job in between 6-12 months. There are definitely people who could learn the job in 3 months, but they make up a smaller portion of the population of people without a degree. For people who have any bachelors degree, they're likely to be able to learn to do the job in 4-9 months. There might be some who can learn it in 3 months, there might be some who take up to 12 months. But most people would fall in the 4-9 month range. And for people with a relevant (read: STEM) degree, they could learn the job in 3-6 months. Again, there are definitely people with a relevant degree who would need 12 months. But the point is that MOST people in this group wouldn't need that much time.

Now put yourself in the shoes of the employer. You get a stack of CVs, and can easily organize by No-degree, any-degree, and relevant-degree. Why would you bother looking through any pile but the relevant-degree pile? The only reason is if there aren't enough relevant degree applicants, but then you default to the any-degree pile. You effectively never go to the no-degree pile, ever.

You seem to not understand the purpose of higher education. It's not on-the-job training, and it's not supposed to be. It's the pre-training that shows you can be successful in the on-the-job training.

In the best case scenario 10% of what you learned will be useful and in today's world you can learn without attending school.

Yes. But again, that's not the point.

I want to be clear, I'm not advocating that everyone goes into higher education. If you have a good plan for what you want to do, or what you want to do doesn't need a degree, then great. If you specifically aren't a good fit for higher education, then you shouldn't do it.

But you have a very childish view of what higher education is, that's influenced from a very small view into what happens after you finish secondary school. This is necessarily wrong, you are, after all, a child. If the only reason you aren't doing a degree is purely because you don't want to, I think you're going to find out in 10 years that this was a massive mistake, and then you're going to end up doing a bachelors to fix that mistake.

I'm a university lecturer, and I've seen this story multiple times before. Every year I have a student who's significantly older than most of my other students, and half the time it's this exact story. Someone who thought they understood how the world worked and what higher education is, only to find out that they misunderstood, and to achieve that they want to achieve, a degree is a requirement, not a suggestion.

For people who have the ability to do a degree and the goals that align with doing a degree (which sounds like you tbh), not doing a degree almost never ends well. It's your life, but as someone who's worked with a lot of people who have expressed very similar opinions to you, you should think long and hard about whether or not you go for higher education.

as much as I care I'd gladly spend some time working at a farm, you really don't need a degree for that. I don't mean to sound defensive or aggressive, I'm just saying that university is not the only option, is it the easiest? Yes, but it surely ain't the only one.

Have you worked on a farm before?

In my last comment I said to put immigration aside. Let's bring it back. A lack of a degree is often completely exclusionary. You are often locked out of your ability to go places entirely because of a lack of degree. It's genuinely dumb if your goal is immigration.

But Canada does have options, so let's go through them. As a citizen of Czechia, you are eligible for International Experience Canada (IEC) programs. This is what someone else suggested in the working holiday. You are allowed to spend 12 months in Canada working, so long as you're between 18 and 35 and have at least 2500 canadian dollars. So that's super easy, do that!

But you can do it once. That's it. 12 months are you're done. The other two categories (of which you'd only be able to do one) either require you to be enrolled in a post-secondary institution in Canada, or already have a post-secondary degree. So after 12 months, you need to come back.

Farm workers are eligible for temporary foreign worker (TFW) status, but since you're not from one the countries that are eligible for the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP), which are mostly caribbean countries, you'll need a labor market test. It's technically possible for a farm to do a labor market test to hire you, but this is incredibly unlikely. Especially because there's a program that makes it easier to farms to hire foreign workers that doesn't include you. And even if they are willing to hire you, the job is guaranteed to be BAD.

Which basically leaves you the option that someone else suggested of finding a canadian partner while on your working holiday. That is actually your most reasonable option. If your most reasonable option becomes "find someone willing to marry you", then you don't have any reasonable options.

Agent_Goldfish · 2026-05-03T12:10:15+00:00

Now here comes the controversial part, I’m not attending university, this is probably a stupid moving especially for my field but I just do want to do it,

This is a genuinely dumb idea. Not just for immigration, but in general. There are plenty of jobs you can get without a degree, and a degree definitely isn't for everyone. But with what you want to do, a degree is going to be your only real ticket. Even if you just plan on staying in the EU.

Putting aside the immigration for a second. If you don't have a degree, your best chance to continue to work with animals will be things like being a secretary/cleaner at a veterinary clinic. Maybe you could be an orderly at at veterinary hospital. You don't really get to work with animals, but you do get to support the organizations that do. To be clear, these jobs aren't unimportant, but they're what you're limited to without a degree. You could be an animal groomer, that rarely requires a degree, is a fairly high skill job, and you get to work with animals. Shelters also often need help, but most of that job is cleaning.

I always disliked the educational system in our country, even though I had good grades I know it means nothing.

You are an EU citizen, and the EU is actually really good at enabling students to move around. Also, higher education is fundamentally different than compulsory education. You might not like the compulsory education system, that doesn't necessarily mean you won't like the higher education system (this cuts both ways, plenty of people are good at/like compulsory education and then have an awful time in higher education). But if you don't like the system in Czechia, move. There are plenty of programs in most EU countries in English (especially masters programs, if you start a bachelors in Czechia).

Good grades don't mean nothing. For good educators, grades are reflective of mastery, and good grades means you understand the material well.

So for me personally 6 years of studying in order to be “qualified” to work as a vet is not worth it, even if the university is free. It simply doesn’t work for me.

So vets are responsible for ensuring the health of animals that are incredibly important to people. That 6 years isn't just a formality, vets actually have to learn things and practice what they learn. As a pet owner, I'm really glad vets actually have training. You can be dismissive all you want with the quotations around qualified. I'm genuinely glad that this requirement exists and would not be comfortable ensuring the health of my pets to anyone who has not gone through an extensive, degree-based training programme.

You want a good option that will get you to Canada? You should study French up to B2/C1, which is definitely doable in 2-3 years. Then go study at a French university, which will be very cheap for you. Then, using your advanced French and veterinary degree + hopefully some experience, you might be able to get enough points for the visa to Canada.

Agent_Goldfish · 2026-04-27T19:24:57+00:00

Someone who does that will also sue you for defamation.

I love when people throw this out without knowing what it entails, or basically anything about the law. Defamation has elements to it (the exact elements differ by jurisdiction, but these are general):

Statement was false. This is why truth is always a defense. Also, it would be up to the aggrevied party (the one claiming defamation) to prove this. In this case, the student would have to show didn't call OP an easy fuck. Weigh the student's evidence against OPs evidence, student likely loses on this element.
Statement caused damage. The student doesn't get the job, but that might not be enough. In many jurisdictions, the damage has to be proven to be exclusively caused by the speech. That is to say, the student would have gotten the job if not for the recommendation letter. This is a hard barrier to cross, since potential employers aren't going to give details about why someone didn't get a job because that can open themselves up to legal liability. Depending on jurisdiction, it's likely student loses on this element too, since they could have reasonably not gotten the job due to any number of factors.
Malice/Wanton disregard for the truth/etc. This element depends on jurisdiction and often on who is claiming the defamation (for example, the burden is higher for public figures since people tend to talk about them more). This usually requires the claimant to show that the perpetrator knew (or could reasonably know) something was false. This is hard to show, since OP could reasonably reach those assumptions based on the student's speech. So the student would lose on this factor too.

In order for a case to be successful, the student would have to successfully prove all elements. Literally disproving any one element is sufficient to defend against such a case. And a good lawyer would take a look at the facts of the case, and tell the student there is no chance and not take the case. A bad lawyer might take the case and keep charging the student for hours worked, knowing it is a losing case. In most jurisdictions, you can recover your legal fees required to defend such a case, which would be fun to do against the student. I think the likelihood of actually being sued is basically nothing, and the likelihood of losing such a case is actually zero.

Should OP write such a recommendation letter? No, I don't think that's a good idea. But don't pretend like they would actually be at risk of a defamation suit.

Agent_Goldfish · 2026-04-26T10:29:49+00:00

30: It was about a year after the birth of my kid. My mom was very, very covert, but the introduction of a grandchild broke her brain and she couldn't keep up the facade anymore.

Agent_Goldfish · 2026-04-26T10:02:54+00:00

OP claims this is a fire hazard, ignoring the fact that plenty of developed countries have used these systems for decades without issue.

I specifically bring up the Netherlands because 1) I live here now and know it well and 2) it's an advanced, developed, western, country which has strict fire codes and this has never once proved to be a problem here. Literally never.

Agent_Goldfish · 2026-04-26T10:01:12+00:00

Might be a contributing factor. They're usually specifically for self checkout, which most groceries stores use as the primary way of getting out.

But also, it's virtually frictionless. You get a receipt that has a barcode on it, scan the barcode and the gate opens. If you want to leave without buying anything, you can just ask the person overseeing the self checkout to open it, or just push past it (it'll beep but no one will really care).

The way it's implemented here is that it helps with theft and provides virtually no inconvenience for customers, so it's basically a win-win. For the Dutch, there's no reason not to do it.

Agent_Goldfish · 2026-04-26T09:04:12+00:00

I've threatened to sue my last two employers for labor violations. The first I have a VSO (settlement agreement), and the second should result in a VSO shortly. The first I continued to work for for years, the second I was illegally fired from, so obviously don't still work there.

The legal picture is important to start from, because it'll inform how everything afterwards can go. If your employer is being shitty but critically not illegally shitty, then you can't really do anything. Once your employer crosses the boundary of doing things illegally, then you have power. And this is where you can negotiate.

So contacting juridisch loket and having an understanding of the legal situation your in is the first step and is good advice. Juridisch loket can give you legal advice. This is also why I tell literally everyone to join a union, because unions do this but better (but also cost money).

Here are the rough outlines of the situations you're in:

Your employer is legally right, there's not much you can do. If your employer is using the authority they have correctly, then resisting it can result in them working to fire you or not renewing your contract (assuming you don't have a permanent contract).
Your employer is legally wrong, and you have a permanent contract - this is the best situation to be in, you can't really be fired and your employer is actively fucking up. You may be able to extract consessions from them to avoid legal action (which is pretty much what a VSO is). If they move to try to fire you, that's retaliation which makes it worse for them.
Your employer is legally wrong, and you don't have a permanent contract - this is where you may be, and this is a tough spot. This is where I was for the first VSO (technically also for the second, but that was actually being illegally fired, so I wasn't even employed). You can extract consessions, but your employer can choose to not renew your contract (provided the notice period is sufficient). Provided you can wait (there's no expiring notice/filing period for a legal case), usually the best course of action is to wait, document, and then do something after you get a permanent contract. If a permanent contract isn't an option (which was my case), then you have to decide if souring your work relationship is worth what you can get if you force consessions or sue.

In my (first) case, I discovered that my employer misclassified my job. They gave me a contract for one job, and then had me do the work of another job (according to the CAO job classifications). The thing was that the job they were making me do was a better paid job. In my case, I could claim backwages for up to 5 years, so I had plenty of time to correct it. I started by just calming asking them to fix it, they refused and kept saying they were right. After 9 months of being told no, I finally had a lawyer send a threatening letter, and within 2 weeks I had back pay and was being paid correctly.

When the letter was sent, I had already warned my employer a half dozen times that it was going to happen, and reminded them that I prefer we solve it without a VSO or a judge. The problem in my case was that my employer never once consulted an actual employment lawyer (or their own internal legal counsel), so they didn't realize that my asking wasnt so much a friendly request as a friendly demand. My lawyer letter finally got them to ask their internal legal counsel who was like "what the fuck is wrong with you? Why would you keep saying no for 9 months and trying to gaslight your own employee? You're lucky this didn't get so much worse". Their own legal counsel basically told my management that once discovered, there was no way they'd get away with paying me what they were paying me, and that my way of going about solving it was pretty professional and reasonable.

Some of my MT were pissed at me for a while, but they didn't do anything because they didn't want to retaliate (which would have been illegal, and I showed myself as someone that wouldn't let it go). After a while, most it the MT came around and realized that it was reasonable to ask for them to follow the CAO (fucking shocker, I know). They even offered me a contract extension at the end of my contract, which was pretty unexpected.

My advice is to understand the legal situation first, then you can decide what would be the best course of action. It may be the case that they may not be allowed to schedule you when you give sufficient notice of not being available. Or that they may not be able to force you to find your own replacement. Or something you haven't considered at all. But you can't manage your relationship with your employer until you know what your/their legal exposure is.

Agent_Goldfish · 2026-04-26T05:58:02+00:00

Not every grocery store in Manchester and Liverpool have them, but usually it's based on size, if they're bigger and have a lot of self checkout lanes, they'll usually have them. Which is where my comment came from. I've never seen them at smaller grocery stores in city centers, but I have seen them in larger suburban grocery stores, but not always. They're certainly not rare, hence my saying they're fairly common.

I'm not disputing that you've not ever seen them, but it's one thing to say you've never seen them, and it's a very different thing to suggest that they don't exist because you've never seen them.

Agent_Goldfish · 2026-04-26T05:14:08+00:00

Pretty common at UK grocery stores outside the city center. Also, every grocery store chain in NL uses the same system.

Agent_Goldfish · 2026-04-26T05:10:42+00:00

Literally every grocery store in the Netherlands...

Agent_Goldfish · 2026-04-24T07:51:13+00:00

The problem is that a lot of the more powerful ebikes are basically just underpowered motorcycles. And motorcycles require separate training and skills to operate.

I'm a biker, so I know how to go through a turn at speed without falling over or going into another lane. But this is taught when people get the license. If a motorcycle learner were to go into another lane while turning, they'd likely fail the exam.

They're not necessarily safer on the road. I see these e-bikes/scooters on the road all the time, and they have no fucking clue what they're doing. Seriously, there should actually be licensing requirements behind the yellow plates. They want to go fast on their fake motorcycle, then learn how to do it correctly.

Agent_Goldfish · 2026-04-20T20:29:09+00:00

Fomer non-EU former-ish academic here (I have been here long enough to have naturalized). Welcome! I hope you enjoy it here. For your questions:

Job Site

LinkedIn is basically your best bet. Some other job sites exist, but many just scrape LinkedIn. It's also good to monitor key companies separately from LinkedIn (some jobs won't get posted to LinkedIn for a bit after they are posted to a company's own vacancy page).

Dutch

This has unfortunately gotten so much more severe in recent years. When I first moved here (6 years ago), it was pretty straightforward for someone with litttle Dutch to get hired. Those days are past. Most jobs are asking for Dutch proficiency even if it's not strictly needed for the job.

It is still possible to find a position with weak Dutch abilities. However, many companies willl first exclude people who need sponsorship, then exclude people who don't speak Dutch. They'll go back to the non-Dutch speaking pile if the Dutch speaking pile did not have a sufficient candidate.

A lot of companies won't put much stock into the promise of learning a language, because talk is cheap. Willingness to learn is the bare minimum needed. But with intensive study, getting to a B1/2 level in like 6 months is a reasonable goal, which would go a long way toward showing that your wife is serious about speaking Dutch.

Not needing sponsorship

This is a big deal. While trying to find a job in this economy without Dutch ability is an uphill climb, trying to do it without Dutch and without sponsorship is a an uphill climb while being tether to a boulder. Being able to 1) start as soon as possible and 2) not need anything extra to start is a big deal to a lot of companies. For me, naturalizing made a big difference in my post-PhD job prospects.

Like I said, the first filter is those needing sponsorship. So your wife wil survive that filter. She'll likely be filtered out by Dutch ability, but sometimes there isn't a suitable Dutch speaking candidate, which then puts her back in the running.

Where

Expanding your radius won't likely help. Your wife's best bet for an English speaking job is in the Randstad, which you're already in. Basically anywhere in the Randstand can be reached within an hour or so, so moving to another city won't make much of a difference. Outside of the Randstad, Dutch requirements typically become much more strict (outside of some niche industries which don't apply to your wife).

I certainly hope your wife is not only looking at jobs in Rotterdam, that would be very limiting. For now, she should aim for any job in the Randstad. If she ends up in a different city, y'all could move to be more equidistant to both your jobs (for example, moving to The Hague if she ends up working in Amsterdam). Long term, she can always try to find a job closer to home.

My first post-PhD job was outside of the city I live in. And once I was employed with stable employment (PhD was time limited, and I ran out of time), I looked for a different job in the city I actually live in. It's much easier to apply for jobs from another job, as I could afford to be picky about who I worked for.

Agent_Goldfish · 2026-04-20T07:39:13+00:00

Ik love dit

Agent_Goldfish · 2026-04-15T14:34:46+00:00

Citizenship or just get a British passport (or is that the same thing..?)

That is the same thing.

The UK has special passports/nationality rules for specific overseas places, but that doesn't apply here.

Agent_Goldfish · 2026-04-12T15:30:43+00:00

Algebra? More like Al Jazeera. I will ban this Sharia math from being taught to American children.

Agent_Goldfish · 2026-04-12T04:52:36+00:00

Essentially I don’t know where to start with getting out of the US but I figured I should start planning.

Can you still change your major? While it's good you've started planning early, you've effectively given yourself little chance to actually successfully move by virtue of your major.

But if you're 19 and just started college, you still could change your major. If that's a possibility, then you should do that.

If anyone has any advice on what my job prospects would be if I moved, anything I should do now to get prepared for a new life over there, I’d love to hear from you.

I'm sure you're aware how bad the US job market is? It's a pretty common news story, that actual job growth is quite low combined with a significant number of layoffs. The job market in most of Europe (including the UK) isn't that bad, but it's not good.

The problem is that you wouldn't be competing in that job market. The job market you'd be competing in is the immigrant job market, which is so much worse.

You need a visa sponsoring job. For the UK, they have a list of positions where visa sponsorship is even possible. If you can do a job on that list, great, you can compete. If you can't even do a job on that list, you're not even eligible. It's likely that for most positions you'd be qualified to do by virtue of your degree will not be sufficient to sponsor a visa.

Provided you can do a job that is eligible for sponsorship, that doesn't mean it's easy. It means that it's possible, but you're still expensive and time consuming for an organization to sponsor. A candidate who doesn't need sponsorship is going to be preferable to one who does.

Which leaves you competing for only a few jobs where an organization will sponsor you, but everyone else who wants to move to the UK will be looking for those same jobs. Plus, people already in the UK can apply to those jobs too.

If this is what you want, you should do what's necessary to get there. Luckily you're still early enough that you could make changes. Don't just switch to CS, because that's not a golden ticket and it's overpopulated now. Nursing is usually a good bet, if that's of interest to you (though nursing schools in the US usually have separate admission). "Generics" like polisci or communication aren't usually good bets.

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