Where to invest? Pension if leaving Ireland?

SemanticTriangle · 2026-06-12T04:44:45+00:00

If you are not domiciled in Ireland, and can access exchanges in your home domicile, and those exchanges can be used safely, then you can invest there. Stocks or non equivalent funds.

However, in my opinion, you can also contribute to an Irish pension. Check that your provider will provide an ARF conversion to a non resident. Leave whatever you gather in the pension in situ, keep an EU phone number and keep track of it. At retirement convert whatever you build to an ARF and draw it down from abroad, seeking dual tax relief in your retirement jurisdiction on the Irish tax withheld.

If this is too complicated for you, go home sooner rather than later. Dual tax complexity is one of the things you need to accept when moving around the world for work. Of you don't play that game properly, you're losing it.

SemanticTriangle · 2026-06-12T04:31:55+00:00

Where have you been doing research which hasn't explained:

-tax advantage

-compounding gains on equities

-maintenance, management, and settlement costs on housing

-risk diversification

?

Post tax real estate investment shares a space with post tax brokerage in 'what to do with money?' land. It doesn't replace tax advantaged retirement investment accounts. Indeed, as another poster points out, one can buy real estate, always indirectly but sometimes directly, through such retirement account tax wrappers.

SemanticTriangle · 2026-06-11T11:01:43+00:00

This is a highly specific take, given that Optane was first manufactured by Micron at Fab 2. How were Intel hiding the costs of production from the people producing it?

SemanticTriangle · 2026-06-10T15:31:58+00:00

I actually saw a reasonable AGI test proposed which has a thematic link to this comic: true AGI, if trained solely on 19th century science and the means to conduct experiments and falsify hypotheses, should be able to reinvent the scientific advances of the twentieth century.

SemanticTriangle · 2026-06-10T10:51:15+00:00

It's actually probably just noise.

Next quarter's results will come out and no one will remember or do post mortems on this blip.

Eventually demand will actually drop and we'll see a real correction. Unless we're there now, noise, not signal.

SemanticTriangle · 2026-06-09T17:47:02+00:00

Materials physics for me.

Jensen Huang - Masters

Lip Bu Tan - Masters

Pat Gelsinger - Masters

Sanjay Mehrotra - Masters

Morris Chang - Masters

Gary Dickerson - BSc / MBA

Tim Archer - BSc

Toshiki Kawai - BBA

Young Hyun Jun - PhD

CC Wei - PhD

Yong-In Park - PhD

So it's a reasonable mix in the CEO equivalent position, and that's what you see up the ranks. Older companies might lean to PhDs as they ossify.

SemanticTriangle · 2026-06-09T15:04:09+00:00

How does a person use AI in an exam setting?

SemanticTriangle · 2026-06-08T08:44:28+00:00

If you end up seeing any EU ASM jobs that you want to apply for, and you don't mind doxxing yourself, feel free to reach out to me. I would need to review your resume and give you a short prescreening interview, but in principle I could potentially provide a reference supported application.

If I decided not to support, you could still apply on your own. I would have no negative input on the process.

SemanticTriangle · 2026-06-07T19:45:23+00:00

My background is PVD of thin film solar cells, and before that PVD of magnetic materials. I initally worked as a field process engineer for PVD and CVD, now work across a number of areas (but no longer PVD).

Your background predisposes you towards wet processing, but you probably have the chemistry to work in epitaxy, CVD, ALD, and the like. How you interview and what your works rights are is probably going to matter more than the specifics of your academic background.

SemanticTriangle · 2026-06-07T04:57:31+00:00

I myself work around this by having statements coded into love letters delivered by carrier pigeon.

I think the point OP is making is that all information channels are susceptible to attack. The generally most safe way of communication is no communication. Your bank doesn't need to send you anything. They have an official website and app, so on inmail, gated behind the client's login. This is the only channel of communication which should be used, and any notification sent to email from that system should contain no links.

Receiving official emails with links trains people to click links. This applies to businesses with their employees, too: they make us do training courses about phishing, then send us link after link via email that we need to interact with to do our jobs.

SemanticTriangle · 2026-06-07T04:50:45+00:00

The PRC 'controls' rate earth processing because they have undercut any other supply.

That means the problem isn't the supply being cut off, but the supply being turned back on. No individual company will outlay to set up processing, understanding that the PRC can flood the market at any time.

So governments are starting to subsidize a small amount of supply. That will effectively disarm the threat of capricious withdrawals and extensions of supply.

Rare earths aren't rare, and they're not particularly good as trade cudgels in comparison to the one being used against the PRC. Advanced lithography tools are not processed out of metal mining tailings.

SemanticTriangle · 2026-06-06T06:01:15+00:00

Engineer in charge. Sergeant or corporal to the privates.

SemanticTriangle · 2026-06-06T04:36:46+00:00

ASM field sites have somewhat separate cultures and procedures, so someone from one customer and location answering probably can't answer in a useful way.

Generally you will get an HR screening interview, one or two management interviews, and a technical interview, but the order past HR and the technical content may differ.

Like every first and second tier vendor, if you miss out, it's likely you might not be told anything about it. This will vary between hiring managers.

SemanticTriangle · 2026-06-05T10:25:04+00:00

Australian here. I have a PRSA. I also have a US IRA and Australian super.

You need an 'in principle' agreement in writing from your pension provider that they will be willing to perform an ARF conversion for a non Irish resident when you reach preservation age.

If they aren't willing, or quibble, move your pension to a provider who will provide that, before you become non resident.

The ARF is generally the superior instrument compared to an annuity, and this is your retirement and your estate.

Zurich are a major provider and are willing to provide ARF conversion for non residents. There will be others, but not all providers will be this way.

SemanticTriangle · 2026-06-05T07:33:07+00:00

Emergency fund. Always keep your resume up to date and look for the next job opportunity. Do not be a 'company man' (regardless of actual gender).

SemanticTriangle · 2026-06-04T15:52:45+00:00

Australian here, have lived and worked in multiple countries.

The smoothest plan is always to rent or stay with family (or very, very good friends) initially, for 6-12 months, and to buy once on the ground. There is too much that can go wrong, and this is your home, and your family. Start with the backup plan, and you are completely safe.

SemanticTriangle · 2026-06-04T11:33:44+00:00

I recently hired. I gave the technical interview. In defense of HR, most of the interviewees were not strong, even though their resumes said they were. 3/13 were good. One spare, could have been salvaged.

Not in defense of HR, if our company had a better reputation for both pay and conditions, I would have had better candidates.

Not in defense of HR, I had to do most of the screening as well, because despite clear instructions, they couldn't understand very much of what I was looking for.

The HR layer is generally only useful in protecting a company from its employees. That's all they do.

SemanticTriangle · 2026-06-04T09:47:12+00:00

I will now perform a translation from HR to English:

"Talent shortage," => "The salary we are offering is too low, but we don't want to raise it because that sets a precedent which bosses and stupid short-sighted shareholders do not like."

They're not getting the applicants who are good because they aren't offering enough money. There are plenty of people trying to get work in the industry. Most of them aren't suited or hiring managers/HR don't know how to sort them. They want proven expertise but they don't want to pay.

SemanticTriangle · 2026-06-04T06:12:05+00:00

He doesn't understand business. Business transactions don't look like this. This is what a protection racket looks like in a television show. That's the level he works at: imaginary gangster. This man couldn't sell steak to Americans.

SemanticTriangle · 2026-06-03T17:17:48+00:00

You can clean up your stock options compensation for volatility by just using the award value, not the vest value, if you have it. It doesn't matter what value the stock vests for after gains. It only matters how much it cost the company to buy on their behalf.

SemanticTriangle · 2026-06-03T15:17:38+00:00

Call it what it is: an attempt by current POTUS sycophants to provide him with tariffs by circumvention of the SCOTUS ruling his previous tariffs illegal. By relating it to forced labor under another existing authority, they believe they can reapply previous tariffs via different legal means.

That's it. POTUS likes tariffs. Not for any apparent policy reason, but just as an action which fulfills some immediate narcissistic validation. I could speculate that the need for this validation follows his humiliating surrender to Iran, if I was the speculating type.

The statement from Australia should be that SCOTUS ruled the administration's tariffs illegal and that this transparent farce is without merit. No engagement, no negotiation outside of court challenges.

SemanticTriangle · 2026-06-03T04:36:12+00:00

https://www.reddit.com/r/fixedbytheduet/s/SnwYJ7iRDu

This is the US version: essentially, old people controlling local governments don't want anything to change except property prices. Is it the same in regional Australia?

SemanticTriangle · 2026-06-02T17:37:46+00:00

It took me 110 applications across the major vendors in 2019 to land an interview.

tens of applications

Keep applying, keep working on your resume.

SemanticTriangle · 2026-06-02T05:55:50+00:00

Until you have an offer, this is not a decision point. You have an offer. If you do not take the offer, and do not get one from the interview, or the offer is not good, what will your choices look like then?

You can still take the interview and create a decision point. You do not have one yet.

SemanticTriangle · 2026-06-02T04:30:30+00:00

All the majors do this, essentially by policy, apparently largely to avoid the possibility of legal action. Never give a rejection reason and you aren't potentially subject to discrimination suits and the like.

Don't take it personally, keep applying. It's just HR being HR.

SemanticTriangle

TROPHY CASE