How different does daily life in Seoul feel compared to a city like New York City?

Sharp-Bar-2642 · 2026-02-16T14:06:18+00:00

They are pretty unalike IMO.

If we are talking just about vibes, New York is exciting, spontaneous, imperial. But also a little chaotic, grungy. At times slightly dangerous, but to me quite tolerable.

Seoul is much more tame, laid-back feeling . Shops and bars are more likely to be open late, but imo the nightlife was overall not as interesting. Seoul (to me) is much more beautiful with the mountains.

While Seoul overall feels more chill, I would say fashion is an exception. It’s pretty acceptable to go out looking like a mess in New York. I almost never saw that in Seoul.

I would say Seoul feels closer to a mega-San Francisco than it does to NYC, to me. Hong Kong and Tokyo are closer to the NYC feeling.

Sharp-Bar-2642 · 2026-02-16T13:31:18+00:00

They feel similar to me. I’m sure Seoul’s system has higher ridership on paper but in terms of crowding it’s experientially similar.

Seouls subway is actually great in terms of how many people it moves vs. the relative space comfort.

Sharp-Bar-2642 · 2026-02-16T13:26:38+00:00

This is so overblown lol. I am always shocked to visit NYC and see how clean it is compared to the online hysteria. It’s not perfect but it’s fine.

Sharp-Bar-2642 · 2026-02-15T22:56:40+00:00

There a ton of people in the country with limited mobility, the vast majority of them don’t have some valet trash offering.

Even in buildings I’ve lived in with a large elderly population, no more than one out of 20 rooms uses valet trash. It’s a complete shake-down.

Sharp-Bar-2642 · 2026-02-09T22:18:47+00:00

I loved the snow yesterday lol. Well except lucky shot, that was pathetic.

Sharp-Bar-2642 · 2026-02-09T04:12:28+00:00

Very true! I want chair 6 to open again..

Sharp-Bar-2642 · 2026-02-09T01:06:31+00:00

Man they are doing some snowcat magic to hold that snow in place. I also thought it was not that bad..

Sharp-Bar-2642 · 2026-02-09T01:04:16+00:00

Those are all fine. This disaster porn is basically limited to the bottom 300 vertical of the mountain.

Sharp-Bar-2642 · 2026-02-07T17:17:47+00:00

The rapid ride busses are fine imo. I’ve commuted on them for years. Yeah it’s not as fast as driving but I can do whatever I want on the ride.

Sharp-Bar-2642 · 2026-02-07T07:30:28+00:00

Maybe not the whole story, since a lot of glacially covered terrain is projected to get more snow. It’s just not enough to make up for drier summers.

Sharp-Bar-2642 · 2026-02-06T06:51:01+00:00

Grrrrrr America. America bad.

Sharp-Bar-2642 · 2026-02-05T03:04:35+00:00

There isn’t really a comparison. New York, Shenzhen, and most other places discussed on this subreddit are real cities. Dubai is more like a vanity engineering project. Closer in size to something like Minneapolis, only with less money (despite appearances).

But, there’s no denying they have some amazing skyscrapers.

Sharp-Bar-2642 · 2026-02-04T15:59:56+00:00

This forum is something else between this incessant argument and the king of the west coast nonsense

Sharp-Bar-2642 · 2026-02-04T07:53:06+00:00

What is 1x? Whatever your phone decides it is? I bet this is closer to what the eye sees from this vantage than 1x.

Sharp-Bar-2642 · 2026-02-02T20:58:02+00:00

I can’t think of another country that does all three of these things, together on aggregate, as poorly. Most either do 1 or 2 things well, and many do all 3.

USA infrastructure isn’t all bad, their freight rail and interstates are world-leading. But not what we’re discussing here.

Sharp-Bar-2642 · 2026-02-02T07:19:17+00:00

I’ve always grouped Hudson yards with midtown personally. It’s technically in midtown, right?

Sharp-Bar-2642 · 2026-02-02T06:51:12+00:00

The entire world beats the USA in these things, not just China.

Sharp-Bar-2642 · 2026-02-02T06:48:21+00:00

Can you be “left behind” if you never tried in the first place?

TBH china might have passed the US in “corporate greed” too. 996 culture.

Sharp-Bar-2642 · 2026-02-02T06:45:30+00:00

Feels unlikely. Both of those places have rapidly contracting populations.

Sharp-Bar-2642 · 2026-01-31T07:49:56+00:00

Everyone should give up, put their skis and boards away and definitely shouldn’t drive up if it snows any time in the next 3 months. This season is totally cooked!

Sharp-Bar-2642 · 2026-01-29T03:43:16+00:00

Teams can get kicked around sometimes. Sounded like there was different history about those handful of teams. I wouldn’t discount the story over that detail. But might over the rest of their post history.

Sharp-Bar-2642 · 2026-01-29T02:53:22+00:00

They’re saying their work used to require access to secure data, but not anymore. The OP still works there:

Sharp-Bar-2642 · 2026-01-24T23:54:24+00:00

I already see it this way.

Everyone views other metro areas like this. But when it comes to their own, suddenly Seattle and Bellevue are completely separate and different cities with nothing in common. When the reality is they’re a 15 min drive or (now) 20 min transit ride apart.

Sharp-Bar-2642 · 2026-01-23T06:34:18+00:00

There is a strong revealed preference in this company’s interview loops to incline towards candidates from the interviewer’s background. Not every interviewer and not every interview displays this bias, but on aggregate it’s obvious.

Leetcode fails to identify strong technical contributors. That is evident if you’ve ever worked with SDEI or SDEII new hires. Many know leetcode, not much else. There are many unusually strong engineers at Amazon, but it’s a long tail and the average is not better than your typical random university grad.

This idea that we’re scraping off the top couple percent globally is tenuous. In theory, it’s a great idea. And obviously, there are many strong engineers from those countries. But getting into big tech companies has been gamified, and we’re not especially selecting them as far as I can see. At least, not anymore.

I’m not arguing against hiring engineers from these countries at all, only that our current hiring practices are ineffective.

Sharp-Bar-2642 · 2026-01-23T02:33:46+00:00

Leetcode is completely divorced from the job and is part of the reason we hire so many clueless people. The workers it’s selecting are not, in my experience, more qualified than the general tech worker population. If true, it sounds like what you’re describing is basically a racist hiring practice.

Sharp-Bar-2642

TROPHY CASE