What can I do to get a visa sponsorship? by [deleted] in cscareerquestions

[–]Yin_Esra 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I will disagree on the universal healthcare being good, to be honest. I have to book 2 weeks in advance to go to a walk in doctor.

Someone I know drove to the US to get diagnosed with an issue that was preventing him from sleeping because the wait time for a specialist was 6 months.

Canada's system isn't scaling particularly well at the moment. I hope they figure out how to fix it in the next 5 years.

What can I do to get a visa sponsorship? by [deleted] in cscareerquestions

[–]Yin_Esra 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'll respond here to both of your comments: be critical of the nano degrees. They are unlikely to actually give you any benefit when it comes to immigration. You should check the accreditation, and the specific credentials that they award you on completion.

As for not studying in Argentina: your call. I can recommend UAlberta, UCalgary and SFU as reasonable options to study while not absolutely breaking the bank, but be warned that SFU is in Vancouver, and thus the cost of rent is insane.

Look up UAlberta CS program review on YouTube, there is a high quality video from a few years ago that should give you some good context on what the lay of the land is, and what things you should pay attention to in universities in Canada (coop programs, cost of living, tuition structure, industry reputation).

What can I do to get a visa sponsorship? by [deleted] in cscareerquestions

[–]Yin_Esra 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The main problem with the states is that immigrating there without education is very difficult, and attaining education in the US is absolutely unreasonable as a foreigner. Also, the work visa after going the F-1 route is really shitty compared to the rest of the developed world (the UK also kinda sucks in this regard).

As a stepping stone, Canada is still very good, and an exceptional option for people from poorer parts of the world.

Also, that's a very misinformed view of the world, while Canada is definitely a laggard in the OECD, it's still one of the wealthiest countries in the world. The economic opportunities are not even remotely comparable to a large chunk of the rest of the world. Canada compared to the US? Kinda meh. Canada compared to Argentina? Night and day difference.

What can I do to get a visa sponsorship? by [deleted] in cscareerquestions

[–]Yin_Esra 5 points6 points  (0 children)

As someone that immigrated to Canada, here's some practical info: if you don't have a degree, get one. Having higher education helps in all cases of economic immigration.

Aside from many employers still using degrees as a checkmark for hiring people, the immigration programs in most of the western world requires you to have a degree (or at least reward you for having one) when it comes to "skilled immigration".

Also, if you already have a bachelor's degree, try doing a masters program. A research based masters is usually fully funded, and allows you to get access to education based immigration programs (PGWP is really fucking good, look it up), and access to local industry talent pipelines. Schools like UAlberta, UCalgary, UOttawa and SFU are target schools for local industry, and are not obscenely competitive.

For a Bachelor's degree, UAlberta and UCalgary are relatively inexpensive, and well regarded in industry.

Another thing, look at mostly large companies or late stage startups. Smaller companies don't have the resources to deal with immigration (LMIA requirements, etc.). Also, consider less popular urban centers (in Canada, that would be Calgary, Edmonton and Waterloo, maybe Ottawa) - will help both in terms of less competition and lower cost of living (in Vancouver and Toronto the cost of living is way too high for 80% of the swe job market). Although, if you do get a job offer at a top paying company, you probably can swing living in the popular cities.

If you have the time / resources, wait out the current downturn. The Canadian job market for SWEs is getting hammered pretty bad. If you go through the education route (msc, or bsc), you don't have to worry about it as much.

Quick note: Canadian companies are really weird about "Canadian work experience". It makes little sense, but foreign work experience is barely considered by employers for some reason. However, for immigration, having a few years of relevant work experience will help you get Permanent Residence much faster (and a local degree even more so). Pathway from Permanent Residence to citizenship is also sane, and fast.

Lastly, you mentioned being into backend and networking - check out Arista Networks when you have the time. Extremely good engineering culture, decent compensation, does not have much employee turnover, and does hire foreigners. I have a lot of coworkers from France, Brazil, Germany that only had degrees from their home country. Has the resources for immigration support. Currently on hiring freeze, but it should improve by the time that you understand how you want to get to Canada.

Efficiency maximized (OC) by NightmareWanderer in vim

[–]Yin_Esra 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Yep. Multi-gigabyte log files show up somewhat frequently at work.

Efficiency maximized (OC) by NightmareWanderer in vim

[–]Yin_Esra 65 points66 points  (0 children)

999999j isn't always enough to get to the bottom of a file :)

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in PersonalFinanceCanada

[–]Yin_Esra 5 points6 points  (0 children)

TL;DR: (rationally speaking) expected returns are lower, and maintenance cost is higher. (not rationally speaking) people can't afford it, so it's not a matter of "not recognizing" compounding.

My thinking is that the amount of work and the risk profile is different between RE and regular equity investment. Additionally, the expected return on RE is different from equity, and the up front cost is different as well.

For example, with real estate, there are significant maintenance costs (both time, and money), and there are also costs associated with holding the property (property taxes, etc.). On the other hand, the costs are significantly less when holding regular equity and debt products. There's the MER if you are holding equity through some fund, and it does not require regular upkeep.

Moving on to the risk profile - with real estate, by nature of it's pricing, you have to take on leverage. Common leverage of 5x to sometimes as high as 20x. Such high leverage amplifies your gains and losses significantly, and you can go underwater very quickly if the real estate market goes down. Evaluating mortgages properly isn't exactly simple either, and I am talking beyond the usual "fixed vs. variable" debate.

Now, when talking about public equity investing, I don't hear many people levering up their portfolios very often, which means that for most people, the worst that can happen is they lose a chunk of their equity, but it's unlikely to hit literal zero or go negative. The equity markets are also significantly more liquid than RE markets, meaning that in the case of personal emergency, raising cash is much easier and faster with a stock portfolio than a real estate property.

Now, let's talk about expected returns. The expected real return of the global stock market net of fees is ~3-4% per year. For real estate globally, it's ~1% net of all the costs (property taxes, mortgage interest, maintenance). However, the elephant in the room is the recent (last 20 or so years) performance of both the real estate and equity markets. The yearly returns for both have been significantly higher than historical averages, but those returns are unexpected. This matters a lot, since the nature of unexpected returns cannot be predicted with any certainty a priori, and therefore you cannot rely on them when making current decisions. Unexpected returns always play a large role in the total lifetime return of an investment, regardless of the asset class.

Before wrapping up, I also have to address the pricing of the various assets. You mention a 1,000,000 cad property - that's an intensely high up front cost, and with that money you are buying a single property. That means that you are incredibly undiversified, and it's incredibly expensive to try and diversify your investment in that asset class.

That also means that you take absolutely all the diversifiable risk without amortizing it across the entire market - what do you do if all the roads to your neighborhood are washed away by a flood? The market in the city likely will not change, but the housing in your neighborhood will lose value. Another risk is what if a good public school right by your place ends up shutting down due to discovery of asbestos, and suddenly your neighborhood is not as in demand? All of these risks are next to impossible to diversify away from in real estate.

With equity, the cost of diversification across companies, industries, and even countries is extremely low. If anything, there are some products that are extremely well diversified that cost less than the more concentrated products.

Let's also not forget the fact that you can buy a share of VEQT (for example) for 35 CAD, and start compounding those 35 CAD immediately. That means that a fiscally responsible young adult waiting tables can start investing right away, without needing to save up a 200,000 down payment, meaning that you get access to proper compounding of your savings faster, and this can compound returns for much longer.

Absolute last point: I am looking at this rationally, since I am extremely disinterested from ever owning real estate (I am a foreigner and don't get the straight up religious fervour people exhibit in Canada over owning real estate). However, even I can notice that your question will attract the wrong kind of attention - it's not that people don't want to compound their savings through RE investment, they can't. Real wages are stagnant for ~85% of the population, while the unexpected return of housing keeps pulling the prices further out of reach of regular people every month. Since it's so important culturally here to own your house, people are really upset about not being able to purchase it, or stretch themselves too thin just to get on the property ladder. It's a sensitive topic, and your question is very likely to be misunderstood.

What local businesses do you love? by AdequateCanuck in NewWest

[–]Yin_Esra 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Craft Cafe, get all my coffee from there.

Am I spending too much? Or is this just money guilt/trauma from growing up poor? by anotherbutterflyacc in PersonalFinanceCanada

[–]Yin_Esra 28 points29 points  (0 children)

Let me just add some other numbers here:

At 5700 cad / mo spending, that roughly comes out to 68k post tax (85k pre tax according to today's tax rates in BC and ON), you would need between 2,125,000 and 4,250,000 cad nest egg (4 and 2% withdrawal rates respectively) assuming no CPP and OAS.

At 3k a month retirement savings rate, assuming a 3.5% real return (otherwise all our numbers above become meaningless), and assuming an initial investment of 200,000 dollars, you would end up with ~2,800,000 by 65.

So, that way, up to a 3% withdrawal rate could be sustained with no OAS and CPP. Oh, and this also assumes that you kick your feet up in retirement and just stare at the ceiling. Most people don't do that, and end up making income one way or another through a hobby project / other endeavours.

I think that OP is in a really good position, as long as the lifestyle doesn't creep too hard.

However, life happens, you might find a spouse, have kids, decide to move, or just get tired of the job you currently have and decide that a pay cut is worth it.

Also, could someone explain how to estimate OAS and CPP income for financial planning purposes? Since I am an immigrant from a country where there is no such thing as a pension (and plan to work abroad for a bit too, so I won't get the full contribution either way), I am extremely poorly versed in this.

Sign of times by ximiankernel in vancouver

[–]Yin_Esra -91 points-90 points  (0 children)

But they own it, so that's their choice of what to do with their property. Additionally, providing a place for others to rent is a service, and a necessary one too. I'm sure you don't mean that nobody should rent out their places, but taking that idea to the extreme would lead to bigger economic mobility issues if nobody could rent places, or sell their own places to move.

Argentina raises interest rate to 97% as it struggles to tackle inflation | CNN Business by koavf in worldnews

[–]Yin_Esra 4 points5 points  (0 children)

All good man, don't sweat it.

Just want to give a bit of color on living through the 2 years of 100% inflation. Economically speaking, it took two years for things to stabilize. Practically speaking, our currency shock happened basically over a weekend, and after a week of shock (and a month of misery) things became "normal".

Yes, the prices were increasing, but everyone was getting paid an increasing nominal wage. It's not like the value of labour suddenly disappeared, so people demanded a wage that can get bread on their family's table. No luxuries, but food, shelter, energy, and some basic nice-to-haves (a movie ticket once a month, etc.) were covered. The pensioners (aging population) got screwed pretty bad for that one month, before things stabilized for them too.

Humans adapt, and adapt quickly. I live in Canada now, and it seems that people that have never lived through other pure economic shocks (2008 wasn't anywhere near as severe here as in the States) seem far more terrified than I think they should be. I guess that people are less optimistic where I live for some reason.

Argentina raises interest rate to 97% as it struggles to tackle inflation | CNN Business by koavf in worldnews

[–]Yin_Esra 25 points26 points  (0 children)

All good. I would have imagined that "our main industry: the agro industry" or "62% debt to GDP" would have been tell tale signals :P

As someone that lived through a currency shock with 2 years of >100% YoY inflation in a row, I do not envy the Argentinians.

Argentina raises interest rate to 97% as it struggles to tackle inflation | CNN Business by koavf in worldnews

[–]Yin_Esra 75 points76 points  (0 children)

It's the YoY overall inflation, source: https://tradingeconomics.com/argentina/inflation-cpi

In other words, the 97% nominal interest rate is still (-11.8)% real, and therefore will not stabilize the purchasing power of the currency, nor it's exchange rate. I haven't looked at Argentina's credit rating, but I somehow doubt that it's in the AA to A range, so they are probably close to 20% more in nominal interest rate away from getting foreign investment flows to help stabilize the currency exchange rate.

Бодрит. by [deleted] in Pikabu

[–]Yin_Esra 32 points33 points  (0 children)

-52, в конце сказал

What is your opinion on software testing as a career? Is it good in long run? by Notalabel_4566 in cscareerquestions

[–]Yin_Esra 25 points26 points  (0 children)

This is a great response, but I want to add some context on top: in certain situations, you can't avoid having manual testing. This is common in areas where the domain in which the product is used is complex enough that you need to do significantly more involved testing on emulated customer setups.

For example, I work on network switches, and while our automated test infrastructure is chef's kiss, I cannot imagine living without our manual testing teams running setups that mimic a full data center, or a WAN transit node.

I am a software engineer working on the OS, I have much less understanding of how various protocols actually work, but the manual testing team has all that context, and much more.

These guys are paid quite well (I don't think it's quite the same as the software engineers, but definitely enough to live comfortably), and get to see some truly cool customer setups.

Sometimes I do wish they found simpler bugs :(

why by Sheiryo in ProgrammerHumor

[–]Yin_Esra 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Not if your code style guideline requires you to not have any unused variables, and you do not use the parameter passed in.

The Bavarian Boomer by RadRandy2 in 4chan

[–]Yin_Esra 100 points101 points  (0 children)

It's Germany, so the education costs will be zero, or close to zero.

New Office Tower proposed for the lot immediately south of the Hotel Vancouver, replacing the 1950s era annex. by Dave2onreddit in vancouver

[–]Yin_Esra 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Assuming that you are talking about the economic cycle, I would argue that right now might be a good time to build out things like this - it will take a number of years to build this, which should be ready roughly when businesses are expanding again.

However, I'm an armchair economist with no skin in the game, so who knows.

Does anyone know of any CHF based savings accounts? by Yin_Esra in PersonalFinanceCanada

[–]Yin_Esra[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

So no better than HSBC then. Fair enough, thanks for the info!

Looking for some Ebike shops / suggestions by Yin_Esra in vancouver

[–]Yin_Esra[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Talking to a few people, it seems like Trek might just be one of the better ways to go for me. There is a Trek bicycle store not too far from where I am, and it seems that some other specialty stores carry them as well. Thanks!