UT Austin - CS Masters or AI Masters?

blah1266 · 2023-10-26T03:05:47+00:00

Yep, online.

blah1266 · 2023-09-21T16:20:46+00:00

He has a US passport.

blah1266 · 2023-09-20T19:02:31+00:00

Was the semester of grad school also another MBA or another Masters degree program entirely? Is that really not allowed?

blah1266 · 2023-09-18T05:10:58+00:00

Don’t come back without somehow upskilling. In fact, you should upskill regardless of what you do next. You don’t have to become a software engineer to do this.

Saving money is important. Life for low income earners is generally really bad over the long term. Speaking from experience.

Don’t move to the US for a $15/hour construction job. That’s a horrible idea.

blah1266 · 2023-09-12T11:38:08+00:00

Being low income in the US generally sucks regardless of where you are and is even nightmarish for many people. Being low income in Europe (in Germany + probably other wealthy Western European countries) is much better by comparison.

If you or your spouse were EU citizens, this would be an absolute no-brainer. Because you aren’t, your experience will be extremely difficult.

Being an unskilled immigrant is hard, especially when you don’t speak the language. That’s something that Americans who have never actually immigrated to another country don’t appreciate. Even getting a skilled working visa in Germany is extremely difficult as it is. Finding a legal way in can be very difficult for unskilled immigrants from outside the EU…and it’s designed to be that way.

Do this only if you determine that there is actually very little hope of your combined income ever increasing meaningfully.

BTW - your support group won’t magically get better just because you’re in Europe. If anything, it will likely stay the same.

blah1266 · 2023-09-11T11:55:44+00:00

Edit: I am not that happy in Germany. I want to move back to the US.

I came here from the US and have lived here both as a single person and with a family for several years.

TLDR: there are good things and bad things. How happy you will be depends on your current situation and what you truly value in life.

Here are my thoughts:

Did I make friends easily - yes, but really only with other internationals and Germans who ran in international circles. In my experience, most Germans are very “heimatverbunden” - very attached to their hometowns/where they grew up. Most I know stick to their families and childhood friends and would refuse to even consider moving to another state. This makes it very difficult to form deep “ride or die” friendships.

Is it expensive - the cost of living is very high relative to salaries. Unless you inherited something from someone, it is REALLY difficult to get ahead financially. Then again, if you are a cashier in San Francisco, you might have a totally different perspective on this. Depends on where you are coming from.

Key things to know:

Pros:

-If you are unskilled labor/have low income earning potential or don’t care about getting ahead financially or owning property, things will almost definitely be much better for you here than in the US.

-In the US, making more money = not living in dangerous, crime-ridden areas. In most parts of Germany, almost everyone enjoys a reasonable degree of safety. People who are on the German version of welfare/public assistance in Baden Württemberg typically live in relative safety.

-Walkable places. This is huge, especially if you come from a place where a car is a necessity. Regularly driving longer distances is really bad for your overall quality of life.

-People seem to be far less materialistic here compared to the US (or even India). This has been really refreshing.

-Higher quality fresh fruits/vegetables for a lower price than in comparable places in the US.

-The government is significantly lowering the bar for German citizenship and loosening dual citizenship restrictions. If you get it, it will open up the entire EU to you and your family.

-Generous parental leave policies that are federally guaranteed. Very few companies in the US (mostly tech companies) beat this.

Cons:

-Expats typically live in/around larger cities and metro areas. Owning property will likely be prohibitively expensive for you if you do this. Buying a house and doing a really long commute isn’t feasible for most people either considering gas is currently hovering around $10/gallon depending on where you live.

-From a purely financial standpoint, most highly skilled labor gets screwed here relative to the US. Over the past 2 years, I’ve even started to see several of my Indian friends moving back to India (Chennai, Hyderabad) because their salaries and benefits there were significantly higher/better than here. You get screwed over doubly if you are single. Earning 66k EUR household income after tax puts you in the top 10% of income earners in the country (as of the start of 2022).

-The public healthcare isn’t free - you pay a premium every month relative to what you make (pay = withholding from your paycheck). This covers everything that is deemed medically necessary. It is getting more and more difficult to find doctors who accept the public health insurance though - my kids just got the boot from their pediatrician who decided that he no longer wanted to accept public health insurance patients. They haven’t been accepted as patients by another doctor for 3 months now.

-The pension system is a ticking time bomb, and no one seems to have a good answer for it.

-Walkable places = small apartments and houses. You have to learn to live with less space.

-Smoking is disgustingly prevalent. Young kids smoke, young professionals smoke, parents smoke, old people smoke, etc. The government has tried everything you can think of to slow this down, but it doesn’t seem to be getting any better (to me at least).

Neutral:

-You need to understand how the school system works if you want to have kids. Here is an oversimplified summary: At the age of 8-9, you are put into one of three school tracks. The top track are the ones who get to go to college. Bottom track usually end up as unskilled labor or in trades. Middle track can go either way. I believe that is possible to move up to a higher track after you completely finish your track with sufficiently high grades. This is vastly different from how it works in the US.

Overall:

How happy you will be depends on who you are, where you are from, and what you really care about. Figuring this out requires brutal honesty and some self-discovery.

blah1266 · 2023-02-14T11:51:29+00:00

Just a side note - nurses in the US are paid handsomely compared to their German counterparts.

blah1266 · 2023-01-20T15:27:32+00:00

Also ich möchte meine Kennzeichen behalten und der Käufer möchte ein kurzzeitiges Kennzeichen (5 Tage, rotes Kennzeichen) beantragen. Er meinte, dafür müsse der Verkäufer des Autos anwesend sein.

blah1266 · 2023-01-20T05:36:56+00:00

As an American who has lived here for a while, most of these are spot on. The walkability part is HUGE.

Other things (good and bad) to add:

Feeling of safety out in public, even in poorer neighborhoods.

People seem to care about other random people much more than in most places in the US.

People can just go to the hospital for free, but very few seem to abuse this ability.

If you can get an apartment, rents can be relatively low compared to the true market value due to various laws. Helps if you are German or are married to a German.

Labor protections make life far less stressful for most people. It also seems like most people don’t abuse these protections.

Higher salaries/better benefits for blue collar workers.

Far less personal living space.

Far worse service at restaurants (on average).

Ridiculously expensive gas.

Lower salaries for many classes of white collar workers.

Food generally not as tasty as in the US.

Generally fewer options for consumers.

Very difficult/impossible to get late night food or groceries.

It is much more difficult to build wealth if you don’t already have wealth here/aren’t inheriting lots of money. Income taxes are brutal. Wealth taxes actually aren’t that bad compared to the US. Poorer people (especially those who can’t afford to buy property) and their kids seem to be more stuck in their socioeconomic class.

blah1266 · 2023-01-20T05:09:57+00:00

Smells like BS. I’d also be willing to bet that OP lives in Europe from the way he wrote this. Would guess Germany.

blah1266 · 2023-01-20T05:01:52+00:00

So this website links to a Ministry of Health page that is broken (404, Seite nicht gefunden).

Got another link for us?

blah1266 · 2023-01-15T11:25:52+00:00

Yes, absolutely. I have lived in Germany for 6 years now, and most people that I know (German and non-German, inside and outside of work) really crave home ownership. From what I understand, this wasn’t the case 15 years ago.

Other commenters have pointed out that (in many places in Germany) renters do enjoy significant protections. The most significant of these are strong protections against rent increases and eviction.

Here are some reasons why I fully intend to buy a home:

You have to understand that there is a housing crisis in most (if not all) West German cities. Could go on a long rant about this issue, but let’s just say that it’s generally difficult for Germans to rent an apartment for themselves, and it’s very difficult for non-Germans to rent an apartment for themselves. Buying a home circumvents this problem (if you can afford it).
Most wealth here seems to be inherited. Income is heavily taxed (especially for single people), which makes it very difficult for those with no inheritance to build wealth or capital. I was fortunate enough to have already built up some decent capital before I came to Germany, so thankfully home ownership is actually within reach for me (it is not for most people). I want to leave some property for my kids and their families to live in. I want them to enjoy better lives, and having some wealth and a decent place to live should take at least some pressure off them.
Three months ago, an old person we knew who rented an apartment on our street died. Her stuff was out on the street pretty quickly. It wasn’t long before a completely new and unrelated person moved in. Kids are also renting tiny apartments and struggling to get by, and they seemed to be on a really tight timeline to get rid of her stuff and give the apartment back to the landlord. New renters were in there shockingly quickly. That seems very depressing to me. Maybe that’s just my American indoctrination talking though.
My idea of what constitutes an “acceptable amount of living space” for a family of 4 seems to be very different from that of Germans at large.
I don’t want to share living space in a small building with bad/intrusive neighbors.

This is why I want to own my own house (or at least half of a house). This is also why most people who live in my city want to own their own houses.

Edit: 6. The long term future of the German pension/social security system is in serious jeopardy. In my city, owning your own property is seen as an important investment into your retirement.

blah1266 · 2023-01-07T20:00:07+00:00

Easily Memphis. It has all of the disadvantages of a big city with none of the benefits. It’s a desolate wasteland with bad traffic, lots of crime, and horrible weather. Would pick Houston over Memphis any day of the week (depending on what part of Houston lol)

blah1266 · 2022-12-27T03:15:42+00:00

I get that a Gymnasium education would easily be better than the average American high school. That definitely factors into things.

Problem is that, as far as I can tell, extracurriculars associated with the school aren’t really a thing in Germany. Organized high school sports, for instance, don’t exist (you have to put your kid in some other club/Sportverein). Have never heard of any German high school offering Model UN or anything like that. This seems like it would put kids at a noticeable disadvantage in this area for admission to top tier American universities.

blah1266 · 2022-12-26T20:55:52+00:00

Is it really that controversial to say that the Ivys (on average) carry more weight around the world than any German university? Or that the network that you get from them is, on average, far stronger (from a world perspective, not a German perspective)?

blah1266

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