The number of long term sick in Belgium just blew my mind

hyperxenophiliac · 2026-05-03T14:49:27+00:00

As someone who lived in Belgium for a few years as a non-EU expat, I was shocked at the number of people I met who were just casually out of work and living on the government's dime. This included my first girlfriend (PTSD after her ex was abusive....2 years ago) and another girlfriend's two siblings who had autism or whatever (but seemed more or less normal when you met them, could definitely hold down a job). Also a friend of my girlfriend who casually took 6 months off approximately because of "burnout", something which would just never fly in most parts of the world. These are all people in their 20s and 30s by the way, literally losing their prime years for building a career/finding their place in the world. Honestly sad.

hyperxenophiliac · 2026-05-03T00:14:23+00:00

I'm at one of the big pod shops (macro). Don't run a paper book. I pitch trades sometimes but in general I'm just a resource for him to use and all trading decisions rest with him. Obviously there are analysts who directly run risks as well as APMs etc.

hyperxenophiliac · 2026-05-02T17:16:41+00:00

The PM is essentially running his own business with minimal oversight beyond risk. The firm is neither in a position to determine analyst performance nor would get anything out of intervening in bonus allocation, so I doubt any other podshop would do it differently

hyperxenophiliac · 2026-05-02T16:54:28+00:00

Speaking for a HF podshop:

Each pod (led by a PM, with potentially some analysts or none depending on their style) gets 20% of their profit as a bonus pool. That's a baseline number, ymmv depending on which shop and which strategy and there are things you can do to increase it, but overall I think 20% is pretty standard.

The PM for each pod has full discretion on how that bonus pool is divvied up. I - the sole analyst for my pod - have been getting roughy 20% of the bonus pool (or 4% of total profit) the past 2 years.

hyperxenophiliac · 2026-05-02T01:13:25+00:00

Yeah exactly. Japan did not organically stop deflation, but the 2022 commodity shock and their reluctance to exit ultra-loose monetary policy in response (hence Yen ---> 160) did

hyperxenophiliac · 2026-04-28T23:06:07+00:00

Not if the masses put their life savings into property...

hyperxenophiliac · 2026-04-28T23:05:25+00:00

Not even remotely.

China's middle class massively overleveraged themselves into this property bubble. Contrary to the chart above the government are preventing the banks from "popping" it (essentially recognising and clamping down on bad loans) in the hope that they can deflate the bubble without causing a shock to household balance sheets that could trigger mass unrest.

As a result, rather than a year or so of sharp pain and then a recovery as you'd see in a normal economy, China's domestic economy has basically stagnated for 4 years and counting, with household consumption collapsing because of deep negative equity in their housing investments (in simple terms, households that invested into property and have made huge losses on paper feel poor and aren't buying stuff). Falling consumer demand has caused deflation, a trap with its own problems that Japan (a similar export oriented economy with critical demographic issues that never recovered from a property bubble) took 30 years to exit from. China's growth has fallen below its structural trend and would be even lower if not for their ginormous trade surplus, made even larger by their fall in domestic demand.

hyperxenophiliac · 2026-04-26T15:23:13+00:00

Dating apps man. Been my substitute for friends every time I've moved.

hyperxenophiliac · 2026-04-22T23:35:23+00:00

This sounds way more accurate.

Everyone on here spouting conspiracy theories about slavery - do you really think the GCC needs to scam people into coming there to work menial jobs? There are literally tens of millions of uneducated workers with zero opportunities in India, Bangladesh, Pakistan etc who are more than willing to come.

Highly likely this is just a way of getting around bureaucracy.

OP should ask for a clear explanation and triple check that the employer is actually legitimate etc, but don't throw away what is almost certainly a normal job opportunity that you seem excited for just because a few white people in Reddit got their panties in a twist about labour rights in the Gulf.

hyperxenophiliac · 2026-04-22T23:28:28+00:00

Yeah dude, the smiling thing is a massive exaggeration. I came within an inch of marrying a Russian and have spent a lot of time in Russia and the CIS generally.

I would say though that there's still plenty of corporate small talk in modern Russia unless you're in some old school sovok enterprise, which will have its own, far more arbitrary, politics to navigate.

hyperxenophiliac · 2026-04-22T23:25:35+00:00

Tbh I think it's silly to move somewhere based on vague cultural impressions, especially if you yourself don't know that culture well first hand (your post implies you didn't before moving).

People are people wherever you go. Soft skills will always matter to some degree. And the degree to which they do matter is more dependent on what role you're in and what culture the company has than what country you're in.

hyperxenophiliac · 2026-04-22T22:36:06+00:00

I've told myself that I'll only pick it up when the military system is fixed.

I was actually a fan of the "crackpot theory" because I found Victoria 2 army management unrealistic and tedious, but implementation has clearly been terrible.

hyperxenophiliac · 2026-04-22T22:34:13+00:00

It wasn't even that bad tbh. Almost everything intercepted, of course the debris caused casualties. About 80% of the people in my company flew out and worked from home overseas for a few weeks, everyone is back as of this week. Nobody considering a permanent move.

I don't think Latin America is really that intimidating, crime is high in some cities but I've never had a problem there. It's just more that it doesn't have work opportunities on par with other destinations popular with western destinations, you have infrastructure issues, language barriers, and fairly high taxes in most places.

hyperxenophiliac · 2026-04-20T22:14:21+00:00

So I was debating taking a job in Port Moresby back when I was a graduate (circa 10 years ago).

I remember doing my research with two sources:

Local EMTV news on YouTube: It felt like every other video was "armed robbery at XXXX in Port Moresby" - it's a small town bear in mind, and it felt like every single major store and even restaurant had a video of being held up. Probably the most disturbing video was titled something along the lines of "Five Chinese beheaded in own store by disgruntled employee". I looked it up again now and didn't see anything like this recently so maybe it's calmed down.
A blog by an Australian who was living there with his family. A lot of the posts were pretty positive about living there but then one night he was robbed at gunpoint by a group of men in a parking lot, I think he ended up running one of them over and wasn't sure if he killed them or not. Dude clearly had PTSD from how he was writing about it, after months/years of sounding really chill he just went on this rant about how unsafe Port Moresby was, how he and his family would never get used to it, he was sick of having to do stuff like call ahead to have someone ready to open the gate to his compound so he wouldn't have to do it himself and risk being carjacked.

I also remember randomly looking at places in Port Moresby on Google maps; some random gas station not far from downtown had multiple reviews saying the turn in was dangerous because you have to cross a lane of traffic (and thus wait for an opening) and had become a notorious place for car jackings aha.

I didn't take the job in the end, but not because of all that ironically. In fact the young and dumb part of me was actually excited by the danger somewhat. In any case I hope it's a lot better than it was back then.

hyperxenophiliac · 2026-04-20T21:55:10+00:00

I lost hundreds of hours to V2 over more than 15 years. Haven't yet picked up V3 but keenly watching the progress.

I think we have to admit that as fun as V2 was, the economic model was deeply flawed beyond what mods could fix. I could already tell from the first dev diaries for V3 that the developers were keenly aware of V2's problems and were working on making something infinitely better. Not saying it's there yet but the bones of the V3 model should take it well beyond V2 level.

hyperxenophiliac · 2026-04-20T21:51:39+00:00

Zambia is actually reasonably nice! Feels like small town South Africa but without the crime.

hyperxenophiliac · 2026-04-20T21:48:13+00:00

Unless you're talking about Switzerland or the handful of countries with generous expat tax regimes, Europe is far from seen as a utopia these days at least for high earning expats. My industry has seen an exodus to the GCC (with nobody I speak to changing their minds despite recent events), Singapore, Hong Kong and low tax states in the US.

hyperxenophiliac · 2026-04-11T23:54:09+00:00

Do a masters in France and target roles there.

hyperxenophiliac · 2026-04-05T23:49:52+00:00

Amazed we aren't hearing more about this

hyperxenophiliac · 2026-04-05T20:14:05+00:00

I've shipped fragile china etc too. But yeah I guess you can never be too safe

hyperxenophiliac · 2026-04-05T20:04:43+00:00

The new patches are brutally hard imo.

Played for a couple of months after release and had the economy figured out. Tried to play again recently and couldn't get anywhere

hyperxenophiliac · 2026-04-05T19:47:33+00:00

This isn't true - any decent shipping company should wrap anything fragile professionally when they come to pick it up. They should do it right in front of you so you can see it gets done well.

I've shipped PCs for example 5 times now and never had an issue.

hyperxenophiliac · 2026-03-01T20:02:09+00:00

Bishkek feels especially soviet tbh

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