That's a bunch of stereotyping. I work in the telecom industry and live in a place without bay area or Seattle type cost of living. I get 15-days caregiver leave, 12 weeks paternity leave and 20 days of vacation. A sr sw engineer where I am at will get about $175k with bonus. A staff engineer will make about $300k with RSU. It's not Big Tech but definitely better than what Europe has. Again not being in the bay area helps. I have a very flexible work schedule and a pretty awesome work life balance.
Don't go by what the media portrays. Your comment makes it sound like Tech workers can never take vacation or have kids. It couldn't be furthest from the truth.
There is no great source on the details across the nation, but there are a hodgepodge of municipal-level studies that shed a light.
There were roughly 20k gun homicides in the US in 2021[0]. It's been fluctuating between 10k and 20k over the past five decades or so, with the last few years seeing a quick increase and seeing a (hopefully) local peak in rates.
In one study in San Francisco, ~70% of gun homicide victims had a criminal record, and three quarters of that figure knew the suspect[1]. A similar study in Milwaukee found that ~90% of both victims and suspects of gun homicides had a criminal record[2], and the top two reasons identified of the circumstances behind the homicide were arguments/fights and robberies. There are other studies done at local levels in many other places with similar results.
A DOJ study notes that three quarters of all gun homicides were during the commission of a (different) felony[3]. And you can query the CDC WONDER mortality database[4] yourself to see that gun homicide rates in "large central metro" areas are twice as high as those in medium, small, or non-metro areas, and that men 15-34 years of age comprise the majority of gun homicide victims.
So, perhaps my "gang-on-gang" statement wasn't really accurate (since a "gang-related" incident is loosely defined), and I'll leave the "vast majority" determination to you; but the point is that most gun homicides occur among the "criminal element" in "bad parts of town", and is not really relevant to life as a software engineer.
Exactly, the reason "active shooter" situations frighten ordinary folks is because they're the rare type of shooting that can victimize you even if you're law-abiding and don't live in a very high crime area.
In 2020, 687 people were killed in railway accidents in the EU, being Poland the country with the highest number with 148 fatalities, followed closely by Germany with 137.
Trains are really unpredictable. Even in the middle of a forest two rails can appear out of nowhere, and a 1.5-mile fully loaded coal drag, heading east out of the low-sulfur mines of the PRB, will be right on your ass the next moment.
there's a lot more than I would have thought in the US.
Railroad deaths totaled 893 in 2021, a 20% increase from the 2020 revised total of 744 and the highest since 2007. Nonfatal injuries totaled 5,781, a 4% increase from the 2020 revised total of 5,544.
wow, I guess mass shootings are no problem at all and when they happen we should be like, "so what? 3000 people died of cancer today, who cares if some kids got their faces blown to pieces". thanks for clearing that up! problem solved
It's possible to think it's not ok but also so vanishingly unlikely to happen that it's not a useful comparison point for quality of life in Europe vs America.
For me, "never get sick or have any kids or anything" is a much stronger point against life the US - these are issues almost everyone has to confront.
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
I promise you I have never thought that HN was "sophisticated". This is an internet forum.
> I'll keep matching the energy I see here
The problem here is in the "I see". People don't see their own negative contributions clearly. We overestimate the bad that others are bringing and underestimate our own by 10x or more. This is why it always feels like the other started it and did worse [1], while we are merely reacting, defending ourselves, or (to use your word) matching. We all have this bias, which means that if all you do is match what you see, you'll in fact be escalating and worsening a downward spiral [2].
What you (I don't mean you personally, but all of us) should instead do is consciously adjust for objects in the mirror being closer than they appear [3]. That is, if you make a point of responding with less negativity than what you see others as bringing, it may be possible to partly compensate for that bias. In that case this crude and unsophisticated blob of internet humanity may at least manage not to burn itself to a crisp [4].
(I'm sorry for footnoting my own past comments - it's an embarrassing practice but it's the only easy way I have to link people to past explanations. Such links are helpful for clarifying and also for depersonalizing; they quickly make it clear that all of these issues are systemic and have been the same for years.)
