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After reading these, probably I shouldnt try to buy a house within 2-3 years, just to see how the things are going.
What do you mean by work history?
a) years and employers (I only have 6 years of oppifical employment)
b) achievments (I'm very good at this one)
Here in the UK they mostly seem to care about a) when we talk about salary, while b) is checked by some people (not everyone) when they are hiring (but only to check who to hire, not for the offered salary).
80skeys:
You said an average engineer buys a house at 700k. Is it from his salary/mortgage, or from their parent's savings? Also how does the work-skill or knowledge difference (people in the same field or job type) effect salaries? Here in the UK it doesnt seem to effect it too much, maybe 20% difference, but at lots of places 0% difference. Also Ms/Bs salaries for experienced people? (again, here it doesnt seem to be considered in any way)
After reading these, probably I shouldnt try to buy a house within 2-3 years, just to see how the things are going.
What do you mean by work history?
a) years and employers (I only have 6 years of oppifical employment)
b) achievments (I'm very good at this one)
Here in the UK they mostly seem to care about a) when we talk about salary, while b) is checked by some people (not everyone) when they are hiring (but only to check who to hire, not for the offered salary).
80skeys:
You said an average engineer buys a house at 700k. Is it from his salary/mortgage, or from their parent's savings? Also how does the work-skill or knowledge difference (people in the same field or job type) effect salaries? Here in the UK it doesnt seem to effect it too much, maybe 20% difference, but at lots of places 0% difference. Also Ms/Bs salaries for experienced people? (again, here it doesnt seem to be considered in any way)
Do you have a Degree? I take it English is not your first language? Don't want to sound rude, but your grammar and spelling is really beyond me. What is "oppifical"?
Borrow money when i dont need it is just weird. I will think about a way to do it. I guess i can't borrow anything in the first a few weeks, but I have to buy a car within a few days (i wanted to pay by cash).
It's NOT weird. This is the best bit of advice you'll get about establishing credit here in the US, and will be essential to your life here. Many landlords won't rent to people who don't have a credit score, and YES they do check it. You may have to get someone to co-sign your lease since you don't have credit.
Since you have to buy a car (assume you are buying one for $15,000), use $13,000 for a down payment and take out a car loan for $2,000. Explain to the loans officer at a local bank, that you have enough, but need the loan to establish credit here in the US. Hopefully you will get a loans officer with a bit of sense who will finance you the money. I think it takes about 6 months of steady payments to establish a bit of credit history, so don't pay it off too early.
I think there are at least 10x as many software engineers than HW design engineers, so its 10x more likely that you can find a training class to learn something, so you dont need to be researching it from a barely-existing literature and by talking to the known experts.
You really have no clue what SW Engineers in SV do. They are developing the next generation of technology, that is why they are in demand. They don't just know one language, or that they just need to take a class 'cause it's not "hard to learn". They develop the patents while implementing, and working with the standardization groups. There is no training. I have worked on projects based off only draft RFC's. I worked with the tech writers and the certification/development teams to develop the training. I worked next to the people who literally WROTE the book in their specializations.
I worked with closely HW Engineers when I was in networking. They made the same range as SW Engineers. Mostly because there are less jobs for HW Engineers, because HW is less profitable (high R&D cost) then software and services. With the current popularity of cloud computing, there is even less demand, because less businesses are deploying their own servers, and opting for cloud services providers to handle that.
Having said all that, I have a great deal of respect for what HW Engineers do, but to say what they do is more difficult..no. It's different, I don't expect to be able to do their job, just as they didn't expect to be able to do mine. I know they have had a harder time then the SW Engineers in this economy...probably because they are so specialized and there are less companies that still do HW R&D in the area.
"oppifical"?"
-it means i am in a hurry and trying to type quickly, needed to go somewhere, but now I am back. Also its a forum, Im not writing an official letter here.
I know my english is not perfect, but my hardware design is more perfect then my 5x years old colleague's (who is british) design. Dont worry, I will not apply for a school teacher's job.
I have Master of science in electrical engineering from Budapest University of Technology and Economics. The alumni of that school has 4 Noble prize winners and it was established more than 200 years ago. The degree is or can be accredited to an US masters degree (dont know much about the process), I have some document from the school about it.
"It's NOT weird. This is the best bit of advice you'll get about establishing credit here in the US, and will be essential to your life here"
-OK, I get it. I will be working on it.
Planning to buy a used one at around $8000. So, if I pay 6000 initially and 1000 monthly for 2 months would worth nothing? Probably I will still have to convince someone to land me 2000. The other problem is as long as I dont buy the car, I will have to be renting one which is very expensive, I woulkdnt do it for longer than 2-3 weeks. I might not get the SSN that soon. I dont know how it is in the US, but here in the UK almost all engineers I know (non-managers) bought used cars. On the other hand an average engineer's status in the society is probably a lot lower than in the US.
Maybe around 3-6 months later moving to an unfurnished apartment, I could buy furniture on a loan. I never bought furniture, always rented furnished flats. I dont know how much it would be to furnish a 1bed place with new ikea stuff, and how much that would help me with the credit score.
absolutely bring a copy of your health records with you and keep an extra copy at home.
Actually a good idea for anyone immigrating to the US. You need proof of your vaccinations to get your green card. If the records are not in english, you need to get them officially translated and hope the INS accepts it. Else you have to get all the shots again. Not fun.
80skeys:
You said an average engineer buys a house at 700k. Is it from his salary/mortgage, or from their parent's savings?
Usually a two-engineer household (husband/wife each making more than $100k salary) will rent while they save up for the downpayment. Often when they have $200k in cash, they'll use that as the downpayment and finance the rest.
Much tougher if not impossible for a single-income household.
Quote:
Also how does the work-skill or knowledge difference (people in the same field or job type) effect salaries? Here in the UK it doesnt seem to effect it too much, maybe 20% difference, but at lots of places 0% difference. Also Ms/Bs salaries for experienced people? (again, here it doesnt seem to be considered in any way)
[/quote]
For a given job title, the biggest impacts on salary are:
number of years of work experience
how smart you are/how much of a real, measurable contribution you make to the company (you have to prove yourself first)
the type of education and how many years
how informed you are about your "proper" salary before you go to the interview/negotation process
I work in systems engineering and there is a young guy working with me who did not graduate college. But he is very knowledgeable and experienced in certain things that are the key to the business, and it wouldn't suprise me if he makes a noticeably higher salary than me and if his overall compensation package (bonus, stock) is better.
"They don't just know ..."
-OK, i think we are talking about different software engineers. I did not work with all types of software engineers, only with those who work on the hardware I design.
The different people I worked with here in the UK and Belgium, did basically the firmware (BIOS, IPMI uC, ARM-proc), and OS drivers development, OS driver testing, Win-CE package. One guy did usually only one of these. I only worked with 2 guys who was able to do all of these plus more, but most of them did just one.
One of them, who only does the IPMI microcontroller firmware in C for 8051, told me about the apples and oranges, another the one who only does bios adjustments for new hardware agreed with him. I remember this sharply, so my view on this came from there. What you described that you worked on, I never met a software engineer with that background, its probably my own shortcoming (or of the companies I worked for). I learn something new every day...
"oppifical"?"
I have Master of science in electrical engineering from Budapest University of Technology and Economics. The alumni of that school has 4 Noble prize winners and it was established more than 200 years ago. The degree is or can be accredited to an US masters degree (dont know much about the process), I have some document from the school about it.
...
I might not get the SSN that soon.
YOU don't have 4 nobel prizes do you? Your skills, experience and education aren't that impressive by SV standards, it's good (though x86 is old news, if you have ARM experience, mentioned that in your resume), but not exceptional.
I have repeatedly told you, you can get the SSN immediately. Show up at the office, turn in your papers, they give you your SSN number. Total time = 30 minutes max if you go first thing with the social security office opens. You can give them your corporate housing address to mail the card to. If you move before it arrives, setup mail forwarding to your new address, so you will get it there.
You can make appointments at the DMV online for your written and driving test.
The delay will probably be with registering & getting insurance for the car.
The shots are checked and extended at the visa medical (done few months ago).
Another problem I found here is that employers tend to freeze salaries at hiring time, so no improvements over the years. When my boss told me happily that I got 0.5% rise at the end of my 2nd year, i did not say "thank you". (I had a few achievements by that time though). Half year later I changed to a diferent company for 33% more pay. They did not teach me my profession there, but the guy might have assumed that they did. That could have beed some kind of reasoning for not giving me a rise.
"how informed you are about your "proper" salary before you go to the interview/negotation process"
-I have checked some websites, but they dont seem to be reliable. For example someone who designs industrial control with microcontrollers is in the same job category as the one who designs complex FPGA or x86 boards. I also dont have an average set of skills, so it makes it more difficoult to estimate. I cant estimate based on UK salaries, because they are generally lower and the rules for them are very different.
By the way... Is it rude to pre-arrange 2-3 job interviews for the first 1-2 weeks after my arrival? Some organizations dont like to hear that they are not the only place I am considering.
"measurable contribution "
-who measures it and how? For example in my previous job this was measured by the engineering director who had a software engineering background. I had lots of little achievements that the other hw designers understood, but probably these were invisible to him (maybe not). For example my x86-ipmi-cpci glue logic FPGA design (for cpci/VME CPU-boards) was reused by most or all other guys later, but for example the end users or the software people probably didnt notice these. It made later hw developments more straightforward, so i think its an added value. I had more visible achivements as well, just i mentioned this one becouse this one was trickier in the aspect of measuring it.
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