UpToWick

  You should try to live in Japan...you wouldn't probably last more than a week there. Of course you would blame your failure to integrate on the locals...

  On the contrary...the tax system here favours people who are self-employed (and married to non-working partners), while employees get screwed by the Finanzamt.

  Taking risks and being first on the market worked very well for Boeing, and the piece of junk they hastily put up in the air...   I prefer "boring" but reliable Airbus.   There's nothing wrong with being boring, or introverted. People are different, not everybody wants or can be an high-energy clown; on a higher level countries have a different culture, and instead of forcing people or countries to adopt something that is unnatural to them, we should respect each other and focus on each other's strength.

Another example of the retarded "Continous improvement" mentality (a.k.a. "Let's break our systems and piss-off customers continously") coming from the US...   LinkedIn has recently deployed some changes to their UI...to make it short, they completely broke the job search functionality, and now the only way I can see jobs in a set of specific cities in different countries, is by announcing to recruiters out there that "I'm interested in jobs in city X, Y, Z". Well, no thanks, I don't want to let also recruiters from my own company know it!!!! Why can't they simply keep things as they are, if they are working very well!!!!   I can imagine some manager has probably recently joined the company, and has to show off at all costs that he or she is "doing something".   Thanks LinkedIn. I'll move to Monster or Indeed...  

Of 4 projects I invested in - 2 went bankrupt - 1 is in big trouble (Sawade), and their communication has been terrible, if not criminal   There are better platforms, mostly from the Baltic countries, to invest in startups and businesses.

  I would say that this is not specific for "the Germans", but in general this is the way things work in Northern Europe/North America...

    I also don't expect you to understand the mindset of caring for your employees...

  I agree...look for example at Apple removing the headphone jack to make the iPhone and MacBook look cooler, forcing people to use Bluetooth headphones. In theory it should be fine, but my experience is that Bluetooth pairing doesn't work 5 times out of 10.   I'm glad I have a MacBook with an integrated headphone jack, I can still use my old cable headphones, and don't have to waste precious time messing around trying to debug Bluetooth issues... Last time I wanted to use my other bluetooth headphones, the pairing wasn't working, MacOS got stuck and rebooted out of the blue, corrupting some data on my SSD.   I'll stick with old reliable technology, than the latest hipster fad that promises to solve all your problems...

  So the free market is good when it gives advantages to employers ("I promise you to give you in X years stock options, so I save now on wages and I can keep you on a leash"), but not when it gives advantages on employees ("jumping out" is one of the few tools employees have to reduce the amount of screwing that companies apply to them)?

  Some people prefer to have a life and a family, than get the vague promise that in X years your stock options will be worth something.   The success of a company is tied to so much more than its employees performance., jesus it's so stupid to think so simplistic. Does the company have a good product and is the market in a good state and ready for it? Is the CEO a dickhead or not? The employees can spin like hamsters (something that you probably like to see), but the company might still end up being bankrupt.   I'm sure that WeWork employees (another 'hot startup' run by a moron) are very happy to have worthless stock options at the moment. Why don't you go tell them that they have it so good?

  A few additional factors that contribute to the mental issues/lack of social skills among people working in IT (but in general among office workers) - This sadistic idea of "continuous improvement" required on people, so common especially in American companies. I'm not saying that it's a bad thing to improve yourself, but the way it's often presented is that...you're never good enough. Imagine what disaster this does to the subconscious of a person...   - This evil methodology called "Agile" (I would even call it ideology, since it's often applied blindly without any questions), which promotes a culture of stress, micromanaging and buggy software. I've seen teams in different companies that had the following behavior: If a story was not completed during a Sprint (something totally normal and natural...there can be many valid reasons why this happens), they would close the story (so that "officially" they had completed it, and it looked good on the board), and create a new one in the next Sprint, which was basically a continuation of the previous one. Another behavior that I've seen was rushing to code reviewing a few hours before the Sprint ends...colleagues begging to have the CRs approved, not matter if the code was of good quality or not. Because..."it doesn't look good if I don't finish the story". I'm not looking forward to the day that this cancer will spread to software that controls nuclear power plans or airplanes. - This other retarded idea of the "open office", which improves collaboration by 20%, but increases stress by 200%. Apparently now the same companies that were pushing so hard for it are backtracking (and buying overpriced phone boots), and they discovered...surprise surprise...that it reduces productivity.

  Would a "family reunion Visa" (assuming it exists) help?

  When you have to spend your entire life studying (often in your free time or weekends), to stay updated on the latest hyped language/framework/tool, you don't have a lot of time to develop your soft skills...   I wouldn't recommend the IT industry to anybody who wants to have a life. It has become crazy...the rate of change, especially in the areas of Frontend development and DevOps, is unsustainable...by the time you become expert in technology X, it's already outdated in the job market.

Since Friday evening my Mnet connections is not working anymore...there is DSL signal, but it can't establish an IPV4 connection.   The Mnet customer service told me I have to wait until Monday when somebody looks at it...I suppose the concept of "on-call" hasn't yet arrived here.   It's just one of the many example of the crap state of the internet infrastructure, in this country of lawyers and mechanical engineers..   Mobile internet is also worse than many developing countries I've been...

  I'd be curious to know why you hated Switzerland...