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Alright, let’s do this.Joe Biden: Highly respected former Vice President who is as well-known for his ability to connect with voters emotionally as he is for his many poorly-worded quotes. A relic from a bygone era, Biden follows the old-school model of bipartisan cooperativeness that earns him the respect of Boomers and the disdain of Twitter. There is a split between voters over whether Biden is the most electable among conservatives and independents, or whether he is too old and out-of-touch to be president in 2019. However, although rarely acknowledged, he does fulfill the country’s “Dad complex” that has been a tradition in the US since George Washington, and many people yearn to see him come in and clean up Trump’s mess so that they can go on with their lives and not have to worry about politics anymore.Bernie Sanders: Mercurial democratic socialist who sees himself as a revolutionary and inflamed a young generation of (predominantly white) voters with his fiery rhetoric, if not with detailed policies. Loves to position himself as the outsider and generally believes that the game is rigged against him, thereby mobilizing his supporters and providing a built-in defense against criticism. His beliefs have been largely stagnant for decades now, which is viewed differently by his supporters and critics: the former take this as a sign of Sanders’ ideological “purity” and authenticity, whereas the latter see this as an indication that Sanders is unwilling to compromise or reconsider his positions. Critics are quick to note that Sanders has little to show for his decades in public office, but his supporters believe that to be the blame of his “impure” contemporaries. His 2016 campaign against Hillary Clinton had a major effect in both moving policy proposals to the left and prompting the DNC to establish more populist criteria for the debates (i.e. having a minimum of 65,000 donors to qualify).Elizabeth Warren: Arguably the most famously outspoken woman in politics, Warren is a former attorney and Harvard professor with a mind for finances. Pulling from her roots as a former Oklahoma school teacher, Warren is running a deliberately homespun, populist campaign that is focused on connecting with voters based on her small-town upbringing and desire to fight for the little guy. Relies on a Theodore Roosevelt-esque trust-busting, pro-small business ethic that aims to create a fairer, well-regulated market economy. Famous for being a policy wonk, Warren has released numerous detailed plans that outline both why such plans are needed and how they will be implemented. As one of the most far-left candidates, Warren has earned praise for her call to impeach Trump, as well as denunciations for decisions that progressives have deemed out-dated, such as her decision to take a DNA test to prove her Native American ancestry. Warren’s pro-free market, unpretentious rhetoric has helped soften her image among some conservatives, although she is still at odds with Fox News, and has refused their request to do a town hall.Pete Buttigieg: Remarkably well-spoken and intellectual, Mayor Pete may well be the most interesting candidate competing in the Democratic primary: a millennial, openly homosexual mayor from Indiana, naval veteran, and practicing Christian. Buttigieg’s talent for public speaking has allowed him to avoid the gaffes that flag other candidates, and he has shown a natural ability to connect with voters. He is seen as more moderate than many of the other candidates, and relies very much on his Midwestern identity. Nevertheless, he has struggled to find support among people of color, and has no political experience outside of his tenure as mayor.Kamala Harris: A current senator and former District Attorney of California, Harris is a natural debater and decisive decision-maker. The multi-ethnic daughter of a Stanford professor, Harris has the appeal of being a well-educated, highly regarded woman of color. Despite having one of the most progressive voting records in Congress, however, Harris has struggled to gain support from progressives due to her many years as a prosecutor, where she was notoriously tough on crime. Her decision to incarcerate black men throughout her career and grant police officers the benefit of the doubt has led to her being painted by some as a “traitor” to her race, although she does possess a fairly strong constituency of black supporters. After making a huge splash with her entry into the primary race, Harris began fading from public consensus, only to make a comeback with a particularly strong performance during the first primary debate. Although Harris is considered one of main heavyweights in the horse race, she faces a tough road ahead thanks to her controversial legal record.Cory Booker: Typically seen as Obama-lite, Booker is the proverbial happy warrior known for public professions of faith and love, as well as his long-winded speeches which are usually heavy on style but bare-bones on substance. Booker is widely regarded as a good man—he was a volunteer firefighter and decided to live alongside his constituents in public housing while serving as mayor of Newark—although many people find his loquacious speeches tiring and overly-dramatic, and are frustrated by his tendency to avoid answering a direct question. While he may be well-liked, Booker has the disadvantage of being compared to Obama, and is campaigning on a platform of love and peace when many politically-active Democrats would rather stew in their anger and frustration.Tulsi Gabbard: A young, Hawaiian Iraq War vet who is running on a non-interventionist platform against what she has dubbed “regime change wars.” Gabbard is possibly the most well-liked Democrat among Republicans in recent memory, especially among the emerging non-interventionist faction within the Republican Party. Her popularity among conservatives is also strengthened by her previous bipartisan work, repeated promises to put country over party, and framing of certain issues, such as homelessness, around rural communities. Despite garnering so much support among conservatives, thus making her highly electable, she is still widely distrusted and disliked by establishment Democrats, both for her 2016 endorsement of Bernie Sanders and skepticism towards Democratic foreign policy decisions. Republicans care very little for her meeting with Assad or her decade-old remarks against gay marriage (if anything, many of them can relate to having only come around on the issue over the course of the past few years), but Democrats both despise and fear her past decisions and libertarian leanings.Beto O’Rourke: A lively, quixotic Texan who became an internet sensation after losing the Senate race to Ted Cruz, but not by a lot. O’Rourke’s charisma earned him popularity throughout the country, turning him into a fundraising powerhouse, but his lack of detailed policies and wishy-washy stance on the issues has caused him to rapidly lose support over the course of the past few months, especially in light of more decisive candidates, such as Buttigieg. O’Rourke is reminiscent of both the Kennedys and the Bushes, the former due to looks and charisma, and the latter for his ties to big oil. Democrats had originally hoped that O’Rourke’s popularity in his home state and fairly moderate reputation would allow them to turn Texas blue, but his decision to run following his lost Senate bid was instead seen by many as an ego-trip, stifling much of his original likability.Amy Klobuchar: Running on the pragmatic Midwestern ticket, Klobuchar is appealing to voters with self-professed honesty, refusing to make promises that she can’t fulfill, and touting her successful record as a Democrat in Minnesota. Her reputation took a huge hit in light of accusations that she was a cruel and abusive boss to her staff, which appears to have especially affected women voters (it is a bit of an open secret that female employers often mistreat and demean their female subordinates, and this dynamic has been studied at length by psychologists). Becoming the first female president without female support is nearly impossible, making Klobuchar’s chances of winning the election increasingly slim.Kirsten Gillibrand: Rather than skate around gender the way Hillary Clinton did, Gillibrand has turned it into the cornerstone of her campaign, asserting herself as the most pro-woman candidate on the trail. Her image took a hit among political circles after calling for Al Franken’s resignation, a move that many interpreted as a manipulative power-play. Among voters, she is seen as Hillary Clinton 2.0: a calculating, opportunistic, blonde New York senator whose core beliefs have changed based on what’s likely to earn her the most support. Whether this is a fair assessment or not, it has resulted in her earning little support in the polls.John Hickenlooper: The John Kasich of 2020, only, frankly, with far less support. Hickenlooper is an accomplished swing-state governor with an impressive resume, but has not managed to excite voters as much as his competitors. His dismissal of socialism will likely earn him support among moderates, but has made him a proverbial punching bag on social media.Bill de Blasio: De Blasio’s tenure as the mayor of NYC has been a chaotic one, filled with a few successful programs, several other unsuccessful programs, and an uneasy relationship with the New York City Police Department. Unpopular among his own constituents, de Blasio’s eleventh-hour entry into the presidential race was widely-panned as an ego trip. While a strong debater, de Blasio has been accused of being a faux-progressive due to frequently touting his mixed-race family as evidence of his own personal enlightenment.Andrew Yang: Extremely popular among young, Gen Z voters, Yang has endorsed a $1,000 monthly stipend for all Americans as a way to combat stagnant wages due to automation. His down-to-Earth, tech-savvy approach towards voters has earned him fans among conservative and libertarian voters, as has his assertion that the capitalist vs. socialist dichotomy is outdated. Although Yang’s support is enthusiastic, it is still comparatively small, and his lack of political experience has prevented many voters from taking his candidacy seriously.Julian Castro: As a former member of Obama’s cabinet, Castro was a rising star who then got lost in the fray of political chaos following the inauguration of Donald Trump. The sole Hispanic candidate in the race, Castro speaks Spanish fluently and is extremely well-versed in immigration policies, although he has often been overshadowed by O’Rourke’s celebrity. His strong performance in the first debate granted him a small bump in the polls, but he has still struggled to inspire excitement for his candidacy among voters.Jay Inslee: A single-issue candidate in its purist form, Inslee is a passionate supporter of Climate Change reform, and has inspired support from voters who also value this issue above all else.John Delaney: Now two years into his run for the Democratic primary, Delaney is a pragmatic, moderate candidate who has yet to either embarrass himself or establish himself as a stand-out candidate among a crowded field. Moderates and conservatives have been unbothered by his rhetoric, but he is not popular enough to siphon away an adequate number of votes from Trump.Marianne Williamson: A New Age guru and novelist whose patrons have included famous figures such as Oprah Winfrey, Williamson is popular on social media, but has not been taken seriously by either the media or the majority of voters. Although many found her perspective during the first debate to be intriguing, it did not prompt much confidence with regards to her political prowess.Eric Swalwell, Tim Ryan, Michael Bennet, Steve Bullock, Seth Moulton, Joe Sestak: Usually lumped together as “token white guys,” the consensus around these candidacies has generally been negative, and viewed as an act of self-promotion rather than a genuine bid for the presidency.

I personally only see one “evil” in the current Presidential race. It’s not Jill Stein. That’s not to say any of the other candidates are perfect. I’ll admit, I only looked at the four candidates with even a basic mathematical chance to win: Clinton, Stein, Trump, and Johnson. No other will have ballot access to the minimum 270 votes needed to win. So it’s pointless to even bother with those beyond the fringe.Experience: Is the Presidency an Entry-Level Job?So let’s look at experience: does the candidate have relevant experience? Any President will tell you that there’s no other job like the Presidency and they weren’t entirely prepared. But as well, it’s a difficult and complex job, and we’ve seen the result when circumstances overwhelmed a President not quite ready for this or that emergency.Firs, the easy ones: if you’ve held political office, you at least have an idea about the highest political office in the land. The higher level the better: holding the Vice Presidency (sometimes… the modern VP is very involved, in the past, not so much, more of a stand-in than a “first mate” to the President) or a Cabinet Position, you have first-hand experience working at the highest levels of the Executive Branch. Running a state as Governor is another common stepping-stone to the Presidency. So is serving in the US Senate.Hillary Clinton is one of the more qualified Presidential Candidates in recent history. Johnson, Nixon, and George H. W. Bush had more; the others, back to Truman, less. She was a two-term Senator, she was Secretary of State -- the highest position in the Cabinet, and the best experience in Presidential foreign policy other than being President. While she didn’t exactly serve in a Presidential Cabinet under Bill Clinton, she has a wholly unique first-hand experience as Bill Clinton’s wife during his Presidency. So experience in the Executive under two Presidents.Gary Johnson was a two-term Governor, so not as qualified as Clinton, but in good company with Carter, Reagan, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush, all former governors.You can argue about Trump’s experience. Dwight Eisenhower went into office without any prior political experience, and by all accounts was a good, perhaps great President (alas, well before my time). However, he had been the Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe in WWII and basically kicked Hitler’s ass. And he had been commanding for a long time… you don’t become a five star general overnight. The job he did in the military earned him the reputation as a great manager — and he was able to translate that skill to the Presidency.So it’s a big question about Trump. He’s had mixed results in business, but he’s been at it for decades and often successful. Being the CEO of a large a business is in some ways similar: you have to have the mind to coordinate thousands of moving pieces on thousands of different projects, you have to hire the best people and trust them to handle different pieces of the job. In other ways, it’s both the opposite and something different. You aren’t the CEO of America. You don’t get to do it your way, you need to work with Congress. And it’s also the individual’s talents… can Trump take what he knows into the Presidency like Ike, or would his hot temper just make his head explode, having to deal with actually governing.I’d claim, while not evil, Jill Stein on this one can easily claim the “lesser” title. Dr. Stein is certainly well credentialed as Physician, having graduated from Harvard Medical School in 1979. Her specialty has been environmental health. She’s participated in a number of community projects over the years, and run for a bunch of political offices. The only office she’s ever won, though, was a stint on the 21 member town council of Lexington, Mass. She hasn’t really shown any career projects that suggest she’s any kind of Presidential material.The Running Mate QuestionSo after qualifications, one of the first big decisions a candidate makes is their choice of Vice President. As a candidate, you are telling the country that your choice of Vice President is, in your view, perfectly capable of replacing you as President. Your choice may also reflect a person who’s going to work together with your as President, and perhaps fill in your weaker spots, or possibly it’s a purely political choice. Barack Obama, of course, chose Joe Biden, a long term Senator with very good foreign policy credentials, himself a rival of Obama’s in the primaries. And it proved to be a very good working relationship.Hillary Clinton’s primary motivation for her choice of Vice President was probably that working relationship. But Tim Kaine is a fine choice. He served as Governor of Virginia, he was apparently also on Obama’s short-list for VP. He’s maybe a little boring, plays a mean harmonica, speaks Spanish, etc. For the political optics, maybe a vanilla white guy helps those with the ticket who are concerned about a woman (well, the ten of them or aren’t voting Republican, anyway), but I think this is mostly Clinton’s choice of someone she can work with.Garry Johnson’s pick is William Weld, former two-term Governor of Massachusetts, and a guy pretty matched to Johnson’s qualifications. There are some who suggest that Weld should have been at the top of the ticket. Johnson has definitely make this choice based on the working relationship rather than any specific political strategy. I disagree enough with the US Libertarians to not have them at the top of my list, though I do match 67% with Johnson on iSideWith.com.Trump chose Mike Pence, former Congressman and first-term Governor of Indiana. Pence is a fairly hard right Republican, so while his choice might offer Trump a little experience in office, it doesn’t seem that Trump and Pence see eye to eye on a number of things. He seems to me to be a politically motivated choice, perhaps to shore up the Trump ticket’s often debatable Conservative bone fides, perhaps an offer made by the RNC that Trump can’t refuse.And then there’s Jill Stein’s pick, Ajamu Baraka. Baraka is an African American Rights activist, a founding director of the 1500 member US Human Rights Network. He has never held political office. He calls Barack Obama an “Uncle Tom”, he characterized the vigil for the victims of the Charlie Hebdo massacre as a “white power march”. He dubbed Bernie Sanders’ campaign "a tacit commitment to Eurocentrism and the assumptions of normalized white supremacy.” More here: The Wild Beliefs of Ajamu Baraka, Jill Stein’s Green Party Running Mate.If Trump has explicitly chosen, perhaps not an outright Klansman like David Duke, but an avowed White Supremacist, a think quite a few Americans would have a problem with that. I don’t see Baraka all that less polarized. And sure, he may well have some valid points in with all that extremism. But the President and Vice President are supposed to represent the whole of America.Other Stuff That’s Freaky About SteinThere are other things that keep me, personally, away from her, even if there were no other considerations. Some of these are evils in my book, and while I don’t think that makes her evil, it certainly makes her unfit for the Presidency in my opinion.Anti-vaccine rhetoric. Yes, she recently promised that she’s pro-vaccine, but when she says that, most of what you hear are anti-vaxx dog-whistles. It is beyond critical to me that our next President believe in science. All the time, not just when it backs up what they believe in. More here: Jill Stein and left wing antivaccine dog whistlesAnti-GMO rhetoric. She is completely off the edge on GMOs. Yes, there has been some reprehensible behavior from some of the GMO companies. Yes, they have lobbied and won some ridiculous protections in US law that need to be removed. I’d love to see a law that listed GMO patents on food labels, so I could make reasonable consumer choices based on the companies involved. But that’s just the politics. The science is clear. GMOs have saved millions of lives. They have not taken one.Anti-WiFi rhetoric. Yes, she has weirdly decided that WiFi is bad for children. Jill Stein goes on weird rant about wi-fi in schools. She claims it’s different in Europe. It’s not… WiFi has a few channel differences, region to region, but it’s the same chips, same antennas, and the same basic frequency bands everywhere. That’s kind of the point of a standard.Free College and Loan Forgiveness. The ultimate goal of merit-based free college is one I support. She’s completely off the wall bonkers, though, suggesting that if she gets elected, she can wipe out every student loan in the country. Just not going to work — she doesn’t even seem to understand the systems she’s citing.Banning all nuclear power. The problem right at this moment is climate change. Safe nuclear energy is one of the best ways to get to a carbon-free future. Not the only one, but the one that’s actually developed, particularly if we build state-of-the-art reactors here, rather than basing all judgements on the few mistakes of the past (even factors in, nuclear has still killed fewer people than fossil fuels).100% Clean Renewable Energy by 2030. Nope, ain’t happening. Not even close, to the point of this just being more unscientific silliness. She clearly hasn’t even tried to do the math. I have. Just to get every consumer vehicle off the road and replaced by an EV (which can only actually happen by outlawing petrol-powered vehicles, and really soon) is of course also impossible because no EV maker can ramp up replacements that fast. Tesla’s Gigafactory is expected to be fully operational, making enough batteries for 1.5 million cars/year, by 2020. So they could replace about 6% of US passenger vehicles between 2020 and 2030. I don’t know where the other 94% come from.And we would have to double the output of the US power grid to support that many cars — cars use lots of power… just the electric motor in my Prius uses more peak power than 2 or 3 average US homes could supply. Our current power mix is 81% fossil fuels (36% petrol, 29% natural gas, 16% coal), 9% nuclear, and 10% renewable. Of that 10% renewable, 50% is biomass, which by definition is renewable but not especially clean. 25% is hydroelectric, which great, but not easily expanded. That leaves solar at 6% (0.6% of total), geothermal at 2% (0.2% of total), and wind at 19% (1.9% of total). So if we keep the proportions the same, we currently have 1.25% of the solar and wind power we would need by 2030 under her plan. There is no way that gets close to 100% in 14 years. Plus, you can’t power a grid entirely from solar and wind, not without massive grid storage, which essentially doesn’t exist yet. Sure, they’re working on molten salt batteries for this, but this whole mess isn’t a 2030 thing.That’s the recurring theme here: nice ideas, sure, but pure fantasy. She hasn’t bothered to look at specific details of any of these ideas. Like Trump. Just not worth her while, I guess. She’s not going to win, and she knows it.The Value of Considering RealityAnd finally, I’ll get to the “she can’t possible win” part. Because that is part of it. Sure, it’s a good year for third party candidates, given the relatively negative public view — deserved or not — of the two major party candidates. But there is no possible way for Jill Stein to win. Her campaign managed to get 0.36% of the popular vote in 2012, they raised a total of about $1 million. That is simply not enough to pretend to run a serious campaign.I did vote idealistically, in 1980 (for John Anderson) and in 2000 (for Ralph Nader). Neither one actually mattered, based on where I lived. Still don’t fell particularly good about Nader — I did not at the time realize that Karl Rove’s people were funding Nader and basically pumping up the “they’re just the same” meme in liberal circles. I also didn’t understand that we actually do have a two-party system.But we do live in a two-party system, and that system is based not on the current power of the Republicans and the Democrats (though sure, they do stack the deck to keep their position as one of the two possible strong parties in our system), but by the mathematics behind our winner-take-all system. It’s actually worse in Presidential elections, where it’s majority rule, not simple winner-take-all. Any strong candidate, anyone who could draw enough voters from both Republican and Democratic-likely voters to actually win some states and be really competitive, they would be far more likely to prevent any candidate from winning 270 electors, and thus the Presidency. That would put the vote into the House of Representatives, and the Republican majority would certainly pick the Republican candidate.However, the Greens are not positioned to be that attractive. They pretty much only draw voters from the far left, people who might not have voted otherwise, sure, but also those voting Democratic. Usually. In the 2000 election, Ralph Nader of course ran on the Green ticket and mainly ran as the non-corporatist against the “just the same” Bush and Gore. Nader got about 65–70% “would-be-Democrats” in exit polls, and his total was only 2.6%. Not enough to get even close to winning a single state, but enough to act as a spoiler in Florida. Bush and Gore were, sadly, very much not the same, and specifically on a large number of issues important to the Greens. That election set their agenda back 20 years.And if you’re really concerned about evils, casting a “tilting at windmills” vote may make you feel momentarily good, but it doesn’t lessen the chance of a greater evil being elected. More here:Is the ‘lesser of two evils’ an ethical choice for voters?Yes, you do have an obligation to vote for the lesser of two evils. Here’s why.Dave Haynie's answer to Is voting for someone because they're the lesser of two evils a good reason? (read some of the others, too).

I can answer this to a degree, contextualized through my own experience as a highly trained immigrant to Oslo, Norway, from Croatia, a small South-East European country with a load of economic and political problems. My experiences may not be representative of other personal conditions and particular destinies.PreambleIn Which We Meet Our Hero.After completing my Ph.D. in Automation (Electrical Engineering) in 2012, with the focus on Marine Robotics / Cybernetics I decided to look for employment outside my country. I had previously had limited experiences living in the UK and US. I had previously lived for 1 year in the UK while I was lower sixth form, in a public boarding school (public, confusingly, means private in the UK, and boarding school is the one where you live in the school). Lower sixth form in the UK is the penultimate year of secondary / high school, so I guess, high school junior in the US? Kids aged roughly 16 - 18, mode on 17. In the US, I lived during a three month research stint tied to my Ph.D. research on a scholarship in Monterey, CA, researching in the Naval Postgraduate School. I had also traveled extensively during my Ph.D. around Europe and to a lesser degree to the US and around the world. I speak English at the native speaker level.It took me about three quarters of a year to find a job in Norway, and I chose to concentrate on Norway for several reasons:During my studies, I had learned that Norway invests extreme amounts of money, even by the EU standards (i.e. the whole of EU through the Directorate for S&T's instrument called Framework Programme 7 before 2013, and now Horizon 2020), into marine technology and marine cybernetics research,Norway, although a small country, has a disproportionally large labor market, relatively speaking, for highly trained marine technology and marine cybernetics professionals, with globally operating Norwegian-based companies such as Kongsberg, Marine Cybernetics, DNV-GL, and multinationals with significant presence and marine technology operations in Norway, like ABB, GE, Siemens, Rolls Royce Marine, etc.Norway is in the same time-zone as Croatia, CET, and is 5 hours away by plane with one change-over somewhere in Western or Central Europe (usually Frankfurt, Munich, Copenhagen, Zurich, Brussels, or Vienna). During the summer, there are cheap seasonal flights directly to the coast by Ryanair. I have a lot of family in Croatia still, as well as friends, and like to be close.Norway is extremely socialist. I espouse socialist values, and, compared to other possible countries that would have an interest in an immigrant like me (a highly trained focused expert who might only be able to get paperwork based on his expertise and the real need of some company to employ a guy with such credentials), like Canada, the UK (Scotland), the US, Mexico, Brazil, Singapore, Hong Kong, it is the best governed. I am very wary of the US culture of over-work (although I grant that I may be misinformed or not have the proper understanding of how it looks in practice). This is especially true at a juncture in my life where I want to think hard and serious about starting a family and having a good work-life balance with respect to that. Norway also offers apt labor rights to employees, and a good amount of paid vacation, as well as paternity leave, health, social welfare programs etc. I consider the American approach to vacation (summed up as one word -- "No") to be uncivilized in the extreme.Norway is still essentially European. Any alienation that I may come to feel should at least be less than in the US, or in Asia.Norway is extremely family-friendly.Most critical to my experience, I had some connections in Norway that helped when competing in their labor market. So all that said, come February 2013, I packed my bags, sat on the plane, and arrived for a two weeks stay in a hotel before I found myself a place to live. The plane, the overweight luggage charges, and the two weeks of stay in the hotel near work were picked up by my company. Seeing as how the oil market has moved in the last two years, I would not expect to see the same happening again were I to get a job today. I also got a liaison in the Chamber of Commerce through my company's Global Mobility office who helped with paperwork, and, which turned out to be rather critical when comparing my story to those of other immigrants -- vetting and vouching for me with Norwegian landlords and essentially acting as my at-large factotum during the first few weeks, driving me around and setting me up as painlessly as humanly possible.Prior to getting the job I ultimately landed, I have to point out that the job-hunting embodied two vastly different experiences:With one company, I went through a protracted competitive and whittling-down process since they were advertising and hiring globally and for a very specific purpose. I begrudged the company for not going through the process more efficiently and communicating their ultimate choice (of another person) sooner. The process was drawn out, very formal, and without too much interaction save for one interview. They would have been happy to cover the travel costs for, from Croatia, had I not had a parallel activity in Norway at a date that was satisfactory for both, so I was already in the country. They were kind enough to send a chauffeur to the airport at Oslo, where I landed for my other activities, and drive me three hours to the company headquarters, and covered the price of the train back to Oslo. So a civilized, but largely faceless and formal process, with a tail end of waiting for the ultimate answer by far too long and slightly mismanaged in my opinion.With my ultimate company, it started with a friendly phone-call by a Technology Manager in charge of the unit that was interested in getting me, on the recommendation of mutual acquaintances who were kind enough to refer me. We had another chat with the unit manager, and the guy who would be my immediate manager after a week from the initial chat. Two weeks after that, they paid for me to come in for an in-person interview. This was not an advertised position essentially, but the company saw it as an opportunity to get the expertise that I embodied. So I was basically head-hunted personally and in a targeted way. They presented me with an offer right after the interview, and gave me three weeks to consider (it was right around the time of Christmas holidays, so companies would have shut down anyway for at least two weeks). I accepted. Very fast, very friendly, I didn't feel too much tension, and after the first experience, was duly impressed by their willingness to come to terms almost immediately.Now, finally, on to the actual experiences of living and working in Norway.Working in NorwayThe GoodWorking in a big multinational company in Norway is... well I don't have a good standard for comparison, having only worked in academia before my stint here, but in general -- nice, civilized, and interesting. It does have its share of frustrations, but I imagine that will be the case anywhere and everywhere. Now, my standard for comparison is Croatian business life and business practices, and e.g. American practices are in many respects even further removed. So, when I say "the internal administration seems to be fast and efficient", maybe for an American it would seem overly bureaucratic and convoluted, but then that person would run away screaming and insane from Croatia. That said -- my onboarding period was extremely efficiently handled. I got a nice office with modern, functional furniture (electrical motor for adjusting your desk, a fancy chair that has more ways of setting it up that I have cared to learn), a cellphone, a computer, 2 big screens, and other paraphernalia within the first week. Well, the laptop was a temporary hand-down that I got on the first day, to be followed by my own, brand new model in two weeks.The working language in my company is English, and at the time there were very many expats and international workers, so communication was never a problem. All Norwegians (at the workplace for sure, and I would wager -- most Norwegians in general, regardless of age, at least in Oslo) also speak quite good English, if with an unmistakable Scandinavian accent. But then again, I probably have an unmistakable Slavic accent, so there is that. The company also agreed to pay Norwegian language courses for me.Norwegians in general are practical, goal-oriented folk. They strike me as having a good balance between setting up workable and rational rules, and sticking to them, and being willing to adapt to a situation. Unlike Croatians, they have a can-do, positive outlook and don't have a particular Croatian trauma and obsession with not incurring any costs in doing business. You've got to spend money to earn money. And if the cost is rational, targeted, known in advance, and will lead to a business result, it gets paid quickly and efficiently.By and large, you can be very flexible with your time, involvement, vacation days, going to the doctor, or doing administration stuff with the state (although for that last one, there is not much need since most of the administration is digital and web-based). There are some restrictions if, unlike me, who works in R&D, you work "front line" in direct contact with customers and in the core business of the company. Then, work is driven by customer-imposed deadlines, and since we build complicated solutions that are systems constructed from components produced, shipped, and coordinated from factories around the world, you may have some constraints on when in particular you want to take your spring, summer, autumn, or winter vacation.Hierarchies in Norwegian companies are flat, and bosses don't command respect just by the virtue of being placed on top of you in the organization chart. They are rather approachable (if sometimes bland and non-committal if you insist on talking to them only about the business), and almost to a fault don't expect any obeisance or sycophancy. The right way to socialize with bosses is to talk about leisure, sports, the weather, travel etc.The "Bad" -- Well, the peculiar in any caseEven in globally operating companies with a multinational workforce, for getting ahead and being in the know, Norwegian is a must. Then again, Norwegians act extremely friendly and like it very much when you exhibit any interest in learning their language. However, I have seen that the feelings get mixed once you've established yourself as at least a mediocre speaker of Norwegian. As time passes, their enthusiasm for talking to you like they would to an idiot child decreases. They start "forgetting themselves" and begin to just talk normal in front of, or to you, and then are a little bit stumped when they see that you can't quite keep up. However, this is probably not strange. I try to think how the situation would play out in e.g. a Croatian company, and I can't in all honesty say that it would be much different. This is by and large true for a lot of things I will say in this section.Getting ahead, in the career sense, is absolutely predicated not only on learning Norwegian, but actively integrating into the Norwegian lifestyle, preferences, culture, and leisure time activities. Norwegians, somewhat like Croatians, are a small nation, so everybody knows everybody else, and networking and mingling are very important. Combined with the sometimes stifling Janteloven ("You shall not consider yourself to be better than anybody else. You are not, the society will not treat you as such, and you will get no more breaks or opportunities than anybody else."), this means that whom you know, who is a good friend, and who you've managed to impress with your personality and your good humor, is equally important to how good you actually are in whatever you do. On the other side of that coin, they still manage to be more meritocratic than Croatians, but Croatians are a byword for nepotism, corruption, and clientelism.Due to this deep-seated respect for the opinions of others and sense of community, decision-making and responsibility-taking, as well as exercise of authority is sometimes... challenging. The way they try to resolve this is by calling an irrational number of meetings, especially when the decision to be made is a multi-faceted one, with many valid arguments in favor of different courses of action. If there is no consensus, you can be sure there will be another meeting on the same issue. Ultimately, this sometimes undercuts business because in a lot of situations, it is important to be fast, rather than right. Especially in the really interesting problems, when it is simplistic in the first instance to try to frame the decision as right-or-wrong. This does feel nice for the people lower down on the pecking order because you get the sense that it truly is important (and it really is) what you think how the company, or your team, or your unit, should proceed on some matter. However, what I think many people fail to understand is that sometimes you either don't have an opinion, or would just like to get on with your work, in whichever way someone tells you to. Sometimes you just need information on how to proceed, and not a debate.Other than that, what I think I am noticing as frustrations or down-sides of the job have more to do with the nature of big corporations in general, than with anything uniquely Norwegian, like the Peters principle ("people tend to get promoted to their exact level of incompetence"). Also, if you are extremely efficient and effective in your work, and if your work is the company's core business and you are in the "front lines", which in my company means engineering the actual deliveries, your chances of getting promoted off of that front line are slim. Because you are indispensable right where you are right now. Whereas as a middle manager, your less-than-efficient-engineer colleague might do just as well. And that is largely true when you consider the job one rung on top of yours. But if you really want to advance along the entire ladder, you need that rung's experience to move forward and further. Not just for the sake of being a team leader.In that last respect, I've noticed that careers in Norwegian engineering companies have some of the nature of "switchback staircase". You get promoted by leaving a company, and stepping into a higher-up role in the other company. Then after some years you come back to the company in a yet higher role. This is something that happens in Norway -- companies often take people back, even after a period where these people have worked with a direct competitor.The UglyNothing really.Living in NorwayOslo And Public TransportNorway is a relatively non-urban country. Even Oslo, the biggest city, is quite small compared to some other European, and even Scandinavian cities, like Stockholm or Copenhagen. The government actually actively pursues the policy of decentralized development, and Norwegian people in general seem to not mind living in the country, or rather, actually prefer it. On top of questions of relative size, to me, who came from the capital of Croatia that is loosely the same size as Oslo (maybe 100 - 200 thousand inhabitants more, depending on how far you cast your statistical net), Oslo just doesn't feel very big. This is due to the fact that Oslo, which for me was quite unexpected since I tend to associate the trend much more with cities and towns in the US, is not very congested or urbanized, urban panning-wise. It has a relatively small urban center, surrounded by a lot of suburban sprawl of detached housing. While in Oslo the public transport infrastructure is good, that is not necessarily the case over all. Oslo has the T-bane, the semi-underground semi-overground light rail, a network of slow and meandering trams, a high speed underground railway connection between the eastern and western railway networks of Norway, buses, and ferries all operated by the same concern -- Ruter.no. Whenever the T-bane stops service (after midnight on weekdays and Sunday, and after 1 am on Friday and Saturday), even in Oslo getting around in public transport becomes a hassle.Nightlife, Social Life, Drinks, And TaxisThese leads me to segue into discussions of nightlife, social life, drinks, and taxis. When you are out and about in Oslo (and even more so in other cities and town) after hours, the only real efficient option of getting around is taxis (and Uber). Taxis are goddamned expensive, but so is almost anything else associated with urbanite nightlife. Drinks are ridiculous, as I am sure many of you already know. Prices of alcohol and nicotine products are extremely high on account of the punitive tariffs imposed by the government. This stance of the Norwegian society towards drinks and tobacco I find to be extremely hypocritical. If you consider that it is so damaging and dangerous -- ban it outright. However, I think every sane person can immediately recognize that this will not work. The Islamic world tried this, and still there is a lively black market for alcohol in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, or Iran. This is one aspect of the otherwise quite accomplished Norwegian nanny state that I severely dislike. To a man from a culture that is the most... interesting, to put it diplomatically, mix of the Mediterranean and Slavic cultures, it is of supreme importance to have his beer or wine in peace and not have the nanny state look down upon you with a tsk-ing sound on its lips and a wagging finger on its hand.Other aspects of nightlife are equally expensive, and to add insult to injury, quite annoying as well. All nightclubs rigorously enforce fire rules (as all establishments in Norway in general rigorously enforce all of the rules all of the time), which results in scenes which I had for the longest of times considered, when I would see them on American TV shows like Friends to be some weird fiction. Namely those of people freezing their asses off in those pesky lines for admittance into nightclubs. More often than not, not without paying an exorbitant fee to top it off. Additionally, all premises that remain open after a given time (I don't know exactly, but I'd say maybe 10 pm) employ bouncers and guards, who are entitled to refuse you entry if they only judge you to be inebriated, or in general, a menace. For me, inebriation at a reasonable level is in no way necessarily connected with being a potential problem in a nightclub or bar. This has more to do with a person's experience in drinking, the set of cultural expectation about how to behave while out at night, and how drinking in general is perceived by the society.Inebriation, Pulling Tail, And FightingThen again, maybe that kind of practice is for the better in Norway, where people generally go for what I like to call the bipolar approach -- either they are stone-cold, dead-set, boring-the-pants-off-of-you sober, or fucked-up drunk beyond possibility of parole. There is no culture like in the Mediterranean countries (Italy, Spain, France, Greece) of being cheerfully tipsy, inhibitions-somewhat-released, comfortably buzzed. Where the buzz and the tipsiness sneaks up on you because you've been sipping wine with cheese, grapes, and nuts for the better part of the afternoon which somehow decided to turn into dead of night at some point. In Norway, like in the UK, you drink to get shit-faced, and that's the sole point of the exercise. Norwegians seem to regard alcohol exclusively as an intoxicant / drug, without a cultural patina associated with drinking as a social activity established through the course of history. As you wouldn't "sip" heroin or meth, but you'd shoot up in order to feel the psychotropic effects, so with alcohol.Additionally, compared to Croatians, and most Italians I've known, Norwegians have poor self-control when drinking. If I was inclined to not being particularly charitable, I'd wager that it was because they actually like that the alcohol gives them the excuse to act more outside of the bounds of what is normally expected of them. More in tune with their id, as opposed to their nanny-state-moderated, Janteloven-totting superego. It is not uncommon (not particularly common, but in my subjective experience also not uncommon enough) to see drunken Norwegians getting into fights with each other. The kind of fights entered in are more a case of peacocking and signalling, then of wishing to actually do someone lasting harm. For me, this was extremely scary, because in Croatia, you fight if a) you're a sociopath thug, b) you've been assaulted by a sociopath thug. In both cases, you fight hard, fast, dirty, and for dear life. No amount of alcohol will cause adult socially functioning Croatians to consider getting into a fight over sports, women, or political opinions. Of course, there are crazies, sociopaths, psychopaths, bullies, hooligans, and thugs everywhere. And the reason why normal tax-paying upstanding citizens don't like to posture aggressively and invite for fights is that what might happen once the proverbial bro proverbially comes at you is that you (or him) get curb-stomped, you get your family jewels kicked out from underneath you, or a knife finds its way to a fist-fight, or a gun finds its way to a knife-fight.Additionally, it is really funny (and recently, for reasons of changed personal circumstances, also somewhat frustrating) to observe Norwegian mating rituals. Norwegians are, in the opinion of this reviewer, notoriously bad at play-of-words, double entendres, and seduction in general. They congregate into bars in unisex groups, proceed to drink themselves into a stupor, without making much effort to communicate with the opposite number. Once comfortably smashed out of their brains, they proceed to play touch-heavy, and bumble that they "like each other", which basically means they want to have sex. After which more often then not, they do (fortunately, mostly away from the prying eyes of the Attenboroughian neutral observer).DrivingComing back to daylight affairs, the road network in Norway leaves a lot to be desired, and the country has but one motorway that I consider worthy of the name, from Oslo along the west side of the Oslofjord towards Kristiansand. The road network includes several A-roads, but generally speaking, Norwegians often fly domestically. It is difficult to keep a country with geography of Norway connected by overland transport. Additionally, Norwegians drive extremely passively and defensively, and quite slow, to someone from Croatia. This is one of the reasons I don't really enjoy the thought of having to eventually buy a car and drive here (at the very latest, if and when I start a family, if I will still be living here) -- I think I'd have real problems with being constantly annoyed over how slow and passively the traffic moves over here. It's similar to California, how I remember it while I was living there. So for Americans reading this, I guess not too different from home, but for Italians, Spaniards, maybe the French (?) and people from the Balkans, this is an excruciatingly bland and passive, almost boring experience. And I fear that I might not be able to refrain from committing misdemeanors like speeding or what would be considered "aggressive" driving.Janteloven; Or How We Tore The Neck Off Of The American Dream And Proceeded To Shit Down Its NeckIn general, from my perspective life in Norway is very calm and organized, and Norwegians are quite worry-free, because they have a rich nanny state that takes care of a lot of things for them. One thing that people need to understand when living here is the Janteloven. In Croatia, we actually have, as a remnant of communist times, a similar term, but in Croatia it is (I would daresay, in the particular socioeconomic context, and perceived needs of Croatia to develop into a modern country, rightly so) perceived as an extremely negative, stifling, and limiting ideological term -- Uravnilovka (roughly Equalization). Both terms can be understood with the same positive and negative facets, and there are, to be sure, both of those.On the positive side, like all socialist ideologies, Janteloven provides social homogeneity, corps esprit, sense of community, and a social safety network that removes a lot of existential weltschmertz from the life experience of even the most socially imperiled Norwegians. On the negative side, I will just share one particular image for Uravnilovka that pertains equally well to my experience and perception of Janteloven -- that of a pendulum blade like in Poe's The Pit and the Pendulum, or like the circular saws springing from the walls in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. These blades are tuned exquisitely to a certain height that is enforced as a universal standard. If your height happens to exceed that to which the saws / blades are set, you get cut down to size.I would imagine that to Americans with their diametrically opposed idea of the American Dream, this sounds like something out of a story with which the Tea Party scare their children.Ordnung Muss Sein; Or On The Question Of Whether You Need A PMP To Have Fun In A SMART Way; Oh, And Sports, Just So, So Many SportsA funny thing about Norwegians in formal settings, like let's say in a company, is that a lot of the time they insist on everything fun being exquisitely planned, with four-color highlighters, neatly organized lists, and arranged seating. It is almost as the idea of the ancient and mystical art of "just shooting the shit out on the patio" is wholly unknown to them. They want to know when we are going, where we are going, how we are getting there, what's the plan B, what do we need to buy before we get there, of course, most important of all, HOW DO WE SPLIT THE BIL.L, before they will even consider doing something fun. And by that, they always mean some kind of organized activity. You cannot just go have something to eat and some drinks. Or you know, god forbid, talk, tell jokes, flirt, and tell stories. There has to be something participatory to do for the organization. Some kind of team-building bullshit. How we build teams in Croatia? Step 1) Lots of food. Step 2) Mountains of booze. Step 3) Maybe some drugs. Step 4) It is in fact not the case that Ana from Accounting must look much worse without all the makeup in the morning. But I'm still not seeing clear from all the booze anyway.The obsession with planned activities reminds me of American summer camps or kindergarten groups.There is one thing that Norwegians are super-passionate about, though, and that is sports. They are an amazingly good-looking, fit, and healthy nation and I have to tip the hat to them for that. But the amount of preoccupation with sports is too damn high, quoth the memetastic Jimmy McMillan. They are crazy about sports, especially the Nordic skiing disciplines, but extending to jogging, cycling, gym, crossfit, everything. If you don't do sports, you are dangerously close to being considered a pariah. And, like the joke about the Vegan, the Cross-fitter, and the Anti-GMO guy, they will tell you about it.Closing Arguments And VerdictIf I wanted to be uncharitable, I'd be inclined to describe the less appetizing facets of Norwegian society and Norway as:They are hidebound. A lot of them do exactly the same thing as the neighbor, and do the popular thing, and do it at the exactly prescribed time of the year, with exactly prescribed gear, having the exactly prescribed opinions on how great whatever they are doing, is.They are spoiled. They have an excellent, rational, social, rich, and high-functioning nation-state that provides, and often don't know how good they are having it, and are prone to First-World-Problemism. In this, they manage to walk the fine line of doublethink wherein they are at the same time extremely liberal and progressive in theory, and quite xenophobic and bigoted in practice.They are unambitious. Their approach to work, while practical and honest, is quite laissez-faire and lackadaisical. Come friday 2 pm, nobody's around to answer phones and emails, and everyone's halfway across the first hill to their cabin.If, on the other hand, I wanted to be charitable, I'd cover exactly the same bases as the above like this, claiming of Norwegians that:They are socially cohesive. They value the same things, understand each other well, are neighborly, and raise children with a high participation of the entire society. They find strength, courage, and beauty in adhering to tradition and unanimity.They are calm, rational, and practical. Their excellent, rational, social, rich, and high-functioning nation-state is an excellent example of how a nation state should be set up. Seeing as how they have their cake and continue to eat it to, at least while the oil still flows, they for the love of all that is holy cannot understand why Rwandans, Somalis, Ex-Yugoslavs, or Russians would choose to operate differently.They realize what is really valuable in life and that you work to live, and not the other way around. They travel on holidays across half the world, are home a lot to spend time with their families, are healthy and content due to sports and spending time in nature, and suffer low levels of work-related stress.All people are people, and there's beautiful, ugly, or boring people everywhere. Croatians are not the rose-petal-smelling pearly ass-farts of rainbow-regurgitating unicorns either, but the question was not about Croatians anyway. For an excellent overview of Croatian idiosyncrasies, I urge everyone to read the excellent Croatian son-in-law, Cody Brown's blog Zablogreb, or more recently, his collected columns on the Voice of Croatia.