Comment by ChainsawSurgery | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ChainsawSurgery | Hacker News Reader

ChainsawSurgery

My experience working at a startup that started out outsourced and slowly started adding inhouse developers:

It was mostly a mess.

1) Time/Cultural/Language barriers are inevitably the biggest problem. Want an answer to something critical right now? Too bad, it's 2 AM there and no one's around.

You're going to end up scheduling meetings at insane hours, and someone's going to get burned out on that.

I also had the fortune of watching an email thread where someone used a colloquialism ("Move it over just a smidge") and it took three days to resolve (because of the time differences) what that meant.

2) This is going to sound super snotty, but I'll just say it: There was a definite feeling of "you're still over there because you're not good enough for anyone to sponsor you for an H1B".

In general the really talented developers I met left quickly because they found someone willing to sponsor them. What was left was... well, what was left.

The salary gap is so severe that it becomes a lot harder to say "I want to stay near my family and friends." If someone offered me 100x my current salary to move to, well, anywhere, I'd be packed in 5 minutes.

"This is going to sound super snotty, but I'll just say it: There was a definite feeling of "you're still over there because you're not good enough for anyone to sponsor you for an H1B"."

Wow this is precious.

Not everybody wants to leave their country for more money. This is the most ridiculous comment I've seen in February.

> Not everybody wants to leave their country for more money

We're not talking about $100. We're talking about orders of magnitudes of your salary. That's a shitload of money.

When you start getting into magnitudes of money like that, things like nationalities and being close to your family become extremely malleable.

If you wouldn't make that choice: great. I would, and I would bet a sizeable majority of people would be totally willing to move to another country to make 100x their current salary.

Hell, I'd move to Antarctica to make 100x my current salary.

I'd even consider Arkansas.

As an Arkansan, I'm taking a little offense. And I'm not a native, either--I grew up in Florida.

This is the most beautiful state I've seen. I love it.

The financial disparity looks rather less clear-cut when you talk about how you get to actually spend the money though. If your $12k a year pays for you and your family to live in a spacious villa, and a full time nanny for the kids whilst still leaving enough left over to be able to save up for a biannual new MacBook, you're going to get a rude shock when you realise what $120,000 before tax actually means in San Francisco, especially if you don't intend to leave the family behind.

In that context, staying at home suddenly looks a lot more attractive, especially if you're aware of just how rich by local standards you'll be if you manage to build enough reputation as a remote contractor to triple your rates in future.

$12k doesn't go that far. Maybe $25k ;)

Perhaps to westerners and perhaps to you. To other people, that is not necessarily always the case. For example, my family has lived in the city where I reside for less than 100 years. This is my home but it's not my ancestral home.

If I were from India, if my family had a connection to an area that went back hundreds or possibly even thousands of years to a region, if I could live similarly to how I live here on the kind of salary the job pays there, I wouldn't be in a big rush to leave either.

Would I leave this area to make 10x what I earn now? Probably. If I left for 5-10 years, I could come back and retire.

Is there any pressing or burning need? No. Not at all.

Even though I could be persuaded to go somewhere else, there are still limits to where I'd go. I wouldn't move to North Korea, even to make 20x my current income. I wouldn't move to any of the former Soviet republics. I wouldn't move to most of Central or South America. I wouldn't move to most of Africa.

I get it, for you, most of these concerns are trivial but that's simply not the case for a lot of people.

I would love to know where you can outsource things for 100X less than US?

Two more things, what about cost of living? and do you know how tough it is to get an H1B unless you have studied in US. (my guess, no!)

Can not agree with "you're still over there because you're not good enough for anyone to sponsor you for an H1B".

There are 2 reasons I see now:

1. Living cost ratio. Well, you might get 10x salary comparing to Asian developer, but living cost is not at the same rate. 100x is different story, but again related to living cost, you might jump in there, when you get there you might end up with 101x living cost.

2. Assume every knowledgable person will leave their homes for 10x salary, 7x living cost and they are earning 3x of money and country will end up with idiots, slow development, slow financial growth in whole country. It takes some time for developing countries to be in decent place if professionals do not leave, it takes forever to be in good place if everyone will leave just for 3x or maybe 10x.

> living cost is not at the same rate

I knew this was going to be brought up, but it's not enough to overcome the monumental salary gap. Your example of developers earning "$2k" just made me think that I invest $2k a month, not even what I save in total each month.

The living cost is obviously much different. There's still really just no comparison, in terms of net compensation.

> Assume every knowledgable person will leave their homes for 10x salary, 7x living cost and they are earning 3x of money and country will end up with idiots, slow development, slow financial growth in whole country

That's all well and good, and you're right, but the individual ends up being much better off by leaving. Brain drain, as it's called.

Rhetoric like "do it for your country" is good in theory, but individuals who leave have an opportunity to help themselves and their families out immensely via monetary gain.

It's really, really hard to ignore that.

Actually nope.

Cost of living matters. A lot.

It directly affects the kinds of things you can afford. Out here (in India), I can easily afford: house rent + groceries for a 2 bedroom apartment ( ~2000USD per year ), paying a cook to cook twice everyday ( 800USD per year ), paying someone to clean my house once a week. ( 200 USD per year ) and still manage to save up more than 50% of my paycheck - after paying 30% taxes.

Neither the places abroad offering me to move there nor any of my friends living there have these luxuries. That's why most of my friends working abroad want to come back to India "after making enough money". Especially the married folk, who are expecting babies.

Also the pay difference is really not as high as you'd think it is.Most decent companies (Google, Amazon, etc.. ) here pay you around 40k USD per year for a guy with 3-4 years experience. Most of my freelancer friends here seem to be making more than that actually.

And:

3. The number of good developers is unrelated to the number of H1-B issued

The truth is that the good developers aren't making 100x less in most of the developed countries. Most of the good developers I know in India are earning in 25-40K range with lots of tax benefits. Expenses are less than 10K even if you live a good lifestyle.

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