Things Engineers Do to Move to the US | Hacker News Reader

Things Engineers Do to Move to the US

medium.com

7 pointsfreedaemon6 comments

Is there a very substantial difference between the things engineers do to move to the US and things non-engineers do to move to the US?

Here's the sentence that gets at the heart of this disagreement:

"..Even when the Valley is facing a supply problem and is desperate for hiring engineers."

Unfortunately, many people have associated being pro-immigration with agreeing that there is a severe shortage of software engineers. I see these things as separate, and I think it's a mistake to try to connect them.

In San Francisco, the median salary for a software developer is a little bit above a dental hygienist and substantially below a registered nurse[1]. I'm not saying programming is necessarily a bad job, or that programmers would jump at the chance to switch places with dental hygienists. But if you consider pay, career stability, the possibility of age-related employment problems as you reach middle age, the difficulty of scaling back or leaving the workforce while you have kids… the decision to avoid software engineering can be entirely rational. The attractiveness of the career is at odds with claims of a severe shortage when you consider other opportunities available to educated, skilled workers. Why favor one segment of the economy, why not require that software employers compete for free workers like everyone else?

In short, why should someone who has agreed to study what Facebook wants him to study, live where Facebook wants him to live, and work on what Facebook wants him to work on, have priority over someone who is "undeclared", who wants to come to the US and choose a career in response to market signals like any other free person?

[1] check US news best jobs for regional salary data, based on BLS

I reject the premise that the country should be open to anyone who wants to come in and give it a shot.

At some point a country has to stand up for its citizens, people who take on massive debt to go to school here, who grew up here and whose family paid lots of taxes, should have priority for jobs.

Besides, if it's about research, research institutions can sponsor H1B really easily and are cap exempt.

> That’s true now, and we don’t realize how lucky we are that it is.

I don't think it is true. I see no reason why one should come to the US and not to UK for example.

How about the fact that a software developer in Silicon Valley earns much more, up to twice as much as one in London? Before taxes that is.

I would be more interested in after taxes earnings and things like holidays, healthcare and so on. Also you are most likely not able to get your family to the US to visit you. This is a huge downer I can imagine for a lot of people.

As a general indication, the average software developer in the UK earns about 45k$, while the average in the US is more like 60k$ (source: payscale). The averages for London and Silicon Valley will both be higher than that of course.

Healthcare insurance is more expensive in the US, but this is compensated by much lower taxes.

You're definitely right about holidays and vacation days, you'll have more of these in the UK. At the same time, even when you value a vacation day at 300$ (much more than either average UK or US dev earns in a day) and suppose our average UK dev has 20 more vacation days a year (he probably doesn't), that's still only 6k out of a 15k difference.

I agree that being near your family and friends can be worth a lot more than 15k$.

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