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Comment by sumanthvepa | Hacker News Reader

This is one of the reasons I hypothesise that you don’t get to hire good programmers in India. It’s not that there is a lack of talent. I’ve seen many enormously talented developers. However, the very best won’t work for Indian salary levels, since they know they can command better salaries abroad or become entrepreneurs. As a consequence there is an adverse selection effect in play in India. The very best won’t offer their services and the quality of the talent pool declines over time in a viscous cycle, as companies lower salaries even further to compensate for a poorer talent pool. Obviously this is not the only dynamic at play in the enormously complex Indian IT labor market, but it is a factor that I think that might be worth pondering.

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Wait what? If you are a senior software engineer at a good company in Banglore you can easily make 40k - 60k USD an year. After taxes and expenses it becames equalent or better than salaries in most places except for San Francisco(USA), London and Singapore. USA is super hard for an Indian software engineer to immigrate. London is doable but for most of them it's not worth all the travel and staying away from family. People immigrate only if they makes way too much salary abroad compared to India which is hardly the case. Nobody is going to immigrate if they will save a few hundred dollars more a month. So good software engineers mostly immigrate for reasons other than salary (Like living in Europe etc).

Edit: Looks like even London don't offer good enough salary for a good software engineer when compared to cost of living.

London is fairly notorious for low SE salaries outside of high end consulting, I’m not sure why it would be listed with those other two cities.

The biggest problem with India is that talent migration doesn’t really work the other way (same with China), so you have to build companies solely with local talent. That works for lower end software services, but for higher end R&D generally requires some amount of draw from a world-wide labor pool.

I'm curious what's the difference between India and China in that it seems like there have been world-class R&D that has been done in China using local talent for a number of years now (from Alibaba, Baidu, Tencent, etc), but haven't heard of many examples in India.

None of those companies can really escape China, so is it fair to call them world class? Even tencent’s most international operations are acquired rather than grown in China.

I mentioned London because it had one of the highest salaries in Europe. I don't have personal experience myself apart from what I saw in Glassdoor.

Cost of living adjusted salaries are what matters, and London has SV level cost of living at way lower salaries.

In Europe, Switzerland is most similar to the Bay area: high salaries, high cost of living and low taxes.

Low taxes? California has high tax right?

Not compared to Europe I suppose?

Last time I checked take home pay was lower in NY than London for someone earning around 150k before tax. Not sure if that holds true in California...

According to this calculator: https://www.thesalarycalculator.co.uk/salary.php

120k £ (equivalent of $150k at current exchange rate) becomes net 71135 £ which is 61.8%

In the state of New York: https://smartasset.com/taxes/new-york-paycheck-calculator

$150k gets you a take home that is 68% of gross. NYC imposes an additional local tax between 3 and 3.8% so in the worst case you’re still taking home more than 64% of gross.

Maybe the last time you checked $150k was a lot less in £ and therefore taxed at lower rates in the UK?

Potentially- I think I added in property taxes (about 1-2k/year in the uk) and healthcare (free on the nhs or if you’re earning 150k you’re likely getting heavily subsidised private care from your employer).

Don't know many making $150k in London, though. Maybe the Facebooks, Google's

I think Texas market seems to offer the best of both world for software developers. Higher salary, slightly cheaper housing and cost of living. Also no state tax.

Yes, but: Texas weather. Unpleasant without constant A/C.

Indeed. Hell, I've known people from India to move back there in recent years because conditions have improved and whilst the salaries are lower the standard of living they can afford you can end up being a lot better.

The pollution in the big tech-centric cities though is still absolutely horrible, and this has to be a big factor for anyone with kids.

I wonder how many returnees were only able to improve their salaries by that foreign experience (warranted or not).

London salary to cost of living ratio is terrible. I made a better real income, and at a lower level, in Australia, which many people leave for better salaries in SV.

> Wait what? If you are a senior software engineer at a good company in Banglore you can easily make 40k - 60k USD an year. After taxes and expenses it becames equalent or better than salaries in most places except for San Francisco(USA), London and Singapore. USA is super hard for an Indian software engineer to immigrate. London is doable but for most of them it's not worth all the travel and staying away from family. People immigrate only if they makes way too much salary abroad compared to India which is hardly the case. Nobody is going to immigrate if they will save a few hundred dollars more a month. So good software engineers mostly immigrate for reasons other than salary (Like living in Europe etc).

That's not how salaries in a career path work -- you want to have the largest base to start. In a worst case scenario ( no job hopping for massive increases ) the salaries increase based on percentage of the salary, not a percentage of what is left.

Quite right. As a hiring manager I've experienced this first hand. You either have to settle for unprofessional engineers or those who accept the offer stick around, at best, for one year. I've seen engineers changing jobs within 2 weeks.

It's become really hard to hire good engineers in India at Indian salaries. It's actually good thing in the longer run if the overall salary levels rise. On the other hand the talent drain out of India continues to be quite high.

You are assuming that everyone hires only the best or need only best programmers. Starting with "good" and then in the middle you go with "best".

Stop rolling this lie about "only the best", there is a place for less skilled people. There is also no measure of "the best developers". Because of this lie, hiring in IT is broken, because people who belive that and are recruiting, shit on people who want to find a job.

It’s not that there is a lack of talent. I’ve seen many enormously talented developers. However, the very best won’t work for Indian salary levels

No, there is something more complicated going on. India has a space programme and nuclear weapons. They have the talented engineers to make that happen. I guarantee those engineers are not all “we are facing an issue” and “please do the needful” like everyone who has dealt with Indian IT has heard when they lack the basic competence to do the job. So where is the disconnect?

Working on a space programme and nuclear weapons is a "perk" on its own that can lower the salary. Maybe not for you, but for a lot of people.

It's like when people write entire programming languages for free. The job is so enjoyable that it lowers the salary to zero.

> It's like when people write entire programming languages for free. The job is so enjoyable that it lowers the salary to zero.

Dang, I thing you nailed it!

(I'd work on rocket engines for free, too!)

Are SpaceX salaries lower than average then?

Anecdotally, SpaceX pays less than other aerospace companies. Source: I used to work at Boeing, I have friends at SpaceX and various other aerospace companies.

How does SpaceX even succeed at what they do while paying below market rate?

It's supply and demand. Lots of people want to work on rockets, so SpaceX doesn't need to pay them as much. It actually is the market rate for rocket engineers.

Double down on this. I want to work in Aerospace, but not for the military industrial complex. Who do I work for?

You won't be doing any military work if you work at BCAC (Boeing Commercial Airplane Company).

Interesting. If true, this (and maybe to a lesser degree games developers) is a micro example of the macro job market. Akin to minor league baseball players, entry-level news reporters, bloggers, etc.

Not to mention the benefits that comes from a government job in India.

Well you get all kind of software Engineers in India. Software engineers that make less than 8kUSD per year to software engineers that make more than 70k an year. You get what you paid for. And most of the times foreign companies pay lower than what a McDonald's employee make an hour in USA and expect back services of a software engineer that gets paid 100K+ USD in USA.

You've just described brain-drain in its most common form. It's not a new phenomenon. It's at least as old as modern forms of transportation and probably way older than that.

A vicious self-reinforcing cycle that drains underdeveloped countries of the best and brightest - the very people most suited to lead and improve the countries they leave.

The US has also been historically the biggest benefactor.

Very true. Also, it is almost impossible to find senior engineer opportunities if you have lot of experience. Most companies I spoke to consider it almost a failure that with 15+ years of experience, I am not looking for upper management roles.

Here I am, still writing code every day after 45 years. One day, I'll figure out how to do it right, and so get promoted to incompetence.

I can second this. A friend of mine went through a real ordeal to change jobs as a senior IC.

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