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Comment by _hao | Hacker News Reader

As a Bulgarian living and working in London for more than a year now, I have no intention of going back. The IT sector in the country is booming and the money you can make relative to the cost of living is insane - you can live like a king. To me that is not enough. Money are not enough to make me go back, even though I miss my friends and family. One of the biggest problems for me is that the country is stuck in this perpetual battle between western and Russian influence and that the government on all levels is mafia. There's a lot more that can be said, but speaking for myself and some friends/family that share my opinion that's not going to change soon.

EDIT: mrtksn's comment paints a very good picture.

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How does the politics and whatever people are saying affect your day to day life though? If you can make 10k a month there and buy a flat for 15k, in a few years you don't even need to work anymore. Why would you not even consider living there? Maybe as the old saying: familiarity breeds contempt

The problem is everything you own can evaporate. 5 years ago we had "the bank of the year" go insolvent in the most ridiculous way, followed by the dumbest cover-up you've ever seen.

Cheaper flats like 15k are almost certainly a scam, and unless you are paying a high monthly bribe for "maintenance" you may get a letter from the local authority that your papers are not in order and the building has to be demolished or otherwise fix your newfound legal issues with the land/permits. Things like that are very common in rural areas.

In bigger cities there are other scams and other rules to follow. Apparently another scam with fake POAs or corrupt judicial enforcers is picking up pace these days too.

That's a thing with corrupt, mafia-ridden places - high income will get noticed, unless you try to hide it continuously, effectively and consistently. Then why to have it in the first place. This is not some anonymous 10-million mega city, but place where people know people and foreigners stick out.

Politics being corrupt means that anytime you want law to protect you, there would be a hand expecting bribe. Also, usually medical care in such places tends to be subpar. Etc etc etc.

It might be a good investment, unless taxation on owned property is/will become bad. Unless you speak well local language, dealing with many things related to ownership will be a pain.

Because in any day your apartment can be turned into potato. Mafia can get eye on you, or government. Or more extreme for example Crimea occupied, ppl got to jail for nothing and nobody gives a fuck. Better to be in some bigger country with at least some law power. I would go to GB, Canada or Australia if i had a chance.

Crimea is Ukraine though. Putin might be bold enough to annex Ukrainian territory but I doubt he'd challenge an EU country.

It's easy to ignore politics and live as a tourist if you re an expat. Being a native, with native family / friends always drags you back into local / national politics - in general it's harder to disentangle yourself.

As a Bulgarian who lives in the UK, I can 100% attest to this. I've found it extremely hard to disengage from the culture I've been so used to for the first 21 years of my life while being surrounded by it. Whenever I go back I only see the negatives - it's as if the country is ruined for me.

Living in a country with lots of Bulgarian expats. 100% understand your position and would do the same thing - but so sad that most of the good and honest people leave the country. If so of you stayed things would probably change very quickly. :-(

What are the tech salaries like in Bulgaria?

If you have 5 years of experience as a Senior Back-end engineer you can get something between 2000€-4000€ net (after taxes) in the Bulgarian currency lev - BGN. The Lev is pegged to the Euro at 1.95BGN for 1€. In the capital where the tech jobs are located with that kind of salary you can afford anything you want.

Can u mention the best/walkable/sociable neighbourhoods for a visiting developer in Sophia and/or Bansko?

And what salary would you get for Google in London?

FYI as an experienced professional I have just been pitched a couple of civil service jobs in London grade 8 to Grade 7 at around 75k - and that would give me about 6.5 k

That's the eqvielent of a full Colonel / GS15 if its the higher grade.

And I bet a FANG in London pays way more than that as do train drivers

With with a much higher pay, London is still much more expensive.

FYI, and I kid you not, FANG in London pays 1/3-1/4 of the same job in Seattle (not even going to go into SV numbers). UK taxes are of course double, and rents similar, if not more expensive for London.

My cousin is in his 20's, roughly makes 10,000/ month (~ $5600 USD). That salary is absolutely amazing. The article states the minimum monthly salary is $320 ( which a large amount of people make, given that Bulgaria lacks a middle class). The reason he stays in Bulgaria is because of that, he wanted to come join me in the US, but he didn't want to emigrate.

edit: mrtksn's comment hits the nail on top of the head.

I keep hearing about these famous salaries in Croatia as well but my impression is that most people get a starting monthly net salary of 1000€ after masters in CS or SDE. Then there's some people who interned during college which get salaries from 1200-2000€ after college depending on how much networking they did. Then there's like 1% of developers/scientists who make 2-5k€ by being able to somehow market them to some external big corps as specialists or consultants but most people including me do not know how to do this. Is your cousin doing remote work for some fancy company or is that by being a full time in a local company?

He is doing full time for a local company. Given that he is in his very late 20's (almost 30). He started around 1200Euro but built his way up to his current salary by jumping companies/roles every 2 years for a salary boost (similarly to how its done in the states).

Salaries in the region can vary wildly.

Your data for Croatian dev salaries is mostly accurate - junior hires will net up to €1k, if they have some exp (interns or good personal projects) that miight go to €1.5k. Actually €1.5k is median dev salary, with seniors fetching €k2 net and team leads maybe up to €2.5k.

Note that this is all net monthly salary. Taxes, social, medical and pension contributions (all witheld by employer) add to roughly again that amount for these salary levels. Here's a recent survey (in Croatian but you'll be able to make sense of the charts and tables) with a lot more details (PDF): https://www.ictbusiness.info/media/infografika/developerske-...

Then there's freelance work, which exploded in recent years, partly due to a miscalculated tax break: if you're freelancer and register as a sole proprietor, you pay miniscule tax for up to €40k per year, handily beating most local companies' hiring budgets.

This lead to massive uproar by said companies, and there's now quite heated debate around the minutia of it. There are primarily two reasons for the complaints: first is that remote companies (which often hire these freelancers on full-time basis) basically get 50% discount, and the second is that local companies started laying off people and "conntracting" them as "freelancers", which is illegal but the guidelines on how exactly that's determined are extremely vague.

And that's just one country :)

While it's possible to make 10k/month, he's in a rather small percentile of people doing so. The average salary in the IT industry is around $1800-2000. Which is still quite a lot, considering the cost of living.

That’s an insane salary for Eastern Europe. I worked with people in the Balkans who grossed that much a year.

The $5k range is not uncommon in Poland for senior people. You can even see this much in stack overflow ads.

Which company pays this in Sofia? VMWare? My company has engineers in bulgaria but they don't make that kind of money (still good money, but not $5.6k good).

That's gross salary, right? It would be the top of the range in Hungary (gross also).

That's a very good salary in the U.S. too.

That corresponds to a gross pay of ~ US$96k, which gets a decent middle class life in many parts of the U.S. (you can live pretty well on that if you choose a non-coastal city.) You can even live decently in America's 3rd largest city (Chicago) on that.

I'll bet that goes a much longer way in Sofia.

Up to net 4000-5000 from what I have heard. Rent is 300-400 eur in the city center. Dinner is 15 euros, lunch 5-8 euros. A decent apartment is 100-150k.

An important point here is that you probably can't get reasonable financing to buy said apartment.

Mortgages in a similar country start from 6%.

Depends, if their banks have to follow the central euro bank rates or not, since they have their currency they might not have to, I don't know the specifics on how that works.

Anyway, Central bank has interest at negatives, people are buying houses in EU with very little interest.

Yeah, my comment is relevant only for non-euro countries.

Wow, that's more than in Slovenia (as far as I know) (another former communist EU country, but officially far more developed) - net salary, I don't know how the tax rates and social contributions compare...

Do people speak Russian a lot in Bulgaria in everyday lifes?

No. Russian used to be a popular second language to know for the generation that is now in their 50s. People under 40 that know a second language would most probably know English, not Russian. However, there is a significant Russian diaspora in Bulgaria (and it seems to be growing), and they do speak Russian at home.

Sane logic. I returned from the uk to romania, and it is one of the worst decisions. Romania is still corrupt and the culture is absolutely vile.

> and Russian influence

wtf are you talking about?

you are in EU and NATO, what is the problem?

South Stream, Belena nuclear plant

both canceled

Under pressure from the EU to the detriment of Bulgaria, all because of the tensions between the EU and Russia.

The problem is Russian influence. They continue to be locusts in EU countries and want everything to be bad and miserable and poor.

Source, Canadian living in BG for 6 years.

That is a disgusting russophobia. You should be ashamed.

Crimea, downing airplane, war in Ukraine. Just last 5 years. So I think it's true.

What is true?

Imagine someone saying "Jews are locusts in the Middle East". What do you think would be the reaction?

This is about the government, not the people. The Russian government is well known for intervening in the affairs of other ranging from invasion (Georgia, Ukraine), to corruption schemes and funding alt-right organizations.

Then that comment would've said so, but it hasn't.

Besides, all that you have mentioned is hardly unique for Russian government.

Nationalistic and ethnic slurs will get you banned here. Please don't post like this to HN again.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Edit: your comment history to HN looks great otherwise. That's the opposite of what we usually see when we moderate an egregious comment and then take a look at what else the user has been up to—so I'm sure you didn't mean to be abusive. Just please don't do it again.

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