EU beckons Indian tech talent
economictimes.indiatimes.com
economictimes.indiatimes.com
Under current conditions EU companies can hire pretty much anyone across the globe. Do you think SV salaries would be as high as they are if they could import any workers hassle free?
My ex employer was low balling everyone and after failing to recruit anyone locally due to low pay he the focused on hiring exclusively Indians and Chinese who were just happy to be in Europe accepting any wage citing the good air quality and social services compared to back home.
Don't get me wrong, I'm happy for them, and glad they're happy here but flooding the market with people who are happy to earn anything as long as they're allowed to live here is not a market I'd like to compete for work in as it increases the inequality putting all the gains in the hands of the employers.
We have enough skilled workers in the EU. Importing people with wages under €50k disincentivizes employers from paying fair wages and investing in local workforce and increases income inequality. If we're talking about a shortage of truly highly skilled people we have to import then probably we should be talking about setting the bar way higher than €50k.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
If you're set to inherit properties/money from your parents or you're ok with being a renter for life at the mercy of your landlord then any salary in Europe is fine.
If you have to buy a property on your own where you could raise a family in then salaries are far from fine.
Anytime I her someone in Western Europe say salaries are fine and shrug it off, usually it's because they will receive an inheritance or significant financial assistance from parents when the time comes to buy a house so they never feel underpaid.
Read `take a 30y mortgage` with plenty of downside risk is quite a low bar for one of the best paying industries in the world.
The disconnect between salaries and the housing market in western EU is pretty much at an all-time high. If these are the expectations for tech salaries then how about the rest of the (middle-class) workforce?
However, I think there is a lot of price variation in Berlin, and many cheap parts: I’m paying €485 for a room in a WG in Buchholz, while collecting €820 (after fees, at current exchange rates) from a flat in a quiet village 30 minutes away from Cambridge in the UK.
The expectation seems to be we will go back to a sharp division between property owners and eternal tenants, like it was when my 95 year old grandparents were kids.
The Old World still likes its Feudalism it seems.
Working as a developer in the USA is way better than being a developer in Europe.
I can't comment on Norway as I have never been, but I live in Switzerland right now and I, along with other students I know here, typically live relatively cheaply by avoiding most optional services.
The quality of living in Germany is in decline in recent years, unfortunately, as our government knows only how to waste money when economy boomed, but is completely incompetent what to do with growing challenges, and how to ensure its relevance and growth in future. Introducing new taxes every week is not a mark of competence.
I think it is mainly supply/demand issue.
Also, there are plenty of 50K-70K tech jobs in US - not everyone works in FAANG or lives in Bay Area.
This is a global market, so you can also grab US jobs for half the pay and make alot of money anyway.
Most tech companies already have enough thinkers, to scale fast they just need more doers that execute orders quickly without rocking the boat or challenging the status quo.
The problem is when EU companies have virtually no restrictions on hiring people outside the EU putting even more downward pressure on local salaries in high COL areas.
If outsourcing was so good why hasn't all of SV packed and moved abroad already to cheap countries or even to cheaper states in the US instead of offering insane salaries at home?
Companies stay in the west because of the ecosystem comprised of stable government, generous financing and skilled workforce.
You will understand that only after you spend time actually hiring people. Telling the boss well I can't do this locally in 3 months, I need 6 plus a budget to relocate people from other EU locations will just get you laughed out of the room for the simple reason someone else in the org has already done it through outsourcing and importing people.
> Companies stay in the west because of the ecosystem comprised of stable government, financing and skilled workforce
This is probably 10-15 year old rhetoric that isnt true anymore. There are now dozens of hubs worldwide that make it simple to hire large number of people fast. Just make a trip and look at the scale at which they function.
The EU is doing the right thing by trying to pull more people in.
Are you serious? Countries with traditions of engineering going back centuries, with some of the best schools in the field, will have trouble to find... 300 software engineers?
Airbus can't find 300 engineers in Germany and France? Come on! More like Airbus can't find 300 engineers in Germany and France willing to work for peanuts. It's always the last part that gets lost in the translation.
Has Airbus thought about training said engineers instead of expecting them to magic themselves out of thin air whenever they're needed? Looking at their margins it's not like they can't afford it.
>The EU is doing the right thing by trying to pull more people in.
The EU is doing the right thing for Airbus shareholders, not for the local workforce.
This is an old debate and it's more or less a settled one in large orgs with large requirements whether in US or EU - the managers who don't care how they meet their goals win. You don't have to believe me, you just need to spend time talking to people who have run large teams in the EU and ask them how they survive.
The world is not getting any less competitive and mgmt in large orgs spend most of their day reacting rather than proactively doing anything. Smaller orgs it's easier but again they too are under pressure in different ways.
During this phase where many things are in flux and unstable it's a safer bet to move to where the jobs are then expecting the govt or corp s to do anything radical. They are too trapped even if they have competent ppl...anyway that's just my experience and opinion and I hope I am wrong.
You don't have to see this kind of cycle too many times before you get a little cynical.
Also, most outsourcing companies have been around for a while and are doing fairly well.
As an EU national and EU taxpayer for decades, I expect to be a first class citizen of my region and the governing bodies to prioritize my well being first as much as I expect the US or Chinese or Indian governments to prioritize the well being of thier citizens first as opposed to mine.
Is it wrong if I can't get a work visa for SV? Or China? Or India?
It is, when you're saying that it is fine for Romanians or Polish to dump the market, but not Indians.
EU membership allows free movement of capital, goods and workforce between EU states with equal rights. Singling out Romania and Poland means you have a personal problem with these nationalities.
Don't like it? Vote your country leaving the EU.
Oh, and FYI, Romanian tech salaries are some of the highest in EU where new grads can earn €2k NET due to a hot market and low taxes so your point about wage dumping doesn't hold.
€2k NET monthly in Poland or Romania as a new grad means you can buy a house immediately. How many houses can one newgrad buy in Zurich or Amsterdam?
>Many Romanians and other poor EU immigrants move across Europe for all kind of jobs.
And? What's wrong with that? It's part and parcel of EU membership. Western companies can also come to the East and straight up exploit the population.
Don't like it? Vote to leave the EU?
As an EU citizen I'm well aware that the EU is full of inter-regional conflicts and xenophobia. Currently there's a very concerning shift to the political right, to protectionism and nationalism, partly fueled by the long-standing migration-related problems and more recent refugee "crisis".
Inviting even more people over from outside the EU would be like pouring fuel on the fire. I can't imagine what the politicians are thinking here... they can barely keep things under control as it is.
Starter salaries for new software development or RE/VR grads, straight out of college with 1-2 summer internships under their belt, is 80-100k. These are not your I got poached by FAANGs MIT or Stanford grads we're talking about, just regular UMD/Mason, etc... working at cyber contractors or small-medium size tech companies.
One of my coworkers used to live her dream of living in Amsterdam doing dev work for a year, while the experience was very relaxed and it was a fun city, she said she couldn't justify getting paid 30-40k a year in Europe when the pay was triple here.
"hire pretty much anyone across the globe" - well only if you are prepared to pay 1.5x average salary in your country (Blue Card), so not for cheap positions, will start from some like 50000 EUR net a year in Germany for example. Otherwise it's really pain in the ass procedure to get a normal work visa, or not possible at all (in some countries).
And if they do outsource something abroad it's usually nothing exciting, so local salaries should not dive.
For example, Microsoft has offices in Eastern Europe and India as well yet Seattle workers still make a killing.
That's the most absurd thing I read today.
I also think companies act naively in hiring, thinking it's just a matter of bringing people to fill seats (which might make sense for the "consulting companies"), also that cultural differences are easy to deal with (that goes both ways and it can either be good or bad)
Yes, given there are many companies paying SV salaries to remote devs from all over the planet. (Off the top of my head: Buffer, HotJar, Superside, Stack Overflow)
Also everyone is conveniently picking the lowest paying company in the bunch.
Why would €42k not a fair wage? Looking at INSEE data, the median salary in France is €38409, 42k-50k to write API endpoints seems fair to me, what do you think would be appropriate?
You say you have a shortage for API devs?
Then either:
1) pay more at which point you'll be flooded with aplicants and if not then you have a real claim for skill shortage with the government and can secure visas for immigrant workers or
2)train them yourself, there's plenty of motivated people of all ages willing to learn something that's in demand. Simples.
But what's that?! Investing in the workforce is too expensive for the shareholders?! Boo-hoo, my heart bleeds for the poor companies and their offshore accounts.
Whether you want to keep that is another thing in itself. From what I see, the availability for large amount of beginners (Not necessarily foreign, see bootcamp) does not affect the market value for experienced programmers at all.
That’ll be great for the world, but not for us — it’ll make this argument about €50k/year salaries depressing our wages seem bizarre to future generations.
>> Do you think SV salaries would be as high as they are if they could import any workers hassle free?
There's nothing great about the wealth generated by the entire global digital industry being concentrated in a few cities.
Really?! Speaking about inequality is so hypocritical in this context that it just boils my blood.
I could understand if you were having trouble to earn a living. But you can easily live in the Western Europe on even €30k. EASILY! And happily, and stress free. Your kids will get free education, free collage. You will get tons of vacations, 38 hours work week.
But no, you want more. You want luxury life, you want to keep the rest of the world underneath you.
Letting poor people compete with you on fair terms does not increase inequality. It undermines your position of power.
Western Europeans and their ancestors benefited greatly from conquest all over the world.
Are Indians and Chinese somehow second rate people? They do not deserve to even compete with the White Elite of Western Europe?
You should stop being egoist. Start your own company if you do not like being employee.
When really, they got out competed in trade and on the battlefield by the Europeans.
So it's equally as fair for those laborers (voters) to say "no more importing cheap competition". The UK already has. It's incredibly difficult to bring in foreign employees.
Edit, addendum, ignore the part about companies, though you'd said European firms.
I have trouble supporting a child in Greece, with a gross household income of around 50k.
I most certainly do not lead a luxurious life.
I shudder to think how this would work out in Western Europe where rents are even higher than the ~500 euro most people pay here for a medium sized apartment.
I have (single living) colleagues from abroad who learn it now the hard way. Hopping from one airbnb to the other, moving al their stuff each time. Doing this for months and they start to despair now. Even local youngsters cannot afford a home anymore.
Most parents I know pay almost 600 for rent (amenities not included, so add another 100, and quite a bit more if it's a colder winter). Fun to note that the minimum wage is currently around 500 euro, AirBnB is a hell of a drug. Add to that up to 400 for childcare a month, per young child.
Tax rate is near 40% at that income level, so let's say it's a net 30k out of the 50k. So that's 2.5k a month.
I will spare a list of the other required monthly expenses but it shouldn't be hard to see that it's hard to save up enough to ever buy property or to be safe against any event that costs any significant amount of money.
Something has most definitely gone horribly wrong in Greece a couple of years ago. I remember hearing that the costs of living in Greece at the time were not a bit lower than then expensive parts of western Europe, whereas wages for young people were quite a lot lower, making it practically impossible for young people to earn a living.
We haven't heard much about Greece in recent years, so maybe things have improved, but this sounds like maybe they haven't.
> The average household net-adjusted income in Greece is USD 17, 700 annually. It is considerably lower than the OCED average of USD 33,604.
https://destinationscanner.com/average-salary-in-greece/
> The Gross Domestic Product per capita in Greece was last recorded at 25140.70 US dollars in 2018, when adjusted by purchasing power parity (PPP). (Roughly €22K)
Numbeo seems to support this based on CoL in Athens: https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/in/Athens
Unfortunately, this sort of thinking is very persistent in people coming from such countries that tend to see us as "weak" or "luxurious" people, because such a lifestyle is light years away from where they come from. I don't say this with the "white mindset". It's just that we Western people are talking about reducing the working hours to 30 per week, because we want to spend more time with our family, want to live stress-free, etc. etc., and possibly keep a good salary. This clashes with the old traditional capitalistic way of doing business: let's hire cheap labor from abroad, so we make more money. The main parent comment is right about it. It's proven that this doesn't lead to anything than more cheap labor.
Luxury to myself means luxury goods (status symbols such as cars, phones etc. or even best-in-class functional items with increased cost compared to value-for-money alternatives), frequent travel etc. all of which I can't afford.
I wonder though if this goalpost would move even further if my income ever increased, or this mindset is well, set, from our upbringing.
My mother alone, as a cleaning lady, was fully supporting me on 30 000 salary in Belgium, Leuven. But as a cleaning lady, earning that money was not easy, or stress free. She was doing 50-60 hours weeks. I know cleaning ladies, my mother colleagues, who as a single mother support their kids and sometimes even manage to spare some money to send back home. I know that there are also people exploiting western social programs to the extend that they manage to live exclusively on child support. My mother has a neighbor who was laughing that she is silly to work, because she has Belgian fiancée and she should live off social support. And, yes, this type of people should be deported in my opinion.
Right now, I'm studying now in Maastricht, Netherlands and I work 1 day a week earning 8k gross a year. I'm living with my fiancée in apartment with one bedroom and I spent around 10k a year.
Yeah, please take me and my family to this magic lala land. You can also survive on the streets with no money. That doesn't mean it's a lifestyle you should aspire to.
Raising children on 30k€ in a city in Western Europe is scratching on the government defined poverty line.
What do you base this on? Based on [0], the poverty threshold in Germany is €13.152/year, and Germany is one of the richer EU nations. Even if that’s a working single parent and one child, €30k isn’t scratching the poverty line.
[0] https://m.dw.com/en/germanys-minimum-wage-is-barely-above-th...
Just because the German government says you can live on €13.152/year doesn't make it a fact.
Government numbers also says inflation is 2.6% last year but if I look closely, my bills and mandatory expenses have gone up way more than that.
That article states that Romanians are best off in the EU when it comes to living on minimum wage, while I can tell you that it's definitely not like that in the real world.
Lots of the time statistics are made with a formula tailored by the government to fit a certain political agenda.
You also only looked at the poverty line for singles, not for couples (or single parent) with children. But you are in good company in this thread as nearly nobody takes children into account. Raising children on the poverty line is not the right way.
Fair point about gross/net:
€13.152 times two people = €26.304, and for reference €30k gross, category 2, one child = 21.018,18 € net, so about €5k short if that’s how family poverty is defined.
Poverty often means that you cannot afford a new washing machine when one breaks. Or not it being able to send your children to school trips.
As a German, I can tell you: 30k€ is not enough to raise a child here, even if both parents are working because at least one cannot work full-time.
It certainly contributes to brain drain which helps maintain inequality between countries.
That is, unless there are fiscal transfers to India I'm unaware of to help pay for the educations their government pays for and western employers use...
Is the US also wanting me underneath them by not giving me a work Visa to work at FAANG in SV?
Arguably yes based on his comment.
And for the record, you can work for several FAANG companies in the EU. Why not just start working?
Most Europeans can’t afford a house anymore. The fear for a lot is that excess immigration and taking on refugees will break the social welfare you just mentioned.
I actually agree with a lot of your points though and envision a similar future that will be less about borders.
But you wrap it in such a vicious rant I imagine you are alienating people from your idea more than winning them over.
> The fear for a lot is that excess immigration and taking on refugees will break the social welfare you just mentioned.
I understand that fear. As I was responding to another person in this thread, I know people ruthlessly exploiting western social programs to the extend that they manage to live exclusively, or almost exclusively on welfare. My mother has a neighbor who was laughing that she is silly to work, because she has Belgian fiancée and she should live off social support.
But that is not the type of argument that was made originally.
The original comment was by an entitled software developer, who hides behind equality.
> Most Europeans can’t afford a house anymore.
Many people say it, but I never seen a good analysis of that issue. If you have data to back that up I would be very happy to see it. That's something that I wanted to research for some time. My biggest question is whether it was really so easy before, or is it just still difficult. Is the issue related to immigration? Or is it due to regulations? Or something else?
Don't you? And since you also do doesn't it make the rest of your point not only moot but also hypocritical? Isn't this the exact reason someone would move from a poorer country to a richer one? Not because they can't live in one but because they want a better life in the other. You can easily live without a lot of things. But sometimes it's not only about living but about how you live.
> Letting poor people compete with you on fair terms does not increase inequality.
You're being very libertine with the suggestion that everyone else in this conversation hates "poor people" and must be racists. "Fair terms" would imply all equal. Are you competing on quality or price? Because winning solely on price is a sure way to lower everyone's wages over time but also lower the quality. Doesn't this push better qualified people to places where "fairness" implies more than accepting the lowest possible salary?
> Are Indians and Chinese somehow second rate people? They do not deserve to even compete with the White Elite of Western Europe?
This makes you sound incredibly racist.
If that was the case, birthrates wouldn't be so low in Europe. Free school and healthcare doesn't support your family when rents are higher than ever and fewer people than ever can afford to buy a property to raise a family in.
Unless one is single, there's a ton of stuff you have to worry about, from finding a job for the spouse, to learning the language, subtle to not so subtle xenophobia, navigating a different social & political system, etc. Moving with kids makes things even more complicated, to the point that we essentially only have migration from poorer to richer countries. I'd wager immigration from the west to the east is almost zero. I know some cases, but it's a tiny minority.
Then there's the fact that most people don't want to live in another country, surrounded by foreigners speaking a language they will almost certainly never speak fluently themselves.
Talking to my circles of highly skilled couples most cite money as the primary reason they're putting off having children.
Until you get terminal cancer and you are sent home to die. Then, I assure, a “kid” might be useful, because nobody else will give a flying fuck.
Why does wanting more imply having people underneath you?
Your comment is full of frustration, hatred and anger, it doesn't have any argument in it. I hope you can see that.
The main issue stems from the fact that Europeans have a different lifestyle, therefore, moving forward for them implies having actually higher wages, not lower ones, in order to have at the end of the month some free days of vacation, health insurance for the family, etc etc.
The comment you are answering to says exactly that. It didn't mention anything like "let's send them back" or whatever it is, as you seem to imply with your words. It was an honest observation (backed up by economists, by the way, just google that) about the fact that by giving more work to people who get less money won't do anything else than lowering the salaries for the entire sector. Of course, it will give people from other countries a possibility to work and make it, however, as a local citizen wishing to improve my country and the average income, why would I care about people coming from other countries? I mean, what do I get in return?
The main point of contention is not about whether this would improve the quality of life of the average EU programmer. It is about concealing what is just naked self-interest (i.e. concern about one's own wages) with noble talk of 'inequality'. I don't think there's anything wrong with concern for one's own interests, but trying to phrase it as a worry about something else comes off as a bit disingenuous.
Secondly, this just smacks of protectionism. If everyone thought the same way, we would have nowhere close to the diverse array of goods available to the modern consumer at such low prices.
My family comes first.
I don't want to be part in the salary race to the bottom for the sake of lower prices and consumerism.
That was not noble talk of global inequality, they meant it increases inequality on the labor market between capital and workers. So it was also a self-interested (and correct) statement.
You're confusing protectionism with protecting one's borders. Protecting one's borders and awarding more rights to the country's own population than to the rest of the world is the status quo and the only recipe for success we know.
This is a pretty stunning question.
Most people care about people other than ourselves. Most people sometimes do things to benefit others, even if they don't "get in return", as you put it, and they expect others to behave similarly. For example:
1. A billion people base their religious beliefs on venerating the self-sacrifice of God dying and/or giving-His-only-begotten-son to help others.
2. Most people believe that people other than themselves can have subjective experiences of joy and pain. Most people would take a little time out of their day, for instance, to help an abandoned, injured infant, even if they would never "get anything in return" for their selfless act; even though the infant can't promise them anything in return or prove that they are suffering, people see a suffering child and feel a sort of basic level of empathy.
3. Almost everyone who has political opinions is arguing not primarily about themselves, but about people more vulnerable than them who are being hurt by existing policy or will be helped by new policy - usually large classes of people that the arguer will never meet.
4. The idea that other people matter is so incredibly common, we diagnose people who cannot experience it with a medical condition sometimes informally called "sociopathy"
So I'm going to assume you know that most people expect you to care about people other than yourself, and I'm going to assume that you actually do care about people other than yourself.
Now try to imagine what it would be like to extend that empathy to foreigners.
That's it. That's the whole trick.
Good luck!
Letting poor muslims compete with you on fair terms does not increase inequality. It undermines your position of power.
That's because of the current Fascists govt who is hell bent on copying 1984, China & Nazis.
Most Indians do not support this law.
Although the access to education is now being heavily gated by property values in countries like US.
No, I want the country I live in to act in the interest of its own citizens and not of the interest of India. After all, I pay masses of taxes, so I think it is not unfair to expect my government to not work towards making sure I get paid even less than I do now.
Slow clap
It's clear that you have good reasons for feeling strongly on this topic, and I definitely don't mean to disrespect that. But it's necessary to post respectfully and with dignity in order to properly represent one's point of view on a topic like this. If you stoop to just flaming the other side, you end up discrediting the very truth that you're trying to express (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...).
Thanks for the work you are doing!
No you don't. Companies have to prove that they couldn't find a person who fits the position before hiring. Otherwise they have to hire someone in EU.
Let me fill you in on how it works:
Company puts up job ad with a salary so low no one in their right mind would even consider applying for. After 30 days of no applications(what a surprise) company goes to the local authorities and tells them that no one in the EU applied and that it's already hurting their business an suddenly, BAM!, working visa secured for the next gullible fool who doesn't know the market.
This abuse is so easy, every company does it and the government is ok with it as it keeps the companies happy.
Exactly this. And to make sure that no one applies, they add bogus requirements to the job like fluency in Russian/Hindi when hiring programmers. From the companies that I see doing this here, Red Hat seems to be the most egregious.
Indians & Chineese are buying foreign products in their countries. Why can't other countries accept goods(human resources) in return ? It's a global economy.
Here the product is human resources. Why is that a problem in the global economy. Have anti dumping or counter vailing for foreign labour too then ?
Imo the issue with European immigration system is that it isn't welcoming for permanent immigration. So high skilled people go to Europe, earn some money and then go back home because they are never accepted as equal citizens in most wester European countries (both by law, but even more importantly, by culture).
In US on the other hand, immigrants can settle in much more easily and call it their new home, and become full fledged part of the society both by law and culturally. Especially in areas like SV and New York.
When you look at leadership (i.e. C-titles, VPs, Founders) of a lot of tech companies in SV and New York, first and second generation immigrants are vastly over-represented.
EDIT: also guess what is going to happen if immigration becomes harder? the outsourcing companies will get better and do the job cheaper remotely from India, so even more of the tech work will just get outsourced, meaning there will be even less tech jobs in Europe. You really can't stop the inevitable consequences of the global free market, unless you want to go full protectionist. So acquiring and KEEPING skilled labor through immigration is probably a much smarter long term choice compared to protectionist immigration strategies.
EU,CA are a conservative xenophobic bunch. Many immigrants in Canada who are now citizens still stick their native countries flags on their cars. I have only one question for them, if you like your native country so much, why don't you go back ? If you accepted Canadian citizenship, be like one.
It's pretty silly to Italians and Scots I'm sure, but maintaining some semblance of this distant cultural connection isn't the worst thing in the world.
And the reality is the large immigration waves of both groups in the past left as much of a mark on American culture as it left on them.
Assimilation isn't a one way street, immigrants should expect to change American culture as much as American culture changes them.
"the outsourcing companies will get better and do the job cheaper remotely from India, so even more of the tech work will just get outsourced, meaning there will be even less tech jobs in Europe. You really can't stop the inevitable consequences of the global free market, unless you want to go full protectionist. So acquiring and KEEPING skilled labor through immigration is probably a much smarter long term choice compared to protectionist immigration strategies. "
I'd like to see some arguments in support of your statements. Outsourcing companies are more or less stuck at the same level, because they just jump from crappy project to crappy project and they don't invest in employee development and furthermore treat their employees poorly.
There's a line of reasoning saying that the current political meltdown in Western Europe is a direct cause of the global free market which is royally fucking blue-collar professions and is also hitting the upper layers. They've had enough of being force-fed globalization and multi-culturalism and now they're lashing out.
I blame European R&D subsidies for this. Basically anything you can imagine a software engineer doing can be subsidised by an EU Grant.
These grants are usually paid as a reimbursement for hours worked, i.e 42% up to a maximum of 100€/h including overheads. Therefore companies maximize hours by favoring multiple cheap engineers.
My hunch is that more jobs are salary capped due to this than immigration, and if the salaries actually went up then the job positions would basically evaporate.
Don't get me started by the ridiculous wastes that go into administrating these grant programs. I tell my European friends: Europe administrates its wealth away and saves whatever is left over.
Would you rather believe in your own mental model of supply/demand or would you rather look at what happened in the real world?
There are really only 3 places in the world with booming tech. USA, China and India. EU is nowhere. One might ask why does China and India (with so-called flood of supply of engineers) developed technology so much faster than already developed EU?
The answer lies in answering that question. Why do you think EU is left behind?
Outside of the EU but still Schengen area, tech hubs like Zug, Switzerland pay just as much as Silicon Valley, without massive federal income taxes all while the neighboring Eurozone is super cheap. State tax in Zug is like 7%
I’d never leave the sauna clubs!
Look at it from another perspective. You earn a lot, you have skills. You can save money, you can start a company yourself. As you say, people will be willing to work cheaply for you. This will allow you to provide cheap services to other people and you will get to benefit from it as much as you will want.
I understand that you personally may not want to start company. Too much risk, too much effort.
But maybe some of your colleagues would want to take on the challenge.
Why would you want to make it more difficult for them to hire people?
Think about the good that can be achieved by giving people opportunities.
Why this is not what everyone should want?
One of my friends at Microsoft in an ML role was rejected for "non relevant degree" despite having studied applied math at McGill.
IMO, the reason this is happening is simple. 1) H1-B visas have an arbitrary numerical limitation every year, which is not tied to reflect the actual dearth of talent, and hasn't been updated since years.
2) They're extremely unreliable. You can only apply once a year, and it's a lottery. So employers aren't even sure if the candidate currently interviewing can get a work permit if hired. And the wait time to reapply is one year. Very inefficient.
3) The EU/Canada/Australia have a very streamlined visa process, allowing qualified candidates to quickly get a visa. Easy to attract and retain talent.
If done right, these countries will benefit hugely like the US did in past decades. The new workers means more taxes, more demand/consumer spending and hence boost to the economy.
Also, I must mention the low birth rates in EU (as normally happens in developed countries) which will start to show next generation onwards. If not for these new immigrants and their tax dollars (euros/francs/kronas) it'll be hard to keep up with the social benefits and expenditure. If not for immigration these countries will end up like Japan with an old population and in massive, compounding debt.
Higher salaries, lower taxes, maybe even more interesting gigs. All good reasons to take the leap.
Yes I am talking about some of Balkans (Serbia, Greece), Baltics (Estonia, Lithuania), Eastern EU (Ukraine, Bulgaria, Romania) where the rates can be $20-30 an hour for very decent devs.
If however the criteria and salary for a good programmer is EUR 42k pa as a comment below suggests, you can earn decently more than that at multiple companies, including mine.
https://www.germany-visa.org/number-of-blue-card-holders-in-...
https://www.thelocal.de/20180109/one-quarter-of-eu-blue-card...
Whenever I got mine, the person at the Ausländerbehörde said that the card was tied to my job title, not employer.
To get a blue card you primarily need an unlimited contract. Companies do help with the process of procurement, like setting up an appointment. Once you get your blue card you also get another "green slip" that mentions your current employer along with your job role. Anytime you move to a different job, this slip needs to be updated, which is then done by your new employer.
We have many good STEM universities with free education in Germany, but do we have enough options for top talent, in software related areas particularly, to make impact and retire at 40 or start own business? In Berlin, I see very few options to be close to such goals.
How many new famous technological companies came from Germany recent years?
As a developer I'm 'fine' with this as it drives my price to many times the median salary.
But its not just IT. Our entire economy is crying about the lack of EXPERIENCED workers. But on the other hand there are still soo many unemployed, especially among the young (often unregistered and thus missing from statistics). No wonder seeing how there are almost no entry level jobs offered.
I used to belive in the 'not enough programmers' line. Now I think it's just yet another unsustainable way to avoid to actually do the necessary socialy responsible tasks that are part of doing business. Train your damn workers and take responsibility for the short-sighted decisions you made years ago.
Companies are like children. They will constantly try to push the limit in their own short-sighted interests. Its the job of government to, in the name of wider society, play the role of the parent and make sure that the negative effects of decisions are primarily felt by those who made the decisions.
This is mostly a salary issue.
Now you're stealing it's best and brightest for your own gain.
Never change.
In Romania (Eastern Europe) you can start to learn programming from high school. Not sure what it's like in Western Europe.
Had lessons in Pascal when I was 14, VBA at age 15, and moved on to a specialized (not very popular at the time) computer studies program at age 16 with about 15 hours of week of IT (VB, Pascal, C++, ...) per week.
1. Till 10th grade you are not likely to know anything about programming
2. In 11th and 12th there is huge competition for getting into medical / engineering colleges. You study physics - chemistry - mathematics for acing that 'entrance exam'. Very few people try to learn outside syllabus. I did try to learn some C programming & linux stuff out of interest. But somehow happened to study well also and got into my province's #1 or #2 college by everyone's norms.
There it just began.
3. We have 4 years Bachelor of Engineering degree for CS. CSE is most prestigious branch because of relatively high salaries. Every kid who topped the entrance exam in entirely irrelevant subjects (Phy-Chem-Math) ends up taking CSE without any idea or interest about it. Most of your classmates will be such bookworms who just study for exams.
4. Worse, they don't teach considerable amount of CS / Programming in first year. Instead put same physics - chemistry stuff -- pretty much rote learning and scoring good at long-essay-answer exams. They do it saying "students should have interdisciplinary knowledge" etc.. refutable excuses. The purpose just seems to be providing jobs for graduates in chemistry / mathematics.
5. Even if you will get relevant CSE subjects in future, teaching quality is subpar. some teachers don't even know to indent code. In C programming lab exam, I was told not to use command line editor and use gedit because they thought using vim / nano may give different results :D..
Thanks for hearing my complaining here ;-) but we are stuck in a subpar quality system because of high influx of incompetent people into CSE degrees, and job-oriented and rote-learning based mentality prevalent here in every field. I wanted to get into an US university. But costs were prohibitive even to write SAT, and coming from rural area, I didn't have much facilities. There needs to be big change in people's mentality here to see any change.
Also, pardon my English.
If Germany can export cars to India and France can export wines, then India can export their talent.
So, if you are confident of your skills and what they are worth, you should naturally go to the USA.
It's actually a better system for everyone. Mass migration is very disruptive, whereas trade in goods and services tends to be less controversial.
And if I think the US has enough people to fill its workforce needs, then it applies even more to the EU since the EU has 200 million more people in a much smaller space.
Instead of bringing in foreign workers, shouldn't the EU be asking why it can't fill the jobs from 500+ million people? Don't you think 500 million people is a big enough pool from which to draw your workforce?
And China or India is not going to buy any of your products. Is this how you want it to be?
Globalization predicates that capital and goods are procured from places where they are readily available. It is what the post-WWII world was built on. Global trade may break apart to some extant due to the nationalism resurge, but economies of scale is real and smart businesses will leverage that.
You're arguing for migration of people / labor, which is a different thing. And I don't quite see why we need knowledge workers to move in particular places. Asians have done extremely well with semiconductors, for example. We did not need to relocate 200,000 Taiwanese workers in Europe, but we can still buy their chips.
You'll soon realize there just aren't enough to support so many industries.
I can speak for the US about how labor shortage affects every one. US has the craziest doctor residency programs. This ultimately causes a massive massive shortage of doctors. This affects society in unbelievable ways. There are so many people who could've done so much more, but can't do so because they need specialized treatment. The doctors for these aren't available quickly enough. By the time doctors are available and treatment is done, these folks are defeated and depleted mentally and financially.
How did the artificial shortage work out?
Same applies for a lot of industries. If you want to work in ALL the industries, you need the best in ALL the industries and 500 million (which is aging rapidly) won't cut it at all. Especially when you are competing with China.
You neglected to specify WHO it works out for:
1) the folks getting depleted.
2) the (doctors) who decide on the doctor residency programs and also reap the income of financially depleting folks?
Now truth be told, there is a quality argument to be made here. 2) is the only thing guaranteeing that IF you do get treatment, it is at an acceptable standard. They ALSO use it for personal wealth of course, but also for quality. And this is medical care, bad quality destroys more lives and causes more misery than the author of Doom can imagine. Just take that time when they accidentally (really) disfigured ~50000 babies as an example. Yes really, accidentally. As in "oops, chirality really matters".
Or
Are you trying to say that all doctors need to he neurosurgeon level smart?
Either way is wrong. Doctors can be a spectrum of quality. The more the doctors for routine checkups and treatments, more and more rockstars doctors can be freed to do rockstar activities.
The current shortage may be great economically for current doctors, but it sucks for you, I, kids and everyone that needs those services
The US should absolutely improve its education and social safety net. :-/ The average American Joe is getting screwed so much by the politicians and businessmen that it makes even people like me which have never set foot in the US sad.
It's much more likely that the best software engineers are concentrated in places where everyone receives a very high level of education. As education varies massively across the world, the best software engineers probably aren't distributed based on population sizes.
And even if India only produces say one tenth the rate of great engineers that the EU does, you still want those!
Im actually more than happy to admit the other side too by the way: it drives me nuts when politicians commit to be tough on immigration except for skilled immigrants of course. Why am I or you competing for jobs and getting lower salaries because we got on and got educated but an unskilled labourer deserves a monopoly? I'm just saying, there are plenty of great people in every country. The quick path to improve home is to get them to come here.
I've never heard anyone ever online or in person praise Indian universities or describe Indian workers on average as more independent. The descriptions that I'm aware of are far less flattering, including from Indians themselves.
What are the above statements based on? Is there any university ranking or study you can reference?
"I'm just saying, there are plenty of great people in every country. The quick path to improve home is to get them to come here."
The wise thing to do is support local workers and train them to become better instead of stealing the "brains" of another country. Western Europe already did this with Eastern Europe, and those countries are significantly poorer for it, because a huge chunk of their intellectual elites have left their respective countries.
Folks specializing in these areas aren't really interchangeable. Thus, having a small number of "good" in each of these still starves demand.
The idea that the we need to concentrate the best people in a few cities in the west is both absurd and dangerous.