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Comment by netsharc | Hacker News Reader

One of the answers to your question is in your second sentence. A significant part of migration is highly educated people moving to a different country for skilled work. Which benefits the host country because it means their companies get the skilled workers, are more productive, and pay more taxes. (Before someone says "They're taking our jerbs!", in Germany and Switzerland they are desperate for good engineers.) It's even better if they were educated elsewhere, meaning the host countries get these highly educated labor force "for free".

On the flip side, it's a brain drain for the exporting countries, of course.

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>Which benefits the host country because it means their companies get the skilled workers, are more productive, and pay more taxes.

If a country already has a high per capita GDP why does it need more money? What do the people in the country gain from more money in total? More labor generally lowers how much workers are paid so each person in the country is likely to get less money afterwards. More productive workers means more workaholic workers which again moves the bar so locals are now expected to work more as well. Again, a net loss for the existing population.

>in Germany and Switzerland they are desperate for good engineers

This is absolutely not true. I don't know why anyone would lie so blatantly.

Engineering and CS graduates are present in abundance, and the job market is brutal.

Thanks for accusing me of lying. Got any statistics to prove me wrong? I suppose I should also do research to prove what I believe to be right, but from the amount of headhunters contacting me on LinkedIn, my gut feeling is I'm not wrong...

BTW an abundance of graduates don't always equal "good engineers". There is also an abundance of mediocre engineers.

Germany just recently passed a new law (in additional to the easier blue card visa).

I suppose it will be mostly used by tech companies.

What do you think about that?

What part of "Germany and Switzerland"

I've lived in a major urban region of Switzerland for the last 12 years and I could not disagree more. I've seen companies looking for capable software engineers for years, including paid relocation and arranging temporary housing for them to move into.

The German job market is brutal for software engineers? How feasible would it be for an American SE to get a job and move to Germany?

Brutal != high salaries. I know someone who got triple the salary when moving from Germany to the US without even trying that hard (FAANG would have been something like 6-8x the salary).

Also on the flip side, it hurts labour. A natural limit on a sought after skill means fairer $$$.

Any profession which has inbuilt labour limits (chartered accounting/lawyer) means those professions get paid fair market value.

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