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Comment by bagacrap | Hacker News Reader

I have a feeling that many of the engineers who live in locations far off from SV such as Bangladesh, who do have the skills to make it as a FAANG employee (for example), already choose to move to SV/London/etc and collect that salary. If so, there shouldn't really be all that much untapped potential* in the third world. The way FAANG companies greedily hoover up the eligible talent pool (regardless of whether they have good project ideas for those folks to work on) makes me think it's not likely they'd overlook a vast pool of talent that's cheaper and just as productive.

*Not counting those who never had access to education or a computer to become fully realized engineers in the first place. Just commenting on ready-to-go software engineers.

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I think there are a lot of preconceived notions regarding developing nations.

A lot of people who can leave, do leave. I left, for example. However, there are a tonne of people who are super smart, but can't leave because of their ageing parents, or other reasons.

Leaving everything you know behind takes courage, and adapting to a new world, a new life takes a lot out of you. Not everyone wants to leave their loved ones. Furthermore, if you are older, it's even harder.

Funny story, one of the reasons I left Bangladesh is because I used to work for this company that paid me 1/6th of the salary someone else was making in a more developed Asian country. I was doing the same work, succeeding at it too.

However, when I wanted equal pay for equal work, they decided to not renew my contract. Back then, I was young, so I decided to apply abroad, an was luckily accepted. Not everyone can do this, because again, you have family, and responsibilities.

2 months into my new job, my old company begs me to come back, and offers me the salary that was more than I wanted, and an O1 visa sponsorship should I want to go to America.

Most Eastern Europeans I worked with in the Netherlands all had one thing in common - they put the effort in to leave their home countries (Romania, Hungary, Greece, Bulgaria, Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania, etc.) and never return. They took all the optional extra courses at school, took as many professional exams as they could afford, and worked on their craft as software engineers to get an opportunity to move to NL, IE or UK.

In Bangladesh, the tried and tested way is to enrol in a master's program and take it from there. Not always something that you can afford though.

Mostly because they're sick with corruption and politicians in those countries or they hadn't had much to leave behind.

Even then, it took my friend 7 years and the death of his father to start thinking about leaving the country. By 7 years, I mean that I've been telling him to leave for 7 years.

Definitely agree with the inertia thing. The labor market works in the long-run but isn't frictionless for practical real-world reasons pertaining to personality, personal circumstance, immigration policy and so on.

that's quite silly - leaving your family is a very questionable deal, you grandparents or parents basically wither away without seeing their children and grandchildren.

The visa laws make you a second-class citizen (well non- citizen, really) and ensure that you cannot spend much time with them - there is a maximum limit on the number of days you can spend out of the country. Also usually they mean you cannot bring your grandparents. Hell, UK home office basically killed a woman because they denied entry to UK to her sister for an organ transplant. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/leukaemia-pa...

You have to have relatives and friends that can look after your family, because every now and then they need help and you are not there to help them.

For many folks who have half-decent life at home, the trouble is not worth it. I have many friends from eastern Europe who have come to UK to study and went back.

Lastly, why is FAANG the ultimate benchmark? Some people develop safety and life-critical systems, land rovers on mars, etc. I hold them in higher regard.

There are vast numbers of people from poorer countries working in richer countries so that they can send the money home to their families. In the Phillipines (for example) it's so normal for parents to work abroad (usually in Arab countries) while the grandparents look after the children, the whole economy is affected by it.

And FAANG is the ultimate benchmark for salaries because they pay so much, not because they're held in high regard. In fact, the stories coming out of FAANG (FB and Apple especially) seem to show these are dystopian nightmare workplaces that you only work in because of the ridiculously high salaries.

Fun fact!

Income is NEGATIVELY correlated with job satisfaction in SOME scenarios. Imagine the thought experiment: you get paid GREAT, but you boss is aweful. You decide to quit as soon as you find a job that let's you keep you current lifestyle. If it is hard to do that, you keep your job longer...and you have poor satisfaction.

To counter this, I got a 10% raise 6 months ago, and it was tots legit.

I very much doubt this is true. I’m sure there are a very large number of FAANG quality engineers all over the eastern US, let alone other countries, that couldn’t or wouldn’t make the move to SV. I would be willing to put money on it being the MAJORITY capable of being hired into those roles couldn’t or wouldn’t move there to take them.

There is no amount of money that would have convinced me to leave Florida. My family and my wife’s family is here. My children’s friends and extended support networks are here. This life is not worth losing for any pay raise. I’m willing to bet a very large number of quality engineer made the same decision I did.

Not everyone is willing to leave family, friends, and country behind.

But its a larger fraction than ever before in history, its pretty safe to say. So the problem is perhaps the smallest its been, and declining. That's a positive thing.

I don't think that's true. See, for example,https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2019/11/22/for-the...

So many parts of the world have such terrible living conditions that anyone with an option will leave even though it means leaving your family and everything you know behind, while those left behind are those with no options stuck there, and most rich countries do their best to make it harder and harder for anyone else to make it there... and you conclude this is a positive thing? Truly we live in the best of all possible worlds!

Its against the site rules to construe the worst possible meaning to a comment. And its lazy to put words in others' mouths. If you have something to say, just say it. Without attacking others, please.

I thought you were saying it was a positive thing that so many people were willing to leave family, friends, and country behind, in leaving poor countries for rich ones.

I may have misunderstood? There was a comment saying not everyone was willing to do this, then you said but more people are than ever before in history, which is positive, no? Did I misunderstand?

But you're right, sorry, I could have phrased my reply in a way that was more explicit about not putting words into your mouth.

I should have just put it in my own words, without projection:

You say, if I'm understanding, that it's a great thing that never before in history have so many been willing to leave family, friends, and country behind. When I see that so many people are leaving family, friends, and everything they know behind for other countries, when they are moving from poorer countries to richer ones, what I see is that quality of life is so unequal across the planet, and people are so desperate. While meanwhile most rich countries are doing their best to keep out these desperate people hoping to leave everything they knew behind for a chance at a secure and dignified life. This to me does not seem like a positive thing. People should better be able to find safety, security, and dignity without having to leave behind their family, friends, and country.

Do we really leave anybody? We can talk to them on Skype for free at any time. I actually see some of my remote siblings more often than the local ones.

The world has changed.

> So many parts of the world have such terrible living conditions that anyone with an option will leave

Hm - I roll to doubt. I think there's an idea in the USA (and the west more broadly) that the quality of life in wealthy countries is Good and the quality of life in poor countries is Terrible For Everyone. (At least, everyone but the ultra-wealthy).

Thats reductive, and (perhaps unfairly) I'm pattern matching your comment to that perspective.

The quality of life for most people in Bangladesh is way better than the quality of life anyone living in a tent city in SF / LA. I doubt many people living in tents in Oakland are scrambling to move to Bangladesh, for kind of obvious reasons. (Its scary, language barrier, culture barriers, no extended support networks, flights are expensive if you're poor, etc etc.) I think it works the same way in reverse.

> The quality of life for most people in Bangladesh is way better than the quality of life anyone living in a tent city in SF / LA.

It's true but misses a broader picture. There are only ~0.5M homeless people in the US [1], or 0.1% of the population. What fraction of Bangladesh lives in that state? Being from the Indian subcontinent and having traveled extensively around the globe, I assure you that that is a much higher fraction and that the quality of life in the US is far far superior than what you'd find in a lot of third world countries.

[1] https://endhomelessness.org/homelessness-in-america/homeless...

you really overestimate how much FAANG companies understand about the world, or how to hire productive employees. It's all dances and bullshit, and puffery on behalf of the employees to make you believe we're the pinnacle of human intellect. I should know, I'm one of them :)

There are plenty of skilled engineers who either don't make it into FAANG or don't manage to get into the US.

As if it was easy to emigrate to the US or western Europe for non-citizens…

It's super easy in case you are a talented young person. See Canada's point base migration system or Blue Card for EU.

> I have a feeling that many of the engineers who live in locations far off from SV such as Bangladesh, who do have the skills to make it as a FAANG employee (for example), already choose to move to SV/London/etc and collect that salary

What is this feeling based on? You have to invest a lot of money, time and effort into paperwork before you can dream of migrating. One does not simply "choose" to move; it takes months or years of effort - not every talented individual takes this route, or even thinks it's worthwhile - there are a lot of trade-offs, even for the most naïve. I suspect this idea of talent=success is an instance of the Just-world fallacy (one way of reading what you said is that those who are talented have already been rewarded by FAANG jobs, therefore those who haven't yet are not talented, obviously)

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