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Comment by baybal2 | Hacker News Reader

> were doing low paid jobs in the west

This fails to mention that US plumbers were getting higher salaries than Russian engineers, or higher on average than most of people in the West.

In my small hometown in Russia, everybody can't get more amused that the best wage for immigrants there is paid by agricultural college diplomas.

The biggest mansions in the town are of: 1. local gang boss, 2. agronomists who went to US for work. (Russian agronomist salary was like 9000 roubles a month 15 years ago)

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You fail to mention parity. I worked for $100/month 25 years ago and that was the average income in the country, a 2 room (1 bedroom, 1 living room) apartment in Bucharest was $8,000 (I bought one). Yes, nominally an US plumber was earning more, but his living condition were below mine at that time. I am taking my example because we used to be part of the Eastern Block, Russian engineers were earning a bit more.

Now with $3000/month ($36,000/year, before tax) you live pretty well in Bucharest, better than the plumber in US that is making the same or more.

Plumbers in NYC can make >200k

In fact, that's more than the prime majority of bankers will ever see.

Computer science/coding seemed to have travelled the same trajectory before the stigma faded. A very in demand trade that nobody really wanted to do despite basics being available to many.

Back at home, people, including my parents, were categorically refusing to believe that starting salary of a banker could be as low as below $30k (per year) in US, or Canada.

That is after many spent their entire life savings, and sold their houses to give their children "business" eduction in the West.

The word "banker" is a homonym and you're using it in two different ways in your comment.

When people imagine bankers making a lot of money, they are talking about investment bankers. When people talk about bankers making $30k, they're talking about retail bankers.

These careers have nothing in common with each other. It's like comparing a McDonald's retail employee to a chemical engineer.

Believe me, I had no shortage of classmates who ended up starting careers in "boutique investment funds" paying not much better.

What roles were those? On bloomberg they said goldman sacs were paying $100k to junior bankers starting.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-18/junior-ba...

100k for 95 hours a week, sounds like a great plan. You get paid double because you work double of the time.

And that's also a niche of the bankers, not everyone of them are ending up on top banks.

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-56452494

Do you have a source?

my guess is that he's referring to the ones that are essentially running a business. Making 200k gross (before expenses) is very feasible.

You also fail to mention that not everybody is driven by money. Russian engineer and scientist knew pretty well that they could get better life conditions in the US for example, yet they decided to live their life in Russia.

These are personal choice beyond what me or you think about, need to be respected.

So said, many researcher today are paid very little and they could get a better pay in private sector yet they don't bother to.

>> yet they decided to live their life in Russia. These are personal choice

Really? Anyone who thinks that America, or anyone else, has any sort of open-door policy towards immigration is kidding themselves. Setting aside whether a Russian engineer would be allowed to leave Russia, the process of immigrating to another country is never easy. It costs money. Lots of it.

It was (and still is) lot easier if you're a scientist or a skilled worker.

> whether a Russian engineer would be allowed to leave Russia

Why not? I live in a country that is not US nor Russia and I know few very good Russian engineers. They worked in US too, some of them returned to Russia eventually. So I don't understand where you get your basis. People are allowed to leave Russia they're not trapped (not to mention the many I've met when traveling was allowed)

Russia and the Soviet Union were different.

Sure. It was still not that hard as long as you didn't work in a classified field and worked enough to "pay off" your studies.

It's quite easy when you're an engineer with experience in a field in demand. Comparatively speaking. Leaving Russia was not so hard as long as you did the required amount of years and didn't work on anything sensitive, which if you wanted to leave you wouldn't go into anyways.

Even without regulation, language is a huge barrier.

> yet they decided to live their life in Russia.

Convenient decision when the KGB has the location of all your extended family in it's database!

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