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Comment by yosito | Hacker News Reader

Does the US have a monopoly on global talent that I'm unaware of?

The US seems to have a monopoly on the ability to pay top talent (at least in the west).

At the high end of the talent pool, I don't think opening up is going to have a significant impact. We're mostly already internationally mobile or can demand competitive salaries, and a new supply of mid-tier talent will only create more capital-deploying opportunities.

I'm a computer vision person with a good grasp on 3d geometry, SLAM, linear algebra, statistics, filtering, etc.

We've had budget and I've been trying to hire another me for at least half a year with no luck (western Europe). Thousands of applicants and the couple of interesting candidates were snapped up before we could move (and likely for more than we could pay).

I'm about to leave and go on the job market, and I have no concerns whatsoever about landing a high paying job. It also helps that I have ties to the bay area and am more than willing to go back.

Other than the 3D skills, these are mostly run of the mill skills for a mathematics major. Why not train a decent math major in the 3D skills?

Now the company is losing you and they have lost 6 months of time to train a new employee. Many companies are short-sighted and unwilling to accept candidates that don’t match exact specifications to their own detriment.

Training someone is a) time-consuming b) not a guarantee of success. Yes, perhaps the OP would take that approach, with hind sight being 20/20, but hardly the obvious conclusion to come to 6 months ago.

I have been patiently training someone for 4 months. He's not getting it. He's not ready to deliver. Whether that's a reflection of my training skills, or him, i dunno. Whatever, but I'm tired, and now have to go through the pain of letting him go and beginning the search anew. Wish i hadn't taken the risk.

Something to note is that the US culture in general seems to value technical expertise higher than some other cultures. For example, it's been a common experience for me to have Doctors and Dentists quiz me about my work and make statements that they wish they could have followed a similar career path. I doubt that would ever happen in England.

Monopoly is an exaggeration, but the US does still attract a staggeringly disproportionate fraction of developers from all over the world.

As long as noone else is able/willing to match pay - kinda. In Poland for example normal pay is $5K but for US startups you can get $10K. Only TikTok or Switzerland has offers in this range.

Not intending to sound completely clueless about the world, but these wages you're quoting...is that USD per month? That sounds way off for a yearly salary.

Yes, per month for very senior people.

Gotcha - thanks for clarifying. We in the US typically talk in yearly salaries, so I assumed that on first read and felt it had to be way off.

If you're talking about tech hubs in the US, you can definitely get more than 10k USD/month as an experienced dev at a startup.

Ireland aside from usual suspects Stripe, Workday and a bunch of others you can get 200K total comp

$5K is normal pay in Poland? that's around 9 minimal wages

They mean a developer’s pay. Yes, the disproportion between the IT and other areas is significant.

20K PLN is still not normal pay.

You think devs in Silesia earn something even close to 20K and aren't giant outliers?

It's like saying that SF salaries are normal in US

normal (probably average) senior developer pay in capital (Warsaw) to be more precise.

That would depend upon the definition of talent. My long mega corporate experience has taught me there isn't any practical different between CS graduates (bachelors level only) from the US and India once they enter the real world. It is generally Java focused with some C++ thrown in and for everything else that isn't Java or C++ you make it look like Java as much as possible.

I have also noticed many generalized similarities between self-taught developers from the US and India in how they proceed against a problem as well. The CS educated developers are convention focused in that there is a certain way to solve problems regardless of the problem while the self taught developers tend to focus more on the goal, the solution.

As someone working remotely, I'd be hard pressed to work for a non-US company, because other places in my experience don't pay as well.

FAANGs retain a lot of this talent I guess

US definitely pays a lot higher than other markets, and that definitely talks.

Apparently we are just that awesome.

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