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Comment by pevey | Hacker News Reader

"Brain Drain" has been a thing for years. I can remember in the late 90s in my Developmental Econ class my Peruvian professor complaining of brain drain from Latin America and how loss of top tier talent affected economic growth. We all appreciated the irony since she herself was a part of the issue she complained about, having studied and taught in the US for quite some time as she was standing up there saying this to us. But I could see her point.

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In the past brain drain meant good professionals would leave their countries to live in the US or Europe.

Nowadays, with remote work, people are being paid handsomely and spending their money in their home countries.

Anecdotally, I'm seeing that happening a lot with dev friends in Rio de Janeiro. People are using money earned in the US to help the local economy. They still interact with local universities and contribute to local projects. Cool stuff.

Also causing the prices in some sectors, such as real estate, to raise abnormally.

That seems unlikely, unless the couple tech workers can buy out the whole town

This is a misconception that a few hundred of devs in a city can do this.

What drives the price of real state up is lack of new developments, low interest rates, and instutional investors using the housing market as a security instrument. The same thing can happen all over the world and is happening in the US and Canada at an alarming rate.

In the long term though this is not good for the home countries, they are left behind and at best become tourist destinations. There is no country that pulled itself forward this way, not even with remote work. Eastern europe is an example with very low growth rates since the fall of communism.

Yeah, it's really interesting but also a huge economic opportunity for countries if they can figure out enough reforms without these people to make the country attractive enough that these people come back with all their experience (and networks) and help boost the economy even further.

Yup. Initial foreign investment in China was mostly driven by Hong Kong and Taiwan (many of these investors were first or second-generation from the mainland), and other parts of the Chinese diaspora.

Unless these people start building companies in said countries this does not benefit the countries. They re essentially tourists

Do you think she didn't realize the irony herself? It's not a negative against her person anyway, there's nothing inherently wrong with complaining about or arguing against a system you're taking part of and/or benefiting from.

Wonder how WFH brain drain where talent stays in their respective countries shake things up. At least keeps some money and expertise circulating in the local economies. Also going to be interesting when Chinese academic institutions start climbing the ranking charts and training foreign talent who has no long term prospects in immigration unfriendly PRC. Perhaps a future where more "sea turtles" return to develop home countries after than be permanently brain drained in the west.

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