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Comment by buro9 | Hacker News Reader

There is more than immigration in the way of non-US programmers moving to the US:

1) Immigration

1) Health care

3) Living standards (some part cost of rent, some part accessible lifestyle, some part relationships and future plans, etc)

I'm a London programmer and yes immigration is an issue, but health care (for themselves and their partner) is joint #1 on that front. It's hard not to look on US healthcare as being the worst possible product of US politics and that starts to impact the standard of living thing.

Most non-US programmers I know come from societies where we're happy to pay more in tax to have a more civilised society and life. You may fix immigration, but to make the US an attractive place to want to relocate to far more needs to be fixed.

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Just my $0.02: I agree with all of your criticisms. Despite that, I am an immigrant programmer living in California. I couldn't find any work in Europe that was as interesting and challenging as what I do here (obviously there are good companies there, but none aligned with my interests and were hiring). I routinely turn down opportunities to interview for companies that are far more appealing propositions than anything I encountered in Europe.

Any reputable tech company (or startup) will provide health insurance and or sufficient wage so that you and your partner will be able to afford more than adequate insurance.

It's not the upper-middle class programmers that get screwed by the US' ridiculously evil and horrible health care system. It's the 99% that make less than 100K/year.

> Any reputable tech company (or startup) will provide health insurance

... which generates another dependency on the employer (beyond the work visa thing).

I know the history of the employer-pays-for-health-care model in the US, but really: it's broken, fix it.

Oh, it is difficult to overstate just how broken the system is until you've experienced it and a more sane alternative (my daughter was born here in the US and I'm Canadian).

However, from a lifestyle perspective of a great programmer it's a non-issue. Once a person has an H1-B it is trivial to change companies. So even though technically you're tied to an employer (visa + healthcare), in a city like SF where a great programmer can get a job in a day (literally), it's a total non-factor.

But seriously after experiencing the american healthcare system a couple of times the only phrase I can use to describe it is "pure evil". I can pay my way out of that pure evilness, but it is evil that 99% of people can't. So I can totally understand if you don't want to be a party to that system for moral reasons, but that's a lot harder to be consistent about.

You already have that dependency in terms of your visa. If you don't work for your employer anymore, you don't have a visa any more, and you need to leave the country fairly quickly or get a new visa elsewhere. In the light of that the healthcare part doesn't matter as much.

You're right, the healthcare issue bites citizens much more than work visa holders (who are already screwed).

It's still broken (like so many other things in the US) and therefore one more deterrent to even considering going the work visa -> green card -> citizenship route.

$100k doesn't even approach upper-middle class. It's not 1995 anymore. $100k is arguably lower-middle class. Consider the fact that most college students are graduating with $50-$100k in student loan debt, then they move to the Bay Area and pay $3k per month for a one bedroom. After 28% federal income tax and food costs it's surprising that they even survive on $100k.

$3k is a pretty nice 1-bedroom... which isn't really necessary if you're just going for survival (e.g. you can get a studio, share a place, etc.).

So thats ageism then. Because a studio almost requires you to be single and or have no dependents. Also - you're not finding a one bedroom for under $3k in SF proper in 2014 regardless of condition.

Is ageism an issue when you're talking about recent college graduates (which you were)?

And try looking beyond the most popular neighborhoods.

Completely agree. I don't have any desire to live in the states.

> It's hard not to look on US healthcare as being the worst possible product of US politics and that starts to impact the standard of living thing.

It would be nice, if there were some rough guidelines, how much more I'd need to ask salary in the US, that would cover the extra fees for insurance and health care, that I get for free in most Western European countries?

Health care isn't free in ANY country. You pay for it, even if indirectly. The high taxes and high 'social charges' in a place like France results in much lower salary. One could argue, that in France your purchasing power is much less than someone in the US paying for health insurance out of pocket. Rails devs in France might make 35k euros per year, so one could argue that, compared to a $120k salary in the US, that you're making substantially less in France, despite almost "free" healthcare. If you also add in, for example, in Paris the cost of accommodation, the higher cost for things like food and consumer goods, that 35k salary is looking pretty bleak. One could ask yourself if approximately $80k less is worth 'free' university and 'free' healthcare plus higher costs for pretty much everything. I'm not saying either place is better (however I do happen to live in France,) but there's no such thing as "free" healthcare or "free" education.

> You pay for it, even if indirectly.

I am not arguing against that. But I didn't mean to be political about this. I was just interested in the net salary, and the more-or-less compulsory costs that you need to pay from the net salary, before you know how much you pocket, or spend, every month.

Comparing income tax levels is, while not as easy as it could be, quite doable. So it is possible to estimate one's net income in different countries. Also craigslist etc. make it relatively easy to compare the cost of hiring an approximately same level of apartment in different countries.

But healthcare (and pension) systems in different countries are, in my experience, more difficult to understand and compare. In some countries you need to pay some amount from your net income for a health insurance, in other countries you get healthcare for free (i.e. without needing to pay some monthly fees). In some countries you automatically accrue some pension, but the system is typically quite opaque and difficult to understand how much pension you actually accrue per year. In other countries, you need to save for the pension from your net income.

Visiting the bay area every now and then, it's ridiculously expensive, compared to Germany or even France.

Rent is a cruel joke, as is land tax (so much for housing costs). Food is more expensive on the label (unless you're counting Ramen, where things are close), and there's sales tax on top (while EU prices are all-in).

It was free in Iraq under Saddam, paid for with oil revenues.

It's hard to have a guideline. Each employer has different level of coverage and deductibles. Make sure you understand how the plan works and what it covers.

Most of the big well known companies have substantial coverage for you and your family. I know some of them have plans that have a yearly maximum out of pocket cost in the low thousands.

This. I was offered a job at a top-10 US tech company, which would have been a massive pay and career boost, and turned it down largely because the US seems so screwed up (politics and healthcare being prime examples).

(They then offered me pretty much the same job, but working in their European office, so win/win :D )

I hope you're making those judgments on a broader set of sources than HN and its ilk. HN has smart users, but there are big sampling biases in more areas than just intelligence.

I agree totally. The level of violence for instance in your society, may be something you are used to, but others may not be inclined to make the move into such an environment.

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