Yes.

I'm a software developer in South Africa.

We work for usually around half of what our UK/US counterparts earn, despite being an exceptionally capable team out here, arguably more so than any other team worldwide. The same can be said for many other tech companies with teams out here (e.g. ask your friends who work at Amazon about their CPT office).

We have one of the highest income tax rates in the world for 'high income earners' (>42% for me, above the highest international average income, and receive absolutely no benefits (schooling, healthcare etc.) as a result, thanks to our government being rife with corruption.

We have one of the highest crime rates in the world. The cost of living of the city I live in is rapidly increasing, it's becoming unaffordable for all who are not in finance or software, or are willing to be senior in their jobs and live like college grads. We have a tumultuous economy and therefore an unstable currency, consequentially your purchasing power is virtually 0.

The highest salary I have ever seen in the field of software development/engineering in SA is USD80k p/a. I know that I will likely never make +USD100k p/a living in SA working as a software developer, and yet, getting a visa to move away is intensely difficult without a company willing to sponsor you.

And yet, for all this financial despair when compared to my peers worldwide, I climb a mountain every weekend. I feel the sunshine on my face almost every day of the year. I surf before work regularly.

I have it pretty darn good. Don't let this superficial financial insecurity govern your happiness :)

Isn't most important where you're happy? From what I saw, plans to work a decade for a high salary and then do something you enjoy usually don't work out. As long as you earn enough to pay for everything you need (incl. hobbies and pension), comp should be secondary. It's more important to enjoy your work and the area you live in.

In the end, money is mostly relative. It doesn't matter if you don't earn $100k if hardly anyone makes that kind of money. In SV you will have trouble buying a house if you're on a $100k salary, in most parts of Europe that won't be an issue.

>>Any HNers reading my rant from outside USA, care to share your thoughts?

Indian. Working from Bangalore. In hindsight, I would say it was a bad move to leave the USA. But apart from all other reasons you have given for the move, only one thing matters- The green card wait.

But I would be interested in knowing your long term plans, if you wish to never return to India, then your savings outside India could take care of you in those economies. Life is easy outside, you get 401K and social security etc and things like that.

If your plan is to save up and retire in India, then my friend, start buying a home or real estate right now. With a 9% inflation here(Actually its higher, but won't go into that tangential debate now) anything you earn will all be dust by the time you arrive here. I have known people who show up from US with 2 - 3 crore rupees in savings hoping they will retire here and it barely covers their need for a home.

Also one thing I've learned is, if you are working in a first world country, then, you and a billionaire both get same standard of living. The same freeways, the same infrastructure etc. But if you retiring in India, money and savings matter a lot. Good money could mean good life, so early savings and investments matter in India. Optimize for salary all the time. Save and invest relentlessly.

These threads are mostly comedy and hot air. Don’t let them fan anything. Everyone here says they’re making $300k. It’s a trope that won’t die. They are either statistical outliers or exaggerating. Median for the Bay Area (which tends to be the highest in the country if not the world) is around $115k plus equity. I’m not going to trot out the links again, but these numbers are Googlable unlike all the anecdotes.

Even the $300k numbers here are 50%+ equity. That's a considerable risk. It worked over the past 10 years because tech stocks have outperformed everything else. If we see a true tech stock crash (50%+ correction), many of those $300k salaries are in reality closer to $200k (or less if you'll never be able to sell the stocks). I don't wish that to anyone but it's important to keep in mind that stock bonus is something very different from cash salary.

Maybe it's because I'm making multiples of what my father ever did, but this is why I'm diversifying my stock immediately on receipt and saving +50% of my income. Anything else seems like insanity, or at least profligacy.

The way I’ve always explained it: if you suddenly got $50k, would you put it all into one stock? No. So if you suddenly got $50k of one stock, why would you not turn it into cash right away? The scenarios are identical.

EDIT: as 0xB31B1B points out it’s worth clarifying that the scenarios are the same only when we are talking about post-tax numbers. Generally when you receive RSUs, the taxes have already been withheld.

No, there is a taxable event in the case of a stock sale

I don't know why you feel you must lie to yourself to feel better. The numbers you find on Google are also anecdotes, and they match here. HN was literally founded to be a home for statistical outliers. Silicon Valley and its extensions are statistical outliers. Why do you think people complain about gentrification and $2M houses , and throw rocks at buses? Because there is a lot of money sloshing around.

I just ran some hypothetical numbers on Amazon based on things people have posted on here about SDE salaries. Let's say you joined April 11, 2014 with a total comp of $200K, made up of $150K base, 400 RSUs @ $353 vesting on Amazon's standard vesting schedule (Y1:5%, Y2:15%, Y2.5:20%, Y3:20%, Y3.5:20%, Y4:20%), and a sign-on bonus that offsets the initial year vests.

At Amazon's stock appreciation, that dev would be earning $150K + (20% * 400 * $995 + 20% * 400 * 1427) = $344K this year assuming no change in salary over that time.

How realistic is this? See the H1B data[1] for base salary numbers or an Anatomy of an SDE2 offer[2] from 2013 showing similar calculations.

So, to answer the question. One route would be to join Amazon 4 years ago as an experienced SDE2+.

[1]: http://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=Amazon+Corporate+Llc&job=&c... [2]: http://www.nailyourjobinterview.com/the-anatomy-of-an-amazon...

This is all true.

You can earn more in the US for doing the same job with the same hours and good benefits. Life in the US is better.

I am speaking from experience. I have worked in London, Philadelphia and Boston.

The biggest difference for me is family and friends being in the UK which affects my happiness. For me it's best to be close to loved ones.

Life in the US isn't automatically better. It depends on so many things.

That's true. I was lazily making a broad wide sweeping statement.

I'll qualify what I said. If you are in highly educated, able to work, and are in the right field (i.e. software), life for the majority of individuals who fall into this category is better in the US than many other countries. On the other hand if you're dirt poor, have no education, bad health.... you may be better off in Scandinavia or Western Europe.

This kind of thing really needs to be normalised by house prices. Even a dumb metric like "salary * (number of bedrooms+1) / (house value)" would give decent results; I'm paid about one bedroom per year.

When I moved away from London I was moving away from all the really highly paid opportunities but my salary in bedrooms/year went up considerably.

I think the phrase you're looking for is "Geographic Pay Differentials" in HR terms.

I'm honestly thinking about not settling down until I'm in my higher 30s and instead move where I'd get the best salary/company hop for raises and set aside a nice amount, then I can move back to the EU, think about committing to relationships and live with a salary lower than what I'd like

You have pretty valid reasons for moving abroad. And I would consider all of them good ones. The only 2 main reasons I continue to stay in the US is because of the incredible number of really cool opportunities and the comp. I know there are cool tech companies all over the world, but the density of them in the US and specifically in SFBA is simply phenomenal. And my desire to work on hard problems is what has kept me here even though the immigration system is broken for people from certain countries.

If you want to earn a bit more, maybe try Switzerland. But are you really not happy? Don't get fooled by money. Rather look around you and ask yourself if you are happy with your situation.

If you can move, consider amsterdam. Great city, great salaries for devs(75k€+).

> I question whether I'm wasting my prime earning years (comp.Engineer)

Gonna be brutally honest. I think you are. Fellow Indian here, also came on H1-B to US, survived 5 layoffs in 2 companies over a 10 month period in the .COM boom and bust. Many of my fellow engineers, waay smarter than me, were not so fortunate. Some went back to India, others found jobs in UK and rest of Europe.

Your complains are what I hear from them even now.

Your comps ( #s ) also check out. I run http://www.visaok.in and routinely find that jobs in Denmark, Germany, UK and couple of other countries pay about 40% to 50% less than the same in US for the same job title and similar description.

Most professions have a prime and a software engineer's career, IMO, peaks at around late 30s or early 40s in terms of the base salary and compensation. I've found the range for a Sr. Software Engineer in a non-Silicon Valley / FAANG company to top around 150K to 170K in San Francisco / Bay Area. If you are average in terms of abilities, you can easily get a Software Engineer job at the IT department of a medium to large corp here in San Francisco for about 110K to 140K. Grow from there.

I would say try to come back to US on an H1B or any other Visa. Try to tell yourself you are here temporarily, and that you can always go back to Denmark as a fall back, or after you've peaked here and want to settle down and work towards FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early).

This may be a harder sell if you are married to a European and went there for that reason. Most western women, I found from experience, always want to move back to their home town after marriage, even if it's a bone chilling place like Siberia or Wisconsin or Alaska.

>>I would say try to come back to US on an H1B or any other Visa.

As a fellow India, who returned from US.

I'd say decide on a permanent home and stay there. Its very hard to retire in places you don't know much about. Also decide on a house, as early as possible.

People who are thinking they will live like nomads and later retire in India have no clue what they are talking about. India is growing by leaps and bounds, nothing that you save will be sufficient 20 years from now. You won't even be able to afford a home.