Slashdot Mirror
Exporting Myself?
sennomo asks: "Years ago, I was told that I needed a degree to get a programming job anymore. So, I went to college. A couple of years and thousands of dollars later, there was still no job for me, in spite of my all-powerful B.A. in C.S. The most common explanation I get is that jobs are being exported out of the country. So, I've decided to export myself. Moving to higher ground, so to speak. I have heard a few others discuss this, but how many are actually trying it? And how is it going for them? Are there any hotspots for American expatriate programmers?"
Why would another country want YOU to move THERE and take jobs away from THEIR people? I've heard people talk about moving to India and such, because all the work is being outsourced to them. Well, guess what, they have plenty of native citizens to perform the work. Unlike the United States, most other countries don't have an open door for anyone that wants to just waltz in. Being skilled doesn't matter, if you're just going to end up taking a job away from one of their own people.
Before I found my current employer I toyed with the idea of seeking a tech job overseas, preferably somewhere in Europe. In my head this seemed like a good idea because I could start my life over, fixing the parts I didn't like. I had a phone interview with a consulting firm in Ireland but the very notion of being in a country on a work visa scared me away.
Shortly thereafter (in 2000 mind you) I posted my resume on dice.com and phone calls started rolling in. I interviewed with four or five companies and picked the one for me.
Jobs are here, you just have to be patient enough to find them. I, for one, don't think it's worth the paperwork to relocate. But then, I'm lazy.
"A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory."
Having worked in the US and elsewhere, I can say that you have a strange idea of work and living conditions outside of the US.
* US office workers recieve less days off than workers in any other country. 14 hour days in cramped conditions are the conditions *here*, not elsewhere!
* In 3rd world countries, basic office space usage is the same or better than the US.
* Housing differs throughout the world, but my experience is that US housing is small, cramped and overpriced.
* You may earn less elsewhere, but your expenses will probably also be less. And the dollar may not always be so powerful (it has already lost 20% of its value in the last few years).
Your optimism about the future is encouraging, but does not seem to be based on anything except blind patriotism. The fact is that corporations have become too powerful in the US, and until that power is reigned in, we'll have economic gains without meaningful job recovery.
Combine that with ludicrous intellectual property and patent laws, DCMA, the Patriot Act, fraudulent elections, and things do not look so bright. You are right, there *is* a lot of untapped potential right now, but I worry that that potential will be snuffed by large corporations wielding big sticks, backed by the full weight of the law.
I'm in Spokane, a city suffering from chronic economic problems, and I didn't have any trouble getting a job. I sent out a grand total of a half-dozen resumes, got two job interviews, and one job offer (I accepted). A few major factors that helped me get a job were that my degree was a BS in Math and Computer Science, rather than straight CS, that I'd held jobs (computer programming and otherwise) before, and that I'd been involved in several major freeware projects as a hobby.
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
I have no degree, and yet I have a programming/admin job, imagine that!
And I don't even live in a tech centric area.
Here's the secret, work for a company that actually produces something. Something other than just software, or intellectual property.
Consulting/support companies that do custom things for each customer are OK, but you are still liable to be replaced by a very small shell script someday.
It's funny that Slashdot is basically a site about how intellectual property is being reformed in huge ways, and yet most of the people reading it still want to get jobs based on obselete business models of "owning information".
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Go for a design job. [...] Who wants to be just a programmer anyway? It's like manual labor for your fingers.
If you think that, you'd be doing the job wrong, whether you're a designer or a programmer. As a consultant who has seen a lot of projects, I find few people more dangerous than self-styled architects who consider themselves too good for coding.
On my last project, it was my great pleasure to recommend that they fire all 20 of their architecture group, and then offer them the opportunity to interview for developer positions on the development teams. In two years of design, they had produced a lot of white papers, a bunch of recommendations, a number of frameworks, and a whole lot of mandates. The code base was hugely overarchitected, tangled, and confused.
Most everything the "architects" produced sounded plausible, and many had good ideas at the core. But almost all of it was useless in practice. Why? Because they never had to deal with the practical consequences of their work. Instead of sitting down with the developers and seeing how their theories worked out, they just stayed in their offices and produced more theories. They were deaf musicians with a captive audience.
Rubbish. I moved from the UK to Sri Lanka and my standard of living has improved in many ways. I earn less in absolute terms but the cost of living is MUCH lower.
whether my standard of living is better or worse is actually quite subjective. Examples:
- My car is a Hyundai, but I pay someone else to drive it for me.
- I eat out more and mostly at better restaurants, but the best here are not as good as the best in London and there is less choice.
- I can afford more holdiays within the country and stay at much better hotels than I could afford in England, but I can afford fewer foreign holidays.
Overall the only things I really miss are the theatre, big bookshops and (BBC) Radio 4.Alhough I am now used to it having done it a few times, moving countries is very difficult for those who are not used to it. It is not just the financial cosnequences that matter. You have to make cultural adjsutments, and learn how things work (and put up with lots of little things being different from what you are used to), and move away from friends and familly.
Erm, if you go overseas to work in India or such, your standard of living is going to go way, way, way down.
Not true. Depending on what sort of position he manages to get you can live a life of luxury in India relatively cheaply. A middle class white collar worker can very easily afford a servant to do cooking and cleaning for them. A very nice property is also affordable.
The problem is that once you move there long term, there is no comming back as your life savings will be near worthless in the states. I and my wife have considered moving to India for a few years so she can be closer to family, but while we could both get good jobs there and live well, it would set us back too far in our retirement savings.
India is great for a healthy 20 something yearold, but unless you are loaded to begin with I would not like to try living my declining years there.