Came to work in the US. Have moved back to my home country. But would love to come to US again(A great country, no doubt). A few things that I have noticed. 1.

Came to work in the US. Have moved back to my home country. But would love to come to US again(A great country, no doubt). A few things that I have noticed. 1. It can be really quite hard to get rich(like crazy rich) as a programmer unless you have a very generous stock grant package. When I mean generous, I mean like really in the upper order of 6 figures. Given tax is going to eat a good bunch of it. 2. Taxes will eat a lot of your salary and bonus. So any dream of making it big out of saving up monthly salary is absurd to a large extent. 3. What makes 2. even more so true is at some point in time you have to buy a home, and take some responsibilities with regards to kids and family. Your savings cache will only decrease. If you are in the Bay area, rents will eat your ice cream. Buying a home is in the order of >=$1 million. Kids can be expensive if you want them to have a good future. If you want to buy a home, you will lose half your life to monthly payments. Plus comes the regular fear of defaulting on payments in phases of financial crises and job losses. And also be prepared for routine house maintenance expenses and property taxes. Overall life is hard for immigrants. But I can imagine it would be the same for US citizens who come from poverty. Education would come at a thick debt on top of which you have to build the above points I mentioned. Life if pretty much paycheck to the next. Paying monthly installment for car, bills, mortgage etc. Somethings that I like about the US:- Social security, infrastructure, uniform quality of education, merit and overall values on which the country is built. Overall there is better appreciation for merit and quality than most countries. If you are in the US you have already made it big by many a definition. You just have to go farther.