3 ms·

Lack of competitive pay makes talent leave the country (source: I have many friends working in startups in USA due to better working conditions).

rbanffy 8y ago
Source, yours truly. But what drove me away was not the money - I make a lot more money now, but in a much more expensive place. Retirement projections remain firmly planted on the very same date since I left and aren't going to change much either way unless some major upheaval happens. What really drove me out was my lack of faith. Corruption was rampant (it was always like this, since well before I was born) but it was being investigated, in some cases more seriously than others, but the local equivalents to the DoJ and the FBI (I'm doing this for the Americans in the audience, hope it helps), for the first time since essentially ever, able to work free from executive interference and, unsurprisingly, uncovered a lot of misdeeds. With that, the perceived corruption skyrocketed, government popularity sunk, trust in the government went into a death spiral and the legislative and judiciary decided it'd be convenient to stage a coup (sorry, "impeachment" is not the right word) so that someone more malleable would be in power (there was even a phone recording stating that much). At that moment I was over for me. I grew up in post-64 coup Brazil and don't want my daughter to go through the same.
malandrew 8y ago
Couldn't agree more. Of all the engineers I worked with back in Brazil that I would happily work with again, more than 75% of them left Brazil. They now live in places like the San Francisco, Palo Alto, NYC, Toronto, Montreal, Berlin, Amsterdam, London. What's most ridiculous is that at the recent BayBrazil event here in São Paulo, I explicitly asked the panelists if the situation had changed since when I worked there a manager would make 2.5x to 3x what the ICs earned. Every single panelist dodged the question by spouting some bullshit about how people have other motivations besides money for staying in Brazil. Yeah, I'm sure a minority of them do, the majority however keep leaving.

rbanffy 8y ago

Source, yours truly. But what drove me away was not the money - I make a lot more money now, but in a much more expensive place. Retirement projections remain firmly planted on the very same date since I left and aren't going to change much either way unless some major upheaval happens. What really drove me out was my lack of faith. Corruption was rampant (it was always like this, since well before I was born) but it was being investigated, in some cases more seriously than others, but the local equivalents to the DoJ and the FBI (I'm doing this for the Americans in the audience, hope it helps), for the first time since essentially ever, able to work free from executive interference and, unsurprisingly, uncovered a lot of misdeeds. With that, the perceived corruption skyrocketed, government popularity sunk, trust in the government went into a death spiral and the legislative and judiciary decided it'd be convenient to stage a coup (sorry, "impeachment" is not the right word) so that someone more malleable would be in power (there was even a phone recording stating that much). At that moment I was over for me. I grew up in post-64 coup Brazil and don't want my daughter to go through the same.

malandrew 8y ago

Couldn't agree more. Of all the engineers I worked with back in Brazil that I would happily work with again, more than 75% of them left Brazil. They now live in places like the San Francisco, Palo Alto, NYC, Toronto, Montreal, Berlin, Amsterdam, London. What's most ridiculous is that at the recent BayBrazil event here in São Paulo, I explicitly asked the panelists if the situation had changed since when I worked there a manager would make 2.5x to 3x what the ICs earned. Every single panelist dodged the question by spouting some bullshit about how people have other motivations besides money for staying in Brazil. Yeah, I'm sure a minority of them do, the majority however keep leaving.