Live data from Hacker News

Bulgaria is the world’s fastest-shrinking country

bbc.com

11–20 of 319 posts

Re: Bulgaria is the world’s fastest-shrinking country

#12
As a Bulgarian living and working in London for more than a year now, I have no intention of going back. The IT sector in the country is booming and the money you can make relative to the cost of living is insane - you can live like a king. To me that is not enough. Money are not enough to make me go back, even though I miss my friends and family. One of the biggest problems for me is that the country is stuck in this perpetual battle between western and Russian influence and that the government on all levels is mafia. There's a lot more that can be said, but speaking for myself and some friends/family that share my opinion that's not going to change soon.

EDIT: mrtksn's comment paints a very good picture.

Re: Bulgaria is the world’s fastest-shrinking country

#13
post #9

[flagged]

It's now been almost 30 years. Isn't that enough time to be able to revert the damage and develop prosperity?

Even in prosperous Germany, the formerly communist East is well behind the capitalist West. One would assume for a nation with less means the problems would be more pronounced.

Re: Bulgaria is the world’s fastest-shrinking country

#14
post #12

As a Bulgarian living and working in London for more than a year now, I have no intention of going back. The IT sector in the country is booming and the money you can make relative to the cost of living is insane - you can live like a king. To me that is not enough. Money are not enough to make me go back, even though I miss my friends and family. One of the biggest problems for me is that the country is stuck in thi…

What are the tech salaries like in Bulgaria?

Re: Bulgaria is the world’s fastest-shrinking country

#15
post #10

[flagged]

[flagged]

A good system of government is resilient to bad leadership.

Edit: do any of the down-voters care to explain why this is not the case? Stable is generally considered a prerequisite of good and history indicates that not going totally down the tubes when you have a bad leader is a perquisite of stable.

Re: Bulgaria is the world’s fastest-shrinking country

#18
post #14
post #12

As a Bulgarian living and working in London for more than a year now, I have no intention of going back. The IT sector in the country is booming and the money you can make relative to the cost of living is insane - you can live like a king. To me that is not enough. Money are not enough to make me go back, even though I miss my friends and family. One of the biggest problems for me is that the country is stuck in thi…

What are the tech salaries like in Bulgaria?

If you have 5 years of experience as a Senior Back-end engineer you can get something between 2000€-4000€ net (after taxes) in the Bulgarian currency lev - BGN. The Lev is pegged to the Euro at 1.95BGN for 1€. In the capital where the tech jobs are located with that kind of salary you can afford anything you want.

Re: Bulgaria is the world’s fastest-shrinking country

#19
post #14
post #12

As a Bulgarian living and working in London for more than a year now, I have no intention of going back. The IT sector in the country is booming and the money you can make relative to the cost of living is insane - you can live like a king. To me that is not enough. Money are not enough to make me go back, even though I miss my friends and family. One of the biggest problems for me is that the country is stuck in thi…

What are the tech salaries like in Bulgaria?

My cousin is in his 20's, roughly makes 10,000/ month (~ $5600 USD). That salary is absolutely amazing. The article states the minimum monthly salary is $320 ( which a large amount of people make, given that Bulgaria lacks a middle class). The reason he stays in Bulgaria is because of that, he wanted to come join me in the US, but he didn't want to emigrate.

edit: mrtksn's comment hits the nail on top of the head.

Re: Bulgaria is the world’s fastest-shrinking country

#20
post #4
post #2

Its neighbour to the north, Romania, may be in a similar situation, for the same reasons. It lost 6 million people since 1990, with several million each living in Spain and Italy.

Am Romanian, I entered the comment section to say the same thing. More than half my friends and work acquaintances from the last 10-15 years have moved abroad.

Just wondering if there is any solution to this. If you incentivise people (financially) to return, you discriminate against the local population. You can try to slow down emigration by building up the economy, but the wage differences are still so large compared to Western Europe that you couldn't stop emigration entirely. It's a tough problem to solve.
Post reply on HN