Before we closed our office in Mountain View years ago, every time we went over there:
- I could not get out of my San Francisco Hotel to get to a deli across the road without having to step over at least 5 homeless people.
- I could not fail to notice that even those people who did have jobs and not lost their homes to tech bros had a surprisingly low number of healthy teeth for a modern western first-world society
- An apartment with noisy air conditioning, dirty carpets and questionable building codes would cost more in rent than a villa at the Côte d’Azur.
- The air quality during fire season was a nightmare. During my time there I developed asthma.
- Everybody hated the arrogant ignorant tech people that invaded their communities, forced them out of their houses to then have to commute into the city or valley to serve tech bros. Yes, as a European I am not that well trained to constantly ignore that my privilege are causing the community around me to suffer. That I do not "earn" this gigantic salary, I am just grabbing the resources pretending the "normal" people don't deserve to have any of that.
You are getting paid so much because you in exchange are living in a sh*thole country without education, healthcare, public transport, clean air, or anything else that I as a "wealthy" developer person would expect to receive in exchange for my work.
Take your US salary, and invest it into a travel into some of the more up-to-date regions of the world. Those with clean air, education, healthcare. Places I have visited that are better than the Valley in this regard include:
- Pretty much all of Europe. Maybe with the exception of Greece and Spain, when they are now burning thanks to the "drill drill drill" people.
- China
- Iran
- New Zealand
- Australia
- Canada
...
Yes, the amount of zeros on your US salary might look soooooooooooooooo impressive. But they are zeros. They don't buy you a livable live in a modern civilization.
Right now you are just bribed with money not to see the civil war getting ignited in minnesota.
Oh oh oh, now I remember! I have even been to two countries with civil wars a while ago, who had clean air, education and healthcare. And I think even directly after the civil war, all of Kosovo had a lower percentage of homeless people than the US has today.
Yes, another one of my drastic postings. But you will survive. Be brave: With someone who clearly is being paid a lot for being clever, I can assume that you think this through again, to calculate what the better deal is. You know the average amount of student debt people who want to become programmers have? Zero.
You are not getting more VALUE out of working in the US in high-tech compared to other places. There are places on this world, where being a good programmer buys you a wonderful life with nobody around you being poor, or without healthcare, or homeless. Try Estonia. They have a lovely tech community, a fully digital government. You can become a digital citizen, open your own company in minutes. And you will have a far better life.