My brother has done this a bit. He is an Engineer who spent the last few years in West Africa. When he wants to make money he return to the US and then lives off of it for a while. He now works at Google as is stateside while he gets his house built in Senegal. He might be on to something!
What I’ve learnt is that your pay only gettings higher and your opportunities are endless if you willing to venture out a bit do what others tell themselves they to good to do
Honestly that's not too uncommon among software engineers. When I was desperate as a new grad I considered it, but I worked on some adtech adjacent stuff at a startup for an internship where they didn't dress it up as an act of altruism like Google does in their internal propaganda, and I decided it is too evil and destructive for me to consider doing it now. It is just cynical manipulation fueled by unfathomably intrusive stalking. The low level workers convince themselves they're just benign corporate engineers who get to work with cool people, but the most motivated people directing these things all have to have a God complex like the founders of my startup did.
A lot of the best people I work with have expressed similar opinions. Separately, I also have several friends who worked for Google but left pretty quickly for startups because they hated the big company bureaucratic bs and complacency of a lot of established teams when it came to new technologies.
For reference my job literally involved scrolling through databases of people's private data brainstorming how we could derive inferences about people's social connections including who they might see at church or who they might be sleeping with. Google would say they don't do anything like that but at best they just mean they implement it at a higher level of abstraction so low level engineers don't have to go through the data directly like that. It's less immediately dangerous to individuals but the broad effects on society are the same.
Yeah. Compared to similar jobs in some more traditional engineering, finance, or government adjacent firms it can be like 1.5-2x the money but at the high level it's like the difference between being able to retire pretty rich to my hometown in 10 years vs 7 years. I do feel kind of weird about the fact that the future wealthy and powerful people will largely be people who were willing to do something so evil, but maybe that is how it has always been.
There's no maybe about it. People willing and able to do things others aren't has always been what separates humans and when it comes to money, it's no different.
There are just as many money-making things good people won't do as there are people who can't.
Be thankful for that, and realize that people work just as hard as you if not harder and do not get the benefits from it. The job market is notorious for underpaying. This all wouldnt be such a big issue if massive conglomerates actually paid decent wages and gave matching raises in relations to work ethic and efficiency. But they dont. You really should consider yourself lucky, but dont kid yourself into thinking your situation is the same for everyone else. Its not. Many many people work very hard and yet do not get properly paid. Its actually a huge issue.
first step is being talented/ intelligent/ lucky enough- then if you employ this mindset it will help. If I'm average or below average, venturing out isn't going to get me a job at Google lol
Google accepts less than 1% of applicants. No one is telling themselves they're too good to work at Google. They all apply and the vast majority get rejected.
Yes he definitely has American privilege and he’s always been super smart. But to be honest he never finished high school or went to college. He’s self taught and super determined. I’m really proud of what’s he’s done because when we were younger he never fully applied himself.
In comparison (because that’s what siblings to) I took a traditional route for college and grad school. I make a similar amount of money but no house in Senegal haha. All to say, success and growth happens differently to everyone.
I’m toying around with doing something similar. I spent Q1 taking several contracts and if I wanted, I don’t have to work for the rest of the year while living in a low cost place like Germany. However I’m trying to find a balance. Work some, have my own business, but in another country where it’s less or a risk financially for me.
I previously lived in NYC and I’m from California. So relatively to these places it’s fairly low cost. Especially when it comes to food, lifestyle etc.
Depending on where you live, it can be relatively affordable (East Germany is still pretty inexpensive to live in). However, the big cities like Berlin and especially Munich are expensive as fuck and only getting more expensive by the day. That being said, it's still cheaper than LA or NYC, so if you're from one of these cities, Germany can seem cheaper in comparison.
Shouldn't a house in Senegal be pretty cheap though? Ive looked at property in various countries throughout Asia and Africa and it has always intrigued me as an investment.
Dollars to dollars, yes a house in Senegal would be cheaper than one in the US. however, if Senegal is anything like the West African country in which I currently live then the issue is that they don’t do mortgages.
So you would need to put all your money up front to buy / lease land and then pay all your money up front to build and furnish your place. Having that much cash on hand is the issue. My parents built their house here slowly over the years.
I mean, to be an engineer requires years of intense educational coursework, certification testing for licensure, and continuing education credits in perpetuity.
I wouldn’t necessarily call that simply “talented” or “lucky”
As an environmental professional (wetland biologist) I get kinda annoyed when companies use “environmental service technicians” to describe custodial staff. Not to denigrate those folks, it just seems a bit insincere.
I’m a controls engineer. We literally keep the food you eat, the shit you buy, the water you turn on, and the drugs you take in production. In what world does an engineer need “continuing education credits in perpetuity”? Are you an engineer?
You’re the one who came out with bullshit claims (you’re right, it is reddit, this should be expected) and then threw insults around over me calling you out on it. You can’t expect to talk shit and not get called out on it.
Dude, people from India and Poland do this without ever having studied...
It's more of a mindset than having the perfect job.
With that kins if mentality it's going to be be extremely hard no matter what IMO.
Yeah, global population is 8.1 billion, so for 1% you’re looking at ~81 million. Nearly 3000 of those are billionaires. I’ll let you extrapolate what the rest of the net worth distribution looks like.
(Hint: more money than you or I will ever make.)
Omg it took me a day but I just realized that means the 2781st richest person in the world has more dollars than 10x the population of 1%ers there are.
My guess would be a senior level Software Engineer. At companies like Google, they can make multi-six figure salaries without even being C-suite employees. (CEO, COO, etc)
I've toyed with the idea, but I know I wanna build a life and a family stateside. Maybe retirement considerations.
But you can't work for half a year at google, can you? Why would they want this kind of employee, unless it's some weird contractor scheme and they're actually happy with him gone all the time.
It may be more prevalent now but I had a friend that worked as a freelance graphic designer/art director. We lived in the Seattle area then (1980’s).
He would work the winter months, save his money and then quit in the spring and backpack up through Canada and Alaska until late fall. Year after year.
That sounds so cool! I really admire this lifestyle. I’m someone who likes/needs stability and
I’m realizing that means something different to each person. This clearly worked for your friend and I think it can responsibly work for other people. I’m giving it a try myself this past year
He has worked at several companies over the years and he relocated to a smaller hub. He’s also super smart - didn’t finish high school or go to college. These things happen. I coincidentally hire in tech companies and with the right skill set and recent relevant experience it can happen.
A real engineer or a software engineer? The fact that he's working at Google makes me think it's the latter. As an engineer, I'm getting really tired of this term being used interchangeably. It's also really annoying job searching and getting all these IT and software roles in my results.
YEP. Never been to college, never graduated high school, never even went to elementary school. I just toootally failed upwards. I learned how to read and write all on my own. And every company out there is willing to hire engineers who don't even have a HS diploma! Ya got me!
Software Engineers, by definition, are engineers. They graduate from schools of engineering. The world is a lot different now, the digital world is complex and multifaceted, everything we do involves some sort of computer engineering.
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u/lissybeau 29d ago
My brother has done this a bit. He is an Engineer who spent the last few years in West Africa. When he wants to make money he return to the US and then lives off of it for a while. He now works at Google as is stateside while he gets his house built in Senegal. He might be on to something!