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this ^^^ I worked in canada for a year and was offered to stay, my permanent residency would have been granted after 6 months and citizenship in 2 years. Afte

this ^^^ I worked in canada for a year and was offered to stay, my permanent residency would have been granted after 6 months and citizenship in 2 years. After 5 years in the US, I'm on this situation, even after obtained a Software Engineering master degree in the US from CMU, my application is being dragged.

levosmetalo 13y ago
That's why there's no rational reason experienced developer who have a wife and kids will choose USA over Germany. In USA he would first need to wait at least one year until his family can arrive, then wait for 5 or more years to get permanent residency (Green Card) in which period his wife will not have permission to work, and he would be unable to plan his future in any significant way because he would live on the edge of deportation if his current employer decide he doesn't work (good/hard/long) enough. That's at least six years of limbo in someones' life. It might be ok for singles with no kids, but noone else. Compare that to Germany where it takes at most 3 months to be completely settled with the family where wife also gets work permit, and children can start getting child benefits and going to state subsided kindergartens from the get go. I would start thinking about moving to US if and only if I would get Green Card from the start, but even then I'm not sure I would change EU(ropean) way of life for 50+ work weeks, one week of vacation and no payed sick or parental leave, super expensive education and no universal health care.
- Aloisius 13y ago
  I'm not sure I would change EU(ropean) way of life for 50+ work weeks, one week of vacation and no payed sick or parental leave, super expensive education and no universal health care. No paid sick leave? One week of vacation? Super expensive education (for kindergarten???)? Where in the US are you talking about? While we don't tend to have laws mandating sick leave, nearly every company that you'd immigrate for gives it. I've never worked anywhere that didn't offer at least two weeks of vacation. Working 50+ hours is really a personal choice (as long as you work for an ethical employer) since it isn't legal to require someone to work more than 40 hours/week. I'm not sure about super expensive education. Out of state tuition is typically expensive if you want to go to a top university, but the average community college is downright cheap.
  - lightbritefight 13y ago
    | Where in the US are you talking about? While we don't tend to have laws mandating sick leave, nearly every company that you'd immigrate for gives it. I've never worked anywhere that didn't offer at least two weeks of vacation. No offense, but your proof here is purely anecdotal. I've worked for employers who offer less than two weeks. My first STEM job offered 5 days your first year, with 5 more each additional year, capping at 20. 2 weeks may be thought of as the norm, but since there is no actual law about it, its only a suggestion. |Working 50+ hours is really a personal choice (as long as you work for an ethical employer) since it isn't legal to require someone to work more than 40 hours/week. This is only true if you are hourly, and dont fall under a salaried exception. Its also only true if your employer is ethical, as you say. Since the US is largely at-will, you can be fired for most any reason. They aren't even required to tell you why. So, if you turn down your unethical boss insistence on a 50 hour week at a 40 hour weeks pay, you can be on the street in an hour. You can try to fight it, but the laws in the US are stacked in the employers favor. |I'm not sure about super expensive education. Out of state tuition is typically expensive if you want to go to a good university, but the average community college is downright cheap. This is generally true. JC are comparably cheap, but contrast this against someplace in the EU that has "high" tuition. A 4 year degree from a good school in England will set you back about 30k. Here, an equivalently prestigious degree can cost you 150k, easy. While you may learn the same at a 2 year JC, which will still cost you 15k by the by,you lack the prestige that a University degree gets you. Sadly, thats what gets you in the door. So, to be equally prestigious, you need to have 150k in debt in the US, and only 30K in debt in the UK. Thats not the same at all.
    - Aloisius 13y ago
      No offense, but your proof here is purely anecdotal. I've worked for employers who offer less than two weeks. My first STEM job offered 5 days your first year, with 5 more each additional year, capping at 20. 2 weeks may be thought of as the norm, but since there is no actual law about it, its only a suggestion. For professional jobs in the US, the average paid vacation after the first year of service is 10 days (2 weeks)[1]. Sadly they don't have statistics for 0-1 years so I don't know if your package was atypical. That said, we certainly don't match our European counterparts, but then again, we don't even use most of the vacation time we are given every year[2]. The US simply doesn't have a culture of taking vacations like Europe. [1] http://www.bls.gov/news.release/ebs.t05.htm http://www.bls.gov/news.release/ebs.t05.htm [2] http://money.cnn.com/2012/05/18/news/economy/unused_vacation_days/index.htm http://money.cnn.com/2012/05/18/news/economy/unused_vacation...
- mahyarm 13y ago
  You can actually get an immigration (green card) visa from outside the country from the start. You could work for Google Berlin/Zurich for example, and then move over when its all processed for a green card on arrival. One co-worker for the startup I work for came from Chile that way. You can also just work for Google in Europe for a year or two, and then get transferred over on a L1/L2 visa where your wife can also get a work permit/visa as part of the package. Also if you work for a company like google/facebook, you get very good health care, can send your children to decent public schools, you have decent working hours, good amount of vacation time, far more pay than you would get in Europe, free meals and I think google offers on site kindergarden too. Also while you just have a work visa, you can still change employers through more paperwork, but no practical ill effects in the end.
  - parennoob 13y ago
    I don't exactly know what country's visas you are talking about, but if it is the US, these are the sticking points: 1) Not everyone works for Google or Facebook. Some of us work for smaller companies that no one has heard of. 2) "Also while you just have a work visa, you can still change employers through more paperwork". Said paperwork is toxic and suffocating to the point where it is extremely detrimental to your mental and physical health to change jobs.
    - mahyarm 13y ago
      I'm talking about the USA. I work for one of those VC funded smaller companies, and they provide comparable services by just hiring immigration lawyers. The fee per employee are around several thousands of dollars and $10-20k for green cards. The new hiring firm also hires the lawyers to switch you over to make it relatively painless on your side. Compared to getting a new H1B visa hire, the switchover employees are much easier to hire. A smaller startup company will ask more hours of you and wont provide such things as an on site kindergarden, but the benefits can be fairly comparable. Some of those startups also have a foreign office you could work at for a year or two and do the L1 visa thing for you too.
  - ozgune 13y ago
- drstewart 13y ago
  No "rational reason" except for the fact that the pay in the US for software engineers is probably double (or even triple) what it is in Germany.
  - levosmetalo 13y ago
    Define pay. If you define pay as something that you can spend when you deduce tax, health, pension, rent/mortgage, education of children I'm not sure that US offers double. And even if it were double in absolute numbers, so is the number of working hours per year of software engineer in US compared to Germany.
    - drstewart 13y ago
      >If you define pay as something that you can spend when you deduce tax, health, pension, rent/mortgage, education of children I'm not sure that US offers double. I define pay the way most people define pay. The gross amount paid to you by your employer per pay period. >And even if it were double in absolute numbers, so is the number of working hours per year of software engineer in US compared to Germany. Unless the average German software engineer works 20-25 hours a week, I'd love to see some statistics on this. According to OECD stats, US workers work 30% more hours than Germans. There's no reason to believe that's different for software devs (in fact, especially on the west coast, it probably trends in the opposite direction). http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=ANHRS http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=ANHRS I was also unaware rent and mortgages are free in Germany. Why do you not have to take those into account?
- outworlder 13y ago
  Regarding the wife not having permission to work: aren't there other visa types which allow this, other than H1B?
tokenadult 13y ago
I worked in canada for a year and was offered to stay After 5 years in the US If I am reading this correctly, you came to the United States even though you had an opportunity to stay in Canada. What was the appeal of coming to the United States?
- potatolicious 13y ago
  Software engineering salaries in Canada are half what you get from a top-flight US company (e.g., Google, Facebook, etc). Cost of living isn't that cheap either. Vancouver is an enormously expensive city to live in, and Toronto while cheaper also suffers from low software wages.

levosmetalo 13y ago

That's why there's no rational reason experienced developer who have a wife and kids will choose USA over Germany. In USA he would first need to wait at least one year until his family can arrive, then wait for 5 or more years to get permanent residency (Green Card) in which period his wife will not have permission to work, and he would be unable to plan his future in any significant way because he would live on the edge of deportation if his current employer decide he doesn't work (good/hard/long) enough. That's at least six years of limbo in someones' life. It might be ok for singles with no kids, but noone else. Compare that to Germany where it takes at most 3 months to be completely settled with the family where wife also gets work permit, and children can start getting child benefits and going to state subsided kindergartens from the get go. I would start thinking about moving to US if and only if I would get Green Card from the start, but even then I'm not sure I would change EU(ropean) way of life for 50+ work weeks, one week of vacation and no payed sick or parental leave, super expensive education and no universal health care.

Aloisius 13y ago
I'm not sure I would change EU(ropean) way of life for 50+ work weeks, one week of vacation and no payed sick or parental leave, super expensive education and no universal health care. No paid sick leave? One week of vacation? Super expensive education (for kindergarten???)? Where in the US are you talking about? While we don't tend to have laws mandating sick leave, nearly every company that you'd immigrate for gives it. I've never worked anywhere that didn't offer at least two weeks of vacation. Working 50+ hours is really a personal choice (as long as you work for an ethical employer) since it isn't legal to require someone to work more than 40 hours/week. I'm not sure about super expensive education. Out of state tuition is typically expensive if you want to go to a top university, but the average community college is downright cheap.
- lightbritefight 13y ago
  | Where in the US are you talking about? While we don't tend to have laws mandating sick leave, nearly every company that you'd immigrate for gives it. I've never worked anywhere that didn't offer at least two weeks of vacation. No offense, but your proof here is purely anecdotal. I've worked for employers who offer less than two weeks. My first STEM job offered 5 days your first year, with 5 more each additional year, capping at 20. 2 weeks may be thought of as the norm, but since there is no actual law about it, its only a suggestion. |Working 50+ hours is really a personal choice (as long as you work for an ethical employer) since it isn't legal to require someone to work more than 40 hours/week. This is only true if you are hourly, and dont fall under a salaried exception. Its also only true if your employer is ethical, as you say. Since the US is largely at-will, you can be fired for most any reason. They aren't even required to tell you why. So, if you turn down your unethical boss insistence on a 50 hour week at a 40 hour weeks pay, you can be on the street in an hour. You can try to fight it, but the laws in the US are stacked in the employers favor. |I'm not sure about super expensive education. Out of state tuition is typically expensive if you want to go to a good university, but the average community college is downright cheap. This is generally true. JC are comparably cheap, but contrast this against someplace in the EU that has "high" tuition. A 4 year degree from a good school in England will set you back about 30k. Here, an equivalently prestigious degree can cost you 150k, easy. While you may learn the same at a 2 year JC, which will still cost you 15k by the by,you lack the prestige that a University degree gets you. Sadly, thats what gets you in the door. So, to be equally prestigious, you need to have 150k in debt in the US, and only 30K in debt in the UK. Thats not the same at all.
  - Aloisius 13y ago
    No offense, but your proof here is purely anecdotal. I've worked for employers who offer less than two weeks. My first STEM job offered 5 days your first year, with 5 more each additional year, capping at 20. 2 weeks may be thought of as the norm, but since there is no actual law about it, its only a suggestion. For professional jobs in the US, the average paid vacation after the first year of service is 10 days (2 weeks)[1]. Sadly they don't have statistics for 0-1 years so I don't know if your package was atypical. That said, we certainly don't match our European counterparts, but then again, we don't even use most of the vacation time we are given every year[2]. The US simply doesn't have a culture of taking vacations like Europe. [1] http://www.bls.gov/news.release/ebs.t05.htm http://www.bls.gov/news.release/ebs.t05.htm [2] http://money.cnn.com/2012/05/18/news/economy/unused_vacation_days/index.htm http://money.cnn.com/2012/05/18/news/economy/unused_vacation...
mahyarm 13y ago
You can actually get an immigration (green card) visa from outside the country from the start. You could work for Google Berlin/Zurich for example, and then move over when its all processed for a green card on arrival. One co-worker for the startup I work for came from Chile that way. You can also just work for Google in Europe for a year or two, and then get transferred over on a L1/L2 visa where your wife can also get a work permit/visa as part of the package. Also if you work for a company like google/facebook, you get very good health care, can send your children to decent public schools, you have decent working hours, good amount of vacation time, far more pay than you would get in Europe, free meals and I think google offers on site kindergarden too. Also while you just have a work visa, you can still change employers through more paperwork, but no practical ill effects in the end.
- parennoob 13y ago
  I don't exactly know what country's visas you are talking about, but if it is the US, these are the sticking points: 1) Not everyone works for Google or Facebook. Some of us work for smaller companies that no one has heard of. 2) "Also while you just have a work visa, you can still change employers through more paperwork". Said paperwork is toxic and suffocating to the point where it is extremely detrimental to your mental and physical health to change jobs.
  - mahyarm 13y ago
    I'm talking about the USA. I work for one of those VC funded smaller companies, and they provide comparable services by just hiring immigration lawyers. The fee per employee are around several thousands of dollars and $10-20k for green cards. The new hiring firm also hires the lawyers to switch you over to make it relatively painless on your side. Compared to getting a new H1B visa hire, the switchover employees are much easier to hire. A smaller startup company will ask more hours of you and wont provide such things as an on site kindergarden, but the benefits can be fairly comparable. Some of those startups also have a foreign office you could work at for a year or two and do the L1 visa thing for you too.
- ozgune 13y ago
drstewart 13y ago
No "rational reason" except for the fact that the pay in the US for software engineers is probably double (or even triple) what it is in Germany.
- levosmetalo 13y ago
  Define pay. If you define pay as something that you can spend when you deduce tax, health, pension, rent/mortgage, education of children I'm not sure that US offers double. And even if it were double in absolute numbers, so is the number of working hours per year of software engineer in US compared to Germany.
  - drstewart 13y ago
    >If you define pay as something that you can spend when you deduce tax, health, pension, rent/mortgage, education of children I'm not sure that US offers double. I define pay the way most people define pay. The gross amount paid to you by your employer per pay period. >And even if it were double in absolute numbers, so is the number of working hours per year of software engineer in US compared to Germany. Unless the average German software engineer works 20-25 hours a week, I'd love to see some statistics on this. According to OECD stats, US workers work 30% more hours than Germans. There's no reason to believe that's different for software devs (in fact, especially on the west coast, it probably trends in the opposite direction). http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=ANHRS http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=ANHRS I was also unaware rent and mortgages are free in Germany. Why do you not have to take those into account?
outworlder 13y ago
Regarding the wife not having permission to work: aren't there other visa types which allow this, other than H1B?

tokenadult 13y ago

I worked in canada for a year and was offered to stay After 5 years in the US If I am reading this correctly, you came to the United States even though you had an opportunity to stay in Canada. What was the appeal of coming to the United States?

potatolicious 13y ago
Software engineering salaries in Canada are half what you get from a top-flight US company (e.g., Google, Facebook, etc). Cost of living isn't that cheap either. Vancouver is an enormously expensive city to live in, and Toronto while cheaper also suffers from low software wages.