I'm afraid I'd get paid too much money.
Actually, I've seriously contemplated it in recent times; it's not too hard
(relatively speaking) for a computer geek to get him/herself (and family?)
into the US.
But I would far prefer to live in Australia; I've not found anything lacking
here that is only available in the US, except maybe that my house doesn't
seem to be able to get a cable modem. But I only have to move suburb to fix
that. And it's a pretty lovely country. I highly recommend a visit
sometime; unfortunately we have similarly draconian immigration laws, with
no special rules for IT people, so it's hard to move here.
My current career goal (which is coming together rather nicely) is to have
myself working directly for US companies via pure teleworking, while staying
here. Nice exchange rate, you guys pay more, and all that. If I can get that
stabilised, which I think I am doing, the next step is to expand into
contracting other pure teleworking IT people, australians, working directly
for US companies. It's something which people have been talking about
(global employment market for knowledge work) for quite a while now, but has
not yet been realised.
The eventual goal, of course, would be to enable workers living in really
low cost of living countries to contract into the high cost of living, high
paying US. For example, I know people who would like to work out of the
Phillipines. Alternatively, it doesn't take long to find huge listings of
eastern europeans on the net who are immensly skilled in IT and unable to
find telework.
This is something which will happen, I am quite sure. Currently there are
barriers to making this kind of employment possible, but they are by no
means insurmountable. Mostly the barriers are attitudinal; these will change
quickly as the practice of hiring pure teleworkers becomes more widespread.
It will spread initially, for many areas of IT (esp software dev), because
if you can get skilled people you will take them, however they come.
Eventually the immense financial gains to all participants will be too
obvious to disregard.
>From my own experience, there are some hefty difficulties with telework, all
communication related. You've got to be a really proactive communicator to
make it work; ideally people at both ends are! But they are surmountable,
and become increasingly so as the 'net infrastructure improves.
Mmm, topic drift. Anyway, my point is, I can get the benefits (work/money)
from here, keep the local benefits (lifestyle, less chance of getting shot),
have fun in the process. Why on earth would I want to move?
Emlyn
----- Original Message -----
From: Brian Atkins <Jutta.Stoeckel@t-online.de>
To: <extropians@extropy.org>
Sent: Saturday, July 01, 2000 8:43 AM
Subject: Why not move to the US? Re: More Green Party
> I am playing devil's advocate here... why aren't all you non-US folk
> moving here? Laying aside for the moment the INS/immigration issues-
> if you could move here, why not? Most people seem to believe that we
> have pretty much the best freedom/interesting people/cheap real estate
> in the boonies/cheap gas/etc. etc. Have you become too dependent on your
> free medical care that you are afraid you wouldn't be able to hack it
here?
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 27 2000 - 14:14:53 MDT