Which country should software engineers emigrate to?
I'm going to research everything, build a big spreadsheet, weight the various factors, etc. over the next while, so any advice that saves me time or improves the accuracy of my analysis is much appreciated. Are there any non-obvious considerations here?
There are some lists of best countries for software developers, and for expats in general. These consider things like software dev pay, cost of living, taxes, crime, happiness index, etc. Those generally recommend Western Europe, the US, Canada, Israel, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Hong Kong, Mexico, India. Other factors I'll have to consider are emigration difficulty and language barriers.
The easiest way to emigrate is to marry a local. Otherwise, emigrating to the US requires either paying $50k USD, or working in the US for several years (under a salary reduction and risk that are about as bad as paying $50k), and other countries are roughly as difficult. I'll have to research this separately for each country.
How ambitious are you? If you want to work very hard and potentially change the world, come to the US. For better or worse (probably worse), the US is basically the place where world-changing technology development happens.
If you are more interested in work/life balance, I would recommend Europe (esp. Germany), Canada, Australia or maybe NZ. In particular everyone I've talked to who knows both Australia and the US agrees that while Americans make more money, Aussies have a better lifestyle.
There are many, many things about the US that are just astonishingly broken. The immigration system is one of them. Also, there is lots of anti-immigrant turmoil going on in the US now.
This thread is for asking the rationalist community for practical advice. It's inspired by the stupid questions series, but with an explicit focus on instrumental rationality.
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(See also the Boring Advice Repository)