Hey, hey, people. Just wanted to share my story, maybe you'll find it interesting. Kinda trying to reflect on my past, think about what should come next, what should I focus on. TC $72K, not paying any taxes at the moment, just SWIFT fees. Before I started working I thought $500 a month would be enough for me: anime is free on torrents, guitar pedals/cabs/sims emulation is good enough, and video games are cheap. But then I moved to Moscow xD 2013: When I just started as PHP dev I had $8K TC. Moscow, $200 for a bed space in a 1-room apartment with 2 other guys. 2015: Created account on oDesk (Upwork) and doubled my salary. Moscow sub-urb, $350 for shitty 1-room apartment. 2015: Got a client paying me $500 a week, met a girlfriend online, paid for her airplane tickets, started living together. Same Moscow sub-urb, $350/1-room apartment 2017: Finally managed to level up my English interviewing skills, got real job as contractor, 30K GBP TC (company from UK), Moscow, same shit $350/1-room apt. 2018: Got fired because GDPR happened and they had to close contract due to absence of EU work permit for me. $0 TC for 6 months, $350/1-room apt. 2018: Decided to find a Ruby job, since I love it so much. Wasn't able to get English-speaking employment and got myself into sub-contracting, working for SF startup. $24K TC, same $350/1-room apt. 2019: Moved to $400/2-room apt. Started cheating on my hours to bill more than 160 hours a month to get at least $30K TC, since manager refused to raise my salary. 2020: Startup I was employed for by a sub-contract sold off to Amazon, everyone released, lost my job. 2021: Unemployed for 6 months again, coping after burnout due to business sellout: all my hard work was gone as if it didn't happen. 2021: Developed some K8s + CI/CD skills while coping, got lucky with employment through LinkedIn, $48K TC 2021: Released after 6 months doing almost nothing, still got extra month of salary. Feeling guilty I wasn't able to work properly. Plus we had to move closer to Moscow, $500/2-room apt. 2021: Got offer for $72K TC 3 weeks after losing job, market was pretty hot. 2022: Had to spend almost all my savings ($8K) to move to Armenia due to war in Russia. Rent raised to $850/1-room apt (many people moved to a small city, exploding housing prices). Got married after 8 years of living together. 2023: Armenia currency became strong, rent increased to almost $1000/mo for 1-room apt. Trying to accumulate at least $10K for moving to Poland. It's hard. But doable. Trying to do LC (with very little success). Mad at myself I haven't relocated sooner: I always wanted to but didn't had enough money. Groceries are 30-50% more expensive here. My PC died, had to spend $2500 to order CPU+RAM+Motherboard+PSU from Amazon. Got scammed by freight forwarding company / Amazon. Expenses, expenses. My $72K TC feels like $30K. 10 YOE. Back in 2019 I went to Estonia for Amazon Hiring event. Failed interview at "Roman to Integer" (easy if you seen solution at least once) but passed every other interview. The other guy had 700LC but failed at OOP interview! He joined Facebook back in 2020 though. I lost his contact :/ I'm happy with my current team in Stash: good WLB, OK salary (for Armenia). Learned quite a lot from co-workers, feel I can pass system design interviews with a bit of prep now. The problem is working through consultancy which sucks: salary could have been 30-50% more, ability to move to US, and so on. Anyway, hoping to get into big tech next year and get that H-1B/L1 visa :pray: And hopefully relocate to EU this year, then I can start focusing on LC. There's Amazon and Google in Poland. Many other companies in EU. I believe I can get in eventually. Relocation process takes away a lot of time, blood, and money. There's no one to support us: I'm an orphan since 2013, wife's only family is mother that we send money to on birthdays. My significant other is NEET. But I like challenging environments — it keeps my brain amused. Without challenge I find myself letargic, procrastinating. For relocation support we got $2K compensation from consulting company I work at. Tickets to Yerevan and 1 month housing/utilities, that's it. Sent all our IKEA furniture to wife's mom (nobody else wanted it), all our stuff (figures, hardware, books, games, plush friends) is rotting at a warehouse in Moscow for $60/month. Managed to send only necessary things: PCs, peripherals, robot vacuum, projector, two guitars — most expensive things I ever owned. One thing I'm proud of is that I never returned to office since I signed up on Upwork. Couldn't stand commuting for 3+ hours a day. If you read everything, thanks. I have no one to share it with except my younger brother, and he's already sick of it. #misc #relocation #mentalhealth #tc #consulting
I have a friend in Ukraine I'm helping. He has a very similar story to you would love to talk to you about it if interested. He is more of a hardware genius (builds drones) and we plan to do a start up hopefully... if I get get him out of Ukriane. He is also trying to get to Poland.
I've been helping my friend financially in Ukraine even before "special operation" started as well. She's doing okay at the moment, staying with the family. I never seen her in real life though but we've been good remote friends for around 9 years now. Would be nice to meet her on some occasion!
Glad you’re making a decent go of it. You should have gone to Poland to begin with. Hope things work out.
Thanks, I would really love to focus my energy on helping other people: be it developing software, giving out donations, volunteering, creating workplaces, but need to get at least myself and my significant other into a better place to live. And after that I'm hoping it would be much easier for me to do so.
You said you are from a 3rd world country. Based on the definition- Russia is not in that category. Unless you are from another country and moved to Moscow
Yeah I couldn't find any better term. To me it would mean that the country is a poor place to live in: given current authoritarian regime, lack of industrial development (most budget is made by exporting raw resources), increasingly shrinking allied countries, low quality of life standards. It's a developing country, for sure. The one that haven't grown economically since 2008 because of government, and thrown back all the way to 1980 because of the war.
Interesting- during the Cold War and even after Russia was seen as industrially developed.
Hey bro, it’s your younger brother. Came here to escape from you and you follow me here as well 😤
Your English is too good to be true 😤 My bro have like A1 or A2 at most.
Where are you from? Seems like from one of exSoviet union countries or Russia itself.
I'm from Volgograd (some people might know it by old name Stalingrad). Been living there for 22 years before the move.
Are there museums there? Did you ever go out to the battle fields and look for German stuff? I think it would be so interesting to visit that city.
Удачи 🤞
If you didn’t love Putin so much, you would have gotten H1B in 2015, green card in 2018 and became US citizen this year.
Back in 2015 my net worth was about $2000 and I didn't even knew about leetcode! Hell, it didn't even exist before 2015! My mindset from 2013 was simply to carry on living without any external support: I had no parents to support me, no friends except two from school time, and there were nobody that could even tell me you can get H-1B and travel to USA just by interviewing. I think my skillset wasn't any better than any US/EU student, so why would anyone want to hire me and pay for expensive relocation? I went abroad 2019 first time ever. Didn't know anything about getting visas and so on: Amazon paid me tickets, hotel reservation, visa cost, guided what I need to do, and even that was still very scary to me. Before that it looked like an impossible task: you need money, English skills, knowledge which countries can give you visa, etc. And I was only interested in getting a girlfriend because I had a fear of dying alone xD I think I've discovered that you can get to FAANG just by farming leetcode somewhere around 2018. When Amazon finally reached out to me I started shitting bricks all over the place: "Wow I was contacted by a FAANG recruiter first time ever!". And only after that I started digging into H-1B process, which skills you actually need to develop and so on. If I knew about it 8 years ago... sure, I'd be already a US citizen by now. I'm only blaming myself though, I was so preoccupied with my hobbies and living peacefully I haven't even paid attention to politics. And russian media actually encouraged this behavior: "your voice on elections wouldn't matter: it would be Putin anyway". I started paying attention to him only when it was 2020, when it was already obvious he's dragging the country down, and then I learned about actual opposition and their ideas. But it was too late for me to change anything: people were already scared to protest publicly, myself included. So, yeah, I'm guilty by not voting all these years, and if I only could see what is going to happen to the country I'd have left it right after getting my IT diploma.
Not the say that your life is easy but for indians the GC wait time is 20+ years. However you are Russian you will get in a few years. I strongly recommend doing it
Russia is not a third world country
Keep up the good work! It's always heartwarming to read stories like this
I will finish reading your book by next weekend
No problem, mate! Actually, I've been thinking for a while if I should start a blog xD My brain always have been generating a lot of thoughts around IT, video games, music, Universe, consciousness, space, people interactions, futurism and so on.