We continue a special series of materials about the relocation of programmers from Ukraine, Belarus and Russia to other countries. Developers tell you how to find work abroad, move and adapt locally. Our sixth hero is developer Dmitry from the Ukrainian city of Zaporozhye. In 2015 he moved to the USA. I come from the Ukrainian city of Zaporozhye. I decided to become a programmer in my youth, although my father discouraged me. My parents advised me to study to become an electrician, because this profession would always come in handy. But I went to study programming at the Zaporozhye State Academy. After graduating from university, I worked in Zaporozhye for about a year, then moved to Kyiv. In Kyiv, I worked in a couple of offices, the last of which was the outsourcing company EPAM.
Moving
Several years ago, EPAM began moving its Ukrainian office to the Czech Republic. Europe didn't attract me. I thought that if I were to relocate, it would be to the United States. My priorities when choosing a country for relocation were interesting work and high salary. Why do I say that interesting work is in the USA? Yes, because all interesting projects “grow” from there. In Ukraine, 95% of IT companies are engaged in outsourcing. All well-known companies originated in the USA (Facebook, Amazon, Google). In the USA you can meet people who know and can do much more. I applied for a relocation within EPAM and interviewed for a couple of projects. Including in a financial project - I worked on a similar one before. That is, I moved to the USA, but continued to work at EPAM on a project for the Swiss bank UBS. EPAM has its own relocation team. They scheduled an interview for me at the embassy and also paid for my travel. Tickets cost around a thousand dollars for two. In the first month, they rented me a house in Jersey City - it was about 4.5 thousand dollars, and also paid for the car rental. I paid 150-200 dollars a month for parking. The entire move cost $8,000. I was also given a $10,000 loan. Without this money it would be difficult.
Documentation
Overall, the US immigration system is a bit broken. When the government introduced a visa quota, it was assumed that they wanted to import the best, but in fact they began to import the cheapest - those who were willing to work below market wages under the so-called “tacit agreement”. This agreement is that a person is relocated to the United States for a low salary, later he is given a Green Card, and then he goes “to free bread.” Every year in April, the quota for H-1B work visas opens (for example, about 65 thousand work visas per year). Outsourcing companies fill this quota literally within a week. This is mainly used by large Indian companies and much less by Ukrainian, Russian and Belarusian outsourcing companies. There is another relocation option besides the H-1B visa - internal company relocation. It is used as a loophole to bypass the H-1B visa, but it is not very beneficial for the employee. On an H-1B you can change jobs, but on an L visa you cannot. This relocation visa is used by many companies in the market. According to the conditions of work at EPAM, the issuance of a Green Card begins one year after moving. It took me about 2 years and 8 months to obtain a Green Card. After obtaining the Green Card, I quit my job because I was mentally and physically very tired by that time. I rested for a couple of months, then I looked for work on the open market.
Job change
It is quite difficult to find a job in the free market of the USA; this is not Ukraine. In Ukraine, for example, you send your resume to ten companies, at least five of them will invite you for an interview and at least two will offer you an offer. In the USA, everything is not like that: competition is quite high, here you need to have a good knowledge of computer science, algorithms, data structures, during interviews they give you tasks - you have to write a program right in the Google Doc and discuss it with the interviewee. I started solving problems before interviews. To get into a good office in the USA, you need to solve at least a hundred problems and invest several months of time. That's exactly what I did. Out of 100 resumes sent out, 5 companies invited me for an interview. As a result, I ended up in a small company that works with blockchain. I was attracted by the fact that the company's office is located in Virginia, near the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University . It's cheap to live here, far from big cities, 4 hours drive from Washington. I live in the town of Redford, the center of the region is the city of Blacksburg, a mini-financial center of this territory. I rent an entire house here for about the same price as a one-bedroom apartment in New Jersey. Everything else is cheaper here too.
Housing
We rented a house in New Jersey for $1,400. We lived in a two-story cottage - each with 4 apartments. The complex consisted of 20 houses. In Ukraine, living in a big city is cool. In the USA, everything is different: living in big cities is very, very expensive. On our first day in the US, a friend took us to Manhattan, the most expensive area of New York. I thought everything must be different there, very cool. We sat at the bar for $100, just drank beer and ate wings. Then I thought: why is it so expensive and inconvenient? Because these bars pay the lion's share of their revenue for very expensive rent. Apartments in Manhattan are small and taxes are higher. That's why wealthy Americans are moving out of town.
Salaries
I moved to the USA on a salary of 85 thousand a year. He received net income of 5.5 thousand dollars a month. I paid taxes about 12% of my income. In New Jersey, getting 5.5 thousand is less profitable than getting 3-4 thousand dollars in Kyiv. When I left EPAM, I was already earning about 100 thousand a year. Now I make 155 thousand dollars a year (10 thousand dollars a month after taxes), but we must take into account that I live in a cheap region. If you live in Silicon Valley, you need to earn about 250 thousand dollars a year, maybe more. I manage to save thanks to the fact that we have cheap housing. The living wage for our family is 3 thousand dollars.
Taxes
There are several types of taxes in the USA. There is a federal tax - it is progressive, that is, it depends on earnings. The next tax is the state tax: I pay 5%, this tax is the same for all residents of the state. Next comes the city tax system, there is a sales tax (analogous to VAT), there is a real estate tax: annually you have to pay a percentage of the market value of your home. In Virginia it is inexpensive; for a house of about 250 thousand dollars you need to pay 1.5 thousand dollars a year. At my level of earnings, I pay about 18% in taxes. If you have your own home, you will also have to pay property taxes.
Work culture
Competition in the USA is high, it is much easier to say goodbye to people at work than in Ukraine. The style of communication with employees depends on the company. If it's some old bank, there's a lot of bureaucracy. If this is a startup, then everything is very transparent. I really like the startup atmosphere. In general, Americans work more than Ukrainians. There are many people in the USA who work on weekends. Americans are more hardworking. At work here, as a rule, the people are very diverse. White Americans, Indians, African Americans. Personal space, personal qualities, and the like are respected here. For example, I remember an incident at work that would never have happened in Ukraine. A young guy was quitting his job and during a Zoom call asked for prayer about ending his job. This is quite normal here, no one said anything against it.
Communication
Communication is difficult for me personally. Lately we hardly communicate with anyone. Now the situation is complicated by quarantine. Previously, we communicated mainly with migrants from Ukraine. I have mostly Indians, Ukrainians, and Russians at work. My wife took an English course and met Mexican women there. We continue to communicate with our friends from the Ukrainian diaspora on the Internet. We have a plan to make American friends, but so far it's not going well. In general, people here are quite friendly and sociable. Once, when we were stuck in a jeep in the forest, we tried to call the rangers, they redirected us to 911. I thought it was stupid to call there about such an issue. As a result, we wrote on Facebook and American friends came and pulled us out. One American told me: “We won’t leave here until we are sure that you have left.” So the system of mutual assistance works here. This surprised me very much. By the way, an interesting fact is that the work of firefighters is fully paid for from donations. This is an example of self-organization of society. Americans as a nation are more conscientious than in our society.
Leisure
It's cheap to move around in the US, so traveling here is cool. The state has many forests and a river. I built myself a bathhouse at home. I have a sedentary job and had problems with my back, so there is a massage table in the bathhouse. I have a gym on the ground floor of my house. Living in the USA is a very good experience. It’s very convenient to live here, there are a lot of little things that you quickly get used to. You have to live in American culture, if only because it is very different from European culture.
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