Why are you still here?
This is a question that I get annoyingly often from people including my fianceé, my relatives, and many of my friends. Dido, with all of your l33t skills in programming, systems design, and all that, why are you still stuck here in the Philippines, when you could go to some other country and make loads and loads of money? When everyone else is looking for a quick way out of these cursed islands?
Well, here are my reasons, and perhaps some of these reasons may also apply to you. First of all, there's that word that everyone loves to hate: globalization. While it does have many bad effects, and these are things that should not be ignored, it isn't about to go away until the day peak oil starts making itself felt, which may be sooner than anyone thinks. In the meantime, one can take advantage of it after the manner of judo, which is why we have the emerging call center boom, and why our company's making money doing outsourcing work for American companies.
I ask myself, why the hell should I go to a place like the United States, when there are tens of thousands of out of work Americans who are probably a lot better educated than I am, who can't get jobs because all the jobs they would have gotten are going to third world countries with reasonably smart people who will work for far lower wages? Like India, and um, here... Maybe if I had been born a few years earlier it might have made sense, but with the way globalization is affecting the tech jobs market it makes a lot more sense for me to work right here, where the cost of living is so low, and get outsourcing money, which is, so far, enough to pay my bills and then some. That's the side of history I'm on, and I'd be foolish not to make the most out of it.
I once made a post on Slashdot (which I cannot find due to the fact that Slashdot's searching tool is absolutely abysmal) detailing the various expenses such as rent, food, water, and electricity as they are here in this country. Is there any place in the "developed world" where you can rent a studio-type apartment such as where I once lived with my fianceé for the equivalent of US$60 every month? Pay monthly electricity and water bills for under $10 per month? Where a simple meal can be had under $0.40? So around here, a survivable salary is the equivalent of US$150/month or thereabouts, and a comfortable salary might be US$500-$1000 or so. Such a wage would barely be considered survivable in most of the "developed" world.
Besides, I can't stand cold climates. And like I've written elsewhere, their food is terrible. :p
Well, here are my reasons, and perhaps some of these reasons may also apply to you. First of all, there's that word that everyone loves to hate: globalization. While it does have many bad effects, and these are things that should not be ignored, it isn't about to go away until the day peak oil starts making itself felt, which may be sooner than anyone thinks. In the meantime, one can take advantage of it after the manner of judo, which is why we have the emerging call center boom, and why our company's making money doing outsourcing work for American companies.
I ask myself, why the hell should I go to a place like the United States, when there are tens of thousands of out of work Americans who are probably a lot better educated than I am, who can't get jobs because all the jobs they would have gotten are going to third world countries with reasonably smart people who will work for far lower wages? Like India, and um, here... Maybe if I had been born a few years earlier it might have made sense, but with the way globalization is affecting the tech jobs market it makes a lot more sense for me to work right here, where the cost of living is so low, and get outsourcing money, which is, so far, enough to pay my bills and then some. That's the side of history I'm on, and I'd be foolish not to make the most out of it.
I once made a post on Slashdot (which I cannot find due to the fact that Slashdot's searching tool is absolutely abysmal) detailing the various expenses such as rent, food, water, and electricity as they are here in this country. Is there any place in the "developed world" where you can rent a studio-type apartment such as where I once lived with my fianceé for the equivalent of US$60 every month? Pay monthly electricity and water bills for under $10 per month? Where a simple meal can be had under $0.40? So around here, a survivable salary is the equivalent of US$150/month or thereabouts, and a comfortable salary might be US$500-$1000 or so. Such a wage would barely be considered survivable in most of the "developed" world.
Besides, I can't stand cold climates. And like I've written elsewhere, their food is terrible. :p
Labels: empire, globalization, work