"Try in three years." A manager moved to the USA with his Belarusian office after 2020. He doesn't recommend doing it (for now)

A product manager who’s been living with his family in the US for several years shares his experience.

Job market: «Several of my friends have been unemployed for months»

«I’ve been in IT for over 15 years. I started as a business analyst and worked in various positions with different technologies across multiple business domains. Even before the pandemic, I joined an American company in Belarus. In 2020-2021, an opportunity to relocate arose.»

I work as a Product Manager at the same company in the same position in the US. But many of my acquaintances and my wife have been looking for jobs here, so I understand how the American job search process works. It’s difficult. It was probably easier before, but we arrived during a challenging period. After the pandemic, there were mass layoffs at Google, Amazon, and Facebook. When the new administration came to the White House—more mass layoffs.

I wouldn’t say there are too many programmers in the US. The IT industry here is mainly consulting and development management—Project and Product Management. In the last couple of years, for some reason, everyone seems to need specialists with AI knowledge and experience working with models.

Working culture: «In 20 years you’ll be over 60 too, but no one will fire you for it»

American companies are diverse. For example, there are many people from India here. In some companies, Holi (Hindu spring festival) is celebrated more actively than Easter.

One of the main differences: in Belarus, it was difficult to find someone over 60 who was reasonably tech-savvy. Here, I work with people approaching 70 who work wonderfully with all applications and tools.

Another difference in work culture: in Belarus, everything was calm. If you were experienced, even during probation you weren’t worried: once you got the job, even if something extraordinary happened, nobody would fire you. That’s not the case here. In the US, everything happens so fast! They can literally tell you in the morning that today is your last working day. Locals somehow live with this; nobody gets nervous about it. It is what it is.

The same goes for being on the bench. In Belarus, sitting on the bench was bad, but not critical.

From a professional perspective, I stopped developing at some point in Belarus. I hit the ceiling. And my salary hadn’t increased in the last four years. Here, there are no boundaries for professional development. You just take a step sideways. It’s easy here.

In Belarus—at the companies where I worked—professional development courses were often mandatory. If it was in your individual development plan, you had to do it. Here, everything is optional. You can just sit and do your job quietly. If you do it well, everything will be fine.

All this is more developed in larger cities like San Francisco and New York. We live in Atlanta (the capital of the southern state of Georgia with a population of about 0.5 million within city limits and more than 6 million in the metropolitan area). Everything is more relaxed and calm here. But it still exists. Compared to Minsk, life is bustling.

But overall, it’s pretty much the same.

Income and expenses: «Buying property in the US is not recommended right now»

IT salaries start from about $70,000 per year. I can’t tell you the maximum. There are legends about developers at Instagram or Facebook earning nearly a million a year. Quite possible.

About a third of this money goes to taxes.

Apartments are expensive. On average, a two-bedroom apartment in Atlanta costs around $3,000 per month, plus utilities and various fees. For example, in a residential complex where I once lived, there was a «convenience fee» of $65 per month just for requiring residents to check water and electricity readings in a special app. Really!

In total, in a city like Atlanta, such housing costs $3,400-3,500 per month. A one-bedroom apartment isn’t much cheaper, maybe $2,500 for rent, and with utilities and everything else—$3,000. A studio is only slightly cheaper, perhaps $500 less. Everything is quite expensive.

We have one acquaintance who managed to save the necessary amount over nine years and bought a house without any loans. But he’s the only one.

After the pandemic, real estate prices roughly doubled. Both property values and rental prices increased. For example, the house I’m currently paying $2,500 for was rented out for $1,270 in 2019-2021.

Plus, mortgage interest rates have increased. They say it can be 6-7 percent. For America, that’s quite high; a few years ago, it was 2-3 percent.

But food here is cheap. After we moved, I visited Belarus once. I went to a café on Karl Marx Street and was surprised by how expensive it was. Here, I can feed my family (of three) for about $20-25 [at a similar place].

Grocery stores vary. There are chains that position themselves as sellers of natural products—they’re expensive. There’s Walmart, something like a maxed-out «Euroopt»—everything’s very cheap. And there’s something in-between, like the Belarusian Green chain.

Clothing is cheap. Some household goods are extremely cheap. Many owners give away good things completely free. You can buy a great children’s slide with swings and climbing elements for $1,500 and put it in your yard. Or you can take a similar used one for absolutely free.

With an average salary of $100,000+, you can afford to travel with your family at least twice a year. Plus two or three weekend trips. We’ve also managed to send my wife and daughter to Belarus several times, and I even went once.

There’s a nuance here. In the US, prices for hotels and Airbnbs depend heavily on school vacation periods. So if you have school-age children, be prepared to pay twice as much for accommodation. But if your kids are preschoolers—you can save a lot.

Savings: «In Belarus we lived paycheck to paycheck, now we’re able to save something»

You can save about three thousand dollars a month [from an average lead’s salary]. But there’s a catch. If you want to stay in the US for the long term and think about the future, some money goes toward retirement.

There’s also a special type of health savings account. It makes sense to accumulate a large sum there because health issues may arise with age, and here in America, medicine is very expensive. Some of that hypothetical three thousand dollars goes there. Using money from such an account for non-medical expenses incurs steep penalties.

But if both spouses work, you can save more.

In our family, the financial situation is better now than it was in Belarus. There, we were really living paycheck to paycheck toward the end. Now we’re able to save something. Of course, not those hypothetical three thousand a month. But I’m trying.

Healthcare: «It’s expensive»

Healthcare in the US is expensive. A nine-year-old child of our acquaintances had appendicitis. As everywhere, there are good doctors and not-so-good ones. They were immediately unlucky—the doctor wasn’t very good. Knock on wood, the child recovered in the end. They were billed just over $100,000 for two surgeries (despite the first doctor not being very good, they still counted the operation) and, I think, five days in the hospital. But they had very good insurance that covered almost everything. They only paid about $9,000 themselves.

Implants and braces are also very expensive here. These can easily cost $10,000-20,000. So if you have small children, it’s recommended to set up health savings accounts for them too. When they grow up, you’ll need something to pay for their dental care.

However, getting a filling might be even cheaper than in Belarus, where I was quoted $500-600 for two or three large fillings with root canal treatment. I declined, waited a bit, came here, and got it treated for free (using my health savings account).

Trump. «We might need to relocate again»

Immigration is complicated. Since about 2023, delays have started occurring at all stages of document processing. The system was already complex and multi-layered.

The US is still the most developed economy on the planet. It’s a saturated market where everything exists. Theoretically, absolutely anyone with any skill set can find their place here. If your primary skill is, for example, Delphi—you can find a job here because there are many businesses that still use legacy code.