[golergka]

A couple of friends of mine worked as hardware engineers in Russian military (or, to be exact, some subsidiary). They later moved on to Intel and Nvidia, and overall you can consider them quite capable CPU engineers (I never got the hang of what exactly they were doing, and a lot of it was under NDA).

While working there, they got less than $10k annually. If they would be able to get H1B, it's my understanding they'd get at least $100k.

While a lot of folks move to commercial sector and other countries, there a lot of people staying there, despite low salaries. Doing essentially the same job that their counterparts in US are doing, quite often for 10 times less money.

[jotm]

Expenses are also lower, right? Basics like housing, food, utilities. Even in the west few actually need the bloated budgets they say they do. "Oh I can't live on 60K/year!". Give me a break.

[golergka]

Depends on the quality of life you're aiming at. Rent is certainly cheaper than in SF, NY and London, but isn't that far off from other american and european cities. Still, you can't compare even rents easily, because while european and american renters usually talk about one-bedroom apartments and sometimes don't even mention a common room, here apartments are measured in rooms (not bedrooms) and in my experience are usually smaller. Personally, I pay about $1k for one-room apartment, but it's 15 minutes walking distance from the office, in a very nice neighborhood, furniture and a view; typical rate would be $500 per month or so.