Maynard Handley (name99.delete@this.name99.org) on August 18, 2014 1:36 pm wrote:
> People are not QUITE as mobile as you imagine.

Premise: I've worked in three different countries, in one occasion I moved to a country whose language was totally unknown to me (the Netherlands) because I was offered a much better contract than what I used to have. I've spent enough time in Taiwan and the US working with people on both places to have a rough idea of what are the relative conditions there so I'm talking out of personal experience.

> One problem is language. If you're not comfortable with English (beyond the ability to puzzle
> through the details of a technical paper) it's going to take a lot of money to convince you
> to give up the comfort of being surrounded by people who talk, write, and think like you.
> Even more so if your wife does not speak English, or your kids speak it poorly.

If you've got good skills in some area of the high-tech business chances are you know at least some measure of English. Family is a more complicated matter obviously but I've seen people relocate with their family if the offer was good enough. That being said I find the original argument ludicrous even in spite of this because as I said Intel already has a significant workforce in Taiwan and nothing prevents them from hiring more people there if they really cannot get them to move.

> Can only imagine how much worse the process is for foreigners.

I came multiple times to the US without running into this kind of issue but I know at least one horror story of a colleague - on a regular business trip - whose French-infused English put him in a lot of trouble when he gave an answer to an immigration officer which he thought would be negative but in fact sounded as a positive answer in English.