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One of his ex-staff was poached by a firm in New Jersey last November and was begging to come back to work for them in Manila last January. Basically, here's what happened to his staff:
- He was promised an $80k salary but on arrival found that this would only be paid if he was placed in a client.
- Otherwise, on the bench, he had to survive on $20 a day.
- Sharing a 2 bedroom apartment with 5 other Indians - in a dangerous, ghetto neighborhood.
Cary is based in the U.S. now and believes that the average Filipino IT worker doesn't understand the deteriorating reality of surviving in the US on even $80k a year. Perhaps it would be useful for them to know major expenses such as healthcare.
- Healthcare costs – a family of 4 with employer-provided health insurance can factor an annual spend of around $6,000 - $10,000 a year on basic healthcare needs due to (i) employee premium contributions (ii) co-pays and deductibles (iii) out-of-plan coverage and pre-existing conditions and (iv) insanely inflated medication costs.
- WITHOUT health insurance (cost = $7k per year) – you are literally gambling with your life and/or your kid’s lives.
- Education costs - Most middle class families send their kids to private education from 4yrs up at $10k a year – otherwise it's the public schools that has its own set of risks and challenges.
If an IT professional can make 90k + in Manila, they’d be mad to go to the US. But who can pay that much?
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Perhaps in our desire to have better lives, the immediate option is to get out of the country with the least difficult route as possible. As a result, some Filipinos have taken on job offers without going through the normal due process.
Time and again, we've seen that majority of those who encountered problems are the ones who didn't go through proper process.
