Sorry for making a big text and sorry for my English. Cheers to you even if you're not reading it.
Very Slight TW
I'll talk about compulsive scratching of some wounds/bruises I have
I'm a Brazilian from a big city, and I was accustomed to the Brazilian way of life. I recently went to the US to visit family and the sheer difference in purchasing power, quality of life, the humongous disparity between the US and Brazil are killing me. The US middle class is better off than the BR upper class by a big margin. I'm currently studying computer science in university, and my goal is to leave BR for somewhere ""better"" (take better with heavy quotes). Thing is, in BR there's basically no university-grade job in my field and there's basically almost no way of getting out if you don't have experience in the field like me.
Recently, about 2 months ago, I've stopped taking my (light) anxiety meds because they're expensive. My parents (I'm 20) can buy it no problem but my expenses weigh on me so much I just stopped it. I started to itch some tiny wounds in my legs and they got rather ugly, which is not as bad as an infection or something.
I was always worried about getting out of BR because I wanted a good professional life in which I could actually use the skills I got from uni, but in Brazil there's basically nothing besides making websites and bugfixing banking software. I want to make graphics drivers, motherboard firmware, work with free and open source software, but there's nothing here. And with nothing here, how do I get an opening to move to another country like Germany or the US? (countries I have family living in)
Seeing NYC compared to São Paulo, seeing the standards of living in person is driving me nuts. I'll live a comparably miserable life, with a miserable job, with mental health issues, and I'll never start a revolution. I'm giving up.
Do you have any words of advice for a young comrade? Thank you for reading thus far and sorry for being so incoherent.
Cheers from Delaware (and from São Paulo)
As a fellow Brazilian. Learn mandarin. https://youtu.be/e-UJq_zO7cY?t=25m33s I learned English 20 years ago for no reason in specific and it turned out to be really useful. I'm now learning mandarin and I think it's a good approach to making a living in the medium term future.
As a fellow software engineer with 20 years of experience, working at an English speaking country. There's nothing wrong with making a living fixing bugs in bank software, if that's what you have to do. There's a lot to be learned from veterans in the industry, and how to work as part of a team. That's useful later when you decide to organise something yourself. But also, do work on side projects so that you can tune your brain on something else when you're outside of work hours. Then you can explore your actual interests, including graphics drivers, firmware and FOSS.
The standards of living for skilled work are similar, if not better in Brazil, dollar for dollar. It's really hard to compare, because of so many factors. But remember, big part of that difference is the US Dollar commercial/colonial dominance over Brazil, and the world. Technology items are supposed to be a luxury item out of the capitalist core. It would probably be useful to list down objectively what you see in the US, and then list things you'd miss from São Paulo, and region.
To be honest, if I went back to Brazil, I'd move to a smaller, poorer city, northeast, something. Somewhere I could contribute with the community and not live under the work rhythm of a big city.
I also, agree with another response that the perspective of a tourist and a person with a work routine is also much different, so, be careful with that bias as well.