Came here with very similar stories in mind. I knew multiple graduate students from Asian countries who would've loved to find work in the USA, but they were not given nearly enough time to search, nor were they comfortable with the uncertainty and current admin's hostility to foreigners. Around half of these students quickly found jobs back home after months of failed searching here.

We are doing real harm to our aging economy by not facilitating these bright young minds to stay here.

Except the article doesn't say anything about visas or better salaries back home. Its whole slant is that apparently Chinese graduates are moving away from Silicon Valley because those darn US labor laws mean they can't work nine hours a day, six days a week, for lower wages.

The article is such a pathetically transparent piece of anti-labor rights astro-turfing: China is going to out-compete the US unless US workers can be forced to accept equally shitty working conditions, that I cannot believe Hacker News is taking it seriously.

The article does discuss increasing salaries in China.

The issue with the pace of development bring quicker doesn't just come down to labor rights. Shenzhen is the world's biggest electronics manufacturing hub, so it can be easier to iterate quickly with manufacturers there. The article does indeed interview someone who complains about Americans supposedly not working long enough hours, but that's actually a pretty widespread view in China about Westerners.

I'm sure it's a very widespread view, amongst "entrepreneurs" benefitting from a ready mass of overworked and under-compensated workers, and workers one generation past poverty who have been culturally indoctrinated with a belief that accepting extreme workloads is a sign of virtue. That doesn't excuse it being uncritically repeated by others rather than treated as the toxic and exploitative sentiment that it is.

Remote work will take it even further with remote salaries exploding. Being underdog in expensive 1st world country vs living like a king while telecommuting from mother's country - no brainer. And human rights become a minority problem. Harsh but real.

Any pro tips to go remote?

What imhoguy said, with particular emphasis on networking. Once you go remote it's hard to stay remote -- networking and having contacts is a must.

The take away from the networking thing is Trust. You need to be able to demonstrate you can be trusted, that you're not secretly a bunch of kids in a trenchcoat or a fake, Western-sounding name that's a front end for a few Vietnamese kids putting out shit-tier code.

Go abroad, build street cred and network, go back, keep in touch with people.