Same words are said by hotel owners unable to find eg. cleaning ladies for hotels over here in my small country.... touristy area (=very few locals), relatively far away from larger towns with more local population, everything is expensive there (eg. lunch and parking), and they offer minimum wage and then complain.

For minimum wage you can work in your home town, basically anywhere.. if you expect someone to spend 45minutes each direction on a bus for you and pack tupperware lunch, because there are no cheap "daily meal" restaurants around, you'll have to pay more... but hey, our government does the same, and there are always poorer countries with very desparate people.

The same applies to every other job, but you seem to not pay enough to even get someone good from poorer countries.

Just pay more, and you'll get good people, from your town even, not just across the whole country.

This might sound controversial but an office job at Microsoft is a teensy-bit more desirable to a citizen than a job cleaning motels.

Microsoft pays new grad SWEs close to a quarter million dollars. Plenty of citizens would gladly take that money if they could land the job.

Sure, but op wants 'good', how much are those people paid?

Also, how much does rent in a 20-minute-drive circle around microsoft cost? And proper health insurance?

I live in a small european country and i know quite a few people who went this route (usually it's google), and after two-three years of burnout, those people come back, because while earning less in numbers over here, they can get a normal 8 hour job (no overtime, no weekends), proper time off (25, 30 days per year, unlimited sick days of course), and still save enough that even if the social pension system fails, they'll have enough to live comfortably.

>And proper health insurance?

You think Microsoft doesn't pay for "proper health insurance" for their workers?

It's 100x better than the failing public system I have in my rich EU country.

>and still save enough that even if the social pension system fails

In which country is that so? 40h is more or less standard for full-time everywhere I've been so far in white collar careers.

> Sure, but op wants 'good', how much are those people paid?

You're proving my point. Paying more, beyond a certain point, doesn't increase the supply of "good" people. It just moves them around. After that the work starts going to overseas offices.

> I live in a small european country and i know quite a few people who went this route (usually it's google), and after two-three years of burnout, those people come back

Usually with several hundred thousand dollars in the bank. Financially they're at least 10 years ahead of their peers who stayed home. And that's after paying the higher rents and health insurance in the US.

Not close to that much left over, a lot of money is spent in USA, you're in a foreign country and you spend money on tourisy stuff, plus you're usually "alone" there, and spend more in bars, restaurants, etc.... many came home with very little left over (except a nice line in their CV).

You're paid good money here for 37.5 hours per week, for ~10 months per year, sure the net number is higher in US, but calculating what's left over per hour of work is not that much in favour of US, especially considering what you can buy with that. One of the friends who worked there (google in sf) spent over 80hours per week in office, something like that is not just unheard over here, but also illegal. He was basically working two jobs there while being paid for one.

And yes, of course at some point (when you earn enough to live comfortably) your priorities become free time and other things, but again, that means that the company needs to pay more, to get another person to split the work. That's why everyone who did that says that the experience was great but that it's not worth it, neither financially nor health-wise.

>You're paid good money here for 37.5 hours per week

In which country? I'm also in Europe, but never seen such low working hours. Maybe some nordic country?

I'm interviewing for a major french company now and their work week is still 40h and money isn't amazing at all.

So can you share this utopia where I can make great money for 37,5h/week?