I found out that Alexandre Zaghetto, former professor at the Computer Science Department at UnB, Universidade (Federal) de Brasília, has resigned (the correct term for public employees governed by Law 8.112/90 is exoneration) now in April 2022. Then I found out that Zaghetto today works at Sony, in California, USA, as a researcher.
An exciting curiosity about Alexandre Zaghetto is that his Google Scholar profile lists seven patents as his most recent productions.
Taking a quick look at Zaghetto's Linkedin, you can see that he has been at Sony since 2019. Therefore, the fact that his resignation was only published now indicates that he probably requested an unpaid leave of absence for three years. He used this time to decide and decided to stay at Sony.
Why is this relevant? Well, Brazil has always suffered from brain drain in academia. Be it through people who go abroad for doctoral or post-doctoral studies and do not come back, or through people who already had jobs here in Brazil and leave for a job at some university (example: Cal Poly), research institution (for instance, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) or even a company that does research (examples: Google, Microsoft, Sony) abroad.
But is the number of people leaving increasing? I cannot say for sure. My impression and several other people's is that it is. It started growing in 2015 and got worse from 2019 to now.
At least in computing, the brain drain will increase because the gross salary of a starting professor with a Ph.D. in Brazilian public universities is around $30,000 per year. Companies that hire software development people can pay up to 130 thousand dollars per year for Brazilians living in Brazil and working remotely. If the person is willing to go and live in California, for example, the annual salary can easily reach 250 thousand dollars a year or more.
My "Brazilian Computer Science Researchers working abroad" page is at https://bit.ly/3v8di3n. If you know someone who fits one of the categories and is not listed, just make a Pull Request.
Salaries of developers working remotely https://bit.ly/3knwpjT.
An interesting observation across the tech job market:
The rise of the "top tier, remote-first, equal pay" companies.
These are ones that pay ~$140-170K/yr base for sr engineers, ~$160-240K/yr for staff, plus equity.
They are hiring away from FANG... in places like EU & India.10:38 AM - 22 Apr 2022
Jobs at Google https://careers.google.com/
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