by braco_alva on 1/30/22, 2:57 PM with 339 comments
by hn_throwaway_99 on 1/30/22, 9:20 PM
1. As the article points out, being in the same/similar timezones is huge. With so many folks working remotely anyway, it's much easier to integrate these developers as part of the team. They join standups, we can have easy back-and-forths in Slack, etc. The timezone difference to India makes this virtually impossible, so that if you ARE outsourcing to India the model is totally different and you have to outsource a very different type of work. Plus, since the time zones are so off, the situation sucks for everyone - someone is either staying up very late or getting up very early. These days I refuse jobs where coordination with India is required, because it's just not worth sacrificing other parts of my life for it, especially when it's easy to get a job where this is not necessary.
2. In general, I have found there to be less of a cultural issue of Latin American developers proactively speaking up and letting us know concerns/potential issues than their Indian counterparts. One of the biggest issues we had many years ago is that, while we hired developers in India that were fantastic technically, they were loath to inform us of problems or schedule slip until it was too late; in general, there was a culture of "over-deference" which proved to be extremely detrimental. If anyone has read Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers, it was very similar to what he discusses about Korean Airlines' cockpit culture.
by lxxpxlxxxx on 1/30/22, 11:28 PM
One week and one interview later I had a job (applied to like 5 companies max) making $3200/month as entry level.
To be honest I would have taken those local jobs but after such success with us companies I don't think I can afford it anymore.
Anyway If someone needs a frontend dev, just hmu, email on profile
by krasin on 1/30/22, 7:47 PM
I am saying it as someone who spent N years working for an American company from Moscow (~11 hours difference) and had to sleep in the office frequently to get at least some things done (like, code reviews approved by the team members in the main office).
by ryanSrich on 1/30/22, 9:30 PM
It’s not just contractors either. With tools like remote.com, you can hire FTEs almost anywhere.
There is no labor shortage. There’s a shortage of adaptable companies.
I’ve been preaching this for years, but the new way is here. It’s all about async, 100% remote, no HQ, no excessive hiring, no in person meetings, no or limited meetings in general. Pay your staff 20% more than what they’d normally get and they won’t complain about not having ping pong or after work bonding events. Trust me it works.
by pevey on 1/30/22, 7:54 PM
by soneca on 1/30/22, 9:21 PM
I am very far from “very money-driven”. I worked for a long time in the non-profit sector that would pay much less than mostly any of my other careers options. Then I changed to software development.
I work for an American company from Brazil. I earn 5 times more (after taxes) that what I would likely earn in a local well-paying company for my level of experience. 3 times if I was lucky and good at negotiation.
And think that is 3 times multiplication of already high-paying job. So it is a LOT of money. There is just not much a company can do around here until the demand for tech talent in the US decrease a little.
by ironmagma on 1/30/22, 8:32 PM
by kragen on 1/30/22, 9:57 PM
Governments often also see this as "pillaging", since they're answerable to powerful company founders who lose out, not the everyday people who benefit. In a lot of cases they put major roadblocks in the way of people who export technical services in this way.
For example, here in Argentina, you are required to convert your earnings immediately into pesos at the official rate, which is half the real rate. That's pillaging. In effect this is a 50% export tariff, used not to provide government services but to subsidize importation and travel abroad for rich Argentines, making most exportation wildly unprofitable; programming services have low enough costs that they can still remain afloat, at least until the programmers move abroad, but any export business with a substantial cost of sales is unviable. Bitcoin is a common way for such developers to get paid here in Argentina. I don't know about other countries.
Argentina has a strong crab-bucket or zero-sum mentality, justified by the belief that anyone who is rich got that way by screwing over other people, so as long as the government can direct attention to the exporters instead of the importers, there's strong public support for confiscatory policies like the fake exchange rate --- even when they harm the poor instead of helping them.
It's probably true that people like López Conde can get away with paying their employees 20% of the market rate as long as those employees don't speak English --- but probably not for very long. Spanish is the most-spoken second language in every state in the US, and in New Mexico where I grew up half the population speaks it.
by brandonmenc on 1/30/22, 8:05 PM
At my last company, about half of our dev team was from CR and they kicked ass. They got rid of the army in 1948 and redirected the funds into education, transforming it into a high tech hub.
by camhenlin on 1/31/22, 2:03 AM
Some anecdotal highlights:
- great time zone overlap with US business hours
- very very good English
- very strong engineers who actually take ownership of the products we’re working on
- leadership aspirations and drive - I’ve promoted a few folks to team lead positions
- shared culture that works in a similar way to US culture
by gregdoesit on 1/30/22, 7:50 PM
There’s a global talent shortage for experienced people in software engineering, and it’s spilling over everywhere.
Remote work becoming the norm thanks to the pandemic, plus the rise of services like Remote.com, Deel and similar ones is making it much easier to hire remotely in most countries - and hiring outside the US is easier and cheaper: especially when you pay above the local market (but we’ll below the US one).
I’ve been covering this trend from mid 2021 both in my newsletter (The Pragmatic Engineer) and my blog. From all evidence I gathered, we are in the most heated tech hiring market of all time, one that is hotter than during the Dotcom Boom (details in [1]).
Having talked with closer to a hundred tech hiring managers the last six months across all geographies, the consensus is that it will get worse in Q1 2022 than before - and, obviously, this means better for many experienced engineers. And H2 2021 was hot enough with out-of-cycle compensation increases of 5-30% on top of annual raises at many tech companies, across all geographies [2].
[1] https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/advice-for-tech-workers-t...
[2] https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/more-follow-up-hi...
by obblekk on 1/30/22, 8:59 PM
On the one hand, American workers now have the ability to work for more companies, including outside the US. On the other hand, there are a lot more people outside than inside, and far fewer large firms outside than inside, so off-shoring could be net negative for American workers.
I wonder if we're about to see protectionism expand from blue collar politics into white collar politics.
by jviotti on 1/30/22, 8:58 PM
I was born and raised in Argentina, but studied and worked abroad (UK) and never was in the Latin American market. As an Engineering Lead at a London-based startup, I interviewed tons of software engineers who were applying remotely from all over South America and Central America. However, we didn't hire more than a bunch of Latin American engineers compared to dozens of Europeans and North Americans. The skill gap was pretty noticeable.
I've observed similar things with friends/family in South America which are into engineering. They find it very hard to be qualified enough to get offers from remote companies/startups.
by novok on 1/30/22, 8:08 PM
I've even done several hiring intensives for people from there 3 or 4 years ago.
by tbrock on 1/30/22, 11:21 PM
by i_like_waiting on 1/30/22, 10:11 PM
I wanted to rescind the offer, but my manager told me to give her chance, because of the market (lets see how she will do for first month).
I already received 2x base offer elsewhere as well, I will probably reject it, as I think I can get even more.
by nestorD on 1/30/22, 8:04 PM
That illustrates one of the few good traits of capitalism: discrimination pushing you to miss on good candidates (women, people of color, LGBTQ+ people, etc) is a drop in profit that can be exploited by other companies and that, thus, should disapear with time (at least in theory, in practice not all companies act as rational capitalists...).
by vmception on 1/30/22, 7:53 PM
They’re* only a little more expensive than India/Eastern Europe. There are enough good developers that speak English good or well enough, but the likelihood of being able to communicate nuanced topics or revisions is the same as anywhere, including US.
(*I literally don’t know which South American countries are committing code, just the hourly rate the firm passes to me)
by kache_ on 1/30/22, 9:23 PM
by 1270018080 on 1/30/22, 8:24 PM
In the short term, we're having a fun little arbitrage event by working remotely with the top salaries, but why would that continue to last in 5+ year timeframes? Of course if you like in person work it won't be an issue, but I don't plan on being in an office for the rest of my life.
by bkovacev on 1/30/22, 8:19 PM
by atleta on 1/31/22, 2:34 AM
So I've been thinking for a while that it's actually a pretty bad situation for local companies who want to develop either custom software (internal or a product) or the ones that have local clients and try to hire local talent. They are, in part, competing with US and Western European companies. And while 10 or even 5 years ago I didn't know to many people who did this, it has accelerated quite a bit.
I'm running a largish (~15k people) job board group on Facebook and I saw the pretty rapid raise in the salaries offered to people. Also, the increase that one can expect in the first 5 years is pretty steep, 200-300%. Meaning that the average senior level salary offers are about 2-3x as high as the entry level ones. (And senior apparently means 5 years in this context.) I'm not sure about the US situation (especially not the entry level salaries), but it seems that at least in part it's about the fact that as a senior you can find a remote job pretty easily.
by pibefision on 1/30/22, 7:59 PM
by tootie on 1/30/22, 8:13 PM
by myth2018 on 1/30/22, 9:59 PM
by Zaskoda on 1/30/22, 8:52 PM
by nerdponx on 1/30/22, 11:58 PM
And white-collar Americans in tech will finally get to suffer along with the rest of the country as the American system of "spend more for a worse life". It shouldn't be so hard to keep a basic middle-class lifestyle, with historically low inflation, but it is.
by TheBozzCL on 1/31/22, 1:06 AM
In my country, the retail industry dreads Amazon's looming expansion. They've started hiring ex-Amazonians to try to catch up. I wonder if they've raised the salaries to match.
by throwmeaway666 on 1/30/22, 11:35 PM
Wow, that's crazy. As a (senior?) software engineer based in Chile who was recently hired by an American company for around $3.5k/mo (that was my offer) I am now feeling underpaid. :)
Assuming that this information is correct, I am now wondering how much I could get away with next time around...
by mcntsh on 1/31/22, 7:15 AM
Honestly, this should concern everyone who lives in the US. I remember the big push for remote work being the "new normal" and thinking how this would bite people who live in more expensive areas. Well... here you go.
by felistoria on 1/31/22, 6:32 AM
by planetsprite on 1/31/22, 1:35 AM
by yftsui on 1/30/22, 9:12 PM
Interesting decision on remove “pillaging” from title.
by badrabbit on 1/30/22, 8:53 PM
by VectorLock on 1/30/22, 8:15 PM
by hammock on 1/30/22, 8:25 PM
by pulketo on 1/31/22, 2:31 AM
by 99_00 on 1/30/22, 8:01 PM
Even within a culture there are people who don't fit into the dominant cultural values and way of working. A big part of diversity and inclusion is addressing that.
This becomes an even bigger problem when dealing with other cultures.
And you might find that other cultures don't value diversity and inclusion as much as n American corporate culture and really look down on the way others do things and see there way as the right way.