[HN Gopher] U.S. companies are hiring Latin America's tech talent ___________________________________________________________________ U.S. companies are hiring Latin America's tech talent Author : braco_alva Score : 135 points Date : 2022-01-30 14:57 UTC (8 hours ago) (HTM) web link (restofworld.org) (TXT) w3m dump (restofworld.org) | i_like_waiting wrote: | Market is stupid crazy right now. My coworkers are leaving | because of 2x base offers, we did hiring recently, shortly after | we sent an offer we noticed that CV is probably totally made up | (inconsistent with Linkedin completely - different companies, | different time periods) So instead of 4YoE we are getting 1YoE. | | 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. | ddorian43 wrote: | Please describe numbers. Your "2x base offer" can still | probably be very small. Example: is 2x +140K ? | krasin wrote: | I am surprised that it took so long to realize that hiring people | in the same time zone is better for productivity. | | 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). | jorblumesea wrote: | Language/education/infrastructure barrier in Latin America, for | _some_ countries at least. Situation is improving as of late | but a large skill gap both in terms of education and foreign | lang skills (English). Hiring in India was painful for some | reasons, but everyone spoke English and education was top level | due to intense competition. | | Most of Latin America is only roughly overlapping with US | timezones. The western most countries (Ecuador for example) are | basically EST time, but Brazil is closer to GMT. | krasin wrote: | I have a first hand experience working with a great team at | Trinidad and Tobago. Maybe we got lucky in finding them, but | I've got an impression that good universities exist and | therefore there's a steady supply of capable new grads. | | As for timezone, Trinidad and Tobago is EST+1, Lima (Peru) is | EST, and Brazil is EST+2. That gives much more workday | overlap than even Western Europe. | jorblumesea wrote: | Overall, Latin America has way less STEM graduates per | capita than they need and is absolutely unable to fill the | demand. Some countries might fare better than others but | the trend is overall that most companies will end up | competing for the few graduates that do exist. The article | also pointed this out. | | https://tcdata360.worldbank.org/indicators/h77528693?countr | y... | | Many tech companies are West coast so you're +5 hours and | then...why not Europe? | novok wrote: | We have been trying for years actually, there just isn't that | many to hire as the article said :( There is a reason why all | tech worker offices seem to be from east/west europe, china, | india, USA and canada. Oracle has had offices in mexico for | quite a while for example. | gregdoesit wrote: | It's not just Latin America. It's also Canada, most of Europe, | it's India, Asia, and I'm hearing Africa also experiencing a | similar pull. | | 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... | devwastaken wrote: | This is exactly what university students in the U.S. and abroad | have been faced with. Most engineers with a paycheck simply | don't get the problem. Competition is _higher_ now than ever | for entry, companies do not want to hire graduates, they do not | want to invest resources into them. They want the maximum | amount of short term profit possible. Build things fast, sell | them, next project. We are racing to the bottom and the natural | result is the U.S 's software dominance will be gone sooner | than later. Just like manufacturing we are seeing an | exportation of work en mass. | holoduke wrote: | I dont agree with your rather pesimistic view on the matter. | I know many companies having fresh new graduates in their | hire strategy because that just works in the long rong. | Proven fact. Also most companies have smart people not | shortsighted and they come up with proper long term | strategies. There might be foolish companies as you describe | but not the majority. | jorblumesea wrote: | We're not really exporting work as much as hiring people to | come over here. Or, it's not as clear cut as just exporting | manufacturing. | raz32dust wrote: | This is not true. I work in a FAANG-like company. Talent | shortage is real - we are having to hire entry level grads | where we originally wanted experienced candidates. We are | even going out of the way to hire candidates from non- | traditional backgrounds and train them. | giantg2 wrote: | Maybe your company is the exception. | | The fact that there is a talent shortage seems to point to | a long-term issue regarding barriers to entry across the | industry. | colmvp wrote: | That's news to me. | | In December, I applied to a number of blue chip companies | for frontend positions and only got callbacks to three of | them despite a lot of work experience writing JS for real | applications including a YC company. Some YC companies also | said to me they wanted someone more experienced in | Vue/React instead of potentially allowing me time and space | to ramp up my knowledge of it. So clearly there were other | applicants who had both a lot of work experience AND the | precise tech knowledge they needed, so they didn't have to | take a risk on someone who didn't perfectly fit the | position. | | I eventually landed a dream position, but a huge reason why | they looked at my application in the first place was | because I knew of a long time employee. Obviously I had to | pass the technical and behavior interviews, but they had a | deluge of applicants and my application would've been lost | to the ether had it not been for that connection. | dvtrn wrote: | _They want the maximum amount of short term profit possible. | Build things fast, sell them, next project._ | | Not a graduate but instead an industry veteran. If what you | say is accurate then Im happy to have my bias of "maybe it's | time I go the mercenary route" confirmed. | | Surely the market is there, right? | thaumaturgy wrote: | Universities aren't reliably producing CS graduates that can | code. | | If a student enters a collegiate program with some interest | or experience in programming, then they're likely to come out | of it with solid skills and find some opportunities. If an | employer has the resources to select from the best that | universities have to offer, then they can find great | candidates. | | But for us that aren't working for FAANG, a university degree | doesn't really tell us much, and certainly tells us a lot | less than a portfolio of projects or work experience. | | This is still fundamentally a hiring problem. There's no way | to sort candidates by skill that doesn't involve a ton of | labor. A CS degree sure ain't it. | dcposch wrote: | I've interviewed a lot of software engineer candidates. | It's always surprising how often people with impressive | resumes, including computer science degrees from good-to- | great universities, can't code at all. | | I'm not talking about trick "do you remember A* search" | questions. I'm talking about the ability to write a basic | program and to reason about what it will do. | | I've seen this across the gamut, from new grads to staff | engineers. | | Part of this is selection bias: those folks probably apply | to many companies before they slip through somewhere, so | they're overrepresented as interviewees. | | My sense is that it's becoming more common. Undergrad CS | has ever more people who are in it for reasons unrelated to | enjoyment or curiosity. | newsclues wrote: | Currently in a Canadian college for cybersecurity and the | content of the courses are being nerfed and the quality of | the graduates are churning out are largely dogshit. | syshum wrote: | Universities today seem to be focusing on quantity of | education not quality | | There goal is to get as much student loan money that they | can, they do not seem to care about the quality of | education the students are getting | | This goes for all levels of universities, and all degree | programs. | idiotsecant wrote: | Universities were never job training programs, their | product has always been the right to engage in class | signaling. By paying the university a pile of money you | signified to potential employers (and everyone else) that | you were a member of at least the upper middle class, | with the financial resources (and sometimes family | connections) to support making those payments of time and | money. Not having that signifier was a signal that you | lacked the time and money to dump into that effort, given | that you had to spend so much of it surviving. | | It's the same human impulse that drives people to bind | their feet, value bleached skin, engage in conspicuous | consumption, etc. It's all an elaborate signal game | designed to convince people of your social status. | | The problem is that we looked at that system and instead | of trying to build something better we dumped more money | into it in the form of student loans and expected that | now more people will be given access to those class | signifiers and thereby raise their social status and | standard of living. In actual practice, of course, what | we did was raise the bar on what qualifies as a class | signifier, forcing a generation into wage slavery with | little real benefit to them or to society as a whole | (other than those institutions who siphon off those extra | dollars and use them to metastasize extra layers of | administration and management to little effect) | | What we need is for education to be more job skills | training and less social positioning. Funding for adult | education should be linked to the success rate of | students leaving those programs. If you have the money to | burn studying topics that will indicate to your peers how | little you need the money, then great. That's apparently | the way we've decided to structure things. For the rest | of us though let's try to encourage study of topics that | will help society work better instead of vainly trying to | convince the rich kids club to let us in. | syshum wrote: | I agree with all of that.... | giantg2 wrote: | "Universities aren't reliably producing CS graduates that | can code." | | And companies stereotype all graduates as worth nothing to | them. | | I had a couple simple Android apps when I graduated. Even | though they were simple, it would show that I could follow | best practices, code, test, and deliver something. I had a | decent GPA (3.5), clubs, etc. I still had a hard time | finding companies that would even give me an interview. | | So sure, a degree doesn't mean too much (my masters has | done nothing for me). But it seems companies have simply | given up and are exacerbating the very problem they are | creating. | kragen wrote: | How are you on leetcode? | giantg2 wrote: | I believe LC wasn't a thing back then, or at least not | mainstream. | | I don't waste my time on LC now. If I get free time, I'd | rather work on a personal project or hobby. | | Granted, I'm actually thinking of moving into some sort | of corporate strategy analyst role since I don't really | get to code anymore. The past 2 years has been very | little coding or business problem solving. It's mostly | been config, infrastructure, prod support, and | meetings/paperwork. I'm tired of it. I want to solve | problems and build substantial things. I assume I'm rusty | when it comes to coding now. | pc86 wrote: | This is the sweet spot that products like LeetCode or | BinarySearch _could_ be used to solve - people who have the | academic background, and should know how to code if they | 're coming out of a good program, but don't have a | portfolio of work to show or a catalogue of experience to | draw examples and answers from for a typical interview. And | all the DSA stuff that is irrelevant for 90% of dev jobs | 90% of the time is still fresh in their mind. | | Ask them 2-3 LC easies/mediums in the language of their | choice for them to prove they can actually write code, and | that's really all you need. Unfortunately it somehow became | "let's have a 5 hour long two-part panel interview where we | ask you half a dozen LC hards and oh yeah don't google | anything" as a way to hire experienced people who have a | decade of work they can talk about the discuss ad nauseum. | giantg2 wrote: | Not going to lie, as soon as you mentioned LC I was | disinterested. But your suggestion sounds good. A few | easy/medium questions and maybe the ability to Google | sounds fair. I sort of enjoy basic fizz bang code | screenings. | pc86 wrote: | And just to be clear I'm only suggesting it for junior | positions. Most of the time I think you can suss out | whether someone can code by discussing their direct | contributions to previous projects. If not, you can | always do one LC problem. | | I see it as a great way to just run a sanity check that | this person who graduated from Random State six months | ago can actually code, and as a great way to ensure high | quality very senior people refuse to go through your | interview (unless you're paying FAANG wages). | EVdotIO wrote: | I have about a decade of real professional coding | experience. Not going to say I'm excellent, or near the | caliber of developer FAANG are looking for, but I can | write code. I can count on one finger the number of | interviews I've got in the past couple years. Zilch. | There is a massive disconnect from what you hear on the | news, and the reality, where somebody like me is a pariah | and the deafening silence of _any_ interest. | | This is just outsourcing 2.0, this time under the guise | of a lack of qualified candidates. | pantalaimon wrote: | My first job was at a startup and they simply didn't have any | money to hire experienced people, so it was petty much only | people fresh from uni. | | You see the same at other smaller companies who will rather | hire a student or a fresh graduate because it's much cheaper | (and more available). | chrisseaton wrote: | Racing to the bottom by paying talent more and more and more? | | I feel like companies are investing even more in the long | term than ever before, building increasingly ambitious | infrastructure projects. | | I don't see what you see at all. | Accujack wrote: | I haven't seen any company do that in a very long time. | What industry are you working in? | chrisseaton wrote: | I work in e-commerce at Shopify. My company is building | some great developer experience stuff for the long-term | like some truly excellent cloud-development environments. | | My previous company, Oracle, was developing an entirely | new kind of language virtual-machine to run the | programming languages of the future as well. | | I see this in many places. | Accujack wrote: | That's just long term product planning. The rest of the | people here are talking about long term employee | development - making your employees more valuable so they | produce better products rather than treating them as | costs that must be reduced. | chrisseaton wrote: | > rather than treating them as costs that must be reduced | | But employers are paying more and more than ever before? | endisneigh wrote: | Paying more money doesn't mean you're investing into | entry level employees necessarily. | chrisseaton wrote: | The goalposts are all over the place in this thread. | | These people must be working for terrible companies. Come | and work for Shopify! We even partner with a university | to offer year-round internships while you study for your | degree. I regularly mentor juniors to build them up to | research-level engineers. | irrational wrote: | If I wanted to get a tech masters degree, my company | would pay for it. If I want to learn a new technology, my | manager will absolutely allow me to spend time doing | that. I'm constantly working on projects that force me to | learn new technologies. I feel like my company had no | problems with my becoming more valuable. It's mostly up | to me. | scsilver wrote: | The talent abroad ends up working for US companies though, | how will dominance dissipate. The market and financing is in | the US. | jimbob45 wrote: | On the ground, this seems to be demonstrably false. I have | numerous current and former coworkers that would love | opportunities elsewhere. | | It's the recruiters who are the problem. If you're looking for | a C# dev and you put "5 years Node.JS experience minimum", then | not only are you going to miss out on some great, if not the | best, developers, but you're much less likely to hire the man | you actually want. | atlasunshrugged wrote: | Anecdata but in my experience it's definitely true in Africa, I | did a project for a Cameroonian tech company recently and they | couldn't afford to compete with major tech co's with remote | roles which is where anyone decent and semi-senior went. They | ended up with a mishmash tech team in Algeria and Ukraine | mostly although they would have much preferred to hire local. I | heard this story many times in the tech community there and in | Kenya. | csomar wrote: | Same in Tunisia. Remote and France have swooped practically | most of the tech talent. You are forced with either mediocre | developers or to pay EU rates. | giantg2 wrote: | Shouldn't mediocre be generally acceptable? It seems unreal | to expect the majority to be above average. | csomar wrote: | Problem is, if you are outsourcing remotely, you want | someone who is quite competent for him to be able to work | on his own and pick up on the lack of face to face | meetings. Mediocre as a result will give less than | mediocre results or no results. | giantg2 wrote: | Or there's a need for communication. It doesn't matter if | the person is "quite competent" if they're on their own | building something that doesn't fit the requirements. An | average dev shouldn't have any issue being able to Google | the occasional problem. The vast majority of the issue we | have with outsourced work is subpar English | communication. | RealityVoid wrote: | My experience is mediocre is insufficient in SW | preojects. You NEED some good technical pillars, else it | will all be shit. | tinyhouse wrote: | I think US salaries are more to do with it than anything else. | It's just not sustainable anymore for most tech companies. So | they hire where talent is cheaper. It was obvious it will | happen with remote work. | Accujack wrote: | >It's just not sustainable anymore for most tech companies. | | Translation: Most tech companies are addicted to cheap labor, | either through exploiting new graduates or handing out | potentially worthless stock options. They won't choose to | reduce their profits regardless of what happens. | | Very few startups "need" to hire less experienced people, | mostly the ones that do just haven't got a viable business | model. The ones that can't afford to hire the people they | need at a reasonable salary for the work they expect | shouldn't exist. They're just machines for turning venture | capital into personal wealth for the founders as they exploit | their employees then sell out. | iamstupidsimple wrote: | I mean, if you were CEO, would you choose to reduce profit | when you have investors on your back or want to grow staff | quickly? Outside of VC driven cash cows or big tech, | there's not that much money to go around at the bottom. | colechristensen wrote: | I've been at and seen plenty of places where a growing layer | of middle management was paying for itself by outsourcing | engineers. Outsourced engineers very often need much more | management and company directors either lose touch or decide | to run the company in ways that justify raising their own | salaries. | | It's not that the cost of engineers is unsustainable, it's | that aging companies tend to want to take power and decisions | away from engineers towards management and accomplish this | with outsourcing. | downut wrote: | This has happened in my wife's rather staid manufacturing | industry. Many plants in the US have no on-site engineers. | The "engineering" design is performed by remote fresh-outs | at the exurban headquarters, and a lot of that work is | simply regurgitating the specs from the equipment | manufacturers. Who quite rightly charge exorbitantly to | have their own engineers perform the inevitable changes | that would be nearly trivial for an in-house on-site | engineer to make. It's not unique to her particular | company; this is the way her industrial customers and | suppliers work too. The backend software is managed the | same way. Buy Oracle/MS/Google whatever integrated | functionality, and hire consultants to make changes. No | expertise in-house. | | No in-house expertise means no management responsibility | for failure: it's the supplier's fault. Yet those same | vendors are more often than not locked in by prohibitive | replacement economics. Gruesome for old skool highly | competent engineers, like my wife. | | Most of these companies are profitable, so who can argue? | This is the present and inevitable future. | colechristensen wrote: | This is how startups succeed and take market share very | quickly. A small number of highly paid highly competent | people build something which is significantly cheaper and | better than the incumbent because they aren't weighed | down by very large numbers of unnecessary people doing | things poorly in the most expensive way possible. | | Then the startup either gets bought by the incumbent who | has existed so long they just have piles of money or the | startup grows into a similarly inefficient monster. | | It is a sign that there is something wrong with the game | created by the economic and legal environment which tends | towards a large proportion of useless work and barely | adequate quality. I.e this is why we can't have nice | things and it's not exactly clear how to fix it. | Jensson wrote: | > and it's not exactly clear how to fix it. | | Constantly creating new companies to outcompete the old | corrupted ones. In other words capitalism, the solution | is to ensure that competition never dies. No country in | the world has found a better solution to this. | ozfive wrote: | The ERP that my company uses is proprietary and they | charge large sums of money to make custom changes. I am | an in house developer that has gotten to know the | database backing the ERP and have extrapolated | functionality based on stored procedures and table | schemas. The work I do would cost my company much more | than my salary and I build interfaces that connect to | marketplaces or marketplace API aggregators such as | ChannelAdvisor. I can attest to your statement that in | house engineers can cost much less than the modification | engineers who know the system but will charge an arm and | a leg. | | As a matter of fact I've carved out a niche in these | matters over the years. Essentially reverse engineering | systems and building out functionality instead of the | original creators of the software. | | EDIT: The ERP company never made it not possible to | interface through their DB in their contracts or by | encrypting their functionality in the DB. | | The amount of value I bring to my company is greater than | 100 fold of my salary. | kragen wrote: | Hmm, so 99% of the value you create is being skimmed off | by the company's shareholders and management? Have you | thought about trying to renegotiate to a more equitable | split, like 10%/90% or 50%/50% instead of 1%/99%? Or is | that impossible because you're in a very weak bargaining | position? | | That seems like a major reason people might quit jobs | like yours and go work for ERP vendors or other | outsourced vendors: even if they create less value, they | are in a better bargaining position and so they can | capture maybe 5% or 10% or 30% of the value they create | instead of less than 1%. | downut wrote: | Yeah, that's an obvious thing to do, right? However, the | company armored themselves against this sort of | competency attack against The Machine by having in-house | IT by policy gate keep access to the ERP db tables, which | are exactly as you describe, and can be reverse | engineered. This does have the additional side effect of | making it quite difficult (in practice impossible) to | implement in-house statistical process control. Which, | again, makes it much more difficult to, um, need to be | diplomatic here... discover which processes could be | improved. Much better to outsource to another corporate | consulting parasite a multiyear/multimillion $$ effort | indoctrinating the troops on the abstract importance of | process. | | However, I enthusiastically applaud your success! Seems | it might be a tightrope act to balance "Ima worth a bunch | of money to you" vs. management realizing "that nerd is a | massive SPOF". | syshum wrote: | >>It was obvious it will happen with remote work. | | Not to many, Many still believe that remote work for | programmers simply means lower cost of living for them while | keeping their high salaries... | | They are about the learn the lesson US steal workers, and | other blue collar works in many American industries did when | globalization hit them.... | Clubber wrote: | >It's just not sustainable | | I'm not sure if it's a sustainability issue or tactic to eek | out every dollar possible given the landscape. I suspect it's | the latter. I'll bet most don't do the leet code interviews | for offshore developers though. | thatfrenchguy wrote: | The US salaries force you to go in more competitive markets | though and use your engineers better, because your costs are | higher. Salaries in France have been 1/3 of US salaries | forever, and yet people don't outsource to French engineers, | more like French engineers move to the US. | colechristensen wrote: | If you outsourced to French engineers you would have to | accommodate all of their rights and work styles which don't | exist so much in "developing economies". A French engineer | probably would not be online at 6am and 11pm on the same | day to attend meetings and solve problems for their | American managers. Eastern European, African, or SE Asian | engineers would though. | nemo44x wrote: | I've hired French engineers in France and they've done | great work. Hard workers too. | | But the impression France has is probably a turn off for | many. There are other problems too like it taking 3 months | for a new French hire to start. Getting rid of them is | extremely difficult as well. There are lots of additional | taxes you have to pay the French government too. There's | just so much risk in hiring there that you're better off | going elsewhere with more modern employment law for | skilled, high demand workers. Don't remind me of the | monthly paperwork we have to send the government to assure | them the French employee isn't working too much and is | taking vacation. An absolute joke. | | The French government doesn't make French engineers very | attractive unfortunately. | marvin wrote: | Haha, modern employment law :D You'd cause hilarity if | you used that expression anywhere in the Scandinavian | public discourse, or at least the Norwegian. You'd get | tomatoes thrown at you and no one would listen to a | single word. | | Not that I necessarily disagree with you or miss your | point, but this is a very strong ideological divide. It's | not about modern vs. archaic unless you posit that | employment law that protects employees is such a | detriment to an economy's effectiveness that it's | effectively obsolete. | | Maybe at some point it will be a question of what | economies actually manage to get things done and thrive | and those who don't, but that's the kind of long-term, | almost geopolitical shift that happens over decades at | the least. | | E.g. no one who wants a position of power would advocate | for a pure planned economy today, rather than a market | economy. I sort of doubt that employee protections are | such a millstone around the neck that they will go the | same way, but who knows. | | It's an interesting question as you see a tendency of | economies with less protections and higher salary luring | away lots of really high performers. | nemo44x wrote: | What I mean by that is how worker protection laws from | the Industrial Age and which apply to hourly wage | employees are applied to professional workers that have | autonomy and other attributes that make them very | different from hourly workers. | | The USA has a concept of an "exempt" and "nonexempt" | worker and a series of questions that determine this | status. In general, hourly workers (nonexempt) get many | protections encoded into law that professionals don't. | And professionals don't want them except for a very small | minority of oddballs that want to unionize. | | So in essence, applying the same set of outdated rules to | everyone. It even makes it hard to compete with | colleagues for promotions if your hours are limited. Of | course the French engineers I had lied to the government | about hours worked as they wanted to maximize bonuses, | stock grants, and promotions. | BigRedDog1669 wrote: | The legal protections on hourly workers aren't enforced | in the US or are skirted around by making hourly | employees contractors. Professionals would like some of | the protections but only if they are actually enforced. | faangiq wrote: | Reminder, every "talent shortage" is actually a wage shortage. | Double those salaries and you'll find plenty of talent. | burntoutfire wrote: | Not neccessarily. Say there's 3 million competent senior | software engineers in the US, and 75% of them are already | working as senior SWEs (the remaining 25% are in early | retirement or have switched professions). The best that | doubling wages in short term can accomplish is makes those | 25% of people move back to the profession. | | As for people who don't know how to code retraining to be | SWEs - since becoming a "senior software engineer" takes at | least 5 years, you'd have to wait 5 years to see a result, | irrespective of how much you increase the wages. | faangiq wrote: | Believe me you start paying those guys 800k a year they'll | wait a few more years before retiring. | mooreds wrote: | This is not actually entirely true (although I've had similar | sentiments in the past). | | The question is, how inelastic is supply? "Labor of a senior | software developer" isn't like "a widget" in that you can | pretty simply create more of them. It takes years and special | training to create senior software developers. | | This means the supply is inelastic over the short term, | although in the long term more people get the education to | become one. | | That means that doubling salaries might not have the effect | you predict. | RealityVoid wrote: | While, generally, that is a good solution, I think this is | not true in this instance. Realistically speaking, SW people | are paid very well relative to the average population. And | you can't really just mint them on demand. Time to bring up | to a SW dev is long. Since the pay is so high, I think most | people who had the ability and interest are in SW already. So | the supply is pretty much fixed. What would increasing pay | do? Just heat up the market. They probably won't get more | manpower in the market, but just poach from eachoter. Great | for devs, bad for companies(stock holders? CEO? I don't know, | modern companies are so nebulous and diffuse, I don't even | know who is to gain from them) bottom line. | | I posit that the "hot" market is the marker of inflation. The | money running around leads to more competition for talents | and competitive fields is where, I assume, inflation should | show up most easily. | | I know I might sound anti-worker, I swear I am not, I just | attempt to get as close to the truth as my small mind allows | me. | scsilver wrote: | Yeah at this point, swe are more key to bringing in the | future efficiency advancements per person than doctors or | lawyers, I remember doctors making multiple hundreds of | thousands a year decades ago, with surgeons into the | millions. It seems reasonable that swe salaries surpass that | as software eats everything and our ability to disseminate | engineering Skill stagnate. | Accujack wrote: | >There's a global talent shortage for experienced people in | software engineering | | No, there's not. There's a shortage of _cheap_ experienced | software engineers in the US. | no_wizard wrote: | The truth is that most software isn't all that special. For the | average business that can accelerate their processes with CRUD | apps you don't need to do much in the name of bespoke work. I | can have a standard run of the mill CRUD app up in like a week | or maybe if sufficiently complex a month or so - with proper | tests. That's the kind of work I'm seeing outsourced in droves | typically. | | The kind of work I actually do nowadays I don't see getting | outsourced so easily. This is core architecture and fundamental | differentiation that the business sees as key to product and | core success. You'd be highly unwise to outsource that. | | An experienced developer that can produce high quality work but | can accept a lower salary (nominal to local markets of the | employer not the developer) based on geographical concerns? You | can make a lot of money with those CRUD contracts I imagine | | Edit: this all assumes someone competent is overseeing the work | and someone that understands the technical things involved in | the overall project to steer it know what they're doing too | csomar wrote: | While simple CRUD apps are not technically challenging; the | hard part of doing these is figuring out the specs and | communicating with the client. I can see how this can go | wrong with offshore clients (time difference, cultural | difference, language difference, only remote). There could be | a market for local agencies outsourcing tech work (and even | that has to be done carefully). But clients directly | outsourcing to off-shore agencies, that spell trouble. | reaperducer wrote: | A company I worked for struggled for years trying to find | the right CRUD system. | | Off-the-shelf packages didn't work right because they | couldn't be tailored to the existing workflow, and couldn't | be integrated into other systems. Three attempts at | offshoring all failed because of culture and communication | differences. | | In the end, it was done in-house. It took longer, but the | application is exactly what was required, and new features | can be added in days or weeks, not months or quarters. Last | I heard, almost everyone was happy with the home-grown | solution. | | CRUD can be simple. But CRUD can also be hard. Anyone who | thinks that they can spin up a generic CRUD and solve any | problem is someone who doesn't really understand what the | problem is. | no_wizard wrote: | That is not what I mean. I am talking about well...when | they are generic applications that don't require bespoke | work to be done. Maybe HN is the wrong crowd for this as | I think most of us work in more specialized capacity. | There is a lot of software out there however being | written that is say, wiring power BI applications with | predefined requirements, or collecting information via | surveys that need to be tied to a CMS. Stuff I've seen | work pretty well when contracted assuming the person | overseeing the venture was competent of course. | | I'd say anything core to a business in terms of how it | functions is not ripe for outsourcing, and anyone doing | this is going to feel a lot of pain | bkovacev wrote: | I have been trying to get US companies to hire from Eastern | Europe (mainly south eastern europe). My company would act as a | middleman (essentially outsourcing), pay money to the devs which | would work directly 1:1 for that company. The devs would be | working for us, yet, we would not manage their day to day | activities - we'd just act as an HR/recruiting/legal middleman. I | have tried with two major outsourcing companies, yet, they were | never that interested. For 100-120k a year, you could get top | tier devs with 6-8+ years of experience from Eastern Europe. | ng12 wrote: | I've done something like this. It worked well with the caveat | that even when working as FTEs most Eastern European devs still | preferred to work like contractors, e.g. "tell me exactly what | to build and I'll build it". It worked best when pairing a | senior engineer in the US or Western Europe with a team of 2-3 | devs in Eastern Europe. | bkovacev wrote: | True and fair point! I have been trying to change that | mindset for a while. One major thing I believe is the | uncertainty of contracting - they never know when they may | not be needed again. However, if an EE dev can align himself | with the company and has a senior dev / manager above him who | can help him make that transition - I think they'd make a | great team. | yuliyp wrote: | It's a bit of a confusing niche you're trying to fill. | Outsourcing firms are generally providing the | HR/recruiting/legal role as their specialty. That they wouldn't | want to provide another company a cut when they can do this | just fine themselves is unsurprising. | bkovacev wrote: | True, it's a hard niche to fill, and yup, slightly confusing | even. We'd aim for development companies within the US that | have some "outsourcing" presence around the world, but have | not tapped into Eastern Europe yet. What we're really looking | to do is help developers get connected to the US companies | and get paid better and not be looked at as contractors, but | FTE with benefits. | | An example - in Serbia and Slovenia you arrange a net salary, | and the company pays the taxes/insurance etc on top of net | salary (usually around 50-60%). So for a senior salary in | Serbia of around 4k euros. you're looking at the company | paying around 6-7k euros. For a contractor (as a sole | proprietor) you can make at most 50k euros a year and then | you pay benefits that are minimum 300e. If you go above that | you pay 10% tax on profit + 15% personal income tax. You can | choose to still pay yourself salary and 50-60% on top of | that, and you will most likely not pay yourself a big salary, | but take the profit and pay the 15%. | | What we would try to accomplish is: | | - Not have developer as a contractor, but as an FTE | | - Create a pipeline of US based companies | | - Bump the salary for devs for 25%-30% -> pay the | taxes/pension (30k+ more) | | - Take a 15% of the annual salary (20-30k) | | - Provide cheap senior/staff/principle devs that are cheaper | than the same devs, but same or similar quality | spamizbad wrote: | My company uses Eastern European contractors for certain | projects as "staff augmentation". Overall, I would say our | experience is positive. There are indeed many experienced devs | who do great work. But it does have some drawbacks: | | 1) 10-hour time difference between West Coast US and, say, Kyiv | is pretty big. It's easier on EST people, but on the US side | you're going to have to plan on jamming your calendars full of | meetings between 7:30-10:30am. | | 2) Because you have fewer "business hours" between two, you | need product, project, and engineering management to operate in | a fairly well-oiled manner with more stuff spelled-out up- | front, otherwise your team across the pond is stuck until the | next day for some answer. Also, if your org even attempts to | adopt "agile" this communication breakdown will murder your | velocity; you're better off doing Waterfall. | | 3) They cannot be on-call to troubleshoot product issues during | US business hours. This makes the business-side uneasy | | 4) Higher churn-rate than domestic engineers. Mostly over | salary; this falls squarely at the feet of the "middleman" who | undercuts their engineers. We attempt to ameliorate this by | giving them feedback on employees who they should focus on | retaining but IME they just view their talent as widgets rather | than craftsmen. I've seen several good devs leave over money | we'd have gladly paid them but their contracting org refused. | | 5) Speaking of higher churn rate: Onboarding can be more | painful, again because of the TZ difference as well as certain | cultural issues. | | None of these are deal-breakers. But it's easy to understand | why a company might be willing to pay 50-100% more to avoid | these concerns. | bkovacev wrote: | 1) Absolutely - I have been working for the US companies as | an FTE (remotely, but C2C, essentially a contractor), and | sometimes the hours do make an issue. It's a 9 hour | difference with the West Coast for me, but Central / Eastern | works well, if the expectations are properly set. | | 2) Spot on - Agile does not work well in such environment, I | have seen it first hand twice. I feel that with senior/staff | level devs, you can expect and should get higher level of | autonomy and less hand-holding, so in a solid project | oriented company, I do feel that fewer "business hours | overlap" would impact much. I do feel that at least 3, | preferably more hours should be reserved for meetings / | overlap. | | 3) I'd argue about that one, haha. I have been on-call | troubleshooting production at 2-3am my time, not once, but | multiple times. For a great employer, with proper | compensation and benefits, you'd be surprised what devs from | this area would do! | | 4) YES! Companies are greedy. However, they do have to pay | pension/insurance on the hourly rate they give to the dev, | think 50-60%, but they don't want to give away their cut at | all, it seems to be non-negotiable flat fee, which is deal | breaking. Another point is that Microsoft and other big brand | outsourcing names are coming to EE and stealing away the | workforce. | | Disclaimer - I work as a senior/staff level dev with high | base salary and equity, so my experience may be a bit skewed. | atlasunshrugged wrote: | Somewhat unrelated but just a side comment, many Ukrainian | folks are really trying to move away from the spelling of | Kiev as you did, instead they prefer Kyiv (I was corrected | several times for this by Ukrainian friends/colleagues when I | got to the region so just thought I'd share). | | https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/kyiv- | not-... | spamizbad wrote: | Noted. Thank you! | Tehchops wrote: | I know the experience varies, but I've seen nothing but trouble | from hiring devs from EE. | bkovacev wrote: | Absolutely - every experience matters. In Southeastern Europe | - you get what you pay for. We would definitely not try to | hire anyone with less than 5 years of experience, thoroughly | vetted before even talking to the US companies and/or | submitting a resume. | tartoran wrote: | It could be trouble hiring remote workers anywhere if no due | dilligence is done properly. I worked with both EE and | Indians and it was okay. Folks did their job decently, they | were paid less (but also didn't have to take all the bullshit | open office, noise and fractal like work hours interrupted by | interminable meetings. | Zaskoda wrote: | I saw this first hand last Spring when I was visiting family in | Mexico. One of my sister's friends there is a web developer and | we really hit it off. A native born Mexican, he told me about how | he works for a tech company out of Utah, but through a locally | owned company. He then went on to explain that this is the nature | of his entire company and that this is a popular trend in the | industry there. I honestly couldn't be happier for them, not sure | he could have made that good of a living doing only local work. | badrabbit wrote: | Not just hiring, I've been asked to move there last year. It's | the new "outsource to india" | hn_throwaway_99 wrote: | My success with outsourcing some work to Latin America has been | much, much, much more successful than outsourcing to India and | other places in Asia for the following reasons: | | 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. | vmception wrote: | I've been doing that for 7 years. | | 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) | [deleted] | soneca wrote: | > _" If someone is very money-driven, there's nothing we can | do."_ | | 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. | pevey wrote: | "Brain Drain" has been a thing for years. I can remember in the | late 90s in my Developmental Econ class my Peruvian professor | complaining of brain drain from Latin America and how loss of top | tier talent affected economic growth. We all appreciated the | irony since she herself was a part of the issue she complained | about, having studied and taught in the US for quite some time as | she was standing up there saying this to us. But I could see her | point. | raziel2p wrote: | Do you think she didn't realize the irony herself? It's not a | negative against her person anyway, there's nothing inherently | wrong with complaining about or arguing against a system you're | taking part of and/or benefiting from. | dirtyid wrote: | Wonder how WFH brain drain where talent stays in their | respective countries shake things up. At least keeps some money | and expertise circulating in the local economies. Also going to | be interesting when Chinese academic institutions start | climbing the ranking charts and training foreign talent who has | no long term prospects in immigration unfriendly PRC. Perhaps a | future where more "sea turtles" return to develop home | countries after than be permanently brain drained in the west. | atlasunshrugged wrote: | Yeah, it's really interesting but also a huge economic | opportunity for countries if they can figure out enough reforms | without these people to make the country attractive enough that | these people come back with all their experience (and networks) | and help boost the economy even further. | bobthepanda wrote: | Yup. Initial foreign investment in China was mostly driven by | Hong Kong and Taiwan (many of these investors were first or | second-generation from the mainland), and other parts of the | Chinese diaspora. | pid-1 wrote: | In the past brain drain meant good professionals would leave | their countries to live in the US or Europe. | | Nowadays, with remote work, people are being paid handsomely | and spending their money in their home countries. | | Anecdotally, I'm seeing that happening a lot with dev friends | in Rio de Janeiro. People are using money earned in the US to | help the local economy. They still interact with local | universities and contribute to local projects. Cool stuff. | 1270018080 wrote: | Is anyone here concerned about an eventual "great salary reset" | driven by remote work? Companies don't need to cover Bay Area CoL | because they can get people from the midwest to do the work, so | avg salaries go down. Then, they can get Canadians to do the | work, avg salaries go down again. Then, they'll get Chilean | software engineers to do the work, and avg salaries go down even | more. | | 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. | Hermitian909 wrote: | I think it will vary based on where you are in the talent pool. | Tech talent distribution is tri-modal [0]. The demand for the | kind of people who can comfortably be part of the rightmost | peak (and even moreso, its right tail) is increasing rapidly. | As tech gets better the leverage high performance individuals | have gets bigger, not smaller. | | I'm less hopeful for people in the leftmost peak or middle | peaks. For decades tech has been slowly eating its low-end. | Think of all the webmasters of the 90s made obsolete by sites | like Squarespace, the work has more or less been completely | deskilled. I think that trend will continue. | | [0] https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/software-engineering- | sala... | 1270018080 wrote: | I feel like that article just affirmed my position though. An | Uber job that would've been $400k in SF is now $250k in NL. | You might think "Wow Group 3 is growing, good for us | workers," but the absolute peak of Group 3 is falling. | Hermitian909 wrote: | Top SF pay is increasing _faster_ than 5 years ago, not | slower. The same appears to be true in NL. My | interpretation is that NL group 3 salaries are going | towards SF but are kept lower by the lack of a local middle | market and the various difficulties pulling in devs from a | smaller country in a different time zone from most big | players. | comp_throw7 wrote: | Yeah, as the other reply said, that 400k L5a (Senior I) | Uber job in SF is now paying 580k first year & ~520k/year | annualized over 4 years (increased stock grants, large | sign-on bonuses, front-loaded vesting). Amazon increased | the top of their mid-level payband by ~100k and the top of | their senior payband by ~200k. 500k/year is the new | "target" senior comp at FAANG & co (where previously | 350-400k was what you were looking for). The international | numbers are playing catch-up but it's not really slowing | things down very much in the US. | [deleted] | jjeaff wrote: | While having more supply will definitely lower rates, I think | there has been a lot of pushback on lowering salaries for | people who decide to move to lower col areas. Enough pushback | that I have heard of several big companies reversing that | policy. | the_gipsy wrote: | Sell that million dollar Bay Are house and move somewhere | better but less expensive. Don't worry. | syshum wrote: | In the 90's they said "learn the code" when globalization | costs people their jobs I thought that response about | ignorant... | | However this new method of just "move" is even more ignorant, | you can not move your way in to a low enough cost of living | to compete with nations that pay below US min wages.... This | is doubly true when there is a huge push to increase those | minimum wages... | | So Learn to code from the 90's has become if you do not like | it leave... nice | [deleted] | jviotti wrote: | I think this article underestimates the difficulty of finding | great talent in Latin America as a remote company. Everybody in | Latin America wants to work remotely at foreign companies, yet | few actually do in practice. | | 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. | soneca wrote: | I worked as a software developer in one company in Brazil and | in three American companies. The skill gap was non-existent. I | could see the same level of talent in both places. | reese_john wrote: | What kind of companies in Brazil though? I feel like the | level of brazilian engineers outside high growth tech | companies is very low. Most of them will literally fail | "Fizz-Buzz" style coding tests. Good devs are either making a | very good salary in Brazil (30-50k USD) or 2-3X that working | remotely for an American company | kragen wrote: | Most American engineers (even specifically programmers) | fail FizzBuzz-style coding tests, too, if you go by job | interview candidates. That's why FizzBuzz exists. | Daishiman wrote: | If you're a good engineer in Latin America you're not settling | for less money than your first-world counterparts. | | Argentina and Brazil's engineering talent is _outstanding_, and | these people are not settling for mediocre companies or | mediocre salaries. | kache_ wrote: | There's a company called Auth0, which was comprised of mostly | Argentinians. They did quite well for themselves, they got bought | out by Okta for 6b. | obblekk wrote: | I wonder if the reverse is also true, or if we're about to see | white collar wages in the US get crushed. | | 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. | atomicnumber3 wrote: | To be honest, I think if most HN-type people want to be worried | about threats to their salaries, the heartland is where to | worry about. Making 60k/yr with a 4yr CS degree is extremely | normal and it's a bit odd because you start high (for the | region, I mean) but then the salary for an engineer with 25 | years of experience (??) is only 150k. | | And there's a lot of solid, affordable schools in the heartland | too. So with only a 1-2 hour TZ difference regardless of which | coast your main offices are in, you get employees that cost | 10-25% as much but are culturally and logistically extremely | similar. | | Also worth noting, on the topic of culture, that while the | heartland votes red, it's mostly just because of how the | counties work. Most of the population is still fairly liberal, | especially the portion with a college degree. And programmers | are usually the liberal anarchy types anyway, on top of that. | mwcampbell wrote: | > Also worth noting, on the topic of culture, that while the | heartland votes red, it's mostly just because of how the | counties work. | | I don't know about that. I grew up in Wichita, Kansas, and | I've lived here most of my life (apart from a little over | three years in the Seattle area while working at Microsoft). | I grew up in an evangelical Christian home, and my parents | have voted Republican for as far back as I remember. I | rejected both their religion and their politics in my early | 30s, but IMO, I did some of my best programming work before | that. So if remote work really takes off, you might be | surprised. | | Addendum: I did get a college education, but it was from | Wichita State University; for reasons having nothing to do | with religion or culture, I was slow to leave home. So maybe | I'm just an outlier that adds nothing worthwhile to this | discussion. | KptMarchewa wrote: | >I wonder if we're about to see protectionism expand from blue | collar politics into white collar politics. | | You already have high protectionism of white collar since ~2015 | or 2016, when chance of getting H1B outside of wholesale Indian | consultancies became very low. | hammock wrote: | How can I help my company recruit better in Latin America? Is an | outside agency the only way? | pibefision wrote: | No statistics or useful data. Only a couple stories with some | information about the topic. | Rekushi wrote: | My company[1] runs a talent platform that helps US companies | source, hire, and manage Latin American tech talent. | | Happy to answer any questions. | | [1] https://www.revelo.io/ | elforce002 wrote: | Interesting. There's a trend now regarding this type of | service. | kragen wrote: | The headline says "pillaging," which is a kind of stealing by | force. But actually (as the less editorialized HN headline says) | what the US companies are doing is _hiring_ Latin America 's tech | talent, paying a fair price instead of the shitty prices Latin | American companies are used to paying. Unsurprisingly these | companies think of Latin American developers as their property, | so they see it as "pillaging". | | 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. 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. 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 Lopez 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. | lvass wrote: | That's part and parcel of deep, amalgamated, problems our | countries suffer from. I receive in crypto, live in south | america and still sleep worry-free. I just do a good job and | happen to heap benefits from all this shit we're immersed in | (ridiculous low prices for everything) and from working for a | rich country. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that, no | matter how deep I look. I don't even worry about how my | countrymen see this, I simply don't have a reason to tell them. | Creating reliable and safe systems is the one talent I have, I | might as well concentrate on that and leave political issues to | those capable of grasping them. | kragen wrote: | What country, if you don't mind asking? Do a lot of other | people there also get paid in cryptocurrency? | vivab0rg wrote: | I'm a half-retired Argentinian developer still living in | Argentina. I second the parent comment 100% | brezelgoring wrote: | >the belief that anyone who is rich got that way by screwing | over other people | | Is this a symptom/cause of the crab-bucket mentality? It is | here in Uruguay, as well, and I hold it myself, to my own | detriment. | | Is there a name for this? I want to read about it and see if I | can change my mind, grow a bit. | | Thank you | hashimotonomora wrote: | It's interrelated. It's part resentment, part mediocrity, | part laziness. | | If the only way the rich got rich is by screwing over people, | then I'm justified in not working hard, not being ingenuous, | not being diligent because what good does it make anyway. | 99_00 wrote: | People underestimate cultural difference and even pretend they | don't exist. | | 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. | georgeburdell wrote: | > This becomes an even bigger problem when dealing with other | cultures. | | I have worked with many in Latin America (Costa Rica and Mexico | in particular) and cultural differences (with respect to work) | have never come up. They seem extremely "Americanized", or | perhaps the differences aren't there in their own native | cultures either. It's like talking to an American with a slight | accent. | | > 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. | | Unless they have a proclivity for wearing red hats or being out | of the house Sunday mornings [0]. U.S. diversity & inclusion | amounts to parading around people with different skin colors | that think exactly like a West Coast White Liberal. | | [0] Tongue-in-cheek reference: Silicon Valley, Season 5, | Episode 4 | bushbaba wrote: | Is diversity and inclusion addressing this? | | For example Eastern Europe is getting a lot of outsourcing. Yet | there's zero d&i initiatives targeting that region. | | Same goes for Africa. I've seen zero d&i initiatives To better | integrate those living in Africa. | mensetmanusman wrote: | Hiring from around the globe is tautologically increasing | diversity. | novok wrote: | Having worked with people in remote latin american offices, the | cultural gap isn't as extensive than the other ones actually. | The barrier is purely a lack of numbers in this case. | | The tech industry is VERY used to working with people from | multiple cultures and backgrounds. Teams where people are | immigrants from 5 different countries is fairly common. | ironmagma wrote: | I worked for a company that did this. It was (and still is) a | complete disaster. They've been around for 5 years and still | haven't released a product. If you're going to do this, you'd | better have an enormous pile of tasks that can be independently | handled and programmatically verified. And just assume that | communication between your US team and foreign teams will be | nonexistent, it's best to set expectations low instead of trying | to embed people into existing teams. | xunn0026 wrote: | You company basically did everything wrong. | | Remote teams that are selected well can be a pleasure to work | with for everybody involved. | vanusa wrote: | And I worked for a company where it worked beautifully; the | remote folks (who were very carefully picked) meshed perfectly | with the team (and better than many of the native folks). | | It's an eternal topic on HN of course. Whether it works or not | seems to depend on multiple factors (not simply language | issues, or remote versus local), in my view. | ironmagma wrote: | Yeah, several things my (former) company did that made it | worse: | | - Not consult with existing employees before making this | decision to see if we were on board. | | - Not hire individually, instead acquire an entire company. | | - Said company was struggling financially (which made it a | "good deal"). | hn_throwaway_99 wrote: | I can hardly imagine that situation working out if the | company you acquired were in the US. | Daishiman wrote: | Newsflash: competent senior engineers in LatAm with 10+ | years of experience are not dramatically cheaper than US | engineers outside of NY/SF. | | A good engineer in Latam might work below market rate for a | couple of years, then they realize their market value and | stop working at a discount. | KptMarchewa wrote: | So this is very, very different and incomparable situation | than presented in the article or discussed in the comments. | The same issues could present if you bought incompetent | company in the US. | myth2018 wrote: | It is, more than EVER, time to return to SIMPLICITY. As it's been | said, most applications aren't that special and shouldn't demand | overly specialized developers. Much like it used to be during | back in the day, the old times of xBase languages and other | contemporary technologies. Even though, nowadays even a simple | CRUD app is expected to have "improved" UX, modern UI, mobile | support, front and backend developers and other unnecessary | intricacies which adds to overall projects costs while adding | zero value to end-products. That has to stop and the conditions | for ending this collective self-delusion are better than ever. | ryanSrich wrote: | I've been hiring engineers from pretty much any country for the | better part of a decade. It still blows my mind that companies | are just figuring this out now. | | 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. | nestorD wrote: | That is great! Latin american are still suspiciously uncommon in | tech so there is definitely a neglected talent pool. | | 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...). | e4e78a06 wrote: | If your hypothesis was true then we'd see all the DEI | initiatives and blatantly illegal diversity platforms like | Canvas [1] have paid off by now. But that isn't the case. | | [1]: https://www.canvas.com/ | golemiprague wrote: | WanderPanda wrote: | I would love if more people would see it this way. If the | discrimination is so strong they should found a company, hire | all the discriminated people and profit. | Latour wrote: | There was a HN submission awhile back about a Dev in Japan | who did this very thing. Hiring people such as college | dropouts, or older women, who have higher expectations of | being stay at home moms in Japan. | brandonmenc wrote: | Disappointed to see no mention of Costa Rica. | | 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. | pevezzac wrote: | FWIW, Microsoft is hiring in Costa Rica. More specifically the | M365 Core team. I work with a few of Costa Ricans. | plumeria wrote: | There's also Intel and Amazon. I wonder if/when more tech | companies will eventually set up offices in CR. They'd be | very welcome and could get some tax benefits establishing in | a free zone, for example. | beebeepka wrote: | Intel used to build their best chips in Costa Rica. Sorry for | the useless trivia. | [deleted] | novok wrote: | IMO I really want tech companies to start hiring in latin america | more just for time zone reasons. If India & China was in south | america a lot of the pain of having offices from those regions | would go away. | | I've even done several hiring intensives for people from there 3 | or 4 years ago. | ashtonkem wrote: | As someone who works on west coast time, it's easy for me to | forget that Latin America is largely _east_ of the continental | US. Not an issue for remote work, but something that caught me | off guard when I started working with people living in that | continent. | novok wrote: | Yes that is true, I even worked in brazil with a west coast | team for a couple weeks. But it's wayyyyyyyyy better than | europe, india or china time zones. | bobthepanda wrote: | The worst is countries that do not share a Monday-Friday | working week. MENA tends to be Sunday-Thurs, so in | combination with the time zone it means you can only really | do Mon-Wed meetings US time. | yftsui wrote: | Prior discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30073727 | | Interesting decision on remove "pillaging" from title. | tootie wrote: | I've worked with partners in Colomba, Costa Rica, Argentina. | There's a lot of talent for sure. My last place had a bid back | office in Colombia, but it seemed like we were already running up | against market capacity even a few years ago and competition for | talent was heating up. The pay scales are already much higher | than Asia. | bumblebritches5 wrote: | VectorLock wrote: | Wheres a good place to find "DevOps"/SRE type people in the EST | timezone in LatAm? ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-01-30 23:00 UTC)