I used to work as an out source, getting a salary of $18,000. Then I got a visa and relocated and my salary increased by 611%. My culture, education, language skills and work ethics did not change. This is not fair.
Is a trillion dollars’ worth of programming lying on the ground?
331–340 of 350 posts
Re: Is a trillion dollars’ worth of programming lying on the ground?
#332To toss in a second-hand anecdote: I once asked someone who worked at/with companies screening Africans for diamonds in the rough, smart guys who could do programming but were being paid peanuts, like $10k/year, and paying them a multiple of that for outsourcing, why it wasn't such a great idea, when Africa seems to have so many under-utilized people. He said that despite expectations, they were not much cheaper to h…
Japanese cars were considered cheap and poor quality too, until they weren't. Chinese-made used to be a synonym for shoddy workmanship. Like recently, when I was an adult, and I'm not that old. Things do change.
"Chinese made" is still a meme. But now there is nothing made anywhere except of China, so it's kinda moot point.
Re: Is a trillion dollars’ worth of programming lying on the ground?
#333I am Brazilian, I tried to get jobs in other countries multiple times and many times it failed due to reasons not related to my competency: 1. Rejected from working in a gamedev in Europe because I am not EU Citizen. 2. Lots of companies on USA have to follow some crazy tax rules or general regulations that make them not allowed to hire foreigners, don't even need to be military stuff. Noticed some companies won't ev…
Assuming your timezone is GMT-3, it's 5 hour difference with California and 4 hours with most of Europe. At least one of them should be manageable (either waking up around 5am or going to bed around 3am).
To me it is, but employers don't care for that. They just refuse to hire. (I regularly sleep around 3am, I am total night owl)
Re: Is a trillion dollars’ worth of programming lying on the ground?
#334I am Brazilian, I tried to get jobs in other countries multiple times and many times it failed due to reasons not related to my competency: 1. Rejected from working in a gamedev in Europe because I am not EU Citizen. 2. Lots of companies on USA have to follow some crazy tax rules or general regulations that make them not allowed to hire foreigners, don't even need to be military stuff. Noticed some companies won't ev…
Based on your comment, I assume these are all under the context of full time employment? Do you find the same barriers apply when attempting contracting (including factors others have noted in this thread)?
I tried everything, same issues. For example for contract many of these issues are even worse, because taxes, regulations on what kind of contractors may be hired, or local countries or cities requiring contractors to be registered locally, etc...
Re: Is a trillion dollars’ worth of programming lying on the ground?
#335It seems to be missing a very big factor: culture. If your goal is to implement some code for, say, healthcare, it is a lot easier to explain the business process to someone who is already familiar with how stuff is done on a higher level. Whenever you hire someone from a different culture / country, you need to start from the basics by explaining the very core of your society. An American programmer might not be too…
Another aspect of culture: how one-sided the communication is. Silicon Valley and Scandinavian cultures are very flat, so it is possible for "the man on the floor" to tell management that it doesn't work to put diesel into a gasoline car. In authoritarian cultures this would be a mistake as it's seen as embarrassing the management by saying they made a mistake. If you want to continue being employed then it is much b…
It's ironic that as someone from a similar "shy" culture, I do not dare to tell my manager that our outsourced programmers in a low-cost country sometimes don't write a single line of code in a day, and one of them is not even familiar with programming beyond a "hello world".
Re: Is a trillion dollars’ worth of programming lying on the ground?
#336It seems to be missing a very big factor: culture. If your goal is to implement some code for, say, healthcare, it is a lot easier to explain the business process to someone who is already familiar with how stuff is done on a higher level. Whenever you hire someone from a different culture / country, you need to start from the basics by explaining the very core of your society. An American programmer might not be too…
Whenever you hire someone from a different culture / country, you need to start from the basics by explaining the very core of your society. An American programmer might not be too concerned if a body temperature measurement returns 45 degrees Celcius. Similarly, a patient height of 95in probably wouldn't immediately raise alarm bells for a European developer. This is so key and has been overlooked for decades. In ad…
I am curious as to what is the benefit of having employees chit-chat with each other, or become friends. I have never personally worked in a dev team that has the `esprit de corps` but as long as you give me a good design, I will implement and release it, and I will work with others to help them in their work.
But I am absolutely not interested in their political opinions, what they had for lunch or what their girlfriend told them last weekend.
Re: Is a trillion dollars’ worth of programming lying on the ground?
#337Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just for clarity, US salaries are usually discussed before tax. If you're taking home 35-45k, you're basically at US salary levels. Remember than even here, Silicon Valley salaries are way above salaries elsewhere in the US. Increased competition for the best / closest programmers increases wages.
The Silicon Valley premium is not that large. Every programmer I know in North Carolina earns six figures. I earned 95 as a programmer with moderate experience in South Carolina a decade ago before I changed career paths.
There's a big difference between making 95k and making 350k total comp as a senior dev at FAANG.
Re: Is a trillion dollars’ worth of programming lying on the ground?
#338It seems to be missing a very big factor: culture. If your goal is to implement some code for, say, healthcare, it is a lot easier to explain the business process to someone who is already familiar with how stuff is done on a higher level. Whenever you hire someone from a different culture / country, you need to start from the basics by explaining the very core of your society. An American programmer might not be too…
> culture except the vast majority of FAANgs work force are immigrants.
I don't know the answer, but to give a counter thesis:
- with higher "programming literacy" in a country they might have more top class programmers, top class programmers where able to optimize their career early by moving to western countries.
Re: Is a trillion dollars’ worth of programming lying on the ground?
#339Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wait, hold on. Won't this be easily mitigated by a native programmer tech lead working overseas? Say I was born in X (low income) and raised there, and then move to Y (high income) and work there as a programmer for several years, then it should be easy for me to hire programmers from X and be the bridge to management at Y?
And that is a very common business model in Europe
And still has its challenges. Another man in the middle doesn't make information flow easier and it's often hard enough to explain between parties within the office.
Re: Is a trillion dollars’ worth of programming lying on the ground?
#340To toss in a second-hand anecdote: I once asked someone who worked at/with companies screening Africans for diamonds in the rough, smart guys who could do programming but were being paid peanuts, like $10k/year, and paying them a multiple of that for outsourcing, why it wasn't such a great idea, when Africa seems to have so many under-utilized people. He said that despite expectations, they were not much cheaper to h…
The world has changed a lot since 1987, so this post-colonial mindset might need revisiting. I don't know about cotton mills, but now the biggest steel manufacturer in the world is ArcelorMittal, an Indian company. On the other hand, British Steel was initially acquired by Tata, an Indian conglomerate, and recently "rescued" from insolvency by a Chinese investor. Any productivity advantages in manufacturing that migh…
According to its wikipedia article, ArcelorMittal doesn't actually have any plants in India: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ArcelorMittal#Facilities