Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Launch HN: Astro (YC W21) – Build your own dev teams in Latin America

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 146 posts

Re: Launch HN: Astro (YC W21) – Build your own dev teams in Latin America

#91

Post by whymauri »

FrankLicea wrote: post #89
whymauri wrote: post #87

Are early startup employees in Latin America finally getting stock or are they going to continue being exploited as they build unicorn after unicorn?

It's up the companies to make compelling offers to candidates if they want to find good people. What I can tell you is that this is more common now then when we first started, which we're very glad about! In fact, on our platform we've seen some companies not only provide stock options but some even pay US level wages, or significantly above local market to entice professionals to join their teams. The companies that…

That is good. I was shocked to hear about unicorn and decacorn companies in LATAM hiring staff level engineers to make core contributions with no stock.

The more I read your responses, the more I believe this could be a net good with a more healthy attitude towards working in Latin America. Cheers and good luck!

Edit: by the way, do you facilitate sourcing talent for companies operating or building within Latin America?

Re: Launch HN: Astro (YC W21) – Build your own dev teams in Latin America

#93

Post by FrankLicea »

mwcampbell wrote: post #53
FrankLicea wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good question! At the time, hiring domestically vs internationally, wasn't a mutually exclusive decision. A team that really needs to hire fast to, say, launch a new revenue feature, needs to be expanding the top of the funnel of good people in all locations simultaneously. So we ended up with a mix of teammates in Austin and in Colombia, and crucially, we did our best to make us all feel like one product team workin…

Fair enough. But why not, say, Austin and Wichita, Kansas? Is it too hard to find people outside the big cities? When you hired in Colombia, and when you hire in Latam now for Astro customers, do you bring a bunch of people together in a physical office, or do they work from home?

You know, if I could do it over, we would have also considered Wichita, Kansas or El Paso, TX (my home town) but unfortunately we didn't do it for no other reason than it just didn't cross our minds at the time.

I speak Spanish and I had experience working with a team in Colombia, so we naturally gravitated in that direction!

Regarding office or work from home, it's up to the team! We have local offices in 6 different cities. in places where we don't have offices, a quiet co-working location with great internet and office perks is built in when building a team with Astro.

Re: Launch HN: Astro (YC W21) – Build your own dev teams in Latin America

#94

Post by pelagicAustral »

FrankLicea wrote: post #90
0xfacfac wrote: post #88

This is the same as Austin Software, right?

Astro is by Austin Software! It's a productized version of what we do. People kept thinking that Austin Software was a product outsourcing firm, i.e. they kept asking us for quotes or rate cards, etc. So to avoid confusion we built Astro, which is a UX over our team building infrastructure.

Alo! As a dev, where do I register for the platform?

Re: Launch HN: Astro (YC W21) – Build your own dev teams in Latin America

#96

Post by scantron4 »

jacsamira wrote: post #15
bberenberg wrote: post #11

Seems cool. How much coaching do you have for US companies to better understand the team's local culture issues? For example, I worked with teams in Brazil in the past and while they were smart, kind, etc they were slow in every sense of the word. They didn't have the US culture of respond quickly, unblock people, get shit done, etc. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, in fact working slower may be a benefit, but the…

Pricing-wise, I'd say our all-in fees on a per dev basis are comparable to a developer's salary here in the US, but our fees are inclusive of benefits, tech, offices, etc... and the US salary is not.

Its frustrating that over and over you say "comparable to" rather than a number.

Re: Launch HN: Astro (YC W21) – Build your own dev teams in Latin America

#97

Post by mattfrommars »

Fantastic work. Basically, you want to be the TCS, Accenture of South America. Awesome.

What I'd love to know is how did you get 50+ US start up to use your services? How did you compete/or reach out to the folks who are directly involved in vetting outsourcing firms to use your services and not the industrial standard TCS/Accenture/Wipro - who dominate the space.

I do want to start an outsourcing agency one day but getting the client to choose my firm over the rest is what gets me.

Re: Launch HN: Astro (YC W21) – Build your own dev teams in Latin America

#98

Post by moonchrome »

smallerfish wrote: post #25

Not to be a downer, but that's pretty expensive. I spent last week in [latam capital city] and met with 3 local outsourcing firms, down from 6 that I'd pre-screened by Zoom. I then reduced the list to 2 based on the co-founders of each being technical, and their solid recruiting practices. Both have offices which devs are free to come into (or work remotely), both pay salaries and offer benefits, both provide embedde…

At those prices I'd expect inflating estimates, catfishing juniors by selling seniors in interview/contacts and splitting senior staff between multiple clients.

Basically that's the price range a senior developer can make on his own remoting on platforms like toptal - there's no buffer there for the agency cut unless they are some partnership or losing money to catch clients.

And best case scenario - they have decent devs available at those prices right now - it's likely they will figure out what I've said and cut out the middle man/work for some US client directly and get a 30% bump for little effort.

Re: Launch HN: Astro (YC W21) – Build your own dev teams in Latin America

#99

Post by Rebelgecko »

causality0 wrote: post #73
FrankLicea wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So for us, hiring domestically (either 1099 or FTE) vs internationally, wasn't a mutually exclusive decision. Finding good people was a real risk to our growth. So we expanded the top of our funnel to more locations simultaneously. However, we weren't just interested in salary arbitrage, we really did need to attract good people with premium benefits. Good international teammates aren't going to leave their team only…

That's nice but would you mind actually answering his question? Why should he pay comparable rates to someone residing where the cost of living is a fraction of the US? There are concrete benefits to having dev teams composed of people who share a common culture. What's on the other end of the scales to balance out losing that if it isn't money?

The cost of employing someone in the US can easily be 2x their actual salary.
Post reply on HN