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

Agony of an African programmer

iafrikan.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 136 posts

Re: Agony of an African programmer

#101

Post by kamaal »

graemian wrote: post #85
limpon wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, it seems like you don't really know what you're talking about. It's not easy to move away if you're born and grew up in Africa. It's not like renting a U-Haul, pack your stuff and drive across the country. You need a visa. But it's impossible to get a visa to work in US/Europe unless you have a job. And even trying and applying for a visa costs more than most people's monthly salary. And there is no money-back g…

I was born in Africa and I'm trying to get out right now. It's not easy, but it's not impossible. I didn't get as good a deal in the birthplace lottery as Steve Jobs and others born in Silicon Valley, but I'll be damned if I'll use that as an excuse for a life of mediocrity. Frankly, if the factors you describe are really what's stopping you from reaching your goals, you're likely to fail anyway.

>>Frankly, if the factors you describe are really what's stopping you from reaching your goals, you're likely to fail anyway.

A very narrow perspective of the world.

Though I hope not, but some day if you fail for reasons beyond your control despite your best efforts may be you will see for yourself why not all failure happens due to a individual's short comings.

The world is full of examples of people who work heroically only to meet chronic failure.

Re: Agony of an African programmer

#102

Post by V-2 »

jwr wrote: post #93

I would gladly start working with programmers in Africa. I'm based in Europe (Poland), and for a long time I've been thinking about how we're working with people around the globe while completely ignoring the huge continent that is right within ±2h of our timezone. The problem begins with the word "Africa". Obviously, this is a meaningless word, describing an entire continent full of radically different countries. An…

> I know how I get annoyed when my country gets generalized as "Eastern Europe" (first, we're Central Europe, and second, countries in this part of Europe are quite different from each other)

Good point, I'm not fond of that oversimplification, either.

I wrote about it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6584077

That's a classical read worth recommending for those willing to understand the subject better:

http://www.euroculture.upol.cz/dokumenty/sylaby/Kundera_Trag...

Re: Agony of an African programmer

#103

Post by geon »

V-2 wrote: post #98

While 100k (especially as a minimum treshold) is an overestimate even for richest European countries, "Europe" is not equal to "just Western Europe" or "just a bunch of richest countries in Western Europe", as some seem to think. Apart from the UK, Switzerland or Germany, there are countries like Greece and Portugal, and there's Central and Eastern Europe, too. Median programmer salary in Poland is 5500 zl, which is…

I live in Sweden, which is by all means a "rich" contry. But a normal developer salary in my not-largest-3 city is about $ 50000 gross.

Re: Agony of an African programmer

#104

Post by wilsonfiifi »

jwr wrote: post #93

I would gladly start working with programmers in Africa. I'm based in Europe (Poland), and for a long time I've been thinking about how we're working with people around the globe while completely ignoring the huge continent that is right within ±2h of our timezone. The problem begins with the word "Africa". Obviously, this is a meaningless word, describing an entire continent full of radically different countries. An…

You could probably get in touch with the trade representative of any the embassy of the country you are interested in. That would most likely be a good starting point to get general information.

In Ghana a few good points of contact would be:

Ghana Consulate Warsaw: http://www.worldembassy.us/embassy/ghana-poland-warsaw.html

Google Ghana:

Mark Davies: http://markdavies.net/

Ghana Telecom University College: http://gtuc.edu.gh/

Meltwater: http://meltwater.org/

University of Science and Technology: http://www.knust.edu.gh

Re: Agony of an African programmer

#105

Post by mattmanser »

lgleason wrote: post #76
mattmanser wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UK, outside of London the average salary is roughly £40k for an experienced programmer ($66k). It does seem to be climbing rapidly though, 3 years ago £35k was more the avg, now I'm getting recruiter emails claiming up to £45k. So unsurprisingly it's just a sliding scale depending on your local GDP, there's not some universal pay grade.

Which languages? From what I understand you could earn that in South Africa and have a much better standard of living. Given the cost of things in the UK that is crazy....

All of them.

I think part of the problem is class, there's a psychological barrier in the UK that employees shouldn't earn more than managers.

The other part of the lower pay is that we had a lot more people dabble with development in our school system in the 80s/90s because of the BBC programs and the Micro/Archimedes in schools which means we started running short of developers a lot later than other countries.

Both of those are speculation, but that's my belief.

Re: Agony of an African programmer

#106

Post by graemian »

kamaal wrote: post #101
graemian wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was born in Africa and I'm trying to get out right now. It's not easy, but it's not impossible. I didn't get as good a deal in the birthplace lottery as Steve Jobs and others born in Silicon Valley, but I'll be damned if I'll use that as an excuse for a life of mediocrity. Frankly, if the factors you describe are really what's stopping you from reaching your goals, you're likely to fail anyway.

>>Frankly, if the factors you describe are really what's stopping you from reaching your goals, you're likely to fail anyway. A very narrow perspective of the world. Though I hope not, but some day if you fail for reasons beyond your control despite your best efforts may be you will see for yourself why not all failure happens due to a individual's short comings. The world is full of examples of people who work heroi…

Exactly! You're more likely to fail for reasons beyond your control (like no electricity, bad Internet) in African than in San Francisco.

But those things ARE actually under your control. Just move to San Francisco :-)

Re: Agony of an African programmer

#107

Post by V-2 »

bdcravens wrote: post #15
w1ntermute wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's not really accurate for the PIGS , and even in northern Europe, it's not as high as in the States.

I had to look the term up, but my first guess was correct ("Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain") http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PIGS_(economics)

I was about to flag him for being offensive to Italians ;)

Re: Agony of an African programmer

#108

Post by V-2 »

mtct wrote: post #50
atmosx wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of, congrats. Out of curiosity, what technologies are you paid to use? Rails/ObjC (ios)? Junior 17k in Italy? That sounds a little bit wild... NOTE: Sorry, I understood 17k per MONTH. Scratch the comment (keep the congrats! :-P )

I work in C#, sometime javascript if needed. For a small IT consulting firm.

Where in Italy?

My girlfriend studies Italian and we might move to Italy for a year or two, hence I'm curious. Significant differences in terms of salary?

Re: Agony of an African programmer

#109

Post by wilsonfiifi »

darronz wrote: post #86

The author forgot to mention something; Finding good staff. Finding staff is difficult because of the scarcity of developers and anyone talented almost always has a job paying far more than a startup can afford. Training juniors is the only alternative, but in doing so your company ends up being a training shop for other companies to headhunt from.

I totally agree with you on this. We had the same problem with recruiting talented staff when we started. We ended up hiring graduates who where on a 1 year National Service Scheme. We spent a quarter of the year training them and got about 8 months worth of production work out of them. A couple stayed on after the 1 year "obligatory service to the nation" period had expired and the rest joined better paying companies.

Honestly being a training ground for young graduates isn't that bad. It was very good for my personal development because teaching/training inexperienced but bright coders really raises your game because believe you me, they will challenge you and put you on the spot! Lol. I should probably make a living of organizing bootcamps for CS graduates and after 3-4 months, "auction them off" to companies … evil laugh!

Re: Agony of an African programmer

#110

Post by wobbleblob »

V-2 wrote: post #98

While 100k (especially as a minimum treshold) is an overestimate even for richest European countries, "Europe" is not equal to "just Western Europe" or "just a bunch of richest countries in Western Europe", as some seem to think. Apart from the UK, Switzerland or Germany, there are countries like Greece and Portugal, and there's Central and Eastern Europe, too. Median programmer salary in Poland is 5500 zl, which is…

I can tell you from experience that anything close to 100k would be an exceptional salary in Western Europe (Germany, Benelux) as well, depending on how you factor in the exchange rate. If I simply multiply my income in EUR by 1.4 (average exchange rate vs USD) it doesn't look that bad, but you can only really take advantage of that when mail ordering something from the US or Asia under the minimum amount to owe import duties. You generally spend a euro like you would a dollar in the states.
Post reply on HN