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U.S. companies are hiring Latin America’s tech talent

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Re: U.S. companies are hiring Latin America’s tech talent

#121

Post by giantg2 »

csomar wrote: post #88
atlasunshrugged wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

Shouldn't mediocre be generally acceptable? It seems unreal to expect the majority to be above average.

Re: U.S. companies are hiring Latin America’s tech talent

#122

Post by scsilver »

faangiq wrote: post #120
gregdoesit wrote: post #3

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 mo…

Reminder, every “talent shortage” is actually a wage shortage. Double those salaries and you’ll find plenty of talent.

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.

Re: U.S. companies are hiring Latin America’s tech talent

#123

Post by EVdotIO »

pc86 wrote: post #95
thaumaturgy wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 univers…

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 f…

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.

Re: U.S. companies are hiring Latin America’s tech talent

#124

Post by scsilver »

devwastaken wrote: post #45
gregdoesit wrote: post #3

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 mo…

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 t…

The talent abroad ends up working for US companies though, how will dominance dissipate. The market and financing is in the US.

Re: U.S. companies are hiring Latin America’s tech talent

#126

Post by BigRedDog1669 »

nemo44x wrote: post #89
marvin wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 enco…

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.

Re: U.S. companies are hiring Latin America’s tech talent

#127

Post by colmvp »

raz32dust wrote: post #107
devwastaken wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

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.

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.

Re: U.S. companies are hiring Latin America’s tech talent

#128

Post by i_like_waiting »

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.

Re: U.S. companies are hiring Latin America’s tech talent

#129

Post by syshum »

the_gipsy wrote: post #62
1270018080 wrote: post #22

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…

Sell that million dollar Bay Are house and move somewhere better but less expensive. Don't worry.

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

Re: U.S. companies are hiring Latin America’s tech talent

#130

Post by csomar »

giantg2 wrote: post #121
csomar wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Shouldn't mediocre be generally acceptable? It seems unreal to expect the majority to be above average.

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.
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