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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

#191

Post by oblio »

kragen wrote: post #109

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". Because I'm…

For companies it's one thing, but for governments it could be different.

If your schooling was free, then to some degree you do "owe" working locally in order to give something back for that.

Of course, if it's not part of an agreement you signed before you started your studies or they don't enforce it, then I guess that's that.

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

#192

Post by kragen »

zozbot234 wrote: post #187
MadSudaca wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The crab-bucket mentality you talk about, at least in what the belief of business being bad respects, comes from the cultural influence of Catholicism, and it’s pervasive in all LA. I’d dare to say it can be found in Spain/Portugal as well.

Argentina used to be a first-world developed country in the late 19th and early 20th century. The self-defeating crab bucket mentality only took root there as a result of left-wing populist politics.

No, Argentina was never either a first-world country or a developed country. What we were is rich, because a small population had conquered a large territory that yielded limitless amounts of beef, and with the advent of refrigerated shipping, that meant amounts of wealth limited only by how many cowboys and meatpackers you could hire. The self-defeating crab bucket mentality was already well in place during the Argentine civil wars, and the distance from the rhetoric of Juan Manuel de Rosas to that of Perón was really just as small as Perón claimed.

Also I really think it's a stretch to call Perón left-wing. Are you talking about the Montoneros?

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

#193

Post by throwmeaway666 »

>“An American company was offering him $15,000 per month to work for them,” Campos told Rest of World. “We cannot compete with that.”

Wow, that's crazy. As a (senior?) software engineer based in Chile who was recently hired by an American company for around $3.5k/mo (that was my offer) I am now feeling underpaid. :)

Assuming that this information is correct, I am now wondering how much I could get away with next time around...

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

#194

Post by [deleted] »

kragen wrote: post #109

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". Because I'm…

[deleted]

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

#195

Post by oblio »

Daishiman wrote: post #100
ironmagma wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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").

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.

That's the case for any good dev, anywhere in the world. If they're not chained to their job for various non-work reasons, they > move on to competitive salaries.

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

#196

Post by reaperducer »

jimbob45 wrote: post #90
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…

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.

I'd go further and say it's not just the recruiters that are the problem, but the automation of recruiting that is the problem.

Hiring is a people skill, not an algorithm skill.

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

#197

Post by kragen »

oblio wrote: post #191
kragen wrote: post #109

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". Because I'm…

For companies it's one thing, but for governments it could be different. If your schooling was free, then to some degree you do "owe" working locally in order to give something back for that. Of course, if it's not part of an agreement you signed before you started your studies or they don't enforce it, then I guess that's that.

I do think people should pay their taxes in order to fund the next generation of universal prenatal medical care, education, etc., but having them work for local companies for 20% of the market rate means they only have 20% as much income to tax, so we can only fund 20% as much education and medical care. You might think this would be compensated by vastly increased profits for the companies, but it isn't, because the low wages mean it's profitable to set people to work on low-value projects.

So, no, I don't think people "owe" working locally. If they owe anything in exchange for free education, it's realizing their full human potential and being generous with their time and money.

Now, go donate to Library Genesis and Sci-Hub, so the next generation can have free education not only in Argentina but everywhere in the world that it's legal.

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

#198

Post by kgran »

pid-1 wrote: post #149
pevey wrote: post #5

"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…

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 contrib…

Also causing the prices in some sectors, such as real estate, to raise abnormally.

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

#199

Post by giantg2 »

csomar wrote: post #186
giantg2 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Or there's a need for communication. > the issue we have with outsourced work is subpar English communication. If you have good English command, you are already worth something on the Internet. Also, someone not from an English speaking country will need to pick up English by himself and practice frequently.

I'm not worth anything.

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

#200

Post by kragen »

giantg2 wrote: post #184
kragen wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A friend of mine who died recently worked on Stretch at IBM. Later, he was one of the early employees of a hot cloud computing startup, in 01968.

Yeah, but there's increasingly no place for me in the working world. I'm decent at a lot of things, but not an expert. I'm no longer relevant.

You may enjoy https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2012-09-02
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