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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

#51

Post by colechristensen »

thatfrenchguy wrote: post #44
tinyhouse wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think US salaries are more to do with it than anything else. It's just not sustainable anymore for most tech companies. So they hire where talent is cheaper. It was obvious it will happen with remote work.

The US salaries force you to go in more competitive markets though and use your engineers better, because your costs are higher. Salaries in France have been 1/3 of US salaries forever, and yet people don't outsource to French engineers, more like French engineers move to the US.

If you outsourced to French engineers you would have to accommodate all of their rights and work styles which don’t exist so much in “developing economies”. A French engineer probably would not be online at 6am and 11pm on the same day to attend meetings and solve problems for their American managers. Eastern European, African, or SE Asian engineers would though.

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

#52

Post by bkovacev »

Tehchops wrote: post #35
bkovacev wrote: post #21

I have been trying to get US companies to hire from Eastern Europe (mainly south eastern europe). My company would act as a middleman (essentially outsourcing), pay money to the devs which would work directly 1:1 for that company. The devs would be working for us, yet, we would not manage their day to day activities - we'd just act as an HR/recruiting/legal middleman. I have tried with two major outsourcing companies…

I know the experience varies, but I've seen nothing but trouble from hiring devs from EE.

Absolutely - every experience matters. In Southeastern Europe - you get what you pay for. We would definitely not try to hire anyone with less than 5 years of experience, thoroughly vetted before even talking to the US companies and/or submitting a resume.

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

#53

Post by Hermitian909 »

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…

I think it will vary based on where you are in the talent pool. Tech talent distribution is tri-modal [0]. The demand for the kind of people who can comfortably be part of the rightmost peak (and even moreso, its right tail) is increasing rapidly. As tech gets better the leverage high performance individuals have gets bigger, not smaller.

I'm less hopeful for people in the leftmost peak or middle peaks. For decades tech has been slowly eating its low-end. Think of all the webmasters of the 90s made obsolete by sites like Squarespace, the work has more or less been completely deskilled. I think that trend will continue.

[0] https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/software-engineering-sala...

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

#54

Post by jviotti »

I think this article underestimates the difficulty of finding great talent in Latin America as a remote company. Everybody in Latin America wants to work remotely at foreign companies, yet few actually do in practice.

I was born and raised in Argentina, but studied and worked abroad (UK) and never was in the Latin American market. As an Engineering Lead at a London-based startup, I interviewed tons of software engineers who were applying remotely from all over South America and Central America. However, we didn't hire more than a bunch of Latin American engineers compared to dozens of Europeans and North Americans. The skill gap was pretty noticeable.

I've observed similar things with friends/family in South America which are into engineering. They find it very hard to be qualified enough to get offers from remote companies/startups.

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

#55

Post by vanusa »

ironmagma wrote: post #27

I worked for a company that did this. It was (and still is) a complete disaster. They've been around for 5 years and still haven't released a product. If you're going to do this, you'd better have an enormous pile of tasks that can be independently handled and programmatically verified. And just assume that communication between your US team and foreign teams will be nonexistent, it's best to set expectations low ins…

And I worked for a company where it worked beautifully; the remote folks (who were very carefully picked) meshed perfectly with the team (and better than many of the native folks).

It's an eternal topic on HN of course. Whether it works or not seems to depend on multiple factors (not simply language issues, or remote versus local), in my view.

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

#56

Post by obblekk »

I wonder if the reverse is also true, or if we're about to see white collar wages in the US get crushed.

On the one hand, American workers now have the ability to work for more companies, including outside the US. On the other hand, there are a lot more people outside than inside, and far fewer large firms outside than inside, so off-shoring could be net negative for American workers.

I wonder if we're about to see protectionism expand from blue collar politics into white collar politics.

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

#57

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#58

Post by jorblumesea »

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…

We're not really exporting work as much as hiring people to come over here. Or, it's not as clear cut as just exporting manufacturing.

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

#59

Post by nemo44x »

thatfrenchguy wrote: post #44
tinyhouse wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think US salaries are more to do with it than anything else. It's just not sustainable anymore for most tech companies. So they hire where talent is cheaper. It was obvious it will happen with remote work.

The US salaries force you to go in more competitive markets though and use your engineers better, because your costs are higher. Salaries in France have been 1/3 of US salaries forever, and yet people don't outsource to French engineers, more like French engineers move to the US.

I’ve hired French engineers in France and they’ve done great work. Hard workers too.

But the impression France has is probably a turn off for many. There are other problems too like it taking 3 months for a new French hire to start. Getting rid of them is extremely difficult as well. There are lots of additional taxes you have to pay the French government too. There’s just so much risk in hiring there that you’re better off going elsewhere with more modern employment law for skilled, high demand workers. Don’t remind me of the monthly paperwork we have to send the government to assure them the French employee isn’t working too much and is taking vacation. An absolute joke.

The French government doesn’t make French engineers very attractive unfortunately.

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

#60

Post by raziel2p »

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…

Do you think she didn't realize the irony herself? It's not a negative against her person anyway, there's nothing inherently wrong with complaining about or arguing against a system you're taking part of and/or benefiting from.
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