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

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

restofworld.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 353 posts

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

#61

Post by thaumaturgy »

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…

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 university degree doesn't really tell us much, and certainly tells us a lot less than a portfolio of projects or work experience.

This is still fundamentally a hiring problem. There's no way to sort candidates by skill that doesn't involve a ton of labor. A CS degree sure ain't it.

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

#62

Post by the_gipsy »

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.

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

#63

Post by krasin »

jorblumesea wrote: post #50
krasin wrote: post #2

I am surprised that it took so long to realize that hiring people in the same time zone is better for productivity. I am saying it as someone who spent N years working for an American company from Moscow (~11 hours difference) and had to sleep in the office frequently to get at least some things done (like, code reviews approved by the team members in the main office).

Language/education/infrastructure barrier in Latin America, for some countries at least. Situation is improving as of late but a large skill gap both in terms of education and foreign lang skills (English). Hiring in India was painful for some reasons, but everyone spoke English and education was top level due to intense competition. Most of Latin America is only roughly overlapping with US timezones. The western mos…

I have a first hand experience working with a great team at Trinidad and Tobago. Maybe we got lucky in finding them, but I've got an impression that good universities exist and therefore there's a steady supply of capable new grads.

As for timezone, Trinidad and Tobago is EST+1, Lima (Peru) is EST, and Brazil is EST+2. That gives much more workday overlap than even Western Europe.

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

#64

Post by ironmagma »

vanusa wrote: post #55
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.

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").

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

#65

Post by bkovacev »

spamizbad wrote: post #33
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…

My company uses Eastern European contractors for certain projects as "staff augmentation". Overall, I would say our experience is positive. There are indeed many experienced devs who do great work. But it does have some drawbacks: 1) 10-hour time difference between West Coast US and, say, Kyiv is pretty big. It's easier on EST people, but on the US side you're going to have to plan on jamming your calendars full of m…

1) Absolutely - I have been working for the US companies as an FTE (remotely, but C2C, essentially a contractor), and sometimes the hours do make an issue. It's a 9 hour difference with the West Coast for me, but Central / Eastern works well, if the expectations are properly set.

2) Spot on - Agile does not work well in such environment, I have seen it first hand twice. I feel that with senior/staff level devs, you can expect and should get higher level of autonomy and less hand-holding, so in a solid project oriented company, I do feel that fewer "business hours overlap" would impact much. I do feel that at least 3, preferably more hours should be reserved for meetings / overlap.

3) I'd argue about that one, haha. I have been on-call troubleshooting production at 2-3am my time, not once, but multiple times. For a great employer, with proper compensation and benefits, you'd be surprised what devs from this area would do!

4) YES! Companies are greedy. However, they do have to pay pension/insurance on the hourly rate they give to the dev, think 50-60%, but they don't want to give away their cut at all, it seems to be non-negotiable flat fee, which is deal breaking. Another point is that Microsoft and other big brand outsourcing names are coming to EE and stealing away the workforce.

Disclaimer - I work as a senior/staff level dev with high base salary and equity, so my experience may be a bit skewed.

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

#66

Post by pantalaimon »

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…

My first job was at a startup and they simply didn't have any money to hire experienced people, so it was petty much only people fresh from uni.

You see the same at other smaller companies who will rather hire a student or a fresh graduate because it's much cheaper (and more available).

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

#67

Post by chrisseaton »

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…

Racing to the bottom by paying talent more and more and more?

I feel like companies are investing even more in the long term than ever before, building increasingly ambitious infrastructure projects.

I don't see what you see at all.

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

#68

Post by Accujack »

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…

>There’s a global talent shortage for experienced people in software engineering

No, there's not. There's a shortage of cheap experienced software engineers in the US.

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

#69

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

#70

Post by downut »

colechristensen wrote: post #46
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.

I’ve been at and seen plenty of places where a growing layer of middle management was paying for itself by outsourcing engineers. Outsourced engineers very often need much more management and company directors either lose touch or decide to run the company in ways that justify raising their own salaries. It’s not that the cost of engineers is unsustainable, it’s that aging companies tend to want to take power and dec…

This has happened in my wife's rather staid manufacturing industry. Many plants in the US have no on-site engineers. The "engineering" design is performed by remote fresh-outs at the exurban headquarters, and a lot of that work is simply regurgitating the specs from the equipment manufacturers. Who quite rightly charge exorbitantly to have their own engineers perform the inevitable changes that would be nearly trivial for an in-house on-site engineer to make. It's not unique to her particular company; this is the way her industrial customers and suppliers work too. The backend software is managed the same way. Buy Oracle/MS/Google whatever integrated functionality, and hire consultants to make changes. No expertise in-house.

No in-house expertise means no management responsibility for failure: it's the supplier's fault. Yet those same vendors are more often than not locked in by prohibitive replacement economics. Gruesome for old skool highly competent engineers, like my wife.

Most of these companies are profitable, so who can argue? This is the present and inevitable future.

Post reply on HN