US Tech Firms Hunt for Cheap Home-Based Hires in Latin America (bloomberg.com) 80
The remote-work revolution has led some U.S. technology companies, from startups to Coinbase and Shopify, to seek new hires in Latin America -- where they can find qualified people in roughly the same time zone who'll work for much lower pay. From a report: It's a logical extension of the pandemic work-from-home drift away from hubs like San Francisco and New York to less expensive locations -- including across national borders. And the way currencies have shifted in the pandemic is only reinforcing the trend. Brazil, in particular, has become steadily more appealing to those with dollars to spend. The Brazilian real has lost more than a fourth of its value since the beginning of the pandemic. Other Latin American currencies including the Argentinian peso and Colombian peso are also among the big underperformers of the past two years.
It's got nothing to do with work from home (Score:5, Insightful)
Years ago large corporations began to silo employees with very specific processes and skills so that they could break down what we do in order to prevent any one employee from becoming essential. This was called devops. I know in the trenches is devops means something else but to management that's what devops was. It was the process of turning expensive IT workers into cogs who could be replaced at a moment's notice.
We are it workers allowed this to happen because quite frankly we had no choice. When you get right down to it we have absolutely no say in how our workplaces are run, since we don't have unions and individuals have very little power. If you're one of the very very top employees you can go work somewhere else but the fact is the majority of us aren't one of those top employees.
The problem with IT workers is that we mostly work with idiots all day long. You work with the kind of people who can barely fill out a spreadsheet. We're the people who can see in the land of the blind. This tends to give us a very inflated sense of our own value and it's why when the management and CEOs began to turn us into replaceable cogs we didn't really notice or care until it was too late. Once that happened our hours started to increase in our pay started to stagnant or just playing get cut.
I know people in IT who will brag about their paid because it's the same pay they made back in the
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> So ... you do want trade barriers on labor? Because I thought that was supposed to be evil and racist.
Do you want US citizens to move to cheap countries and price out locals? ... which is racist and evil and fascist and .. and ...
Or are you in favor of limiting foreigners from buying up local property
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Sorry, exactly who said it was "evil and racist"? Seems like you said it.... and ulreawealthy, who don't want to pay crap, because it cuts into their ROI.
Why, exactly, did the US cut and cut and cut corp taxes and the top income tax rates? Was it so that the "job creators" would create more jobs?
Right, and here they are doing it... OUT OF THE US.
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Sorry, exactly who said it was "evil and racist"?
People like rsilvergun (you know, the person I was responding to there) and his political bedfellows said it and say it, all the time. They think that barriers on cross border labor are evil and racist ... well, if Republicans propose them, anyway.
I was pointing out his contradictions when it comes to this stuff.
Re:It's got nothing to do with work from home (Score:5, Insightful)
Hi from Latin America
No, we don't work for "cheap". We know what your salaries are, and we work for similar salaries too.
We may be "slightly cheaper" compared to obscene housing prices in san francisco, but myself, I make $75k/year for "semi senior".
The first thing you need from a LATAM based developer is that they speak english. And this is a huge barrier as most people don't speak enough english to maintain a conversation.
But still, we prefer to work for european companies, that give far better benefits (mine gives me 34 days off a year!), and don't push us to "grind" like american companies are famous for.
I've seen job posts from amazon in Argentina trying to get developers for $5K a year. To amazon, i say, GOOD FUCKING LUCK.
Re:It's got nothing to do with work from home (Score:4, Funny)
> But still, we prefer to work for european companies, that give far better benefits (mine gives me 34 days off a year!), and don't push us to "grind" like american companies are famous for.
Whoops... now work from home Americans are going to be taking your European work from home jobs for the vacation perks. Take that. :)
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If 75K/yr is enough for you, be my guest, but hey, let me refer you.
I get a 1500 EUR referral bonus!
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We may be "slightly cheaper"
$75 - yeah that is a lot cheaper actually. Even outside the valley "semi senior" IT work is more like 95-100k in the US.
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and i know of people in the US making less, with a higher seniority.
But 20k a year for a company is very little compared to the 'risks' of hiring someone from abroad.
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Except that is about 20% of the salaries you are talking about. Multiple that out by an entire team and most CTO's would be pretty excited to cut 20% of their salary expense!
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Re:It's got nothing to do with work from home (Score:5, Insightful)
Example: When you have a US person, you are paying their salary, plus half of the taxes for the person, plus unemployment, whatever perks are part of the company "bundle" (health insurance being a common one) and from a tax perspective, all of these go into different buckets some of which can't be deducted, others are deducted at different rates.
vs. an outsourced person, they are paying a flat rate which is almost 100% deductible.
Some companies do try to play the ultra cheap numbers (like that ridiculous 5K from amazon you mentioned).. but this is a little like SPAM.. they know they won't get EVERYONE.. but as its so cheap to blast it out there (coupled with the panache of working for amazon).. they will get one or two fish.. Most aim for a 10-20% cost reduction and full tax abatement which to a company means a 40% cost reduction by outsourcing..
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I know you're trolling but
yes, what you're saying is true. And they take days off incredibly often too. EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM also took a day off after their vaccination because they were "not feeling good"...
but if you want to "work hard", you do you.
Re:It's got nothing to do with work from home (Score:4, Funny)
You say that like it's a bad thing?
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How are those 34 days broken out, I always see the Europeans brag about how many days they have but I don't know how to compare it to what we get in the US.
For instance, I get 10 federal holidays, plus 26 vacation days (1 per 2 week pay period), plus 13 paid sick days (and as many unpaid as I need).
So do I have 26 compared to your 34, or does your number include holidays in which case I would have 36. Do your days off include your paid sick?
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Traditionally*, Federal/State/Bank holidays are separate, so we get a minimum x days holiday per year, plus state holidays.
In the UK, that'd be 28 (which I believe is one of the lowest in the block) plus 8. So 36 total, just like you.
*I just double-checked this & it appears that employers are legally allowed to discount state holidays from your allowance, however I've never personally worked anywhere where that was the case.
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Well, I'm a contractor so I don't have any "rights", but they try to make them similar to what an employee gets.
But it's 34 "working days" off. so, If I want to work during the holidays and save all 34 days for a single big vacation, it's possible. If I take national holidays off (around 15 a year), I have 19 working days off. or almost 4 weeks off. So yeah 1 month vacation + all national holidays.
Sick days I haven't asked. Probably from the working days. But the company is pretty cool anyways, maybe they
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In Europe we don't have a fixed number of paid sick days, or any unpaid sick days. We have as many paid sick days as we are actually sick. I don't know off-hand how many days I can self-certify before I need my family doctor to sign me off work (and it almost certainly varies between countries and sectors), but I do know that if it does come to that then the company would get in big trouble if I showed up at work before she certified me as recovered.
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We kinda/sorta have unlimited paid sick as well for most professions. As I mentioned I get about 13 days of paid sick per year, in my case it rolls over so I actually have a lot saved up, but if not after I exhausted my leave I could get short term disability (or disability insurance provided by my work or covered personally). If it's a permanent disability then you would apply for social security disability plus any applicable state disability program.
If you don't get sick benefits from work you would mov
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Re:It's got nothing to do with work from home (Score:5, Insightful)
Here come the chickens! (Score:5, Insightful)
Here come the chickens, home to roost.
I and many others pointed out here if you can do your work at home in the USA, than someone else can do it in some other country with dramatically lower living expenses and under bid you.
This "i am not going back to the office" attitude after a year+ of proving, work from home actually did work for a given job roles is just a license for employers to depress wages. It has not happened yet because HR in a lot places was not prepeped to have out of state or international employees. That will get fixed..
This post pandemic hiring binge/recovery worker sqeeze is temporary upward pressure, the downward presser won't be temporary.
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Yes, and I have no issue with at will employment!
I do have an issue with free-trade as a concept or rather I have issue with free-trade + taxation and regulation.
Stop asking me to pay SS, med, and income taxes and I'd be ok taking a lot lower wages, I might still have to ask a premium over some guy living in a *astan or some South American shit-hole country but it would be a premium I am sure I could justify in terms of better productivity etc.
Either that or we need some protectionism. Labor "imports" shoul
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"This is the exact wrong approach in a capitalist system." -> only if believe we should have entire gaps in industries and there are not more critical long term national interests / suitability considerations that are bigger than the efficiency.
Which is probably true for smaller nations, with fewer people, and less breadth of natural resources within their geography. Its not true for the USA.
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Why do you think people in SA aren't going to pay taxes? Do you think companies will just Western Union you the money like illegals do? No. We have to bill you completely legally, and pay for our own medical insurance out of pocket, and pay income tax the moment money hits our bank accounts.
Also, your racism is showing. Good luck with that attitude.
Re:Here come the chickens! (Score:4, Insightful)
My racism - come off it much SA if full of people of European decent anyway. It has nothing to do at all with race - and you sir are the worst kind of trash for suggesting it does by the way - its about living costs and economic CLASS.
Living a upper middle class lifestyle in the US costs much more denominated in dollars than it does in most of SA. That is just a fact
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My racism - come off it much SA if full of people of European decent anyway. It has nothing to do at all with race - and you sir are the worst kind of trash for suggesting it does by the way
I might still have to ask a premium over some guy living in a *astan or some South American shit-hole country
Nationalism a better word perhaps? Branding large swathes of the world as "shit-holes" definitely exuberates a certain amount of ignorance (as was pointed out to your last President). Whilst the bottom of the barrel may be lower, the quality of life for the well employed in the urban & economic power-houses in middle income countries is well on par with the US average.
...but it would be a premium I am sure I could justify in terms of better productivity etc.
Well, good for you. But keep in mind that there's massive distance between the often stereotyped outsourcing sweatshops of poorly trained
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Ok fine no taxes and medicare. But good luck finding privately owned roads to drive to work on. Because you now lose access to public roads.
usa really needs medicare for all! (Score:2)
usa really needs medicare for all!
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Yes, and I have no issue with at will employment!
Then quit complaining about companies firing people in order to increase the bottom line.
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I and many others pointed out here if you can do your work at home in the USA, than someone else can do it in some other country with dramatically lower living expenses and under bid you.
Going to Latin America may overcome the time zone issue. It doesn't fix the language/accent barrier, nor the cultural or business knowledge barrier. Nor any law and regulation barriers across countries.
Re:Here come the chickens! (Score:5, Informative)
Going to Latin America may overcome the time zone issue. It doesn't fix the language/accent barrier
Have you been to Latin America lately?
Millions of Mexicans have lived in America and returned for family, economic, or legal reasons. Many of them spent their childhoods in America and speak fluent, unaccented American English.
Costa Rica has universal English education. Anyone under 40 can speak fluently.
Honduras has a community of native English speakers on the Atlantic coast. They are immigrants from Jamacia who came to work on the railroads many decades ago.
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Yes, there are exceptions.
And you may get lucky and find someone who overcomes every barrier (well, except the legal/financial related cross-border issues).
That doesn't mean that the barriers don't exist. The pay differential has to compete with (on average) some very real costs.
(Which is why I still have a job that everyone says I can't possibly have, while also working from home, after decades at this point when some cheap foreigner could have had it, if those barriers didn't exist.)
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Costa Rica has universal English education. Anyone under 40 can speak fluently.
Honduras has a community of native English speakers on the Atlantic coast. They are immigrants from Jamacia who came to work on the railroads many decades ago.
For varying definitions of "native English speakers". I can tell you now I have a much easier time understanding heavily accented English from spanish-native speakers than I do the Jamaican Patois.
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If the only thing you have going on for you is "I can drive to work every day" then you have nothing going on for you.
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Not all jobs are software.
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I and many others pointed out here if you can do your work at home in the USA, than someone else can do it in some other country with dramatically lower living expenses and under bid you.
Most of these places don't actually have lower living expenses - the US actually has a very low cost of living (as long as you don't get sick), certainly by first-world standards and actually less than a lot of third-world countries - again, excluding healthcare costs.
What these countries have is a lower standard of living for the working classes and a more desperate workforce.
Currencies Losing Value? (Score:1)
Ah, dear slashdot (Score:2)
At least this hasn't changed since the 90s.
"Trade barriers are evil and racist!!!"
"(Er, unless they are in my field ... can we have some?)"
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The great sucking sound is very very real.
Ross was right. People who support free trade sold out their neighbors; regardless of color or creed.
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Global companies grow globally.
Get over it.
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Global companies only exist domestically or only have access to our markets because our NATIONAL governments let them.
Its supposed to be a government by the people for the people - it does not have to be that we choose globalism.
Re: Ah, dear slashdot (Score:2)
Yes, and these people want access to global goods and labor.
I was on Perot's side until years later, when I wandered into a Wal-Mart and saw a DVD player selling for $29. That was an epiphany: the people I disagreed with were right and had been all along, while I was wrong.
You wanted to work from home (Score:5, Insightful)
If a dude in South America who is broke and cannot afford a decent education can have skills that are competitive with and just as useful as yours, whose fault is that? I mean, really think about that .. we have the best universities and advantages .. unless you grew up in a household making less than $10 a day it is squandering ones privilege to make less of yourself than a person in South America. Fuck off it is true. Everything you need to be 10x smarter and more skilled than a South American was available to you. Instead of you complaining someone else can do your job, we should be complaining that you squandered the ahead position provided to your on a silver platter. It is not too late, there is free training and tutorials on any subject on the internet. Why are you not enrolling?
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The upside is global employment without physical emmigration. Humans who can afford to stay home tend to be happier with their kinsmen and lower cost of living. Why spend money and years trying for a foothold in an expensive location if you can make a comfortable income where you are? There's plenty of beautiful, affordable land in Central and South America but a key reason for lower industrialization than in North America is geography.
Freed from the need to physically relocate creatives the world can benef
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You figure? Got any proof of that? Please show something, anything, in my comment that meets the definition of racism — which you probably need reminding is the belief that one set of people is superior to another because of certain intrinsic non-teachable traits passed to them due to their ancestry. .
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I think your post disproves your own point.
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Damn those commies and their free education!
More like a threat to outsourcing (Score:3)
Actually for outsourcing firms this is a threat because it is becoming easier for companies to just hire their own employees in other countries if they don't need to provide offices and all in countries where they have workers. Outsourcing firms are generally not excited about WFH. Hiring workers in foreign countries to work as employees is not outsourcing.
nothing learned from past follies (Score:3)
Or, it did, and this is a shallow ploy to suppress US wages, eviscerate benefits, and get rich off the backs of workers - Because, you know, every CEO deserves his own space d!ck rocket ship company, while the workers can't afford child care or college. Just and an antidote: the CEO of Kroeger makes over 900X the average workers salary - https://perfectunion.us/exclus... [perfectunion.us]
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Fixing botched lowest-bidder software is good job security. Botch away!...
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God damnit, Now I know why Kroeger always has long-ass lines, they offshored all of the checkers.
Fair enough (Score:5, Insightful)
If I was American I'd think about buying a cheap home in South America, move there, and find a work-from-home job in the US.
Works both ways... :-)
No, it's not fair... (Score:2)
Yet these same people who would outsource to the third world won't hire a native-born American for a third of that price in rural America. There are plenty of farmers who would gladly code while they watch their crops grow.
You can speculate as to why, but I suspect it has something to do with negative stereotypes about rednecks, Trump voters, and white Christian males.
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It has to do with laybor law and tax structures is what it has to do with.
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I'd like that explained how tax law favors outsourcing overseas versus outsourcing domestically. Was Trump actually right about the US favoring China over our own citizens?
Minimum wage (Score:3, Insightful)
How the fuck is it that people can live in Latin America for a few dollars a day but we cannot? The only reason has to be the US minimum wage illusion has ramped up the costs of everything here. It has kicked millions of people off the payroll permanently. In 1950 adult male labor participation was at 95%, today it is around 70%. We got to this place because people rather the temporary dopamine hit of seeing salaries fake-increased. For every dollar you increase minimum wage, the cost of the things you can buy goes up 2 dollars. It is simple damn mathematics. Every time. Doubling minimum wage increases the cost of living. It is better to halve salaries and have the cost of things drop 4x .. but fools will never see that. It requires too much logic that most peoples brains do not wanna compute. The true reality is that if we eliminate minimum wages and trade barriers, we can compete and win globally and people worldwide would live better too.
Fact checking time (Score:5, Interesting)
Latin Americans live on more than a few dollars a day. The worst GDP per capita is Honduras at $2,602 / year, which is over $7 a day. Meanwhile, Costa Rica's GDP per capita is $11,860, or $32.50 a day.
Also, I wouldn't consider living off $7 a day a pleasant living experience. $7 a day buys you three meals of food, but requires that you stay with extended family, because you sure can't afford a place of your own. Maybe if you're good at saving you can buy a used smartphone.
But goodness gracious, you sure are reaching when it comes to equating minimum wage with impoverished living. The US cost of living is high, because there's a crap-ton of money in the US. There's a huge population producing a large quantity of goods and services that creates a large pool of money; there's a ton of banks and other institutions loaning out money daily, adding to that pool of money; there's this entity called Uncle Sam, giving out money every day to people, adding to that pool of money. And the greater the supply of cash, the greater the inflation. All minimum wage attempts to do is try to see that everyone's getting enough from that pool of money to earn a living.
And there's plenty of places in the United States that have "halved" their salaries. Just go to any state that hasn't raised their minimum wage in the last couple years. California's paying $15 an hour, while Idaho's still stuck at $7.25. But go to Boise, Idaho, and you'll find out how terrible the cost of living is there. Why? It's not because Idaho raised their minimum wage. It's because so many people from California moved there in the last two years, bringing their CA salaries with them.
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Nonsense. (Score:5, Interesting)
How the fuck is it that people can live in Latin America for a few dollars a day but we cannot? The only reason has to be the US minimum wage illusion has ramped up the costs of everything here.
Nonsense, most Scandinavian countries dont have minimum wages and Switzerland only enacted one 2 years ago and things are just as expensive in those countries as they are in the US meanwhile tons of third world countries have minimum wages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] .
For every dollar you increase minimum wage, the cost of the things you can buy goes up 2 dollars. It is simple damn mathematics. Every time. Doubling minimum wage increases the cost of living. It is better to halve salaries and have the cost of things drop 4x .. but fools will never see that.
How does what you're saying here even make sense? Why on earth would a dollar increase in wages, which only make up a fraction of the cost of almost any given product, result in an even larger increase in said product's cost? I mean if that makes sense to you then I have a great deal on a perpetual motion machine for you to check out.
Re: Nonsense. (Score:2)
Wages donâ(TM)t make up a tiny portion of the cost of a product, for most commonly purchased products it makes up nearly all of the cost when you walk down the supply chain.
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That's as accurate as your last post.
Not really (Score:4, Interesting)
Minimum wage *raises* wages. It creates a floor under which wages can't drop. When you do away with minimum wage you pull that floor out.
The result is that people who might be happy, say, being a line worker at a restaurant, can't make a living anymore. They're not just going to starve to death. They're going to try and get a job they can live off of. Your Job.
In other words, a race to the bottom.
Oh, and before folks say everyone says (Score:5, Insightful)
When the gov't negotiates wages on behalf of workers that's a minimum wage. The difference here is that Norway doesn't have a *fixed* minimum like the US does. They negotiate higher wages for their citizens than a fixed minimum.
This is how/why their McDonald's workers make a living wage with full healthcare. Oddly enough the cost of a Big Mac is about the same. It was a little cheaper last I looked.
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In Latin America they have:
* Widespread corruption? Check!
* Pay 2000 bucks a month so your kids can have some education (not prep-school level mind you, my kids are being better educated in Canada's public system then they were in a private school)? Check!
* Live in a 83 m^2 apartment with fences all around? Check!
* Pay 1500 bucks a month for heath care becaus
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Well...you can control minimum wage to an extent. There is not an equivalent way to control prices. Minimum wage does not have a way to permanently keep people from being employed. That's delusional.
While depressed wages can hold prices down a little, it doesn't actually control inflation. So you just end up trying to keep the poorest from being able to afford a living. Increasing wages does release some of that deflationary pressure but it still has to happen.
In 1950 adult male labor participation was at 95%, today it is around 70%.
Women are allowed to work now. Also, the
Re: Minimum wage (Score:2)
âoeFor every $1increase in wages your costs go up $2?â
So at some point if you work for $2 you somehow get all the stuff for free? Yes, this is the solid logic of the anti minimum wage crowd on display.
Why not start in a "cheap" country? (Score:4, Interesting)
Why don't these companies set up shot in cheap labor markes to begin with? Why wait? (somewhat rhetorical)
1. They need a stability: government (corruption arguments aside), utilities/infrastructure, economy, legal system etc.
2. Many decently to highly educated people to choose from
3. Attractive living conditions
After all that has made you a bunch of money and you need to make more, then you do the following:
1. Keep all your friends and C-level employees in "expensive countries" at premium wages
2. Find a tax haven to move your "HQ" or whatever is necessary to dodge taxes
3. Outsource or off-shore as much of your work force as possible to cheap labor markets
4. When asked about it, say "it's legal" and blame it on "fiduciary responsibility"
5. Shift blame whenever possible: "Our customers want cheap products, so we can't pay middle class wages here anymore. We're simply giving our customers what they want."
Then talk about how great it is to be an "American" company all the while figuring out how bilk the government and it's people (except "share holders") out of jobs and money after they directly allowed and participated in making your company what it is.
So many companies try so hard to create "brand loyalty" but few exhibit it themselves.
I don't understand why the wealthy are so interested in hoarding so much wealth. Wouldn't it be better if more places on earth had a true middle and upper class? Things like quality housing, food, education, lower crime etc. Wouldn't you like to visit places like Mumbai, Mexico City and Sao Palo with way fewer slums/ghettos/barrios/favelas etc.? Just have an overall nicer planet to live on. To me, that sounds about as "self serving" as anything.
This is the end of America (Score:1)