$2400 a year? What US dev works for that in this market? You are better off at burger king.
> To be fair to Squad, the Mexican minimum wage is about $100 USD monthly, so they weren't technically paying anyone lower than the minimum wage...
As to what they earn, again, I live in Mexico, I am employed by a Mexican company, and work for Mexican clients. I make their yearly salary in 15 days or so. It really is disgusting that they would treat employees this way, specially when they were such a big success.
But what do you mean by that? Do they get paid less or more?
[1] (in Spanish) http://www.milenio.com/politica/salario_minimo-aumento_salar...
That sounds like what my friend made as a cashier here in Mexico.
Very shitty payment, even for this country. A good entry level job starts at about 10k a month.
July 2015 - Oct 2016: Lead Engineer, Squad
Delivered Kerbal Space program version 1.2 on time and on budget. Managed team of 5 geographically distributed developers and graphic artists. Reduced defect count by 17%
Reads way better than:
July 2015 - Oct 2016: Panhandler, Mission and 16th
Achieved 11% month on month growth in revenue. Exceeded all set goals and milestones. Migrated from crack to high grade Bolivian cocaine without incurring mob debt or serious personal injury.
;-)
(Though with a little more polishing and embellishment, I bet you could get that second entry past a typical recruiter... Maybe change to "July 2015 - Oct 2016: Growth Hacking Contractor, Bay Area Startup still in stealth mode (under NDA)... " and "Migrated from legacy processes to best practice agile methodology without incurring technical debt or serious downtime." - there, that ought to do it...)
Seems like that's twice the minimum wage where it happened (just from reading the post/comments), so it's extremely unlikely to be "illegal" where it happened.
(it's a curious question as to whether there's anything illegal, and if so, on who's part, if a Mexican business is paying above-local-minimum wage salaries to people who are not local. If you _accept_ a remote job where the renumeration is disclosed but below your local minimum wage - I wonder if any law has been broken, and if so, by who?)
Yes. That is a crime. The employee has committed a crime by negotiation/accepting the wage. The employer has too. Regardless of where they think they "work" they are employing someone standing in the other jurisdiction. If one allows offshore companies to bypass wage laws then every single local company would be run through an offshore shell, negating the local law. So it is near-universal that offshores must comply with local wage laws.
In practical terms, a flesh-and-blood 'employee' isn't going to be prosecuted. That side of things is reserved for sub-contracting entities that aren't real people. Negotiating a sub-minimum wage contract remains a crime for subcontractors. This is necessary to prevent one-person "companies" negotiating illegal pay for their one employee under the fiction that they are an arms-length subcontractor when everyone knows the person is effectively an employee.
EDIT: none of what I said applies; this was in Mexico.
I guess the question here (as per nine_k comment) becomes, if you are working remotely, for a position listed in country A, but you are located in country B, do country B's minimum wage laws apply? If so, does that mean the company in country A should pay you a higher wage, or simply means you don't qualify for the position (note that developer positions in Mexico with Mexican companies are often advertised with offer details such as the salary, in a way that is not common in the U.S.)
Edit: huge correction on the multiplier on minimum wage. For some reason I had been comparing monthly rates with annual ones and arriving at 24x. Upon careful examination, that is ridiculous, but the overall point remains. With the correction, this is actually hugely subpar wages for developers even in Mexico, but not quite illegal wages... for reference, entry level dev work at software companies might be around $20,000 MXP, which is currently $1,000 USD monthly.