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Comment by throwawaytree | Hacker News Reader

I make $7 US dollars an hour designing and developing apps as a full-time employee. I’m paying off a new car, pay rent, and live quite a good life compared to others in my country (third-world country).

Compared to other countries salaries, mine is awful. Compared to local salaries, it’s actually about 4x the minimum wage. The cost of living here is quite low (I pay 150$ per month for a single bedroom with bathroom). Where this kind of salary hurts is when:

- traveling

- buying online

- saving for the future (maybe I will want to move overseas, and I also need savings for emergencies)

- paying for study (courses, uni overseas)

- buying work computers or phones

- buying software or services (e.g. Photoshop, Sketch)

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My friend Jay El-Kaake and I wrote two books on freelance consulting. We would be happy to send you both copies for free. It is a shame, for a variety of reasons, that someone intelligent and competent is earning $7 USD hourly. Email zack@codefor.cash

I'm so much interested in that book to improve my business skills. Any reference?

If you're interested in my book, the link is in my profile; it has practical tips specifically for freelance programmers/developers/consultants/coders/software engineering people. But if you are purely interested in improving your business skills, then I recommend reading "The Personal MBA" by Josh Kaufman.

Also, I'm a developer but my father is a Silicon Valley business lawyer. He wrote a chapter of "The Software Engineer's Guide to Freelance Consulting" that is available for free. https://codefor.cash/legalideas

Thanks, I’ll take you up on that!

now that you have revealed that you are from a third world country, cheapos in the first world countries will try to outsource work to you, which is very good IMO. But at the same time blaming third world programmers for taking their jobs. Pretty much like blaming China for taking the manufacturing jobs, but first world country people wanting things cheap products from Amazon.

I was going to offer him/her $7.01 an hour. Rats!

Are you interested in any side work? I'm always looking for good freelancers. My email is in my profile if you want to get in touch.

Anyway I could connect with you about app development? I can offer over 7$/hr

Sure, can you share an email?

Also working in a slightly "better" 3rd world country and my salary is 15$/h, while it's enough here, it becomes a problem when I travel, especially to 1st world countries.

So where do you live?

Small Latin American country, -4:00 UTC

What do you build? I'm looking for talented freelance developers.

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