Comment by otto_ortega | Hacker News Reader

Comment by otto_ortega | Hacker News Reader

Any advise on how to get a wage on the ranges mentioned on the article (or in the comments) while living OUTSIDE the USA?

I live in Central America, but work for a Seattle based startup as a remote contractor and make $32K.

Whenever I read about "common" salaries for programmers in the US an internal conflict unleashes on me.

On one side what I make is on the middle-high range when compared to the local market, but it seems it is low when compared to US salaries.

I often wonder if I'm fooling myself and the guys with those salaries in the US are actually more skilled than me and there is no point on comparing.

For the record I have a bachelor degree on computer science (from a local university), was Cisco CCNA certified (expired already) and consider myself to be a fairly competent full stack programmer, in the sense that I can build a web application from zero and handle everything from setting up the server and designing the DB to developing the user interface (html, css) and programming the back-end (in PHP)

I have recently reached the same conclusion that the person on the article, and I'm planning to launch a SaaS side project of my own and let the market decide the real value of my work...

Someone above made a point about how there is a big difference between your local market value and the value you bring to the company which I agree with. The way to close that gap is through negotiation and by getting past people's biases.

Even people who are generally logical will be resistant to paying a good south american developer as much as a mediocre developer who is also remote but in Seattle.

Even though I'm from SF this is strangely something I've thought about a lot. What I would do in your shoes: (1) create a nice portfolio of all your work (omit the Cisco CCNA stuff, if you are looking for work as a web developer that is actually a red flag, just put your web work and claim to have done anything you can reasonably defend in an interview), talk in aspirational language about your passion for the craft of software development and always point out every way in which you were involved in collaboration with designs are in business concerns and how that informed your more technical work because your real passion is for creating useful products that people love, not just banging out code (2) write some blog posts occasionally about functional programming and how to write better tests, (3) instead of saying you are from Central America say you are "currently enjoying living in Costa Rica (a US friendly timezone)" or just completely omit where you are and simply say you are in EST, who cares beyond that??(4) explain that you are an expert in "remote collaboration" (5) humans are experts at sniffing out non-native language speakers. Find a US Native copywriter and have them polish all your copy and pay a designer buddy to make your site look cool and modern, (6) post your resume on Hired, etc (7) ask for $175/hr but expect to accept $150 or so.

This all depends on how good you really are of course. Another US bias (possibly valid) is that php developers are paid less. Bone up on Elixir/Phoenix or another hot language/framework + react native, do a cool side project even if it is quite small.

IMO if you did all that you'd have plenty of work at high US rates. (just for comparison, $32K/yr is about $16/hr, you can definitely get up to > $100 or $150/hr)

All that investment and the resultant relationships have real value so step 2 of course is to hire a couple of your buddies who are also good at slightly better than local market rates...

If you can build and deploy a webapp from zero to nothing you could make 120k usd in San Francisco, cause that's what bootcamp grads are doing and pretty much the only thing they bring to the table is webapp skills.

Visa and etc might make it harder for you, but if it were me I'd start browsing for remote positions at San Francisco companies.

$120k is San Fran could easily be a worse quality of life than $40k in Central America (too broad to say for certain).

But 120k remote salary while living in central America is probably better than 40k local salary while living in central America ;)

I've seen this sentiment posted before and it's pretty much untrue. At 120k/year, even spending 4K/month on rent, your leftover pay is still more than my gross salary. I know SF is expensive, but if you can't have a nice QOL on a the leftovers of a 120k salary, your location isn't the problem.

$120k in SF probably amounts to take home just under $6k/mo. $4k goes to rent, so you have $2k for everything else.

That's not a great QOL. For comparison, I ran the Mexico City / SF cost of living on Numbeo[0]. $38k in Mexico City would need to be $140k in SF for comparable quality of life.

(side note -- this COL calculator is super neat! anyone have any evidence of the accuracy?)

[0] https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...

$2k/month is what many people I know take home after tax and before rent.

I have. it grossly underestimates.

a while ago, this and other sites said I needed 120k in LA and 140k in SF to maintain my south america 40k.

turns out I moved making more than the SF salary in LA. and it still falls short on what I have money to do on short trips and night life.

I guess it is acurate if you dont go out every friday and saturday and never, ever leave the city for the longer holidays.

So, for reference, after taxes a single person takes home what? $80k. That's about $6,666 per month, leaving $2666 after paying rent. That's not including food. Also for reference, when I lived in a South American country, rent was running about $400 a month, but even if it was $700, wouldn't you be doing better in South America? You can't ignore the fact that food and services are extraordinarily cheaper due to the lower cost of living.

>$120k is San Fran could easily be a worse quality of life than $40k in Central America (too broad to say for certain).

this is the dumbest thing i've heard today. Stop exaggerating.

Is your cost of living even remotely comparable to those programmers living in the US? Keep in mind those big salaries tend to be in the highest cost of living areas of the US. Seniors (5-7 years) in say Raleigh are probably $70k to $100k.

Also remembered that you might only have the opportunity to work that job presicely because you are in a low cost of living area and can be offered a low wage while delivering acceptable work.

I completely understand that my cost of living is widely different, however given the level of globalization we have, and seeing how our very own profession enables money flowing freely from pole to pole makes the concept of someone earning 4 times more by producing similar or equal value hard to understand.

And I also understand that a big part of the reason why I was offered that position was because of the savings the company was going to get by hiring me, although it was not the only reason because I landed the job after completing a freelance gig which results were judged to be "great"

I'm not complaining about my salary just trying to figure out ways to pursue personal growth.

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