Comment by vmchale | Hacker News Reader

Comment by vmchale | Hacker News Reader

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> The headline says "pillaging," which is a kind of stealing by force. But actually (as the less editorialized HN headline says) what the US companies are doing is hiring Latin America's tech talent, paying a fair price instead of the shitty prices Latin American companies are used to paying. Unsurprisingly these companies think of Latin American developers as their property, so they see it as "pillaging". Because I'm a liberal I don't see it that way.

> Governments often also see this as "pillaging", since they're answerable to powerful company founders who lose out, not the everyday people who benefit. In a lot of cases they put major roadblocks in the way of people who export technical services in this way.

There are salary differences w.r.t. Europe and the US as well but no one uses such language.

The salary differences are smaller, in large part because the governments have taken very different policies over the last century. Latin American governments are, by and large, continuing with the policies that have been producing economic disasters throughout that century, though Argentina is among the worse cases.

Also, though, the US does have a history of actually pillaging Latin American countries. Like, with soldiers. By contrast, the last time the US invaded Europe there was a surprising lack of pillaging.

They're not much smaller when one factors in the extreme taxes we have to pay in Europe. 49% of a salary for a senior SRE position vaporizes in taxes before it reaches me. That's a salary that would be decent but not great for the same title in the US subject to US taxes. And my union told me they've never seen such a high salary with that title before when I sought their counsel during negotiations.

It's hard to tell, but I think there may be a big difference between "51% of a salary that would be decent but not great" and "literally paying people five times less than a decent salary", which is what the article described. Like, maybe a factor of two. And in Europe you get something extra for those taxes, while generally in South America public services and infrastructure are worse than in the US, not better.

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