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Comment by itake | Hacker News Reader

I interviewed there, and I thought their compensation strategy was disappointing to say the least. They basically pay bottom tier in every economic zone, and despite being a remote workforce, don't accommodate local economic situations.

I (an American) was temporarily living in Argentina. They wanted to pay me in Argentina pesos (that have a 20% inflation at the time, but currently around 50%). I mentioned how I plan on returning home to SF. The pay band was less than what I made at a seed-stage startup.

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> I (an American) was temporarily living in Argentina. They wanted to pay me in Argentina pesos

Well .. yes? If you were Japanese in the US would you expect to be paid in Yen? It’s not like you were working for them in the US and they sent you as an expat. I’m sure they would have switched you to USD had you moved to SF

I would expect my employer to work with me and compensate me adequately for my skill level and work done.

Agreed. Not based on my nationality

My residence was the US. I will admit, me working in Argentina on a tourist visa is a grey/black area. My residence to both the US and Argentina government was the US. My visa only allowed me to stay ~3 months.

My Argentina developer friends don't even get paid in pesos. Why should I (a tourist) be paid in the local currency?

I mentioned that Argentina has 20% inflation and locally businesses provide salary increases every 3-6 mo. They told me salaries are adjusted annually.

I don't remember their exact response when I talked about me returning to my residence in San Francisco.

The point about currency seems like a red herring, since it can be easily converted into USD, etc., but insisting on paying people salaries based on averages in their current location is pretty inflexible and remote-unfriendly IMO.

People may move around and have financial obligations in multiple countries. E.g., if you have a mortgage and school loans in the US, and you want to live in Armenia for 1 year, your employer insisting that you take a 80% paycut due to "Armenian rates" is pretty ignorant and inflexible.

There were 2 problems:

1/ I was on a tourist visa. I did not have a bank account that could accept pesos.

2/ if I had an arg account, the gov limits how much can be sold for usd. [0]

[0] https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/economy/2019/10/28/argentinas-...

> that have a 20% inflation at the time, but currently around 50%

Official interannual inflation rate was 94,8% in December 2022.

https://www.indec.gob.ar/uploads/informesdeprensa/ipc_01_238...

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