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Comment by alephnerd | Hacker News Reader

To all the pissy commentators on here - Average Monthly HOUSEHOLD Income in Kenya is around $145/month [0]

The fact that Sama's STARTING SALARY is almost $300/month is staggering.

That's the equivalent of being a SWE in the US (around $140k median salary) when the median salary in this country is around $65-70k/yr.

Also, at $300/month I could hire plenty of English speaking moderators and labelers in Central/Southern Phillipines or Madhya Pradesh/Bihar and not have to deal with level of instability Kenya has. They're honestly lucky Sama even chose Kenya as a base to operate instead of going with Infosys or the Pinoy equivalent (if anyone has experience with the PH BPO industry, I'd love to learn more)

[0] - https://www.businessdailyafrica.com/bd/economy/kenyans-avera...

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What instability does Kenya have? There are sporadic minimal localized protests about the cost of living that happen now and then, but nothing on the scale of the animosity that exists between different religious groups in India (that flares up now and then, according to what I see in the news, which I recognize could be leading to me doing what I'm accusing you of). And $300 per month is too low, even in Kenya. That's what I earned in my first underpaid practically-an-unpaid-internship straight-out-of-university job 15 years ago.

Source: I live in Nairobi.

You are correct. There isn't any significant instability.

I brainfarted and typed that instead of intertia and can't edit it now that the timer has passed.

Kenya is definetly on a solid path developmentally.

Though I'd be curious if someone who did a BA or BSc in a non-STEM major from a non-target university could get a $300/mon starting salary in Kenya.

Those tend to be the kinds of people who end up working as labelers in PH and IN, and I'd assume it's similar in Kenya.

I do agree, there is significant unemployment, and it's possible that outside Nairobi, without rent and growing some food for yourself, $300 could go a long way.

I was speaking more in terms of "should", not "is". I think most semi-skilled jobs are probably paid around that, but it honestly doesn't compute to my privileged self how someone could live on that, with the rampant inflation.

Ok! That's fair!

And yea, inflation seems to be hellish outside the US+Canada.

Companies like SamaSource or Infosys can take advantage of that arbitrage by paying below a living wage because there are enough "desperate" or un/underemployed people who have higher education but aren't getting jobs that are paying a realistic/living wage.

I've seen this issue play out all over the developing world (India, Philippines, Vietnam, China, Thailand, Brazil, etc).

Millions of people in those countries are now living lives their grandparents could only dream of, education is much more democratized, and economies at a macro level are better than they were a generation ago - yet white collar/college educated salaries are still stuck at the 2000s or 2010s level because income rate conversions dropped or commodities have inflated. People are earning the same amount of money in Rupees, Yuan, Reales, Dong, etc as they would have 10-15 years ago for the same white collar job, but all of society has become much more expensive.

It doesn't look like he couldn't have left the job he found unsuitable. Especially in Kenya, where the rule of law and contract enforcement are not that stringent... If I don't like blood, I better not work at a hospital or a butcher shop. Content moderation is hard and it's not for everyone.

Average and median are different.

Median is an average, just like the mode, arithmetic mean, geometric mean, harmonic mean, etc., are, even though most of the time when “average” is used without specifying which one, its actually the arithmetic mean.

It most definetly is.

And given that Kenya's Gini coefficient is 51.3, that means the median Kenyan household is earning less than $145/month, which only shows that Sama is paying competitively at the national level.

Income distributions have fat tails, so the median is less than the average, which only amplifies grandparent poster's point.

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