FrankLicea

So for us, hiring domestically (either 1099 or FTE) vs internationally, wasn't a mutually exclusive decision. Finding good people was a real risk to our growth. So we expanded the top of our funnel to more locations simultaneously.

However, we weren't just interested in salary arbitrage, we really did need to attract good people with premium benefits. Good international teammates aren't going to leave their team only to risk being a second class contractor on a foreign team. So we found that by offering our teammates a premium experience: health insurance, gym perks, education resources, Macbooks, and other apple products, career paths and salary reviews, we expanded the pool of people that were interested in working with us beyond the pool of people on Toptal/Turing and other platforms with no fulfillment on the ground.

Not all teams are interested in that philosophy in hiring but we've had the most success with it.

Oops, forgot to mention that. The management fee is 15%. You would get a break down for any teammate that you want to interview for your team. It would look something like:

1) The teammate's desired salary 2) Benefits and taxes 3) 15% management fee

I see you point about this not being spelled out on our landing page! Good catch!

Thanks for the feedback, I see your point! That's on oversight on our side, nothing nefarious intended, we'll have to figure how to best spell out the pricing.

Pricing-wise, I'd say the all-in fees on a per dev basis are comparable to a developer's salary here in the US (Austin, TX), the fees are all inclusive of benefits, tech equipment, offices, perks, etc...

When you decide to make an offer to someone, you'll get a break down of 1) the teammates's personal salary requirement), 2) the benefits and taxes and, 3) our management fee.

Because we don't set the rates, the candidates do (just like in the US), it's hard to say exactly what the price will be, it depends on the individual's requirements.

That said, we can def offer guidance on what the market tends to be!

Good question!

At the time, hiring domestically vs internationally, wasn't a mutually exclusive decision. A team that really needs to hire fast to, say, launch a new revenue feature, needs to be expanding the top of the funnel of good people in all locations simultaneously.

So we ended up with a mix of teammates in Austin and in Colombia, and crucially, we did our best to make us all feel like one product team working for one company.

Yikes! half the salary to an outsourcing company for two years? That's nuts, and those are exactly the kind of horror stories that made us want to build Astro, as U.S. devs, we often take for granted the "Silicon Valley" engineering culture we enjoy (vague I know, but roughly captures what i mean)

All we ask is that if a company builds a team using Astro, they don't try to cut us out, similar to the terms that other platforms have.

Thank you!

Companies have a few avenues to help with this. The Astro dashboard lets the US company sponsor meaningful perks that value teammates and really make a difference with retention and wellbeing; Bonuses, health insurance, gym memberships, education resources, access to co-working or offices for the team, even coordinate hard to get equipment like Macbooks, Airpods.

We can even coordinate travel and off site retreats to really help the team feel like one. Finally, our platform keeps US companies accountable for things like regular salary reviews and career paths. All the perks in the world won't matter if that's not in place.

Thank you!

Thank you! We really appreciate it!

Thanks for the feedback! Yes good catch. We chose the roles we see most often requested, but when you scroll a little further down, you'd see a field where you can just type the role you're looking for! Thanks!

Sure, because we're not a consulting agency, Astro is designed for teams that know finding good talent wherever they are located is a real risk to growth. Typically these kinds of companies are true technology companies and know the value of good people, so they often pay above market rates whenever they find the right person.

These kinds of companies don't typically use Thoughworks to develop their own product, but are willing to accept international logistical help to find and manage their own teammates.

We actually do everything that remote does plus a few other things: We have local fulfillment teams that can actually do things on the ground like help with local recruiting, finding meaningful local benefits, provide local equipment like Macbooks, Airpods, even treat teams to local team building events, etc.

Our best shot at convincing companies to use us is to point to the large engineering departments that are already trusting us to expand their engineering departments in Latam.

We operate in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay!

Gracias!

Would love to hear more about your experience finding people in Latam vs Eastern Europe or South Asia.

In my experience the real risk with remote teams isn't really technical, it's possible to find great people everywhere. The real risk is human: communication, courage, culture, yes even timezones. And you mentioned that Latam overlaps more in culture!

This is great! I used to maintain connections to all kinds of social media APIs; lots of on going maintenance. neat to see a service dedicated to this. What are the SLAs like?

Austin Software | Director of Developer Education, Austin Texas | Full-time | https://austinsoftware.com

We work to place developers in Latin America directly on Silicon Valley teams. We're looking for a Director of Developer Education to help us prepare devs for interviews on US product teams and then guide and mentor their careers while working on US teams. If you're an experienced developer but you love education and mentoring, we should talk!

reach out to recruitment@austinsoftware.com if you're interested

I recommend you setup a landing page and get your own custom email domain. Doesn't take long, it's cheap to do, and will help move one one level above the random spam emails employees at large enterprises get.

Even then, having your emails being ignored is pretty standard, just from previous experience I'd expect to send out hundreds of emails before getting any kind of response, so a warm introduction if you can get one is much faster.