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Why a, say, Portuguese pro, would go and work in some american meat grinder? He's also able to choose. Here in Spain I know a handful of devs working remotely
by spaniard89277 5y ago
Why a, say, Portuguese pro, would go and work in some american meat grinder? He's also able to choose.
Here in Spain I know a handful of devs working remotely for american companies. It's true none of them get +100k but they are about 70-80k and say it's pretty pleasant experience, so I guess they also have the typical EU holidays package + some other niceties.
So I guess that while they're cheaper for those american companies, it's not everything about cost, otherwise they could go somewhere else and pay 20k. It has to be, because AFAIK for american companies the attitude towards work here in europe is prety alien.
Every time an american company has tried to set up in Europe and manage their operations as in america it has failed.
- pjmlp 5y agoYou get a Portuguese company acting as nearshore frontend for a offshore one in India. The Portuguese company acts as gateway and code review (aka fixes) the deliveries, while ensures that the costs remain low. The actual owning company then regularly threatens the Portugue one to fully move into offshore if they cannot keep up. Actual scenario, I will refrain from naming which ones.
- KptMarchewa 5y agoThis is a completely different situation than what I and tons of other EU devs working with US companies are. We're not in siloed team with only communication happening between layers of managers highly above people doing actual work. We're just embedded into normal US teams and communicate directly with American engineers, managers etc. Everyone works remote. Only difference is that I work 11-19 and turn off Slack at 21.
- spaniard89277 5y agoIf were an american company, why would I pay for such setup? Provided I have the resources to screen it. That scenario is a time bomb, and if the americans are the ones putting the money in the table they'll get bitten by it. Anyway, nowadays with services like remote.com or similar ones, you can hire and manage your own talent without the outsourcing company overhead (not affiliated with then).
- pjmlp 5y agoIt is easier to manage, instead of a swarm of remote devs. There are even companies that hire externals based on ticket budgets, e.g. "we have budget this quarter for 10 tickets, hire externals to handle them". The world of companies whose main selling product isn't software is quite interesting in this regard. Anything related to computing is a cost center that has to be minimised.
- andai 5y agoI'd be curious to hear more about this. What kind of cultural differences are there?
- pjmlp 5y agoDepending on the European country, 40h week are 40h, want more pay extra hours, or extra vacation days. We have between 20 and 30 vacation days depending on the country, plus national holidays that can be used to extend it even further on lucky years. On some European countries unions actually matter, they affect the whole building across a specific industry domain, regardless if the devs think they should belong to one or not.
- andai 5y agoSo wait, what are things like in America?
- pjmlp 5y agoFrom what I know, 60h work weeks are quite common, you only get 10 vacation days on the first set of years then it gets incremental, health insurance is tied to employer, you can be fired at any moment, people usually despise unions, you need to take care of own retirement assuming the pension fund isn't blown away is some stock exchange deal,...