I don't think, I know it. I wake up in the morning (PDT timezone), and they have already produced and committed a massive amount of work, or tackled complex architectural design projects. On top of that, they stay pretty much active on Slack during my entire work day, until their local midnight/1am. By the time I go to sleep at midnight PDT, they are already committing code or following up in previous IM discussions (it's their ~7-8am). So, effectively they work twice my amount, and as I said they are very smart and motivated individuals, so they produce more than twice my amount.
If I were to start a company in the future, rest assured I would do 100% of the engineering hiring over there, after having seen their work ethics and productivity levels.
As an added bonus, they are really not in the mentality of profit sharing/equity compensation typically seen in the US, so you can get them with a cheap salary (think ~$50k/y), whereas a local senior engineer would cost you ~$250k + equity, and would demand a good work-life balance and probably resent you because your free lunch is not as good as FAANG's.
Eastern European here - it's interesting to read how this looks from the other side.
But yeah, $50k is enough for many to throw work-life balance out the window and at times pull all-nighters - I should know, because just recently I quit a job where that unfortunately was a habit of mine - all for approximately this pay.
I don't think it's sustainable, but younger people increasingly choose this way of life, because it lets them obtain status symbols like a MacBook Pro or a lease for a Mercedes C-Class. Also the overall mindset is that this is how people live and work in Silicon Valley - regardless of whether that's really the case.
But here's the kicker: some in my area are saying that we're in a bubble and developer salaries surely must come crashing down eventually. Others think that our only advantage is low cost.
Personally I share neither of these views. It's all relative and as long as real estate prices in Silicon Valley remain absurd, developers will be compensated generously. Perhaps even after they come down - if they ever do of course.
As someone who's heard nothing but good things about Eastern European programming shops, looks like y'all's salaries are only gonna increase. Perhaps you should take some bets on your market with that assumption!
> But yeah, $50k is enough for many to throw work-life balance out the window
It should be pointed out whether you mean net (take home) pay or total cost for employer. The latter is usually about twice the former at these salary levels (at least in some parts of Eastern Europe).
In Russia a self-employed contractor would only pay 2%-6% in total as taxes depending on where they live.
Of course, for that they will only get minimal pension and standard medical insurance. They have an option of voluntarily contributing additional money to the state pension fund to get increased pension.
As a self-employed contractor in Poland I can get away with retaining ~75% of the sum of my net invoices(sans sales tax, which is transparent B2B) as take-home pay.
For that I get rudimentary health insurance - only really good enough for a hospital stay free of charge.
The tax rate is a flat 19%, so I would wager that the tax wedge is likely smaller in eastern Europe than in the US.
Thanks for putting a good word for us. I work mainly for US clients from Serbia, and while I do occasional overtime, or 60-70h/w before a deadline, those should be and are exceptions. Even you as an employer don’t want chronically overworked employees.
These are not programming shops, that’s the whole point. These are basically full time employees hired on payroll, who will care about your codebase as much as any other member of the team. Programming shops in my opinion never work, there’s always the mentality of just building crap and throwing it off the fence.
> As an added bonus, they are really not in the mentality of profit sharing/equity compensation seen in the US, so you can typically get them with a very cheap salary (think ~$50k/y), where a local senior developer would cost you ~$250k + equity.
ugh !!! yeah, you better be scared for your own job and good luck hiring those devs in the future...its more likely they'd be hiring you.
If I were to start a company in the future, rest assured I would do 100% of the engineering hiring over there, after having seen their work ethics and productivity levels.
As an added bonus, they are really not in the mentality of profit sharing/equity compensation typically seen in the US, so you can get them with a cheap salary (think ~$50k/y), whereas a local senior engineer would cost you ~$250k + equity, and would demand a good work-life balance and probably resent you because your free lunch is not as good as FAANG's.