[noahjk]

Feels a bit chicken-and-egg - if I live in, say, Brazil, and I know that there isn't a great market for good devs here, will I put in the effort to become a good dev? If I really have a passion for dev work, will I try to move or work freelance?

Not that you're implying it, but I think it's fair to point out that people in ex. Brazil aren't worse at dev work, just that there is probably lower incentive to be good.

[DanielHB]

My point was, there ARE opportunities in Brazil that don't involve working in a slave outsourcing factory. Even individual remote dev contracts are not always the top tier of talent. The real good talent working remotely from Brazil is probably working for startups in silicon valley not your average mid US company.

Just as you compete for top talent locally you also compete for top talent globally when hiring remote.

I live in Sweden now and have dealt with a lot of Swedish companies over the years. It is hard to explain this to the locals because they see Sweden as a big tech hub where all the talent is at, but the scale of things in Brazil is _crazy_. I worked in a telecom project where this one single company had more active (paying) SIM cards than the population of Sweden several times over.

Just because it is a poorer country doesn't mean it is easier engineering, if anything the engineering is harder.

[johnnyanmac]

I think GP's point was that the best devs don't stay in Brazil, even if some can pay decently for Brazil. Whether those people not staying in Brazil are signifigant is only guesswork.