
Ask HN: Salaries in 3rd old countries, how justified? - underpaid
I&#x27;m from a third world country, a good enough web developer and get paid around 10K USD a year after nearly 3 years of experience at a full-time job.<p>This thread of &quot;salary spreadsheet [https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=11331223]&quot; makes me wonder how is it that the companies justify paying so less in countries like mine (say India) vs countries in US&#x2F;Europe&#x2F;Elsewhere.<p>Although I understand the &quot;basic cost of living&quot; is less in these 3rd world countries; if you really think about it, the cost of living the <i>same lifestyle</i> in US&#x2F;Europe vs in India might come off to be same (if not more) when:<p>You live in similarly sophisticated, safe, serviced house&#x2F;apartment&#x2F;area<p>Drive similar car<p>Go to same restaurants&#x2F;hotels order the same menu items<p>Take similar vacations<p>Get similar insurance&#x2F;retirement plans<p>Drink similar wine<p>In other words, for similar lifestyle<p>In some cases, things are even more expensive in countries like India where the taxes are high in imported goods or abroad vacations compared to the income we generate or services we get for the same&#x2F;more amount of money we pay (for eg. Internet bandwidth).<p>From the 10K&#x2F;year that I make, I can never afford a decent car here at my place, will never be able to go to Paris with my wife, will never be able to buy a house in the area where I would like to settle - not at least in the foreseeable future!<p>Granted that we can survive by for a lot less (go to cheap restaurants, don&#x27;t go abroad vacation, don&#x27;t have insurance, don&#x27;t have decent apartment and such). But if we are doing the same jobs (for eg. Microsoft) that produces same result on similar effort, shouldn&#x27;t we be earning the same amount of money and living similar lifestyle, regardless of where we live?
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jacquesm
That question is akin to asking why there even is a 'third world'. Companies
capitalize on the fact that you and enough of your countrymen are willing to
take less pay because you are charging based on your costs-of-living rather
than based on the value that you create. And because _everybody does it_ if
you refuse someone else will step into your shoes to do it. The thing to
remember is that if it wasn't cheaper then the outsourcing would have never
happened in the first place. So until your economy as a whole has been lifted
up to the point where the wages between the two countries are at parity this
situation will likely persist.

The best way to tackle the problem then is to become a founder that will pay
'first world' wages to employees in the third world. But I'll bet that when
given the option the management of that company will wonder why they are
throwing money away and will instead pay the same that everybody else does
because they don't perceive any gain.

The only thing then that will really solve this is (hopefully) the eventual
rise of the standard of living globally. But for that to happen societies
would need to change in a dramatic fashion. Less corruption, more equality
between men and women, less nepotism and more meritocracy, fewer dictatorships
(in fact or in name) and so on.

For the foreseeable future this situation will persist, with slow improvements
over time and a lot of potential for set-backs.

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meric
If you're good you can charge roughly U.S. rates as a freelancer. Keep getting
projects, testimonial and after every project where your clients were
ecstatic, hike your rates by 30% or 50% or more, until client's are "merely"
happy.[1]

The lower salary only means one thing - you can get by being a less
experienced developer in India than in the U.S. People aren't willing to pay
even $40k for a Joomla programmer who has done nothing but gone through the
tutorial, but they might be willing to pay $5k for one, and there's only so
many places in the world where one can get by for that little.

This incidentally also mislead hiring managers in India thinking everyone will
accept salaries that low, so they set their salary cap that low, and only
people who are inexperienced or those unwilling to work for themselves on the
internet will accept that low of a salary.

Having heard various stories and my own experience, there's definitely
difference between outsourcing to an Indian consulting firm than to an
Australian (or even Russian/Ukrainian) one.

[1] Two examples:
[https://www.upwork.com/o/profiles/users/_~014440ca451f6d05fd...](https://www.upwork.com/o/profiles/users/_~014440ca451f6d05fd/)
He looks like he's charging $45 on a short term basis and $25 for full time,
long term work, which equates to $50k.
[https://www.upwork.com/o/profiles/users/_~01ec0a80c3dfdb1477...](https://www.upwork.com/o/profiles/users/_~01ec0a80c3dfdb1477/)
At $40 per hour, that's only 250 hours of work per year to reach $10k.

