
Programmer pay rates in Armenia, from intern to top - e_d_g_a_r
https://yerevancoder.com/2018-01-09-pay-rates-in-armenian-tech/
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sidlls
This kind of discussion can only help programmers.

A point I've raised elsewhere: why should geography figure into a pay rate.
The work programmers do in Armenia isn't less valuable than work I do in the
Bay Area. They should be paid closer to my rate. Even if the figures quoted in
the article are US dollars it's still low for programming. Programmers who
live in Armenia should demand more.

Note: obviously geography will have some indirect impact. Local shops in
Armenia providing services for local businesses can likely only afford local
rates, for example.

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FBISurveillance
I think those numbers are impacted by outsourcing market a lot. As discussed
here multiple times, when you work remotely for a company without a middle
man, other rates are applied.

With Basecamp, for instance, you'd get proper pay so you'd be able to afford
flight tickets for a conference, which is not the case with rates in this
article.

Disclaimer: born, lived and worked not too far from Armenia; worked in
outsourcing for a good chunk of my early career. I'm a strong advocate of
location-independent fair salary and hope other companies will follow
Basecamp's lead.

EDIT: typo.

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FBISurveillance
Pardon my sloppy example, but using
[https://about.gitlab.com/jobs/developer/](https://about.gitlab.com/jobs/developer/)
as GitLab salary calculator (on the bottom of that page), you can earn at
least $76k/year working on GitLab as a senior engineer. While still not
fair—in my humble opinion—that's more than 2x compared to numbers on the
article.

Mind you, outsourcing firms take at least 30% of your paycheck (from what I
remember from more than decade ago, $1.5k fees on top of $3k/month salary).

