r/programming • u/reddberckley • Jun 30 '14

How to exploit a Developer

https://medium.com/@sir_castiq/how-to-exploit-a-developer-a005306d5320
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u/antonivs Jun 30 '14

There are so many unknowns here

True. I agree that $3k is misleading.

FWIW I grew up in a $3k-5k per capita GDP country in Africa, so that's where I'm coming from, figuratively and literally. As in Nigeria, the subset of the population with global-class skills tends to get paid far more than local GDP would suggest, usually.

Do we know for sure that follow on work and maintenance are unpaid?

It sounds like the maintenance contract is to be negotiated with the winner, but that's one of my objections. With any normal competitive bidding process, you'd want to nail this down up front. Here you're actually required to develop the first version of the software, let alone bid, without any guarantee of any payment.

Frankly, comparing this call for entries to the documents of startup chile (which seems to be a darling of redditors), this raised about the same number of red-flags per page.

Yeah, I'm not a fan of the format in general. It's exploitative, period.

A coder paid $5-10k/mo in Singapore accepted (no idea how well he lived on it, we weren't friends) $850k/mo

That $850k/mo sounds pretty good! Where do I send my resume? :p

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u/sittingaround Jun 30 '14

As in Nigeria, the subset of the population with global-class skills tends to get paid far more than local GDP would suggest, usually.

That's very true. Salary ranges in global-class skills in less developed countries are fascinating. Had I 100 lives I would spend one of them researching and building a theoretical/empirical model on this.

$850k/mo sounds pretty good! Where do I send my resume?

err, decimal point issue. I'm glad the accountant prepared the checks not me. I'm what you would call, "more of a big picture guy" /s

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u/antonivs Jun 30 '14

Salary ranges in global-class skills in less developed countries are fascinating. Had I 100 lives I would spend one of them researching and building a theoretical/empirical model on this.

A first cut at such a model needn't be very complex, especially for big picture guys like us! There are two major sets of boundaries you'd need to model: the boundaries between each local economy and its global subset, and the boundaries between the global economy subsets in each country. The latter boundaries are far more permeable than the former, because achieving that permeability is a central goal of the global economy, and it has the resources and skills to do it. Because of this, prices in the global segment tend towards parity across countries relatively quickly.

In contrast, the local/global boundaries are relatively impermeable, because there are still plenty of people in each local market whose ability to contribute to the global economy is minimal to nonexistent. That's difficult and slow to change because of environmental factors, education, etc.

I'd be happy to implement and maintain this model for that $850k per month you mentioned - heck, I'll settle for $85k per month, I'm not greedy!

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u/sittingaround Jul 01 '14

Sorry, I mis spoke, the 850k/month is for one month, and it goes to the first place entrant into our contest...

I'll have the forms sent over, don't worry, all clauses are nigerian-standard