Let's talk money
What sort of salaries are out there?
¡Bienvenidos a Gringo Jobs! Esta semana traemos un tema muy interesante: Los salarios y las compensaciones en la industria de TI. Espero te guste y le encuentres valor 👀 si sabes de alguien que le pueda servir la info, ayúdanos a compartir!
Ah cash! The sweet juice of capitalism that hits your account twice monthly. The gasoline that keeps your middle class lifestyle humming! I could go on…🤑
Anyway, what sort of salaries are people getting in Mexico?
First - a quick distinction between freelancers and salaried employees.
Most freelancers are making dollars. Paid to them via Transferwise, Bill.com or some other form money sending service. They have to do all their own tramites con el SAT.
When the company is more established in Mexico, and they go through an Outsourcer de Nomina, the pay is in MXN - with benefits (IMSS, AFORE and all of los bells y whistles).
Now what are the numbers? Well, Empleos TI came out with an interesting report of Mexican salaires.
Take a look - (note the numbers are MXN/month)
What's your reaction? Mine was
La verdadera tragedia? ¡Un reclutador gana 16 mil pesos por mes! 😭😭😭😭
The numbers seem off. Really off. I mean, where does a CEO make 77,000 pesos per month?
Anyway, I wanted to compare these numbers to some recent candidates I spoke with.
Ruby dev with 8 years of experience working remotely for a US company: $72,000 USD/year as a freelancer.
Node dev with early stage experience at a YC startup and around 4 years of experience total: $60,000 USD/year as a freelancer.
Python dev with 7 years of experience working for a US startup with a Mexican presence: $75,000 pesos per month con beneficios.
So what’s going on? Why the discrepancy?
I got 2 theories….
Outsourcing companies need to squeeze salaries as part of their business model.
Mexico is still mostly outsourcing firms, and the business model relies on profit being squeezed out of the difference between the employees salary and how much he/she is “farmed” out for. That model will always encourage a push towards lower salaires, even if the long term effects are negative.
The salary gap between English speaking companies and Spanish ones is widening.
This is a phenomenon that I predict will be very acute in 5 years or so. But it could very well be happening already. English speaking companies operating in LatAm will most likely have offices worldwide, and salary bands that track international standards. Local Mexican (or Colombian, or Argentine…) companies are…much more local. And those salaries tend to be local. I wrote about how learning B2 English can be one of the most important career advancing moves you can make, here.
So what can you do to get better salary visibility?
Take a look at other online resources. Levels.fyi has some interesting info for the US (keep in mind it's mostly not remote) and the numbers seem accurate to me. Glassdoor also has pretty good info.
Talk with me! Or other recruiters. 3rd party recruiters are always open to sharing this sort of information, and they are not incentivized to give you a low number. They generally know what sort of budgets companies have depending on candidate experience.
You are probably not going to get a FAANG comp package for San Francisco if you are working remotely. The cost of living in SF is insanely high (one bedroom apartments are around $3,500 USD) and so salaries reflect that.
For info, this is a real FAANG comp package for 4 years:
(FAANG stands for Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google)
There are no 50 peso comida corridas in SF, sorry.
https://sightsinplus.com/news/jobs-news/siemens-to-let-staff-work-from-anywhere-permanently/
In other news… the latest big company to let their staff “Work from Anywhere” is Siemens. Now our German friends can eat schnitzels from the comfort of their Haus.
Please note: it looks like its still 3 days or so in the office. So there will still be more kafeteriaschnitzel for Siemens.
If you were given the chance to work from anywhere, what place would you choose? What would you prioritize? the weather, safety, family friendliness, timezone? Let me know via Twitter.
This Saturday, we have a special webinar about how to manage your Mexican Taxes as a freelancer. El SAT es complicado de manejar, y yo estaré con Sergio Olea de OC Contadores para preguntarle cómo salir adelante y cómo manejar tus impuestos cómo un boss. Register here.
Want to “gringificar” your resume? I’m doing free resume reviews on Wednesday and Fridays. Pick a time here. Lo podemos hacer en español si prefieres.
See you next week...
Follow me @GeorgesJanin and @GringoJobs on Twitter don’t forget to subscribe and share with your tech friends!
And thanks again for giving me a small piece of your time and attention! I appreciate it.
Peace and Jobs,
Georges