I just quit my full-time job yesterday and free for freelance work from 9th August. Perhaps I can help? I'm a tech recruiter with over 8 years of experience 🙂

Anyone here happen to have a good grasp on the various tech hubs within Latin America? My company (based in the US) needs to scale fast and looking to hire 30-50 engineers within the next year. The US and Canada markets are just too hot right now and it is proving immensely difficult to compete and find good talent. I know of some tech companies in Buenos Aires and I'm currently living in Colombia. Are there any growing hotspots that anyone recommends to open a new office?

My company has several engineers in Colombia, Argentina, and Brazil that do great work.

What do you typically use for recruiting? In-house / job boards, local recruiting firms? Combination?

most of them have been contracting with us for a while now via a firm that operates in LatAm, I wish I could give you the name, but I don’t handle that myself

I appreciate the info regardless. Do you see any specific country/city as really making greater strides in creating a thriving tech ecosystem?

yep! Panama City, Medellin, BA, and São Paulo mostly

Sao Paulo, Recife, Curitiba in Brazil for sure are hotspots. But... even if you find enough engineers, actually the exchange is much in favor of USD, but that can change. now its about 1:5, this was once 1:2, even 1:1 ... (I lived there and had IT Offshore company for 12 years. Exchange was in this time once in my favor, once the other side...)

I usually go speak with professors at La Universidad Nacional in Medellin or Bogota and get good contacts that way.

perhaps a 'body shop' approach could be a good way to go? Baires Dev are a good one. They hire devs from all around central and south america

I would have recommended Buenos Aires pre-2020. But today most experienced devs are just getting remote jobs for US companies and getting at least 3X the local salary.

muyryjfbrszd I actually have an uncle via my wife, who is a dean of a university and does tech etc.. in Colombia. It would be graduating computer science students though.

Armenia, Colombia for example has an excellent dental program which made them great digital dental technicians. 3Shape, a Danish dental technology company, hired specifically in Armenia for CAD/CAM hardware and software support due to their dental backgrounds. Sometimes it's a good idea to look in midsized towns across Latin America whom get overlooked.

Hey. Anyone here record podcasts while they are travelling? I am looking for some advice on where to find pretty quiet spaces where I could record an episode over squadcast, when I'm living in a hostel. I often do Airbnb which is easy, but a guest is only available when I'm in a hostel in Iceland.

book a hotel for one night?

co working space?

Has anyone tried charging a _lot_ for services on Upwork? $200/hr or more?

I may or may not have sourced a U.K. client from there and then just said fuck it let’s go direct

😛

$200/h is a bit of a stretch for U.K. clients, but not impossible

I'm worth it _preens_

Why is $200 a lot? Maybe he can do wonders for those $200. In that case, he might be more affordable than someone else who would take much more time for the same service. 🙂

Sadly shijtyyahrr knows me in real life 😄

Oh, fair enough. 🙂

😜

I have submitted my first proposal asking for $100 an hour

That’s definitely the way to do it

There are definitely people on upwork charging $250 and more. I think it’s all about positioning and reviews. Once you have reputation and a fine tuned profile then anything is possible.

Have a click on my profile in the other place and let me know what you think 😁

I can't imagine anyone looking for an expensive contractor on Upwork, but I'd love to be proven wrong!

abpbkpgqtnvo There is definitely an opportunity there. It's rare, but it can happen.

Someone can search for "tech stack" + "problem" + "domain" and find your profile.

Example Ruby on Rails developer for SaaS, specialized in Stripe billing.

You have a burning need that you need to solve _right now_!

Why would you not pay $250 for some expert's time, who will probably just solve it in 2 hours anyways. Rather than hire a cheap and generic freelancer, who is going to charge $60/h, but take 10 hours to figure it out.

100% acknowledge aafyurma

Not sure about upwork specifically, but I've seen contractor jobs (e.g. for software devs) quoting 500-700 GBP per day, so around 100+ usd an hour

day rates are usually for a longer period (e.g 3-12 months) so they are discounted on what you would pay for the same person if you only wanted them for < 40 hours total.

dxoitjxi very good points!

I only get contracts through Upwork and Freelancer for $100+ per hour, and it can go up to $200 per hour depending on the project (more for shorter and/or urgent projects). So it definitely happens, it just isn't that common. And not only in tech I'm in business management & business intelligence. It's more of a matter of who you sell to and how you market your services.

Interestingly enough, my last contract in that range was for an UK-based branch of a Fortune 500 company. 180£/hour for business intelligence on a market in familiar with.

try out krisp ai? noise cancelation tool

Also, don't send messages like this on Upwork to clients:

> I am working as a Senior Business Analyst. Using a variety of skill sets to tackle tough, intricate problems ingeniously, and not just provide a sustainable, theoretical solution, but rather going forward and implementing it to generate meaningful, tangible impact is very central to my conception of the ideal career I wish to embark on. Furthermore, the low-duration, high-intensity nature of the job is also very compelling to me, as it equips me with the ability to tackle a particular problem holistically with single-minded focus, and at the same time diversify my palate of business skills by working on projects from different domains.

Sounds like a bunch of nothing, lol at palate of business skills

I was reminded by the news of the acqusition by Fiverr that i have a workingnotworking profile. Anybody here is on the platform? If so did you ever get a gig from there?

And you just reminded me that I have a W~W~ profile too, but haven‘y logged in for years. Haven‘t got a gig from there too.

Guess that's the situation for 70% of their users which means that there shouldn't be much competition 🤔

It's hard to get experience with no experience but honestly if you are a throwing a net, "I don't have much experience but I am open to new challenges and understand that my pay would reflect my level of experience." would be more compelling.

How do I join that slack?

It's called BcnEng

Thanks!

Yeah you are right, that sounds off. So I asked them about it and it’s bad copywriting. The word stipend is not right. In reality, they pay a normal salary with all the perks on top (free travel, housing, health insurance, coworking, etc.). They will correct the wording in the job description. sfwduik igldeqoj tbxjbym

What’s a normal salary, do they give a range?

Good idea! Will add that

awesome! 👏

What VPN provider would you recommend?

Most trustworthy Host it yourself
Otherwise Whichever company you trust the most. From what I've seen, most of the providers that do a lot of advertising have also been caught saving/parsing logs despite claiming they don't keep logs.

Personally I have ProtonVPN, haven't had too many issues.

Thanks!I just need VPN in order to hide my location of presence

fdnrnpuothhm Freedome is cheap, easy to setup, and run by a very well-known and non-dodgy Finnish company that’s been around since forever

Thanks!

I use NordVPN with no issues and I also host my own VPN server for when sites are strict and blacklist known VPN IPs.

It mainly depends what you want from a VPN (eg what your threat model is) anonymity, security, or both.
If you want anonymity self-hosting is not a good option, since everything would still be traceable to you (using a VPN to be one out of many; use TOR for better anonymity). If you want security and privacy, self-hosting might be a good option, if you’re confident with setting up your own VPN on a (trusted) VPS provider and can keep up with all security best-practices/updates. If you want both anonymity and security you should again not self-host.

I’d argue that for most people a solid VPN provider is by far the best option. I personally use Mullvad without having any problems.

If I'm not hosting I'm going with ProtonVPN or Mullvad.

VYPR VPN with Chameleom protocol 2.0. I have use both nordVPN and VYPR in the past, the time VYPR is 3 -5 times expensive than now. I use nord most of the time few years back, but realize many site blocked NordVPN ip address (not sure now) that cause some inconveniece for me. then i switch to VYPR. now sticking with this with that cheap 3 years plan. Mainly because they have their own closed internet protocol, Chameleon protocol (combined OpenVPN and their own tech) and with smart IP. I have view the recent reviews of both, NordVPN is faster, but for security and hiding identity. my pick is vypr and their server is own by them not someone else.

I’ve used NordVPN and haven’t had any issues with it so far. Don’t use it very often though

I've been getting some value out of a Saved Search on Upwork that's an RSS feed + a mini RSS feed reader in my menu bar

hehe i do the same! great hack.

I think there is a bug in that feed, it sometimes shows jobs that were marked private. when you visit it, it is not available.

Interesting, how do you set this up?

Setting up an RSS feed to alert for past clients posting new jobs is one of the best hacks I found on the site when I was using it. Not sure why, but Upwork clients tend to post new jobs rather than reaching out for follow up work through the messenger.

tokens

I also recommend mullvad. Have used it everywhere for a couple years. It also takes digital currency and has a good wireguard and socks5 option which keeps captchas away.

> Tech co-Founder for social impact startup (equity only)

vlfcvzehktpeeozq What's the split?

I'd disqualify based on spelling `co-Founder` ... might as well be `CO-foUnDeR`

😄

By the way, TIL, this is called english.stackexchange.com/questions/533036/what-is-this-kind-of-capitalisation-called-random-capitalisation-or-intermitt|Studly Caps>.

We’re very security oriented at work and our staff consensus pick is Mullvad.