Being a developer in Venezuela.

When you want to start having a place in today’s software industry, things are simply not easy. Every beginner will agree that you can experiment the everyone-knows-a-ton-lot-more-than-you feeling, but as a freelancer you can find your way making the real effort.

Now, being from Venezuela changes the equation, you instantly become part of two groups. The “Okay, give me 100$ a year” group, and the “I would like to be paid as if I didn’t live in a third world country” one.

Sadly, there is plenty of people in the first one and consequently, a lot of companies and individuals are taking advantage out of the situation of our country. Who wouldn’t profit if you hire 10 Venezuelan Back-end Developers, pay them 100$ a month, and just connect them to contracts from the internet? It is an easy bet.

Obviously, I am not saying that every single one of those developers are worth thousands a month. Most are Juniors and, in some cases, they do not really have that much of a knowledge and do not really add to the team.

Although, this makes everyone want to profit from our country’s situation, without giving an eye to the fact that they could still pay devs a fair amount and profit like ANY OUTSOURCE ORGANIZATION WORLDWIDE.

Finally: If you are profiting from Venezuela’s poor economical situation to underpay your workforce, I hope you fail to deliver to your clients and they totally lose trust in you, because what you are doing is totally unfair. Now, if you are a venezuelan dev and you actually know your stuff, do not accept getting underpaid from your international bosses, you are as valuable as any developer outside of the country.

Note: I do know that some people get hired by venezuelan companies that sell software to venezuelan clients. These are an exception to the rule and I fully admire the honest ones. Being productive how things are is a complete achievement, you da real MVP.