Working remotely as a programmer while living abroad

Mauricio Vasquez
Jul 30, 2017 · 5 min read
Mexico City

I often get asked why I decided to move to Mexico from the United States. It seems like for many people is the other way around… To be honest, I did not plan it and it seemed to work out pretty well in the long term. I might go into specifics as why I actually moved, but for this post I’ll just describe how I got started and the hurdles along the way.

Just to give you a general idea, I’m not an engineer. I did not get a degree in Computer Science or Engineering. I did acquire a Bachelor of Science degree which I’ve never used, but that’s besides the point. I became a programmer on my own after landing an entry level job here in Mexico City. I was lucky enough to be part of a really talented team of iOS developers that were working on several interesting projects.

Salaries

Another thing people ask me about is money. “Aren’t the salaries really bad?” or “Why would you work for pesos if you can stay in the US and earn dollars?” Hourly rates in Mexico are obviously lower than in the US, but so is the cost of living. I remember when a friend from New York told me that he was happy because his office rent was only $14,000 USD a month. It was a bargain according to him.

I was earning 7,000 MXN in my first job in Mexico City which I considered an “internship. That’s was about $400 USD dollars a month back then. Since I didn’t know anything about programming, I thought it was an amazing opportunity. The salary was doubled in about 4–5 months which made a huge difference. I was only paying $200 USD in rent in a shared apartment so I had $600 USD left for the rest of the expenses. A senior developer in Mexico City can expect to make about $2,500-$3,000 USD a month after taxes.

Working for American companies in Mexico

This is possibly the hardest part and it’s probably what every single freelancer and consulting company in the world wants to achieve: having a client that pays dollars, euros or any strong currency. Interestingly enough, many of these potential clients would also love to pay a fraction of the cost. So why is it so hard to find clients in the United States if there’s such a high demand for programmers?. The simple answer is trust.

Many of my friends in the US and Europe have worked at one point or another with a company or freelancer from abroad. Some had good experiences and some didn’t. Usually when a consulting company finds a good developer overseas, they will never let him or her go. To the contrary, I’ve seen some of these companies offer H-B1 visas to make sure the developer stays with them. When a company has a poor experience, it’s very likely that they will think twice before hiring from abroad again.

My personal experience

In the last 3 years, I’ve worked with four consulting firms in the US and one in Europe. I gotta admin that the first time around wasn’t a smooth sailing. I didn’t know how much I should be charging, how to do taxes or contracts, and how long it actually takes to receive the payments. Most importantly, I did not know how to choose the people I will work with. That last one was my biggest mistake.

Everything started out great. The client agreed to a decent hourly rate for Mexico standards (between 35 and 50 dollars an hour). They needed three developers so I got a couple of friends to help me out. I “partnered up” with a company that would supposedly take care of all the legal stuff and the salaries until we got paid. The client liked the developers (all three of us) so much, that they offered a $16,000 USD upfront retainer per month, for three months. $48,000 dollars for my very first client? I couldn’t even believe it myself.

Mistakes and what I’ve learned from them

To make it extremely short: the project went on for about 4 months, the company I partnered up with did not have a way to receive payments, and because of this the programmers did not get paid as promised and quit. It went from a good start, to a really, really poor ending. I’ll write another post going into specifics on what went wrong and maybe it can help somebody avoid these same mistakes.

What I did to make sure this didn’t happen again:

  • Make sure to have enough cash to pay your salary and whoever else is helping you for at least 3–4 months.
  • Accounting and legal. Have your company and bank account completely ready to go. It can take months to do in some countries.
  • Sign everything. Make sure you make it very clear how much you and the people you’re associated with are going to make percentage wise. It’s very easy for the person running the bank account to keep all the money at the very end.
  • Make sure you also have access to the bank account. I guess this one is self explanatory

Never stop

After this not-so-great experience, I started applying what I wrote above. It’s a very logic approach, but I’ve seen many people taking it for granted. Currently, I have two active clients who really appreciate that they don’t have to worry about anything regarding to billing, taxes or legal (from my end). As I mentioned earlier, once they find a good company or developer that charges a fraction of the price, they’ll never let them go.

Condesa, Mexico City

P.S. I took these pictures with a Mavic Pro. Still figuring out how to properly fly this thing.

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