The simple answer is: yes and even more than that.
When I asked the question on Twitter, I asked it as follows:
One problem is that I used the phrase "third world." I should have used "developing countries."
My inspiration for the question was this tweet that is part of a thread:
In case someone doesn't already know, a first important observation is that people usually talk about annual salary in the USA (and in some European countries). In other words, 100 thousand dollars is equivalent to 8,333.33 dollars per month.
I do not know precisely how it works, but USA vacations are negotiated company by company, and there is no Christmas bonus. Some companies pay for one or more benefits (health plan, stock participation, etc.). I think this is what Tyler Young is talking about when he writes "total compensation." In other words, the person gets, for example, 180,000 in cash and 20,000 in "benefits."
Another observation is that Tyler Young talks about senior developer people working with Elixir. But these salary levels are not exclusive to Elixir. They apply to many (not all) other technologies. In my tweet, I asked the question about Elixir and Erlang because the Elixir-Erlang-BEAM community is where most of my contacts are.
From the answers I got, some of them private, it is possible to earn even more than 100 thousand dollars per year. One person (who is not Brazilian but is from a developing country) said that he receives 165 thousand dollars per year. Some others said they received around 100 thousand dollars.
Can I be sure that what they told me is true? Not. But I trust the people who spoke to me. Considering that Silicon Valley companies can quickly pay up to $350,000 per year, it is not extraordinary to pay $165,000 to an excellent developer working remotely from a developing country.
What about you? What do you think? Is it possible?
Top comments (1)
TL;DR: I'm doing it (although I'm living in Mexico working for a startup in SF, remotely).
This subject is quite important to me so let expand it:
My take, most likely wrong, with the salary situation is quite similar with what people is doing in Oxide Computer.
One could argue that doesn't scale... well, yeah... but i think the issue is deeper than that. If tomorrow, someone mines an asteriod worth of 7,900 trillion dollars, we could easily give 1 mll to each human on the planet... what does that mean? what happen with the economy? and so...
Then perhaps we should take the path of why-we-get-pay?-why-need-to-work? path...
If we care to imagine the future... how would a future where there is no salary would look like? What would I be doing then? How do we get here in the first place? I mean the economy we have. We are social beings and since the birth we need others to relay on. How do we get here? Perhaps the deeper, deepest question is: why we deny death? I imagine the whole economic system relays on that... death, existence, etc...
Anywho, I'm just ranting and rambling at the same time.
PS: Thanks for the post!!! It got me out of my shell!