I agree 100%. Aside from time differences, the biggest problem we have with remote teams in faraway places is communication. We have really sharp folks in our Hyderabad office, but some of them really struggle to communicate clearly, and a poor Zoom connection doesn't help at all. That would be my one piece of advice to someone outside the US who wants some of that sweet, sweet income we have grown accustomed to. Being a good coder is fine, but not really distinctive. Work hard on speaking English as clearly as possible. It absolutely will give you a competitive advantage.

Buying a decent microphone is also something I'd strongly recommend, especially for people (like me) that have a non-local accent.

In addition, high quality audio makes you sound smarter :) https://tips.ariyh.com/p/good-sound-quality-smarter

Yes, this helps a lot. I bought a Audio-Technica AT2020USB+ for my home office a while back. Now my team says I sound like an NPR host :)

South America is an interesting one for a lot of US companies because the timezones line up much better with US-local folks than in any other continents.

There are still other substantial collaboration challenges, but if more places move to be truly remote-first, those places will necessarily have solutions for that anyway.

Agreed the time zones are killer.

If I start another company I’d really like to hire a competent offshore team in south or Central America but I have a lot of trouble getting there from here. If I wanted to hire a team in Israel, Pakistan or India, I could do it immediately, because I have trusted friends who can hook me up with people that they themselves trust plus or minus some skeeviness that I know how to manage. For south-of-us I have no connections and basically no way to start.

Agreed. I am a product manager for a startup software acquired from Brazil. Nearly all engineering sit in Brazil (or some squads in India). I am the EU based PM that has to deal with the timezone issues and requirements- do I like it? Not really, but it is existing and the company might hire a an architect or tech lead on europe, the rest will remain outsourced. Generally speaking some of the developpers speak good English and so with Jira and Figma it works.

I could get a 60k USD a year remote thing but I would be out of the system (I mean, now I am an Argentinian employee with all the rights it entails). For 60k, it is not worth it. For 100k it would be worth to solve all the issues associated with getting money from abroad (maybe make a corporation somewhere?). Anyway, I am listening to 100k+ offers.

Just curious: what kind of lifestyle does 100k USD get you in Colombia?

You can live in a flat in the best parts of major cities comfortably, you could hire one or maybe even two FT employees to help you to cook, clean the house, take care of kids, etc. If you don't like the city life, you could also rent a small "mansion" in the suburbs (but then you'd suffer a bit with the internet connection, fiber only goes to major cities)

You could dine out at nice restaurants every weekend and travel around by plane every time there is a holiday and stay at 5 star hotels

Taking into account the minimum salary here is 300 USD / month and with 50k per year you are already top 1%, 100k gives you an unimaginable level of wealth. You'd earn about the same salary as the president of the country and more than most CEOs from local companies

But that would be if you spend all your salary every month which is not so smart, what most of us (bilingual developers) do is continue living a standard middle class life and just invest heavily, I invest more than 50% of my salary, mostly in real state and US stocks

I would say I live even further than the suburbs (45 minutes from Medellín, one house every acre / 5000 m2) and we just got a second fiber option maxed out at 300mb so that may be changing.

As an American who moved to Colombia, I can highly recommend it. That said, there’s a lot of downsides not mentioned here. First off, your foreign earned income and your US credit score mean nothing here. You will not be able to get a loan and if you want to buy property, you’ll be paying cash. I had to pay 8 months of rent into a bank deposited escrow just to rent a fairly cheap house for one year. That also involved (literally) about 6 trips each to a physical notary office and banks). Things that would be unheard of in the US are common place, like constant physical signatures and finger prints to authenticate documents and asking for your national id number in order to do anything and everything.

A small empty lot in the nicer parts outside Medellín will be at least $225,000. Not bad and beautiful land but again you’ll have to pay cash for everything. Taxes are very high and you can expect to pay 30% - 80% more for many foreign products (“nicer” cars in particular seem to be ridiculously high priced). Tech product selection is terrible, everything lags way behind or simply isn’t available. Amazon does ship a selection of lighter weight items here but you’ll pay a VAT tax of 20% plus an import tax of 10% on the total including shipping. It usually works out to be a 40% premium. Electric vehicles essentially do not exist unless you want a Twizy. I just had my radiator fan go out on my car and was quoted $900 for the part alone which is available in the States for $200. With shipping and taxes I can order from the US for about $550 but it will take about 2 weeks to get here.

There’s a lot of unnecessary friction in daily life, just trying to do “simple” things like an online purchase.

Still an amazing place, lots of great things but as someone trying to actually make a long term life here it can definitely be frustrating.