Thanks for the feedback, I see your point! That's on oversight on our side, nothing nefarious intended, we'll have to figure how to best spell out the pricing.

Pricing-wise, I'd say the all-in fees on a per dev basis are comparable to a developer's salary here in the US (Austin, TX), the fees are all inclusive of benefits, tech equipment, offices, perks, etc...

When you decide to make an offer to someone, you'll get a break down of 1) the teammates's personal salary requirement), 2) the benefits and taxes and, 3) our management fee.

Because we don't set the rates, the candidates do (just like in the US), it's hard to say exactly what the price will be, it depends on the individual's requirements.

That said, we can def offer guidance on what the market tends to be!

"Pricing-wise, I'd say the all-in fees on a per dev basis are comparable to a developer's salary here in the US, the fees are all inclusive of benefits, tech equipment, offices, perks, etc..."

Well, then as a USA based org, I'd have to say - what's the point? If it's comparable to a USA dev Salary, what savings/arbitrage/win a I achieving here? Wouldn't it be easier for a USA based company to just corp 2 corp/1099 or such someone onshore, then offshore and have a middle man?

So for us, hiring domestically (either 1099 or FTE) vs internationally, wasn't a mutually exclusive decision. Finding good people was a real risk to our growth. So we expanded the top of our funnel to more locations simultaneously.

However, we weren't just interested in salary arbitrage, we really did need to attract good people with premium benefits. Good international teammates aren't going to leave their team only to risk being a second class contractor on a foreign team. So we found that by offering our teammates a premium experience: health insurance, gym perks, education resources, Macbooks, and other apple products, career paths and salary reviews, we expanded the pool of people that were interested in working with us beyond the pool of people on Toptal/Turing and other platforms with no fulfillment on the ground.

Not all teams are interested in that philosophy in hiring but we've had the most success with it.

That's nice but would you mind actually answering his question? Why should he pay comparable rates to someone residing where the cost of living is a fraction of the US? There are concrete benefits to having dev teams composed of people who share a common culture. What's on the other end of the scales to balance out losing that if it isn't money?

I believe I did answer the question, but let me try rephrase!

First, the rates tend to be comparable to _just_ the salary component of a US teammate (Austin, Texas). The US salary component doesn't include insurance, taxes, and other perks, which could add another 30-50% to the cost of employment. With Astro all those items are included in the rate.

Second, and hopefully I answer the question, the reason you would pay for those benefits for an international teammate (and not just an arbitrage play), is because we believe that it allows companies to recruit and retain a different pool of teammates not accessible on the other platforms like Toptal/Turing/Outsourcing, etc.

I hope that's better! Let me know.

I'm not in this space at all, but my reading of OP's comment was that the _total_ cost of a dev from their service is comparable to just the _salary_ (excluding benefits and other overhead) of a US developer.

The cost of employing someone in the US can easily be 2x their actual salary.

>> If it's comparable to a USA dev Salary, what savings/arbitrage/win a I achieving here? Wouldn't it be easier for a USA based company to just corp 2 corp/1099 or such someone onshore, then offshore and have a middle man?

I'm not affiliated with the GP, but here are my takes:

1. Talent is talent, so doesnt matter where you hire from as long as it is good talent with good communications skills

2. I cant find someone overseas, so this is a good platform to do so

3. I dont want to deal with international money transfers/taxes/restrictions, so this takes care of that

4. I doubt you can get this type of talent at Austin rates, so the rates are good. If you need talent NOW, it is even harder to get it at good rates

What percentage does Astro charge on top of that (e.g. management fee)? Where's the breakdown? You're claiming transparency but it looks fairly opaque. I'm not trying to be combative, merely pointing out the marketing pitch is at odds with the data available.

Oops, forgot to mention that. The management fee is 15%. You would get a break down for any teammate that you want to interview for your team. It would look something like:

1) The teammate's desired salary 2) Benefits and taxes 3) 15% management fee

I see you point about this not being spelled out on our landing page! Good catch!

Andrew, thank you for the feedback. This is something we'd love to be able to be better at and would love any advice you may have.

We send the rate with each developer. We don't have a flat rate; otherwise, that means we set the rate. The developers set their own rate and we send that over with their profiles after you state what you're looking for and who in our platform is a match.

What's a better way of going about this?

I'd recommend some document that outlines the fees Astro charges based on selections for the teams. Any AWS pricing calculator is a decent model to use.

amazing suggestion, seems so obvious but we had never considered - thank you! <3