alt text: 18 of our 40 employees are located in the Philippines. Insanely competent, great judgement, and $5 per hour. If you run a small business and don’t have overseas help you’re at a disadvantage

  • JohnDClay
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    10 months ago

    I think it’s fine to outsource some things overseas, but don’t criminally underpay them!

    • sugar_in_your_tea
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      10 months ago

      $5/hr is a decent wage in the Philippines. Minimum wage there is ~$11/day, so $5/hr is quite a bit more than minimum wage.

      • Verat
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        10 months ago

        Minimum wage may not be the whole story, our minimum wage is $7.25 still and I dont think anyone believes that can be lived on here. The cost of living is more significant a measure of the pay’s fairness

        • sugar_in_your_tea
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          10 months ago

          Cost of living is also much lower in The Philippines vs the US. A quick search says a 1br studio near Manila costs ~₱6,500/month, which is ~$115/month. The same thing costs about 10-20x that here in the US in a city.

          So $5/hr would be enough for a pretty nice lifestyle there, whereas it would be significantly below the poverty line here in the US.

        • youRFate@feddit.de
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          10 months ago

          Right, he is paying about 4x minimum wage, which would be about $29/hr, that’s doable.

        • shalafi@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          Funny note on that: Went to stay with a friend in Manhattan back in '91. Stunned by the prices I asked, “How does anyone survive on minimum wage?!”

          He laughed, “Man, nobody gets minimum wage here!”

          I’m in a poor county in Florida. 6 years ago, jobs could be found at the very bottom, no more.

        • Mossheart@lemmy.ca
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          10 months ago

          Apparently the US government does, otherwise they’d have changed it…

      • Slotos@feddit.nl
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        10 months ago

        Their labor creates expensive value in an expensive market. Share accordingly.

        “It’s a great pay where they are” argument is bullshit.

        • BrotherL0v3@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          Exactly this. If they are making the same product as a local team that generates the same revenue, you’re just taking a bigger slice of their surplus value. In other words, exploiting them harder.

    • PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca
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      10 months ago

      I think that companies shouldn’t be allowed to change wage/salary based on locale.

      But I have no idea how that could be enforced.

        • PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca
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          10 months ago

          And how do you enforce the taxes?

          The problem i was alluding to was shell companies, subsidiaries, and all the existing popular tax avoiding strategies used by big companies (that’d also be used for avoiding counting those employees)

        • PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca
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          10 months ago

          LOL you think they wouldn’t have already done that if they could? Explain to me how you think that’d be the result of making offshore labour more expensive 🤣🤣🤣

    • MissJinx@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      It doesn’t. Since the dolar has usually a higher value americans pay little but when you convert the people there make ok money. It’s a win x win x lose (in this case the american people that need jobs too :/)