When you are trying to build a team, going remote is the easy and perhaps best option. If you are already going remote, you can dodge the U.S. talent shortage and avoid rising team costs by exploring your global options when building that team. The question then becomes, where should you hire your global team, and we’ll take a look at Central Asia vs Brazil.
Does Brazil Have a Talent Shortage?
You are trying to go to another country for a lot of reasons. Maybe you want to broaden your cultural horizons. Maybe you want to provide your team with a unique perspective. Likely you are also looking to save money and avoid a lot of the hassle of finding talent in a talent shortage.
Of course, that means you have to know if Brazil has a talent shortage. If they are having a latent shortage, then it sort of defeats the purpose a bit, doesn’t it? It turns out they are, and not in a small way either. Even before COVID and the talent shortage issues that followed, it was estimated that they were short 1.8 million highly skilled workers. By 2030, that shortage is expected to increase to 5.7 million highly skilled workers.
Does Central Asia Have a Talent Shortage?
Central Asia is in a very unique position. It is one of the few regions worldwide that is actually going through a talent surplus. It has been like this for awhile, but recent events have led to more people migrating to countries like Georgia, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan. There is plenty of talent available in Central Asia, and you can see that reflected in our time to hire which we’ll cover in a minute here.
How Does the Salary in Brazil Compare to Central Asia?
When you have a talent shortage, salaries tend to rise, and we have seen that play out in Brazil in the tech industry. In Central Asia, salaries have been relatively consistent, but Brazil has quickly caught up and even surpassed wages for many positions in Central Asia. Currently, the average IT salary for remote workers is estimated to be $50,446.
There aren’t a lot of hard numbers on remote talent in Central Asia as it is still very much an emerging market. We can say that, in our experience, the average is much closer to $40,000 for Central Asia.
How Fast Can You Get Hires in Central Asia
Most EoR services do not publish their time-to-hire numbers by region or otherwise. We do know that hiring in a talent shortage is going to be difficult and Central Asia doesn’t have that problem. In fact, we will be so bold as to put some of our numbers out there for our time to hire in Central Asia.
For mid-level Java developers time to hire has averaged just 10 days. For a senior .NET developer, it’s been 16 days. And for senior React developers the time to hire has been 22 days. If you’ve tried to hire for these positions in the states, then you know just how fast these are.
Read More: How to Successfully Recruit in Emerging Markets
What about the Time Zone Difference with Central Asia?
Brazil is in the Brasilia Standard Time Zone, which is GMT-3. In other words, they are 2 hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time. This does provide some overlap for the east coast, but will matter less on the west coast as there is a 5 hour time difference. Both of these gaps could be reduced by an hour during daylight savings time, especially if daylight savings time is ever made permanent, but maybe time zones don’t matter that much.
Central Asia has a few time zones. The country of Georgia is 8 hours ahead of EST, Uzbekistan and the western half of Kazakhstan is 10 hours ahead and the eastern half of Kazakhstan is 11 hours ahead.
With these big differences, you can decide if they matter or not. Some candidates are willing to work different hours to maximize their overlap with a U.S. team, but you can also use this difference as a big advantage. Now you have a team that can work through the night on your product, when many of the people that use your product are sleeping. Our evenings are the perfect times for software updates, bug fixes, and changes.
Is There a Language Barrier in Brazil or Central Asia?
This is often the first question we get when people come to us looking to grow a global team. Rest assured, especially in tech, pretty much everyone is fluent in English. They can speak it, read it, and write it. In fact, in the country of Georgia, 85% of the population speaks English and in Kazakhstan 22% are actually trilingual being fluent in Kazakh, Russian, and English.
In Brazil, the story is a little different, only 17% of the population is fluent in English. That’s less than the number of trilingual people in Kazakhstan. Combine that with the labor shortage in Brazil and your talent pool is going to be very limited.
Find Talent in Central Asia Today?
Are you looking to tap into the talent market in Central Asia? That’s where we come in! At TRUSS, we can support you though every step of the process because we are an end-to-end employer of record service. This means we can handle the recruiting with our talent acquisition team that’s local to the area. We will handle payroll, device procurement, payroll, compliance, and more. Reach out today, and let us help you start building your global remote team in Central Asia.
