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Comment by hdesh | Hacker News Reader

> Indian interviewees said they earned 25,000 rupees ($306) per month on average, while the Costa Rican average was 514,000 colones ($843).

What explains the difference?

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Could be time zones. I recall reading an article about Mechanical Turk that suggested the highest-paying tasks get done the quickest. I wonder if those are often posted on US hours, leaving lower paid tasks for Indian daylight hours.

Costa Rica has a pretty educated workforce. Probably just demand a higher wage.

Cost of living.

To imply that Costa Rica's education is somehow superior to India's is misrepresenting the situation.

If in my local market 300 dollars is a pretty good average then I don't have leverage to ask for 800 dollars from the HR department of a billion dollar beast of a company who will create every possible pressure to adjust the offer according to my local market.

But that doesn't explain the incentive for Amazon to hire anyone from Costa Rica at 3x higher salary? If education/skills are the same why not just hire more Indians (or ppl from some other, cheaper Latin America country) and save a lot of money? Hell, they could easily open a center in many parts of Eastern Europe and still hire people for far less than those $800.

There could be tons of other factors in play. Regulation, taxes, available workforce, etc. that guide decisions like these.

I think the real answer is: The difference between $300 and $800 per worker for a program like this is _couch money_ for a company like Amazon. The value they will eventually derive from the data and profits is well worth whatever time savings they get from hiring someone in the western hemisphere I imagine.

> To imply that Costa Rica's education is somehow superior to India's is misrepresenting the situation.

You fail to explain why it is a misrepresentation. In fact, you don't address it at all outside of this statement.

India is a very cheap place to live in.

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