technology jobs and a Canadian

rash9000 says on Feb 8, 2005, 15:46:

Asians are fine fine in colombia...they're going to call you "chino"
go to: http://www.parquesoft.com/
is a new company that is developing new software, they just started last year, and are located in Cali.

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Lionheart says on Feb 8, 2005, 18:12:

software I am software engineer and I will be moving to Cali. Send me a PM for more details on opportunities there, also considering Parquesoft. Business is very different in Colombia, not the happy-go-easy style we are used from hi-tech worlds here.

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ColombiaBoard says on Feb 9, 2005, 07:03:

Check this out... Email this company, they´re located in Medellin and they´re perhaps the best Software Development / Software Design company in the country, or at least that´s what they say...


www.psl.com.co

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caslug says on Feb 9, 2005, 09:01:

van.. the best thing to do is look for a company in CAN that does work/consulting in COL. AS GIB mention, there is tons of qualified engineer in COL that will work for a lot less than you. Plus unless your spanish is fluent, why would a COL company want to hire a foreinger and deal with work visa issues when they can hire a local.
Unless of course the COL company is selling their stuff to english speaking market, then they may see your status differently.

As for being asian descent, you wont have any problem. i am and never had a problem, i even met another asian-candian engineer that was on a 3 mos project in COL for his CAN company. He spoke decent spanish and was having a blast partying when he was not working.

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VanMan says on Feb 9, 2005, 11:15:

the information
Thanks for the information so far. I will take into consideration what gringoinbogota and caslug have said.

Van

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Lionheart says on Feb 9, 2005, 13:36:

hightech jobs There is no big chance getting a tech job alone in Colombia, engineers there are cheap and plenty, plus students in the final years work for free to get job experience up front. Without this prior experience they won't get hired.

The only way you can find a job, or create a market for yourself, is to add value to a company and/or products. The high tech business is just beginning, and it is in severe growing pains, much worse than any of the dot.com pains you might have experienced in the USA. Therefore be cautious when you apply as employee, the company might be gone or broke when you arrive there. As freelancer you want to be an octopus, be able to stand on 8 feet business-wise, because at least 4 will be chopped off before you get your money. Also, be prepared to operate within family businesses, no matter how big the company is. It seems that only direct relatives are trusted, so you will be dealing with cousins and uncles galore, not all are honest. But they belong to the family, so in a dispute you will be on the loosing end.

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vladimiro says on Feb 9, 2005, 14:55:

Good and Bad Colombian Engineers I worked with Colombian software engineers at one of Colombia's best companies. These engineers were very well educated but didn't have experience writing systems from scratch. New system development was still contracted out to foriegn companies, so unfortunately although the Colombian engineers at this company were very smart they never got the opportunity to gain experience developing new systems. They only mantained the code once it had been written by foriegners. I've read that Colombia has good engineers but they are relagated to mantenance work rather than development, and that's my experience too.

I have also worked with Colombian engineers at another major Colombian company that is not very well run. These electrical, and software engineers have engineering degrees but from what I can figure out they were given good jobs but were not expected to do any real engineering work - any engineering task they are given ends up having to be contracted out. Its seems its just prestigous to have some degreed engineers in the company. These engineers are not even capable of mantaining systems let alone developing new ones.

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Lionheart says on Feb 9, 2005, 15:02:

connect the dots then you see where the job opportunities are in Colombia. Senior developers, project managers, system architects are just a few examples. Or what about independent consulting and external project coordination? There are many more there ...

Trivia: Indian/Chinese developers are no good at creating specs or writing code from scratch either. The US developers excell in this work. So the experienced US developers have to go to these countries to lead a project. Wouldn't you rather go to Colombia and do this work there?

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VanMan says on Feb 9, 2005, 15:44:

design work, spec writing, PM
- Right, that is the type of work I am looking more for. Design, specs, and consulting.

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VanMan says on Feb 9, 2005, 20:30:

U.S./CDN companies If anyone knows of any US/CDN companies that requires software consultants/software designers/architects to do work in Colombia please let me know...

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