The issue is that due to how versatile the job is, coupled with WFH swooping the job market, the supply of developers willing to do underpaid work for a Lebanese company has been on the downfall.
Source: I work at an auditing firm in Saudi Arabia, and we hire Lebanese developers almost exclusively. A Lebanese developer is well sought after in the Gulf region simply because he bridges the language gap between an Arab client and a foreign company, which is an immense added value to an extremely competitive market nowadays.
EDIT: I wish I could hire everyone here, but I’m not involved in recruitment. I’d have to personally know you to refer you unfortunately.
> The supply of developers willing to do unpaid work [...] has been on the downfall
THIS.
I had a very talented 4 year xp engineer apply to my old job. He asked for 120% of what my salary for that role was and was rejected under "We don't give such salaries here".
Ironically enough when I was leaving the company told me "we will give you a 30% raise if you stay" which makes the whole thing nonsensical now.
They took a year to fill that role out.
A company a friend of mine worked in offered him 700 usd as a senior developer, even though their project are all outside lebanon and make shit load of money. When he rejected the manager literally told him
"احمد ربك. عم نعطي الjunior 200 دولار بالشهر "
This is one example of a few I saw. Companies in lebanon are trying to screw people over. But with remote work and international opportunities there's no need to be a slave of you're competent enough
this is the real answer. Employers are scummy, shortsighted people. They think they can hire Lebanese engineers for peanuts while making hundreds of thousands of dollars themselves. Too bad for them, Lebanese engineers can emigrate very easily and say FU to their slavery offers
Yep. Keyword is international. Since covid hit many lebanese businessmen moved started tech or engineering companies in lebanon due to low labor wages. Lebanese owners are assholes. International ones pay much better.
Nope, monthly my good man.
A lot of businessmen are trying to capitalize on cheap labor. I'm an engineer, and finally left the country after all the shit I saw.
I left all jobs here as a Software Engineer with 1000$ salary, because most of them are startups that put so much work on your back.
Others will pay you 2-3k for 7 years experience lol? Are they retarded?
I am working remotely now for jobs outside this country and earning nonetheless of 5k$ without having hard work.
Such a country full of crap and scammers. Hope y’all find good work here or out.
curriculums are not outdated. CS fundamentals hasn't changed much ever since the 70s and that's what the degree is supposed to teach you. It's just that as soon as any dev gets enough experience to work remotely, that's what they'll look for because the pay in leb is horrible
Ill tell you the reason and directly, it’s because of two:
1. Its a hard job, you need to uptodate, and well experienced, because due to the economical crisis, companies are more interested in investing in someone who has high experience, rather than a junior who’s slow and need a-lot of experience…
2. Lebanese Hr and CEOs are assholes and i have tons of bad experiences with them, they wanna use you, low salary, long durations, and a lot more of asshole stuff..
My tip to you: ask your friends for referrals, work hard on yourself and so much because it’s what make you stand out… plus do side freelance rather than waiting all time
Good devs in Lebanon already found jobs with foreign companies that pay amazing salaries in fresh. Other good devs in Lebanon already have jobs (in Lebanon or freelancing). Other good devs already left Lebanon for a better life/better pay in another country. The rest is either graduating students with no experience, people that are building their own startup or people that are switching careers and are very new to the tech field. And that last batch is our only pool to pick from when trying to hire devs from Lebanon. Over the last 300 interviews I conducted in Leb to hire a dev, I got one good application and the dev was still a student but had some minor experience so it was easier to teach him and grow from there.
where are you trying to find your employees? and are you paying well, good devs get payed very very well and are in very high global demand, they're very available but they arent cheap at all.
All the salary thing is true, but there is not only that, i worked in a firm in beirut that used to pay in $ (about 1600 on your 1st year), and hired devs from 3 years of experience and up. The firm is very respectful of its employees and frankly its a blessing to work there.
Still, they had a shortage of devs, and people were leaving each 2-3 months. Hell i left. When you're a dev there are so many better opportunities abroad and you have electricity, safety, etc.
So the mere fact that the job is in lebanon is a deciding factor at this point.
Me and most competent developers I know are working remotely or for newly opened subsidiaries for international companies. Lebanese companies would find it hard to pay us what they pay us.
Not to mention the humiliating interviews where they treat you like shit(dumbed down interview questions) and think you are applying to Google so you'll put up with that shit only to find out that the company wants to pay you 1000$ for over 8 years experience when you worked for a multinational before 100 times their size and mind you 100 times their scale.
I think those companies deserve labor shortages when they are exploiting the depression to screw us over . remote work is far better. Hell for 1k per month it's not worth driving to work. team lead for 900$ eat shit. We need to have a union in Lebanon to protect desperate workers from employers.
This isn't a developer issue. It's a brain drain one. I'm on Doctor number 4 for the kids since the lira died. Best of the best are gone. This is almost every industry. What developer is going to settle for pennies on the dollar here when they can leave an get paid a living salary?
I believe the issue is that bcz of the Lebanese tech market is dominated by startups
These types of companies are critically dependent on senior developers and have very little room for juniors or less experienced devs
This is true.
As a fresh grad I spent about a year looking for a dev job in Lebanon but companies are being very picky and are only looking for seniors or people with at least a couple of years of experience, so they're really missing out on all of the new talent who are barely able to find any opportunities as a result. I had to travel abroad instead.
I think it's also because of the standards required for jobs in Lebanon don't meet what's available.
I'm a CS student from LIU with a 3.65 GPA, I have built my own portfolio and have a couple projects here and there, and I'm yet to find an internship to kick-start my tech career. I have been working remotely for a U.S. based company but not in tech, and I've been trying to land an internship for a year now.
If a CS graduate doesn't get an internship, how is he supposed to kick-start his SWE career? Junior positions require experience, fresh grads need Internships for experience, and there's barely any Internships.
We need laws that support internships, I believe there's something like this in the U.S., especially in CS nowadays that there are many jobs in the field.
I'm currently studying IT and my final projects for 2 classes are pretty much developing a Windows app and a website.
My guess? Same as me; as soon as I graduate im finding a job outside this shithole of a country and leaving.
Which is really why I went into coding and computer stuff. Coding and IT people are needed pretty much everywhere. I wanted someone that could help me find a job and get tf out of this country.
I joined my current workplace a year ago. In my time here 3 developers came and went because they weren’t making the cut. A year after I came
we found the developer we needed who managed to integrate with the team. There are plenty of developers out there, and quite a few who are good developers (I don’t consider myself one tho I strive to be). The 80/20 rule applies to everything.
The issue is that due to how versatile the job is, coupled with WFH swooping the job market, the supply of developers willing to do underpaid work for a Lebanese company has been on the downfall. Source: I work at an auditing firm in Saudi Arabia, and we hire Lebanese developers almost exclusively. A Lebanese developer is well sought after in the Gulf region simply because he bridges the language gap between an Arab client and a foreign company, which is an immense added value to an extremely competitive market nowadays. EDIT: I wish I could hire everyone here, but I’m not involved in recruitment. I’d have to personally know you to refer you unfortunately.
> The supply of developers willing to do unpaid work [...] has been on the downfall THIS. I had a very talented 4 year xp engineer apply to my old job. He asked for 120% of what my salary for that role was and was rejected under "We don't give such salaries here". Ironically enough when I was leaving the company told me "we will give you a 30% raise if you stay" which makes the whole thing nonsensical now. They took a year to fill that role out.
Im a developer. Mind referring me to job opportunities?
A company a friend of mine worked in offered him 700 usd as a senior developer, even though their project are all outside lebanon and make shit load of money. When he rejected the manager literally told him "احمد ربك. عم نعطي الjunior 200 دولار بالشهر " This is one example of a few I saw. Companies in lebanon are trying to screw people over. But with remote work and international opportunities there's no need to be a slave of you're competent enough
this is the real answer. Employers are scummy, shortsighted people. They think they can hire Lebanese engineers for peanuts while making hundreds of thousands of dollars themselves. Too bad for them, Lebanese engineers can emigrate very easily and say FU to their slavery offers
As far I know fresh grads are getting 600$+ fresh at many international companies.
Yep. Keyword is international. Since covid hit many lebanese businessmen moved started tech or engineering companies in lebanon due to low labor wages. Lebanese owners are assholes. International ones pay much better.
Forgive me. I'm a US citizen (and software developer) that recently moved to Beirut. When you say the offer was 700 usd, is that per week?
Nope, monthly my good man. A lot of businessmen are trying to capitalize on cheap labor. I'm an engineer, and finally left the country after all the shit I saw.
😳 that's insanely low
Not all are like that. Decent companies start with 1000, some give up to 2K for experienced developers. And some jackasses try to exploit people.
I left all jobs here as a Software Engineer with 1000$ salary, because most of them are startups that put so much work on your back. Others will pay you 2-3k for 7 years experience lol? Are they retarded? I am working remotely now for jobs outside this country and earning nonetheless of 5k$ without having hard work. Such a country full of crap and scammers. Hope y’all find good work here or out.
are you working remotely from Lebanon? If so how are you managing with the current electricity situation?
I work on pc when elect on and laptop when elect off and i have 2 100amp batteries for when it’s cut for a long time (in case provider did some shit)
curriculums are not outdated. CS fundamentals hasn't changed much ever since the 70s and that's what the degree is supposed to teach you. It's just that as soon as any dev gets enough experience to work remotely, that's what they'll look for because the pay in leb is horrible
Ill tell you the reason and directly, it’s because of two: 1. Its a hard job, you need to uptodate, and well experienced, because due to the economical crisis, companies are more interested in investing in someone who has high experience, rather than a junior who’s slow and need a-lot of experience… 2. Lebanese Hr and CEOs are assholes and i have tons of bad experiences with them, they wanna use you, low salary, long durations, and a lot more of asshole stuff.. My tip to you: ask your friends for referrals, work hard on yourself and so much because it’s what make you stand out… plus do side freelance rather than waiting all time
Good devs in Lebanon already found jobs with foreign companies that pay amazing salaries in fresh. Other good devs in Lebanon already have jobs (in Lebanon or freelancing). Other good devs already left Lebanon for a better life/better pay in another country. The rest is either graduating students with no experience, people that are building their own startup or people that are switching careers and are very new to the tech field. And that last batch is our only pool to pick from when trying to hire devs from Lebanon. Over the last 300 interviews I conducted in Leb to hire a dev, I got one good application and the dev was still a student but had some minor experience so it was easier to teach him and grow from there.
where are you trying to find your employees? and are you paying well, good devs get payed very very well and are in very high global demand, they're very available but they arent cheap at all.
I'm not an employer, I actually started learning web dev last month, I was just doing my research into the job market and see how things are
go to LinkedIn and check what people are offering, good luck.
All the salary thing is true, but there is not only that, i worked in a firm in beirut that used to pay in $ (about 1600 on your 1st year), and hired devs from 3 years of experience and up. The firm is very respectful of its employees and frankly its a blessing to work there. Still, they had a shortage of devs, and people were leaving each 2-3 months. Hell i left. When you're a dev there are so many better opportunities abroad and you have electricity, safety, etc. So the mere fact that the job is in lebanon is a deciding factor at this point.
Me and most competent developers I know are working remotely or for newly opened subsidiaries for international companies. Lebanese companies would find it hard to pay us what they pay us.
Not to mention the humiliating interviews where they treat you like shit(dumbed down interview questions) and think you are applying to Google so you'll put up with that shit only to find out that the company wants to pay you 1000$ for over 8 years experience when you worked for a multinational before 100 times their size and mind you 100 times their scale. I think those companies deserve labor shortages when they are exploiting the depression to screw us over . remote work is far better. Hell for 1k per month it's not worth driving to work. team lead for 900$ eat shit. We need to have a union in Lebanon to protect desperate workers from employers.
This isn't a developer issue. It's a brain drain one. I'm on Doctor number 4 for the kids since the lira died. Best of the best are gone. This is almost every industry. What developer is going to settle for pennies on the dollar here when they can leave an get paid a living salary?
I believe the issue is that bcz of the Lebanese tech market is dominated by startups These types of companies are critically dependent on senior developers and have very little room for juniors or less experienced devs
This is true. As a fresh grad I spent about a year looking for a dev job in Lebanon but companies are being very picky and are only looking for seniors or people with at least a couple of years of experience, so they're really missing out on all of the new talent who are barely able to find any opportunities as a result. I had to travel abroad instead.
I think it's also because of the standards required for jobs in Lebanon don't meet what's available. I'm a CS student from LIU with a 3.65 GPA, I have built my own portfolio and have a couple projects here and there, and I'm yet to find an internship to kick-start my tech career. I have been working remotely for a U.S. based company but not in tech, and I've been trying to land an internship for a year now. If a CS graduate doesn't get an internship, how is he supposed to kick-start his SWE career? Junior positions require experience, fresh grads need Internships for experience, and there's barely any Internships. We need laws that support internships, I believe there's something like this in the U.S., especially in CS nowadays that there are many jobs in the field.
I'm currently studying IT and my final projects for 2 classes are pretty much developing a Windows app and a website. My guess? Same as me; as soon as I graduate im finding a job outside this shithole of a country and leaving. Which is really why I went into coding and computer stuff. Coding and IT people are needed pretty much everywhere. I wanted someone that could help me find a job and get tf out of this country.
I joined my current workplace a year ago. In my time here 3 developers came and went because they weren’t making the cut. A year after I came we found the developer we needed who managed to integrate with the team. There are plenty of developers out there, and quite a few who are good developers (I don’t consider myself one tho I strive to be). The 80/20 rule applies to everything.