Software Developers Working Remote in DR & local Devs 101

arete92

Active member
Jul 5, 2018
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I am a little curious about your micro tech community here; I want to hear about your experiences working here as a remote or even local employee, what tech stacks you're working with what state/province and country you're employer is from and how you came to work remotley in the DR and why. Would also be interested in hearing how you configure your taxes how much you pay who you pay etc. if you're comfortable revealing your salary feel free to share if not it's all good; some of the hurdles you have to jump through your pros and cons also.

A bit about myself, I am a software dev from Canada working mostly with A.I at the moment ( OpenCV, Tensorflow) using Python and C++ but also do a lot of web dev. Angular, Java/Express, Postgres.

Thanks in advance.
 

windeguy

Platinum
Jul 10, 2004
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In the 15 years we have been here we have had many people work on line from our apartments. One of the earliest was reverse engineering SKYPE.

People do it all the time. Rent an apartment, work on line a bit in the morning, Kite Surf in the afternoon, party at night, rinse and repeat.

I have heard of people trying to set up work spaces, but if you work on line such a work space would not be necessary for the majority of on line work.

On the north coast, I don't know of any "community". It is just people that come and do their work on their own while doing whatever else they like in the area.
 

arete92

Active member
Jul 5, 2018
290
107
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In the 15 years we have been here we have had many people work on line from our apartments. One of the earliest was reverse engineering SKYPE.

People do it all the time. Rent an apartment, work on line a bit in the morning, Kite Surf in the afternoon, party at night, rinse and repeat.

I have heard of people trying to set up work spaces, but if you work on line such a work space would not be necessary for the majority of on line work.

On the north coast, I don't know of any "community". It is just people that come and do their work on their own while doing whatever else they like in the area.

ok thanks, i'm kind of surprised actually there is not more of a developer community there although I get the feeling "La Boca De Caberette" will attract some engineers; hopefully anyways.
 

windeguy

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Jul 10, 2004
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ok thanks, i'm kind of surprised actually there is not more of a developer community there although I get the feeling "La Boca De Caberette" will attract some engineers; hopefully anyways.

La Boca De Cabarete was in fact terminated as a project by the Ministry of the Environment for failing to meet the requirements of being in an environmentally protected area. I was just talking a short time ago to Wilson at his restaurant across the river from where he used to have it before La Boca De Cabarete displaced the area where locals used to gather on the weekends and the developers thought they were going to start their tech park. I know, hard to believe that the environment won over big money and actually stopped this project since that is not normal in Cabarete.
 
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arete92

Active member
Jul 5, 2018
290
107
43
La Boca De Cabarete was in fact terminated as a project by the Ministry of the Environment for failing to meet the requirements of being in an environmentally protected area. I was just talking a short time ago to Wilson at his restaurant across the river from where he used to have it before La Boca De Cabarete displaced the area where locals used to gather on the weekends and the developers thought they were going to start their tech park. I know, hard to believe that the environment won over big money and actually stopped this project since that is not normal in Cabarete.

It was a beautiful location, perhaps the project can be built somewhere else in the future. although I do find it quite ironic something like that would be shut down in the DR considering corruption is at every level.
 

TropicalPaul

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Sep 3, 2013
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Santo Domingo has a Parque Cybernetico just past the peage at Las Americas on the way out of town towards Boca Chica on the left. This is also a Zona Franca, meaning that if you set up an office there you are exempt from paying some taxes. I had a meeting with them some years ago and remember that they spoke good English and were very helpful, so it may be worth a visit. If you're thinking of doing serious business here, I would recommend that you think more in terms of Santo Domingo than the resort areas as you'll find that the vast majority of (tech) businesses on the island are located here, so you'll have a far bigger support base. If you can operate as a one-man-band with just an internet connection, then somewhere like Cabarete may work for you.
 

jtom343

New member
Nov 8, 2017
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Interesting stuff. I’m currently not employed as a developer but been studying Python, Django, Flask, Postgres for the last 1.5 years after leaving my career in Real Estate. Currently working on a couple private web pages and exploring data analytics.


Would be interested in any Tech communities. I did see a small storefront in La Romana with a guy running a web design shop but I don’t believe he knows much on the programming side. From what I gathered on our convo, I believe he outsourced all his coding work and not even aware of what language his sites are coded. Def interested in meeting more techies as I’m used to that being from NY


I am a little curious about your micro tech community here; I want to hear about your experiences working here as a remote or even local employee, what tech stacks you're working with what state/province and country you're employer is from and how you came to work remotley in the DR and why. Would also be interested in hearing how you configure your taxes how much you pay who you pay etc. if you're comfortable revealing your salary feel free to share if not it's all good; some of the hurdles you have to jump through your pros and cons also.

A bit about myself, I am a software dev from Canada working mostly with A.I at the moment ( OpenCV, Tensorflow) using Python and C++ but also do a lot of web dev. Angular, Java/Express, Postgres.

Thanks in advance.
 

arete92

Active member
Jul 5, 2018
290
107
43
Interesting stuff. I’m currently not employed as a developer but been studying Python, Django, Flask, Postgres for the last 1.5 years after leaving my career in Real Estate. Currently working on a couple private web pages and exploring data analytics.


Would be interested in any Tech communities. I did see a small storefront in La Romana with a guy running a web design shop but I don’t believe he knows much on the programming side. From what I gathered on our convo, I believe he outsourced all his coding work and not even aware of what language his sites are coded. Def interested in meeting more techies as I’m used to that being from NY

Cool! I've saw a few too and some local advertisiments. Most of the stuff I see there is PHP and JQuery stuff which is ancient in the world of web development mostly the stuff that gets outsourced to India. If this is a career path you want to go down I would highly reccomend yourself spending a solid year in NY/CAL going to a coding bootcamp or even school if that's possible, it's very difficult to move past junior to intermediate going solo. Having a solid community around you and people who have real world experience will make you a great software dev. As for accepting jobs in DR from local companies I can just see that going sour in every direction as effective communication of their part is lacking for the most part. Most times if you're a dev from US, Canada , Europe you can command 60-120k remote of what ever island of your choosing :) I would be interested in growing the dev community in the near future and start meetups.
 

arete92

Active member
Jul 5, 2018
290
107
43
Santo Domingo has a Parque Cybernetico just past the peage at Las Americas on the way out of town towards Boca Chica on the left. This is also a Zona Franca, meaning that if you set up an office there you are exempt from paying some taxes. I had a meeting with them some years ago and remember that they spoke good English and were very helpful, so it may be worth a visit. If you're thinking of doing serious business here, I would recommend that you think more in terms of Santo Domingo than the resort areas as you'll find that the vast majority of (tech) businesses on the island are located here, so you'll have a far bigger support base. If you can operate as a one-man-band with just an internet connection, then somewhere like Cabarete may work for you.

Interesting... i'll check out the trade free zone as I would be interested in doing my own thing perhaps in the next 5 years. Thanks