When you are an experienced IT professional residing in a country with relatively low local wages, you should be particularly cautious if someone who has moved to Europe, North America, or another high-income area offers you projects simply because you are “cheap” in comparison to local professionals.

The distinction between a genuine international opportunity and someone merely taking advantage of wage differences across countries is clear. When the client is operating in a European or North American market, you must first find out how much similar work is being paid there. To do this, check freelance platforms, contractor rates, salary reports, and the amounts professionals with similar skills are asking.

It is not essential to charge the same rate as someone physically based in that country, since location, taxes, benefits, purchasing power, and local market conditions can reasonably influence pay. In fact, even multinational companies usually base the salaries of their non-managerial employees on local market standards rather than adopting a single global salary. However, location-based pay is quite different from extreme underpayment.

A developer, designer, engineer, or other IT professional who agrees to a rate which is much lower merely because their local salary converts into a small number of euros or dollars is not only selling their own work at a low price; rather, it gradually leads to the idea that skilled workers from certain countries should always be cheaper, and this in turn exerts downward pressure on all individuals in that market.

There is yet one other serious problem with such arrangements: a great many of them are informal. In these cases, there might be no proper employment contract, no definite payment terms, no benefits, no legal protection, and, in some instances, no feasible means of recovering unpaid invoices. When someone is already trying to reduce your rate as much as possible, you should also consider what would happen in the event of a payment dispute.

Hiring talent from less affluent countries can be mutually beneficial, but it must still be grounded in professional respect. Although geographical differences might warrant a certain adjustment in prices, they should not be used as a justification for purchasing skilled labor at an unfairly low price.

Before you take on an international project, you should investigate the market in which the client operates, find out the standard rate for your position, and then negotiate from that base level. You might choose to give a fair discount, but do not base your professional value just on the minimum wage or the average salary in your own country.

Your rate may be affected by your location, but it shouldn’t be determined by it.