In Havana?s iconic Bacardi building, teams of computer programmers are working for U.S. companies with the tacit permission of the Cuban government.
Could the island become the next international hotspot for software development?
That?s not far-fetched, says John McIntire, chairman of the Cuba Emprende Foundation, which has been working with the island?s Catholic Church to train entrepreneurs and private business owners on the island.
?It?s already happening. I know of half a dozen companies, all based in Miami, that already have software development teams in Cuba and there are probably more that I don?t know about,? McIntire told el Nuevo Herald.
?I also know some big outsourcing companies, based in the United States, that are looking to establish operations? in Cuba, he added. ?Until now, they have only been visiting Cuba, establishing relations and starting ? relations with programmers.?
Most of the U.S. companies hiring computer engineers and programmers in Cuba put them to work programming or designing applications for cellphones and internet sites, as well as more complex coding with open source software, added McIntire, pointing out that Cuba has many highly educated programmers who are currently ?underemployed.?
With salaries of approximately $5 per hour ? a more ?competitive? rate than at other programming centers in the region ? and in the same time zone as the United States, contracting Cuban programmers ?looks very promising,? McIntire told a recent conference organized by the Americas Society/Council of the Americas and the Andean Development Corporation.
Formal office spaces like the Bacardi building are expensive, and therefore many teams of programmers work from their homes, in rented apartments or even from their office in government agencies and companies.
The people working in the Bacardi building probably also work for Cuban state enterprises, McIntire told el Nuevo Herald. ?The government knows full well that those are independent programmers who work for foreign companies. They are allowing it, but not promoting it,? he added.
The private production of software for export is a unique enterprise in Cuba, where the government holds a monopoly on all imports and exports and the vast majority of private businesses are limited to the tourism industry.
The Obama administration, as part of its campaign to ease sanctions on Cuba, allowed U.S. companies to hire Cuban programmers in 2015. But the Cuban government has not said whether programmers can legally work for foreign companies, leaving the issue unclear.
?You can get a personal license as an applications developer and pay taxes ? but you cannot operate as a business,? said Victor Manuel Moraton Hernandez, a computer engineer who with Fabian Ruiz Estevez co-founded NinjaCuba, a web page for people offering or seeking employment in technology.
?I developed software with U.S. and French companies. They usually go to Cuba looking for programmers for mobile apps or web pages, but if you?re not part of the network of contacts, you don?t have access? to those jobs, Hernandez said in an interview from Twitter headquarters in San Francisco.
Hernandez is among the winners of the ?10x10KCuba? contest, who participated in seminars at Stanford University and Miami Dade College and visited the headquarters of Google, Facebook, Twitter and Airbnb. The contest was sponsored by the Cuba Emprende Foundation, as well as #CubaNow and other organizations, to promote exchanges between island programmers and leading-edge U.S. companies.
Estevez said the exchanges have been ?very important for relationships and knowledge, to give some direction to what we are doing, and to learn how to value what we?re doing in Cuba.?
