13 ms·

“Finland could employ some 2000-3000 developers immediately”

61 points by velmu 10y ago

majewsky 10y ago
And simultaneously, my government (Germany) is only capable of thinking about how to make immigration even harder.
- Avalaxy 10y ago
  That's because the immigrants you're receiving are the wrong ones (the unskilled labor instead of high skilled labor).
  - mamon 10y ago
    If only they were even that - there is still quite big demand for even unskilled labor. Instead they are usually allergic to any type of work, and just looking forward to receive some benefits.
    - pavlov 10y ago
      That's a despicable stereotype to apply to millions of people displaced by war and drought.
      - zdkl 10y ago
        Don't assume this is targeted only at Syrians. Your parent describes a situation we're confronted with in general. Locals and immigrants alike have understood that the optimal quality of life option in europe is to not work. Can't blame them when you see the alternatives at that level of qualification
      - mamon 10y ago
        First of all, only small fraction of so called "refugees" storming EU are actual refugees, and even smaller fraction is from Syria. They come from whole Middle East and North Africa, including Libia, Egypt, Iraq, even Pakistan. And it is well known that they have demanding attitude: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/6753/germany-migrants-demands https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/6753/germany-migrants-dem... in fact, none of them is refugee, because by definition used in international laws, they stop being refugees the moment they come to first safe country on their way, namely Turkey, so they enter EU as plain old economic immigrants.
- easytiger 10y ago
  > thinking about how to make immigration even harder. Well they just let in over 1 million new state aid dependants. Hardly a formula for growth.
  - barpet 10y ago
    No short term benefits but a lot of long term benefits. Germany has one of the largest aging population in Europe. They have just added a lot of people to their population and can use them however they like. Do not worry about germans they always knew how to screw with people. Just look at the number of factories that operate outside of Germany and how many people they require in order to keep the machinery running. I do not hate them. I do not detest them. I am just scared at how they run things. And other countries seem to follow because they also want to take advantage of it.
    - mrtree 10y ago
      I fail to see how having people translates into having jobs, skilled labor, etc. This crisis is about automation, there is no need for more people. It is also well-accepted that migrants contribute less to the economy, either due to lower wages or simply because they are unemployable.
      - barpet 10y ago
        Germany needs new germans. Or people that will speak german. You can't automate everything. Not yet. A lot of automation today is TOO expensive. Requires too much maintenance and some other stuff cannot be automated at all. Or are you telling me that wiping old people's asses is something that has been already solved by building robots ?
        candiodari 10y ago
        Currently the government mostly seems concerned with wiping old people's assets. Not just in Germany. (the main side-effect of the supportive economic policy we've had since is destroying pension savings by transferring wealth into large corporations)
- Yaziyumaru 10y ago
  Immigration to Germany as a skilled worker was very easy for me.
  - sunilkumarc 10y ago
    Could you please let me know how you applied for the German company and what the interview and visa processes were like?
    - Yaziyumaru 10y ago
      I found the job on StackOverflow Jobs. There was an online test, some online video interviews, and then an in-person interview. The visa I have is this one: http://www.bluecard-eu.de/eu-blue-card-germany/ http://www.bluecard-eu.de/eu-blue-card-germany/ I had to scan some documents, but otherwise the process was mostly handled by the company. I had to do a couple meetings to finish the process once I moved but they put me on a temporary visa until that happened.
barpet 10y ago
Bollocks. Read the whole article. They can't compete with GB or Germany in terms of salaries nothing to do with shortage of people. They just want to be able to hire Indians,Pakistanis or whoever will be willing to work for the fraction of what even an unskilled person from a remote village in Romania would ask for. This is not about SHORTAGE of people for the companies. Companies can hire entire teams overseas and especially developers do not need to be hired in local countries. The thing is people from even the poorest regions of EU do not want to relocate hence Finland is looking to repopulate itself with at least semi-skilled workforce outside of Europe. This whole thing is disgusting. But Finland is free country and they are free to do whatever they think is the best for the country and its people.
- AlbertoGP 10y ago
  Yes, and in the related links at the right side they even have another article titled "Cost of labour falls in Finland at the highest rate in the European Union".
  - barpet 10y ago
    Yup. Programmer is a new derogatory term for a "worker".
  - pavlov 10y ago
    "Cost of labour falls in Finland at the highest rate in the European Union" It should be noted that this is a very intentional policy. Finland's current right-wing government has been working hard (and in many quite confused ways too) to bring down cost of labour. When elected, the Prime Minister's stated goal was a reduction of 5% across all salaries. (The name for this plan was kilpailukykysopimus, "the competitiveness agreement".) Due to expected resistance from unions, it has been watered down to various benefit cuts, promises of raise freezes, etc. But the atmosphere among the country's economic decision makers is very much one that pushes for salary reductions by any means possible. Another name for this salary reduction plan is "internal devaluation". As a member of the Euro zone, Finland can't simply devaluate its currency to increase the competitiveness of its exports. So the other way to achieve the same goal is to reduce the internal cost of producing those goods. (If you ask me, this whole thing is chasing a 1980s recipe for a 21st century problem. The problem with Finland's exports is not cost of goods or even quality; it's a combination of wrong industries and lack of global marketing savvy. The pipe dream of a 5% reduction in production costs won't solve any of that.)
mrtree 10y ago
Seems that salaries in Finland have been consistently dropping for the last 5-10 years. Add that to the incredibly high housing prices and you get why they "lack" developers. Looks like Finland is moving to the low-tier type of jobs. At least they still have blond girls...
forgottenacc56 10y ago
"Developers" or "good developers"? Important distinction.
- kagamine 10y ago
  Not really, good developers become good from working, being involved and working together with more experienced developers. Sitting at home while employers moan about lack of skills without investing in employees is perhaps where the distinction lies. Across Scandinavia there is a trend to outsource to eastern Europe to reduce costs, we can't then complain that developers in Scandinavia lack the competence required for the job. Employers have to invest in skills too. I would assume the same goes for Finland.
  - meekins 10y ago
    I've seen this happen where I work at (a rather large international software company). First all coding is offshored to Eastern Europe and/or India - just to wake up a few years later to a crisis where there is a serious lack of senior technical personnel (senior devs and architects) to sit between the local customer and the offshore dev team or do some consulting at customer locations.
nippples 10y ago
That's great, because we have far more than that unemployed skilled developers in Finland. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-finland-technology-idUSKCN0Z01D9 http://www.reuters.com/article/us-finland-technology-idUSKCN... Make no mistake, this is about dumping the market salaries and shedding worker rights. A lot of things going on in the EU at the moment are exactly that.
- retox 10y ago
  Exactly my thoughts, this candid remark spells it out in neon letters; >Timo Ahopelto [...] estimates that Finland could hire 2000-3000 talented software developers immediately. He demands that the bureaucracy of immigration must be dismantled. You can read this as "I want software developers but I don't want to pay them what they are worth". Globalism is the reduction of pay and workers rights by another name.
  - yummyfajitas 10y ago
    I'm reading your post as "I'm no better than Indians, but due to being a Nordic blonde I think I deserve a higher salary." Globalization improves workers rights, increases pay, and reduces inequality. It's only people who were formerly at the top of the heap due solely to dumb luck that have anything to fear.
    - retox 10y ago
      If you can't afford to pay people the going rate open a shop in Bangalore.
      - yummyfajitas 10y ago
        The "going rate" is whatever rate the lowest qualified candidate will accept. That candidate might be Indian. You actually want to get something well above the going rate simply because you are Nordic. History hasn't actually looked favorably upon people who insist on special privileges due to Nordic heritage.
olegp 10y ago
We at Toughbyte have recruited and relocated almost twenty mid and senior level developers to Finland for our clients in the last year, more info here: http://toughbyte.com/#recruitment http://toughbyte.com/#recruitment I can confirm that there is indeed a shortage of developers with the right skills. Salary levels is not the issue here. I disagree with the point about bureaucracy in the article. Getting a residence permit once you have an offer is fairly straightforward and takes a few weeks, compared to some other countries in Europe (like Malta for example) where it has taken us months.
- toyg 10y ago
  > developers with the right skills. Salary levels is not the issue here. In a country that just saw several high-profile tech giants falter and cut thousands of highly-skilled and experienced developers, I find that really difficult to believe, sorry. What sort of skill is so in demand, that legions of C/C++ developers with tons of experience in embedded platforms cannot be retrained for? Are you building teams of brain surgeons? More likely, demand does not match offer in terms of salary expectations, and employers don't want to adjust for one reason or another. This might fit your business model and that's fine, I'm not attacking you. These processes are not specific to Finland, it's globalization in action: producing a virtually unlimited supply of "reserve army of labor".
  - olegp 10y ago
    Here's a good post that explains this in a lot more detail: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/7-hurdles-ex-nokia-employee-need-jump-finland-tatu-lund https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/7-hurdles-ex-nokia-employee-n...
    - toyg 10y ago
      Half that post clearly states there are not enough jobs because the Finnish economy is not growing as it used to. The rest boils down to "old people need to retrain", something the government should pay attention to. Importing workforce when natives are jobless is a recipe for social strife.
ccozan 10y ago
The whole article is about the workers/developer from _outside_ EU. Any EU citizen wouldn't need anything, just go there, get the job, register with the authorities and find some housing.
lucaspiller 10y ago
> Estonia, the southern neighbour of Finland, is much more nimble. In the baltic country employees can be hired for a trial period without bureaucracy. Official arrangements are required only after the decision to hire permanent employees is made Isn't this the case for all companies in the EU? You just hire someone (or in reality their company) as a 'freelancer' or 'contractor'.
- germanier 10y ago
  Which usually just shifts the paperwork to the "freelancer". Most potential employees cannot just pickup work as a freelancer without hassle.
  - mercer 10y ago
    I can't speak for other countries, but at least when it comes to programming, it's really easy to become a freelancer here in The Netherlands. In less than a day you can register your business, get a business bank account (+ working card!), and send an invoice to your 'employer'. For less than a hundred 'bucks'. Once a year it gets a little more complicated when you have to do your finances, which can trivially be outsourced to an accountant. I know plenty of people (perhaps especially programmers) who do their finances themselves though. For freelancers, and especially programmers, it's (apparently) not that complicated. Going through this for just one month before you're hired is perhaps still a bit too much of a hassle, but you only really have to do this once and you can then use your freelancer status every time you switch jobs. I don't know much about the legal aspect of all this though.
    - toyg 10y ago
      It's not just the paperwork; is that you then have to calculate your rates, your holidays, your pension payments and so on. You get a number wrong and you don't go on holiday that year; you get a number wrong, and on the month you have to pay your taxes you don't have cash to feed your kids. And all this before we even get to the issue of finding and maintaining business relationships, without which again your kids go hungry. In contrast, regular employees don't have to do any of that - they know they will get a paycheck around X every month, will have Y days off work and (if the company is not run by crooks and/or nosedives) when s/he retires she'll have a pension worth Z. It's a completely different mindset, even before you get to the bureaucratic side of things.
tluyben2 10y ago
I realise this is an unpopulair opinion somehow but as someone who dreamt of the future since my first line of code begin 80s; working from anywhere via 'phone'. I started doing that with friends via BBS. I had a BBS system running at night when my parents did not need the phone and we would work with a few people on assembly, pascal and c. I continued that until (via internet) now and besides some travelling it always worked well. Why do other people insist on offices and closeness all the time? Sure I meet up with people every 1-2 months but we do efficient and cool production software and hardware with a distributed team all over the place. Is it that management wants to be overly controlling or something else? I have nothing against offices but like elsewhere in this thread: make an office in st pete's and put people wanting to work for you there. Did that a few times (200, 50, 40 and 80 people in 3 different countries in different cities) and am doing it again in two countries. This would solve this but, as said as well, this might be just something to violate worker rights instead of something else.
- lagadu 10y ago
  You're not thinking small enough: many, if not most, companies would need like 1-2 new people. The overhead of opening and managing a new office isn't worth it in those scenarios. Plus you're ignoring that most companies aren't ready for remote development: they don't have the infrastructure or the means for remote knowledge transfer, there's a fairly big cost both in money and culture to change that. Finally you're ignoring that most companies aren't software houses. They operate in different industries and their IT/development departments rely on being close to their users, to these the effective cost of having remote employees is even higher than what I mentioned in the previous paragraph. As an aside: My company allows for remote work but I just can't stand it; unless I really need to be home for something I'll always work from the office, where I can work and be social with my colleagues. We've considered moving to cheaper, nearby countries with fewer taxes (Germany most likely) and decided against it because I really don't want to have to work from home despite having a financial incentive to do so. Remote work isn't for everyone.
  - tluyben2 10y ago
    It is a matter of taste: some people like one, some the other. I cannot stand offices myself. And I do not ignore small companies: I always have a few devs somewhere working on things which are not part of the main company. Everything I do starts with 1 or 2 people working home. No issue. You do not like it or even cannot stand it: many others can. And yes, I do ignore industries I am not familiar with: the companies mentioned in the article are software houses. Also I work at a hardware company: software is just as important but the main part is the hardware. But yes that is why I said; some satellite offices and people working at home usually is a good mix. Some sit in the office, some at home, all happy. The main point, going after what is said in the article: If you are in Finland and need 100 coders and those coders are easy to the in St Petersburg then just open an office there.

61 points by velmu 10y ago

majewsky 10y ago

And simultaneously, my government (Germany) is only capable of thinking about how to make immigration even harder.

Avalaxy 10y ago
That's because the immigrants you're receiving are the wrong ones (the unskilled labor instead of high skilled labor).
- mamon 10y ago
  If only they were even that - there is still quite big demand for even unskilled labor. Instead they are usually allergic to any type of work, and just looking forward to receive some benefits.
  - pavlov 10y ago
    That's a despicable stereotype to apply to millions of people displaced by war and drought.
    - zdkl 10y ago
      Don't assume this is targeted only at Syrians. Your parent describes a situation we're confronted with in general. Locals and immigrants alike have understood that the optimal quality of life option in europe is to not work. Can't blame them when you see the alternatives at that level of qualification
    - mamon 10y ago
      First of all, only small fraction of so called "refugees" storming EU are actual refugees, and even smaller fraction is from Syria. They come from whole Middle East and North Africa, including Libia, Egypt, Iraq, even Pakistan. And it is well known that they have demanding attitude: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/6753/germany-migrants-demands https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/6753/germany-migrants-dem... in fact, none of them is refugee, because by definition used in international laws, they stop being refugees the moment they come to first safe country on their way, namely Turkey, so they enter EU as plain old economic immigrants.
easytiger 10y ago
> thinking about how to make immigration even harder. Well they just let in over 1 million new state aid dependants. Hardly a formula for growth.
- barpet 10y ago
  No short term benefits but a lot of long term benefits. Germany has one of the largest aging population in Europe. They have just added a lot of people to their population and can use them however they like. Do not worry about germans they always knew how to screw with people. Just look at the number of factories that operate outside of Germany and how many people they require in order to keep the machinery running. I do not hate them. I do not detest them. I am just scared at how they run things. And other countries seem to follow because they also want to take advantage of it.
  - mrtree 10y ago
    I fail to see how having people translates into having jobs, skilled labor, etc. This crisis is about automation, there is no need for more people. It is also well-accepted that migrants contribute less to the economy, either due to lower wages or simply because they are unemployable.
    - barpet 10y ago
      Germany needs new germans. Or people that will speak german. You can't automate everything. Not yet. A lot of automation today is TOO expensive. Requires too much maintenance and some other stuff cannot be automated at all. Or are you telling me that wiping old people's asses is something that has been already solved by building robots ?
      - candiodari 10y ago
        Currently the government mostly seems concerned with wiping old people's assets. Not just in Germany. (the main side-effect of the supportive economic policy we've had since is destroying pension savings by transferring wealth into large corporations)
Yaziyumaru 10y ago
Immigration to Germany as a skilled worker was very easy for me.
- sunilkumarc 10y ago
  Could you please let me know how you applied for the German company and what the interview and visa processes were like?
  - Yaziyumaru 10y ago
    I found the job on StackOverflow Jobs. There was an online test, some online video interviews, and then an in-person interview. The visa I have is this one: http://www.bluecard-eu.de/eu-blue-card-germany/ http://www.bluecard-eu.de/eu-blue-card-germany/ I had to scan some documents, but otherwise the process was mostly handled by the company. I had to do a couple meetings to finish the process once I moved but they put me on a temporary visa until that happened.

barpet 10y ago

Bollocks. Read the whole article. They can't compete with GB or Germany in terms of salaries nothing to do with shortage of people. They just want to be able to hire Indians,Pakistanis or whoever will be willing to work for the fraction of what even an unskilled person from a remote village in Romania would ask for. This is not about SHORTAGE of people for the companies. Companies can hire entire teams overseas and especially developers do not need to be hired in local countries. The thing is people from even the poorest regions of EU do not want to relocate hence Finland is looking to repopulate itself with at least semi-skilled workforce outside of Europe. This whole thing is disgusting. But Finland is free country and they are free to do whatever they think is the best for the country and its people.

AlbertoGP 10y ago
Yes, and in the related links at the right side they even have another article titled "Cost of labour falls in Finland at the highest rate in the European Union".
- barpet 10y ago
  Yup. Programmer is a new derogatory term for a "worker".
- pavlov 10y ago
  "Cost of labour falls in Finland at the highest rate in the European Union" It should be noted that this is a very intentional policy. Finland's current right-wing government has been working hard (and in many quite confused ways too) to bring down cost of labour. When elected, the Prime Minister's stated goal was a reduction of 5% across all salaries. (The name for this plan was kilpailukykysopimus, "the competitiveness agreement".) Due to expected resistance from unions, it has been watered down to various benefit cuts, promises of raise freezes, etc. But the atmosphere among the country's economic decision makers is very much one that pushes for salary reductions by any means possible. Another name for this salary reduction plan is "internal devaluation". As a member of the Euro zone, Finland can't simply devaluate its currency to increase the competitiveness of its exports. So the other way to achieve the same goal is to reduce the internal cost of producing those goods. (If you ask me, this whole thing is chasing a 1980s recipe for a 21st century problem. The problem with Finland's exports is not cost of goods or even quality; it's a combination of wrong industries and lack of global marketing savvy. The pipe dream of a 5% reduction in production costs won't solve any of that.)

mrtree 10y ago

Seems that salaries in Finland have been consistently dropping for the last 5-10 years. Add that to the incredibly high housing prices and you get why they "lack" developers. Looks like Finland is moving to the low-tier type of jobs. At least they still have blond girls...

forgottenacc56 10y ago

"Developers" or "good developers"? Important distinction.

kagamine 10y ago
Not really, good developers become good from working, being involved and working together with more experienced developers. Sitting at home while employers moan about lack of skills without investing in employees is perhaps where the distinction lies. Across Scandinavia there is a trend to outsource to eastern Europe to reduce costs, we can't then complain that developers in Scandinavia lack the competence required for the job. Employers have to invest in skills too. I would assume the same goes for Finland.
- meekins 10y ago
  I've seen this happen where I work at (a rather large international software company). First all coding is offshored to Eastern Europe and/or India - just to wake up a few years later to a crisis where there is a serious lack of senior technical personnel (senior devs and architects) to sit between the local customer and the offshore dev team or do some consulting at customer locations.

nippples 10y ago

That's great, because we have far more than that unemployed skilled developers in Finland. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-finland-technology-idUSKCN0Z01D9 http://www.reuters.com/article/us-finland-technology-idUSKCN... Make no mistake, this is about dumping the market salaries and shedding worker rights. A lot of things going on in the EU at the moment are exactly that.

retox 10y ago
Exactly my thoughts, this candid remark spells it out in neon letters; >Timo Ahopelto [...] estimates that Finland could hire 2000-3000 talented software developers immediately. He demands that the bureaucracy of immigration must be dismantled. You can read this as "I want software developers but I don't want to pay them what they are worth". Globalism is the reduction of pay and workers rights by another name.
- yummyfajitas 10y ago
  I'm reading your post as "I'm no better than Indians, but due to being a Nordic blonde I think I deserve a higher salary." Globalization improves workers rights, increases pay, and reduces inequality. It's only people who were formerly at the top of the heap due solely to dumb luck that have anything to fear.
  - retox 10y ago
    If you can't afford to pay people the going rate open a shop in Bangalore.
    - yummyfajitas 10y ago
      The "going rate" is whatever rate the lowest qualified candidate will accept. That candidate might be Indian. You actually want to get something well above the going rate simply because you are Nordic. History hasn't actually looked favorably upon people who insist on special privileges due to Nordic heritage.

olegp 10y ago

We at Toughbyte have recruited and relocated almost twenty mid and senior level developers to Finland for our clients in the last year, more info here: http://toughbyte.com/#recruitment http://toughbyte.com/#recruitment I can confirm that there is indeed a shortage of developers with the right skills. Salary levels is not the issue here. I disagree with the point about bureaucracy in the article. Getting a residence permit once you have an offer is fairly straightforward and takes a few weeks, compared to some other countries in Europe (like Malta for example) where it has taken us months.

toyg 10y ago
> developers with the right skills. Salary levels is not the issue here. In a country that just saw several high-profile tech giants falter and cut thousands of highly-skilled and experienced developers, I find that really difficult to believe, sorry. What sort of skill is so in demand, that legions of C/C++ developers with tons of experience in embedded platforms cannot be retrained for? Are you building teams of brain surgeons? More likely, demand does not match offer in terms of salary expectations, and employers don't want to adjust for one reason or another. This might fit your business model and that's fine, I'm not attacking you. These processes are not specific to Finland, it's globalization in action: producing a virtually unlimited supply of "reserve army of labor".
- olegp 10y ago
  Here's a good post that explains this in a lot more detail: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/7-hurdles-ex-nokia-employee-need-jump-finland-tatu-lund https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/7-hurdles-ex-nokia-employee-n...
  - toyg 10y ago
    Half that post clearly states there are not enough jobs because the Finnish economy is not growing as it used to. The rest boils down to "old people need to retrain", something the government should pay attention to. Importing workforce when natives are jobless is a recipe for social strife.

ccozan 10y ago

The whole article is about the workers/developer from _outside_ EU. Any EU citizen wouldn't need anything, just go there, get the job, register with the authorities and find some housing.

lucaspiller 10y ago

> Estonia, the southern neighbour of Finland, is much more nimble. In the baltic country employees can be hired for a trial period without bureaucracy. Official arrangements are required only after the decision to hire permanent employees is made Isn't this the case for all companies in the EU? You just hire someone (or in reality their company) as a 'freelancer' or 'contractor'.

germanier 10y ago
Which usually just shifts the paperwork to the "freelancer". Most potential employees cannot just pickup work as a freelancer without hassle.
- mercer 10y ago
  I can't speak for other countries, but at least when it comes to programming, it's really easy to become a freelancer here in The Netherlands. In less than a day you can register your business, get a business bank account (+ working card!), and send an invoice to your 'employer'. For less than a hundred 'bucks'. Once a year it gets a little more complicated when you have to do your finances, which can trivially be outsourced to an accountant. I know plenty of people (perhaps especially programmers) who do their finances themselves though. For freelancers, and especially programmers, it's (apparently) not that complicated. Going through this for just one month before you're hired is perhaps still a bit too much of a hassle, but you only really have to do this once and you can then use your freelancer status every time you switch jobs. I don't know much about the legal aspect of all this though.
  - toyg 10y ago
    It's not just the paperwork; is that you then have to calculate your rates, your holidays, your pension payments and so on. You get a number wrong and you don't go on holiday that year; you get a number wrong, and on the month you have to pay your taxes you don't have cash to feed your kids. And all this before we even get to the issue of finding and maintaining business relationships, without which again your kids go hungry. In contrast, regular employees don't have to do any of that - they know they will get a paycheck around X every month, will have Y days off work and (if the company is not run by crooks and/or nosedives) when s/he retires she'll have a pension worth Z. It's a completely different mindset, even before you get to the bureaucratic side of things.

tluyben2 10y ago

I realise this is an unpopulair opinion somehow but as someone who dreamt of the future since my first line of code begin 80s; working from anywhere via 'phone'. I started doing that with friends via BBS. I had a BBS system running at night when my parents did not need the phone and we would work with a few people on assembly, pascal and c. I continued that until (via internet) now and besides some travelling it always worked well. Why do other people insist on offices and closeness all the time? Sure I meet up with people every 1-2 months but we do efficient and cool production software and hardware with a distributed team all over the place. Is it that management wants to be overly controlling or something else? I have nothing against offices but like elsewhere in this thread: make an office in st pete's and put people wanting to work for you there. Did that a few times (200, 50, 40 and 80 people in 3 different countries in different cities) and am doing it again in two countries. This would solve this but, as said as well, this might be just something to violate worker rights instead of something else.

lagadu 10y ago
You're not thinking small enough: many, if not most, companies would need like 1-2 new people. The overhead of opening and managing a new office isn't worth it in those scenarios. Plus you're ignoring that most companies aren't ready for remote development: they don't have the infrastructure or the means for remote knowledge transfer, there's a fairly big cost both in money and culture to change that. Finally you're ignoring that most companies aren't software houses. They operate in different industries and their IT/development departments rely on being close to their users, to these the effective cost of having remote employees is even higher than what I mentioned in the previous paragraph. As an aside: My company allows for remote work but I just can't stand it; unless I really need to be home for something I'll always work from the office, where I can work and be social with my colleagues. We've considered moving to cheaper, nearby countries with fewer taxes (Germany most likely) and decided against it because I really don't want to have to work from home despite having a financial incentive to do so. Remote work isn't for everyone.
- tluyben2 10y ago
  It is a matter of taste: some people like one, some the other. I cannot stand offices myself. And I do not ignore small companies: I always have a few devs somewhere working on things which are not part of the main company. Everything I do starts with 1 or 2 people working home. No issue. You do not like it or even cannot stand it: many others can. And yes, I do ignore industries I am not familiar with: the companies mentioned in the article are software houses. Also I work at a hardware company: software is just as important but the main part is the hardware. But yes that is why I said; some satellite offices and people working at home usually is a good mix. Some sit in the office, some at home, all happy. The main point, going after what is said in the article: If you are in Finland and need 100 coders and those coders are easy to the in St Petersburg then just open an office there.