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I'm always amazed at all the developers who are in favor of remote work....as long as you don't offshore.... If I'm going to hire remote workers why wouldn't I

I'm always amazed at all the developers who are in favor of remote work....as long as you don't offshore.... If I'm going to hire remote workers why wouldn't I hire great talent in Vietnam or China or Poland instead of in the US?

ForHackernews 8y ago
Hopefully those employees in Vietnam or Poland would soon start demanding higher salaries. If you're selling your labor into a global market, charge what the market will bear, which is evidently a small fortune.
- arnvald 8y ago
  It is already happening. In Poland the salaries among developers are getting closer and closer to salaries in Germany or UK. The reasons are that developers can find a job for foreign companies (therefore local companies need to increase salaries in order to compete), but also that local companies get more foreign customers, therefore they can quote higher prices and offer higher salaries.
  - joelbluminator 8y ago
    I don't know how reliable Payscale is but it's showing software development salaries in Germany to be 2x those in Poland.
rock_hard 8y ago
Because many tech companies are not looking for sweatworkers but people who fully understand the context in which the product they are working on exists...from my expierence you won’t find these folks offshore
- freddie_mercury 8y ago
  I don't work in the US. I guarantee you those people exist outside of the US. You think the engineering team behind Alibaba's singles day sale are just a bunch of sweat workers? You think people in Bulgaria can't understand context? Engineers in Canada can't?
  - thucydidesofusa 8y ago
    The same reason Alibaba isn't opening an office in the valley. Context for Alibaba means living and working in China. Context for an American employer means living in America.
  - rock_hard 8y ago
    I should have been more clear, I meant in your typical engineering offshoring shop. Of course you can find talented engineers with product sense elsewhere...though so far a majority keeps flocking to the pacific north west.
- shaklee3 8y ago
  Kind of backing yourself into a corner. You can find competent people anywhere, so if you are advocating remote work, just realize that there is no longer anything unique about living in the USA.
  - eanzenberg 8y ago
    If that were the case itd have happened already.
    - Bootvis 8y ago
      The old joke: Two economists walk down a road and they see a twenty dollar bill lying on the side-walk. One of them asks “is that a twenty dollar bill?” Then the other one answers “It can’t be, because someone would have picked it up already,” and they keep walking.
      - eanzenberg 8y ago
        The rarity of finding $20 bills on the ground, let alone smaller valued bills such as $1, proves my point.
    - sooheon 8y ago
      Why can't it be in the process of happening? Is there a global on/off switch somewhere?
      - rock_hard 8y ago
        Its a moving target! Of course todays top skills will be broadly available in 10-20 years...it will all be common sense. But what ever the next frontier will be, again only a bunch of experts will exist for it.
- mdpopescu 8y ago
  As a contrary anecdote, I once worked on a project where we had a method with a cyclomatic complexity of over 200. (The company had a tool that stopped counting at 200.) I was not allowed to change it, or even add tests to it, because it was written by the NY office and they would have complained about it. Bad programmers are everywhere.
diafygi 8y ago
There are often legal, contract, or regulatory restrictions on outsourcing software development to other countries. For example, most grants from the Department of Energy require that funds be spent in the United States.
- kiallmacinnes 8y ago
  While I'm sure restrictions like this exist in government contracts everywhere, I suspect companies working government contracts are a tiny proportion of the whole. i.e. in the general case, these restrictions don't exist & companies are free to hire their permanent staff from anywhere they please.
  - tracker1 8y ago
    They're definitely not the majority, could be as high as 20-30% of jobs being secondary to the government (varying by location). The US Gov't employs nearly 1% of the population as direct employees and roughly the same as contractors. Not all of the 20-30% would be bound to US employment for all projects, but wouldn't be surprised if a large portion have U.S. only requirements by locality (citizen + visa employees). Note: I currently work for an election services company, and have worked in eLearning development though am no expert on the field of labor, law or guesstimates, just going from past reading and other loose knowledge. I did a brief google search to try and track down sourcing, but unable to find anything firm.
austincheney 8y ago
Absolutely. Hire the very best. The disadvantage to hiring within a specific geography is that your talent pool is limited and you are forced to compromise your internal standards to the capabilities of the available candidates. Companies are willing to pay more for competence and I am willing to accept less pay to work with a more competent team.
lazyasciiart 8y ago
Time zones make a big difference to remote collaboration. South and Central America are likely to become increasingly popular for offshoring for that reason, IMO.
- jobigoud 8y ago
  Timezones are a drawback for quick slack style discussion but can be a plus sometimes when work on a project can be done by both sides of the team. You can work while they sleep and they take the relay when it's their "shift", and it can increase throughtput.
  - mdpopescu 8y ago
    Also, I've been working on an US EST schedule since 2000 (from Eastern Europe). It's great for waking up late (I hate early mornings) and having the day free for shopping or whatever.
  - eeeeeeeeeeeee 8y ago
    It definitely encourages asynchronous communication if the time difference is large. It really depends on the project in my experience. Sometimes, or at least initially, you need a lot of back and forth contact and without that it really slows the project down.
JimDabell 8y ago
Are there that really all that many? The pushback I see from developers against "offshore" is specifically directed at cheap outsourced offshoring. That's an entirely different kettle of fish to hiring people to work for you directly.
Consultant32452 8y ago
I don't know why, but it just doesn't work. My guess is that the top tier candidates from those places are capable of moving to a place with higher standard of living. At least that's the case where I'm working now. The best Indian candidates have been able to demand relocation to the US and the rest are still in India.
- freddie_mercury 8y ago
  People seem really set on reading this as "hire developers from a 3rd world country". But no one said that was the only option. Go hire some French or Belgian or Danish developers or New Zealand developers, you'll find the salaries are nothing like Bay Area salaries... And few of them would consider the US as having a higher standard of living.
  - Consultant32452 8y ago
    If you're just trying to get good candidates for salaries below the Bay area rates, basically pick any 2nd tier city in the US. It may still be more expensive than France/Germany etc, but there's no language barrier, closer time zones, similar holidays, better labor laws (for the employer), etc. In my personal opinion the cost difference doesn't make up for those hurdles until you get much cheaper salaries like India, China, Brazil, etc. Obviously individual circumstances apply.
TeMPOraL 8y ago
As a remote developer from (and living in) Poland, working from an US company, please do offshore :). You can pay us 2x less than you would your local devs, and we still earn 2x more than we would working for a local shop :). (EDIT: but see replies) WRT. timezones, they sometimes are a problem, but in my experience, they actually force better work arrangements. You can get an uninterrupted stretch of time for focused work before the people from another zone start asking you stuff, and after the overlap passes and you're done for the day, they get uninterrupted time too. Also this puts a bit extra pressure on writing things down, which is almost always positive IMO (in every place I've worked so far, there's way too little documenting happening, which causes lots of waste for everyone).
- jobigoud 8y ago
  In a game theoretic way it would be more beneficial if we all align our compensation demands to US salaries, independently of location, and in your case you get 4x above local shop salaries.
  - ForHackernews 8y ago
    Yes absolutely. At the very least, workers at offshore divisions of the SV giants (e.g. Facebook London) should be demanding compensation to match their Bay Area colleagues.
    - granshaw 8y ago
      I’m curious, how far off are they today?
      - ForHackernews 8y ago
        It seems like there can be a >100,000USD difference in total compensation. Take it with a grain of salt, but there's some self-reported numbers at https://www.levels.fyi https://www.levels.fyi If you click on an individual position, you can filter reports by location. If I were a SWE working for Google/Facebook/Uber in London, I'd be irked.
ebg13 8y ago
> I'm always amazed at all the developers who are in favor of remote work....as long as you don't offshore.... Think of it rather as "who are in favor of remote work as long as it doesn't end up pushing them out of a job if they don't leave their home country" and it might make more sense. The answer is because it harms _my_ financial prospect in favor of someone _else_'s just so that executives can further consolidate wealth at the top. > If I'm going to hire remote workers why wouldn't I hire great talent in Vietnam or China or Poland instead of in the US Right. If you're going to hire. But that ignores the "if I'm going to get hired" side of the equation which affects significantly more people. You can replace "remote" with "manufacturing" and trace the economic collapse of middle America. Hiring great talent in Vietnam, China, or Poland may be great for people in Vietnam, China, and Poland, but that doesn't come for free for US workers. Are US workers more important than Vietnamese workers? No, of course not. But if you live anywhere in the US then you literally cannot live on a typical Hanoi salary, and that has real consequences.

ForHackernews 8y ago

Hopefully those employees in Vietnam or Poland would soon start demanding higher salaries. If you're selling your labor into a global market, charge what the market will bear, which is evidently a small fortune.

arnvald 8y ago
It is already happening. In Poland the salaries among developers are getting closer and closer to salaries in Germany or UK. The reasons are that developers can find a job for foreign companies (therefore local companies need to increase salaries in order to compete), but also that local companies get more foreign customers, therefore they can quote higher prices and offer higher salaries.
- joelbluminator 8y ago
  I don't know how reliable Payscale is but it's showing software development salaries in Germany to be 2x those in Poland.

rock_hard 8y ago

Because many tech companies are not looking for sweatworkers but people who fully understand the context in which the product they are working on exists...from my expierence you won’t find these folks offshore

freddie_mercury 8y ago
I don't work in the US. I guarantee you those people exist outside of the US. You think the engineering team behind Alibaba's singles day sale are just a bunch of sweat workers? You think people in Bulgaria can't understand context? Engineers in Canada can't?
- thucydidesofusa 8y ago
  The same reason Alibaba isn't opening an office in the valley. Context for Alibaba means living and working in China. Context for an American employer means living in America.
- rock_hard 8y ago
  I should have been more clear, I meant in your typical engineering offshoring shop. Of course you can find talented engineers with product sense elsewhere...though so far a majority keeps flocking to the pacific north west.
shaklee3 8y ago
Kind of backing yourself into a corner. You can find competent people anywhere, so if you are advocating remote work, just realize that there is no longer anything unique about living in the USA.
- eanzenberg 8y ago
  If that were the case itd have happened already.
  - Bootvis 8y ago
    The old joke: Two economists walk down a road and they see a twenty dollar bill lying on the side-walk. One of them asks “is that a twenty dollar bill?” Then the other one answers “It can’t be, because someone would have picked it up already,” and they keep walking.
    - eanzenberg 8y ago
      The rarity of finding $20 bills on the ground, let alone smaller valued bills such as $1, proves my point.
  - sooheon 8y ago
    Why can't it be in the process of happening? Is there a global on/off switch somewhere?
    - rock_hard 8y ago
      Its a moving target! Of course todays top skills will be broadly available in 10-20 years...it will all be common sense. But what ever the next frontier will be, again only a bunch of experts will exist for it.
mdpopescu 8y ago
As a contrary anecdote, I once worked on a project where we had a method with a cyclomatic complexity of over 200. (The company had a tool that stopped counting at 200.) I was not allowed to change it, or even add tests to it, because it was written by the NY office and they would have complained about it. Bad programmers are everywhere.

diafygi 8y ago

There are often legal, contract, or regulatory restrictions on outsourcing software development to other countries. For example, most grants from the Department of Energy require that funds be spent in the United States.

kiallmacinnes 8y ago
While I'm sure restrictions like this exist in government contracts everywhere, I suspect companies working government contracts are a tiny proportion of the whole. i.e. in the general case, these restrictions don't exist & companies are free to hire their permanent staff from anywhere they please.
- tracker1 8y ago
  They're definitely not the majority, could be as high as 20-30% of jobs being secondary to the government (varying by location). The US Gov't employs nearly 1% of the population as direct employees and roughly the same as contractors. Not all of the 20-30% would be bound to US employment for all projects, but wouldn't be surprised if a large portion have U.S. only requirements by locality (citizen + visa employees). Note: I currently work for an election services company, and have worked in eLearning development though am no expert on the field of labor, law or guesstimates, just going from past reading and other loose knowledge. I did a brief google search to try and track down sourcing, but unable to find anything firm.

austincheney 8y ago

Absolutely. Hire the very best. The disadvantage to hiring within a specific geography is that your talent pool is limited and you are forced to compromise your internal standards to the capabilities of the available candidates. Companies are willing to pay more for competence and I am willing to accept less pay to work with a more competent team.

lazyasciiart 8y ago

Time zones make a big difference to remote collaboration. South and Central America are likely to become increasingly popular for offshoring for that reason, IMO.

jobigoud 8y ago
Timezones are a drawback for quick slack style discussion but can be a plus sometimes when work on a project can be done by both sides of the team. You can work while they sleep and they take the relay when it's their "shift", and it can increase throughtput.
- mdpopescu 8y ago
  Also, I've been working on an US EST schedule since 2000 (from Eastern Europe). It's great for waking up late (I hate early mornings) and having the day free for shopping or whatever.
- eeeeeeeeeeeee 8y ago
  It definitely encourages asynchronous communication if the time difference is large. It really depends on the project in my experience. Sometimes, or at least initially, you need a lot of back and forth contact and without that it really slows the project down.

JimDabell 8y ago

Are there that really all that many? The pushback I see from developers against "offshore" is specifically directed at cheap outsourced offshoring. That's an entirely different kettle of fish to hiring people to work for you directly.

Consultant32452 8y ago

I don't know why, but it just doesn't work. My guess is that the top tier candidates from those places are capable of moving to a place with higher standard of living. At least that's the case where I'm working now. The best Indian candidates have been able to demand relocation to the US and the rest are still in India.

freddie_mercury 8y ago
People seem really set on reading this as "hire developers from a 3rd world country". But no one said that was the only option. Go hire some French or Belgian or Danish developers or New Zealand developers, you'll find the salaries are nothing like Bay Area salaries... And few of them would consider the US as having a higher standard of living.
- Consultant32452 8y ago
  If you're just trying to get good candidates for salaries below the Bay area rates, basically pick any 2nd tier city in the US. It may still be more expensive than France/Germany etc, but there's no language barrier, closer time zones, similar holidays, better labor laws (for the employer), etc. In my personal opinion the cost difference doesn't make up for those hurdles until you get much cheaper salaries like India, China, Brazil, etc. Obviously individual circumstances apply.

TeMPOraL 8y ago

As a remote developer from (and living in) Poland, working from an US company, please do offshore :). You can pay us 2x less than you would your local devs, and we still earn 2x more than we would working for a local shop :). (EDIT: but see replies) WRT. timezones, they sometimes are a problem, but in my experience, they actually force better work arrangements. You can get an uninterrupted stretch of time for focused work before the people from another zone start asking you stuff, and after the overlap passes and you're done for the day, they get uninterrupted time too. Also this puts a bit extra pressure on writing things down, which is almost always positive IMO (in every place I've worked so far, there's way too little documenting happening, which causes lots of waste for everyone).

jobigoud 8y ago
In a game theoretic way it would be more beneficial if we all align our compensation demands to US salaries, independently of location, and in your case you get 4x above local shop salaries.
- ForHackernews 8y ago
  Yes absolutely. At the very least, workers at offshore divisions of the SV giants (e.g. Facebook London) should be demanding compensation to match their Bay Area colleagues.
  - granshaw 8y ago
    I’m curious, how far off are they today?
    - ForHackernews 8y ago
      It seems like there can be a >100,000USD difference in total compensation. Take it with a grain of salt, but there's some self-reported numbers at https://www.levels.fyi https://www.levels.fyi If you click on an individual position, you can filter reports by location. If I were a SWE working for Google/Facebook/Uber in London, I'd be irked.

ebg13 8y ago

> I'm always amazed at all the developers who are in favor of remote work....as long as you don't offshore.... Think of it rather as "who are in favor of remote work as long as it doesn't end up pushing them out of a job if they don't leave their home country" and it might make more sense. The answer is because it harms _my_ financial prospect in favor of someone _else_'s just so that executives can further consolidate wealth at the top. > If I'm going to hire remote workers why wouldn't I hire great talent in Vietnam or China or Poland instead of in the US Right. If you're going to hire. But that ignores the "if I'm going to get hired" side of the equation which affects significantly more people. You can replace "remote" with "manufacturing" and trace the economic collapse of middle America. Hiring great talent in Vietnam, China, or Poland may be great for people in Vietnam, China, and Poland, but that doesn't come for free for US workers. Are US workers more important than Vietnamese workers? No, of course not. But if you live anywhere in the US then you literally cannot live on a typical Hanoi salary, and that has real consequences.