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Remote work means anyone can take your job

• popotamonga 6y ago
  It also means i can take someone else's job. It balances out.
  • darepublic 6y ago
    I think living in the West where dev salaries are best a lot of the readers of this blog article would be concerned about a big change to the status quo. But article is pretty speculative
    • kristianc 6y ago
      You’re conflating ‘the West’ with the Bay Area. Most people in European countries, or even smaller American cities, are pretty relaxed about the idea of California job opportunities becoming more widely distributed.
      • darepublic 6y ago
        Yea I guess that is true. But that may or may not be mistaken, I mean, depending on the skill of even lower paid devs in other parts of the world. Its hard to say how things will shake out but I would say the better you have it now the more you don't want things to change, even if there are some scenarios where you gain.
  • klmadfejno 6y ago
    You require more wages than someone in a cheaper country (assuming some western area). It balances out, but you're at risk.
    • sgift 6y ago
      The same was said about offshoring and so far it worked out.
      • cameronbrown 6y ago
        Tell that to 80s coal miners and factory workers.
        • ncphillips 6y ago
          It's not a great comparison. Coal mining isn't knowledge work.
          • cameronbrown 6y ago
            What - why?! Because knowledge work is more important for some reason?
            • username90 6y ago
              Yes? For a tech company outsourcing software creation is like outsourcing upper management, sure you can do it but then you basically move the whole business. If you want to create an American tech company then the tech needs to be built in America. Indian tech companies are not nearly as successful as American ones, so you probably want to stay an American tech company today. Once India starts cranking out companies that beats out American ones you will probably see more tech companies move their entire HQ there, but until then they will mostly stay in USA.
      • klmadfejno 6y ago
        I mean, it worked out for one side of that equation
      • neltnerb 6y ago
        Is that just because the total number of jobs that would be considered to be in your field went up by 10x in the last 20 years?
  • cameronbrown 6y ago
    Unless their wage is much lower due to cheaper location.
  • pknopf 6y ago
    More competition leads to lower wages.
    • ncphillips 6y ago
      Lower wages for SV but higher wages everywhere else. The average developer wage for SV is $100,000 higher than the average where I live.
    • neltnerb 6y ago
      Except for the owners of the company, they get to pocket the difference... But of course this is less about tech workers that are already getting outsourced because the, well, workers are more technically savvy anyway so of course it happened sooner. It is possibly more relevant to people in management, or people like professors and many other random jobs who are discovering that working from home works fine for them. Though sometimes it's questionable whether this is because their work is largely on a computer or just because they didn't do much anyway... If we don't have permanent UBI in place soon it will continue to be an emergency response to job losses like now. The economy is shifting as surely as the sun sets to one where if you don't own or play a major leadership role you either aren't necessary or can be outsourced. Floor workers are getting replaced with robots and touchscreens; managers are realizing they too can be outsourced; lawyers are finding that no, the work they do isn't that hard to automate; doctors are finding that machine learning can analyze images better than they can; it's not going to stop... why would it? Why would a business owner want to keep a human with a continually increasing salary around if they can possibly replace you with technology that costs your annual salary once and after that just requires maintenance? There are cases where that's just not possible, but my imagination for what is possible to swap has definitely gotten bigger. Even if a job isn't entirely replaceable, productivity tools are making the same amount of work take a quarter of the staff.
  • HarryHirsch 6y ago
    The more highly qualified you are the more at risk to offshoring your job is. A long time ago, Albany Molecular, a contract research organization, highlighted they were based in Albany, NY. A shithole, yes, but a shithole with cheap cost of living. Nowadays, the PhD jobs are based in Shanghai, Szeged and Hyderabad. The only thing that's left stateside is regulatory functions and support. You don't need a PhD for that. Political leadership should be concerned about the loss of institutional knowledge and knowledge networks.
    • oblio 6y ago
      Do you have any proof for that? Everything I know says that more qualified people congregate, in general in the places with the highest cost of living...
      • HarryHirsch 6y ago
        more qualified people congregate, in general in the places with the highest cost of living That has to do with short job tenures (in the US) and industry consolidation. In the past, someone might have joined Upjohn in Kalamazoo, Eli Lilly in Indianapolis or Dow in Midland and stayed there their whole careers. Nowadays everyone changes jobs every 5 years and employment is in San Francisco, Boston and San Diego. It's problematic.
        • Frost1x 6y ago
          >It's problematic. I'd say that's the understatement of the century. Mass wealth accumulation and wealth inequality has shifted power so far towards businesses that the general populous requires solving a massive orchestration problem (together) in order to change that imbalance which I'm beginning to believe may not be something that can reach critical mass and a stable state in larger populations as historically peaceful revolutions were capable of. As such, businesses are calling the shots economically, legislatively/governmentally, culturally, ... and their interests are falling further out of alignment with most peoples' well being. We're becoming less innovative and working more to chase short-term profit margins for employers that keep us fed and sheltered instead of pursuing societal interests. From your DOW example and the chemical industry, DOW and those they've acquired used to innovate. In their later years they've turned in an IP portfolio management business, focusing on strategic patent purchases to stiffle competitors and eek our royalties for certain processes. This isnt unique to the chemical industry, it's happening across the board. In the neverending quarterly optimization search space, we're making tradeoffs that are hurting us more and more leading to instability in society all to inflate a few peoples' pockets and grips on control. The labor market has always been a target but due to social ramifications, has been largely avoided. We're now seeing more aggressive attacks on optimizing costs in the labor market in order to meet growth expectations and it's really starting to press on people. I'm just wondering at which point enough people will crack or give up instead of continuing to support the madness.
  • ReticentVole 6y ago
    You drive a car, I use a bus. You eat meat, I eat potatoes. You fly to Disneyworld, I take the train to the seaside. You live in a big house, I live in a small apartment. You pay American income taxes, I don't. You demand clean air and water, I tolerate pollution. There are some fundamental factors which make labour in other parts of the world much cheaper, and people willing to accept a much lower quality of life and associated lower incomes. Its no wonder that big tech is so in favour of remote working - its going to allow the outsourcing of a huge amount of work (white collar) previously considered untouchable.
    • new2628 6y ago
      Funnily, except for the pollution part, most of your items on the right seem more attractive from a quality-of-life point of view than those on the left. Flying to Disneyworld sounds like a nightmare I would never (willingly) do, but a trainride to the seaside is always nice.
      • deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      • renewiltord 6y ago
        Haha I have to admit I wasn't sure of his point at that stage. Taking a train to the seaside sounds sort of romantic. Flying to Disneyland sounds sort of rote. I still get the point but it is amusing.
    • josho 6y ago
      In addition, there are a couple concerns when branching out to other countries: Currency exchange means some can work at a discount compared to USD Government subsidies hoping to diversify their economy may even pay partial salaries Strong social safety net in other countries means companies may not need to pay for health benefits for remote workers
      • wildmanx 6y ago
        That strong social safety net does not fall from the sky. People in those countries just pay higher taxes instead, so if you want your employee to have the same net income, you need to increase the salary. My American friends always rant about the high income taxes in Sweden. But my taxes include health insurance and I pay essentially nothing for kids' daycare, school and university. For people without perfect health and with kids, the total pay is worse in the U.S.
  • gigatexal 6y ago
    Agreed. Just keep investing in yourself, your network, and growing and you'll be fine. That's my hypothesis anyway. I am not the best at what I do but I am getting better everyday and I keep in touch with people doing really cool things at the biggest places in case I want to join them in doing something neat. My network came through for me when I was suddenly let go due to this pandemic and so I am giving back by helping out those coming up behind me as best I can but also investing in myself by upskilling.
  • anpago 6y ago
    The employers can also balance out the wages. Your saving on travel, they save on building, building services and location adjusted wages. With huge savings being made by all businesses and less costs on the balance sheet. Wages will come under intense scrutiny.
    • josho 6y ago
      > Wages will come under intense scrutiny. What's going to drive that scrutiny? Shareholders won't demand it, they'll be happy to keep the additional margin. Employees may demand more, but that will only accelerate hiring from lower wage regions.
  • Mikeb85 6y ago
    But when you start opening up jobs to people from all over the world, those in countries with lower living costs can undercut those in higher-income countries. Globalism has already decimated the working class in developed countries, it's only going to accelerate and get worse.
  • jayd16 6y ago
    Salaries are set by supply and demand. Looming economic collapse aside, we can assume a move to remote work doesn't necessarily mean an increase in global supply or demand. Salaries will even out but workers will have the ability to change jobs more easily. Companies will want to keep talent. Top tier salaries might go up as companies are now competing for talent globally. I wonder if we'll see brain drains (without emigration) as a country's talent is bought out by a wealthier country. Would you want your country to have the salaried workers or the executives and corporate revenues(or maybe that goes into the modern incarnation of double dutch)? Should be interesting.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• davedx 6y ago
  Seems like this article ignores the gigantic wave of out-sourcing throughout IT that already happened in previous decades and in many cases returned to near-shore / onsite work. What you actually see if you look at remote work job boards is many (if not most) companies in say, the USA, want remote people from the USA (or at least the same timezone as the USA). I think this is what will happen in other countries too.
  • vcanales 6y ago
    In my totally unscientific assessment of remote job boards, US companies seem to be the only ones requesting US-only applicants, and I have no insight as to why this happens. In my -South American- country the trend is to look outwards if you're hiring remotely; European countries seem to fit this description too.
    • hopia 6y ago
      I've made the same observation. Does it have something to do with US tax or other regulations?
      • gamblor956 6y ago
        Yes, recent changes in the tax code made it less enticing for US companies to offshore US jobs. The company can potentially end up losing a lot of (otherwise legitimately acquired) tax benefits. With respect to R&D, for example, the US no longer allows foreign R&D activities to qualify for the R&D tax credit.
        • phkahler 6y ago
          >> With respect to R&D, for example, the US no longer allows foreign R&D activities to qualify for the R&D tax credit. From what I've seen, many companies will shoehorn regular product development into the R&D category. I'm not sure if it's supposed to cover next iteration of existing products that most company should be doing anyway.
• bamboozled 6y ago
  What if your already remote? It doesn't change anything.
  • paucanosa2 6y ago
    interesting
• cameronbrown 6y ago
  There's some serious irony that traditionally globalist brogrammer types are now whining about outsourcing (to "poorer" areas, or other countries). You guys didn't care when it was happened to blue collar workers, and then go and rag on Trump voters who didn't see any other way out. Then there's the other faction that doesn't understand basic economics and expects Bay Area pay from Bangladesh so they can live like a king. Your employer will pay the minimum they can. Salaries are only high right now because of the concentration of talent and cost of living. To those people, please, get over yourselves and stop thinking you're somehow better because you went to college or don't do manual labour. Edit: Wow. Downvote in five seconds. Really makes you think how much effort people are putting into processing the words I wrote.
  • syndacks 6y ago
    Would be curious for you to expand on what you mean by "traditionally globalist brogrammer types."
    • cameronbrown 6y ago
      It's a generalisation to be sure. But many programmers (from Silicon Valley in particular) or other middle class workers like finance, law, etc.. are in this weird bubble totally isolated from reality. The working class has been complaining about outsourcing for decades and I just find it hypocritical that this bubble is only just starting to complain because now it affects them with remote work. It's elitist attitude and my number one complaint about our industry.
      • y-c-o-m-b 6y ago
        On the contrary - from my own anecdotal experience - programmers have been complaining about outsourcing forever. There was an especially strong distaste for it at Intel where outsourcing was more common. I've seen countless articles and opinions here on HackerNews outlining the tremendous loss of quality and productivity by outsourcing work over the years. Have you considered if you're the one living in the bubble?
  • 6y ago
• vsareto 6y ago
  If you get replaced only because of your salary, they're doing you a long-term favor. They weren't really invested in you. This article implies the cog theory of developers, and I rarely see that supported on this site: >You can get the same work done, but cheaper. What would you choose? It probably won't be the same work. Other variables, such as throughput, also factor in.
• mandeepj 6y ago
  Not true at all. Working remotely is a skill and lifestyle - not everyone likes/have it
• paucanosa2 6y ago
  good post
• vs2 6y ago
  I am not paying to read someones blog! This is the second day in a row ... if this was reddit the admins would ban it! Oh yeah I am off to reddit!
  • agustif 6y ago
    Just open an incognito tab then, or if you use firefox checkout this extension https://addons.mozilla.org/es/firefox/addon/medium-unlimited-read-for-free/ https://addons.mozilla.org/es/firefox/addon/medium-unlimited... I hate medium too, anyway for my the paywall is like a nice feature, if it's behind it I'm probably better off not reading that shit anyways
    • GnarfGnarf 6y ago
      Brilliant! Thanks for the tip!
  • jcims 6y ago
    Do the people that host their blogs there get an indication of how many readers bailed at the paywall?
• ryanisnan 6y ago
  This article seems to ignore the fact that working with people in vastly differing timezones can be a real nuisance. Yes, it can also be a boon for some positions, like follow-the-sun type SRE or customer support, but for a lot of positions, having people working massively different schedules is a real challenge. It can absolutely work, given the right async workflows, but it can also absolutely fail. I'm inclined to believe failure is the default mode of operation.
  • Wowfunhappy 6y ago
    Almost my entire (small) company is based in NYC, but we have one programmer in Europe. He just adjusts his schedule to US Eastern Time hours. Might be harder if he was in Australia, but that still leaves a lot of flexibility. Heck, as I'm writing this, it's 11:20 am where I live, and I just overheard my sister get out of bed in the next room. Last night, she was taking an online MCAT prep course until after I went to bed around midnight. She could easily work in a different timezone.
    • ghaff 6y ago
      In my experience, Eastern Time to Central European Time synchronous communications works pretty well without anyone having to deviate too much from normal working hours. Add Pacific Time to the mix and you're starting to need people willing to take calls at 6am and/or in the evening. But, yes, some people are willing to adjust their personal time zones. I know someone who lives in Hawaii and runs a PR agency with mainland US clients. She just normally gets up very early.
• beager 6y ago
  The implication from this litter of thinkpieces on HN is that proximity to a tech hub (SV/NY) is your only competitive advantage as a knowledge worker—your butt is close to their chair. This runs counter to the other prevailing wisdom about SV/NY, which is that those areas are hubs—and essential to the tech industry—because the world's top talent is drawn to it. So which is it?
  • SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    The same set of people aren't saying both things. The people who believe SV and NY have top talent are exactly the ones who think remote work is great. I'm excited about the trend; a bigger pool of talented engineers for me to work with means I'll be able to accomplish more and have to compromise less on my career goals. The people who worry that remote work will be a disaster are the ones who never believed SV engineers were more talented in the first place.
    • cvlasdkv 6y ago
      > The people who worry that remote work will be a disaster are the ones who never believed SV engineers were more talented in the first place. Or that technical talent does not really contribute to success as much as the prevailing theories believe?
      • SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
        If someone says SV engineers are talented, but only in some technical way that doesn't really matter, I'd classify that as a claim that they're not really talented.
  • ralph84 6y ago
    Why can't it be both? Companies locate where the talent is; the talent goes where the companies are. Your standard positive feedback loop.
  • toyg 6y ago
    There are multiple layers. I think SV will remain a hub from a commercial standpoint, so if you're fishing for VC money that's still where you want to be. From a purely technical standpoint, we'll see, but tbh, as others have said, outsourcing has been happening for decades now and if anything the wave is currently retreating.
• biolurker1 6y ago
  the way it should be right?
• kolla 6y ago
  Almost all of my work has to be performed by a citizen of my country due to security laws so I feel pretty safe.
• st-isidore 6y ago
  The article makes broad, sweeping generalizations, but it was enjoyable and engaging to read, so cheers to the author for that. He's right, too, generally speaking: lots of work can and will be done remotely from various locations across the globe. Of course, there will always be natural divides (that's what makes us human). Someone who can't speak the same language as the rest of the team just isn't going to get hired, no matter how well they can code. Government regulations also play a huge role in how "globalized" a job can be. If you're working at a defense contractor, for example, you sure as heck aren't going to be replaced by a foreign national. In many cases, the office culture at those companies won't change hardly at all, due to data governance restrictions.
• betimsl 6y ago
  Very true for parasite employees. But to employees who actually work and have a basic understanding of self fulfillment, it means nothing more than environment change.
  • Lio 6y ago
    “Parasite employees” is a somewhat unfortunate phrase. I would imagine that any employer who thinks of their staff like that is already outsourcing or planning to outsource anyway.
• klmadfejno 6y ago
  I think the biggest population at risk if useless office jobs that have just had staying power for legacy reasons. Once those go remote and off shore they're never coming back to high cost of living areas.
• adwn 6y ago
  The economic incentives to out-source development to India have been there for decades. In the 2000s, "everyone" (i.e., the media) was sure that soon there would be no high-paying programming jobs left in the Western world. Well, how did that pan out?
  • temporama1 6y ago
    Yes. Please send details on how we surely implement the microservices.
    • BubRoss 6y ago
      First, start by making a giant empty class heirarchy in java. Once you have created a dozen classes that inherit from each other, but not yet made any variables or functions, send it right over, your work is done my man.
      • temporama1 6y ago
        First we make the Spring Boot with the common package yes? Ok. Please reply immediately.
• suff 6y ago
  Everyone duck! At the median age of 28, millennials just woke up to off-shoring :-)
• roosterdawn 6y ago
  > What globalization did to manufacturing jobs, remote work will do to many service jobs. This is bait. It's taken as a given rather than a hypothesis to be proven, which invalidates most of this post for me. Issues with the analogy: - Offshoring existed before remote work was popularized. For the many of "your jobs" up to be "taken" that shift has already occurred. - Outsourcing is not a magic bullet. Timezone gaps, communication style, expert knowledge, and legal compliance are all issues that previous outsourcers to call centers have already discovered. - Significant gaps remain between "tier-1" and "tier-2" support. Effective deployment of offshoring requires using the two to complement one another, not trying to use the latter to replace the former. No matter what it is that your company is selling, tricky situations will come up that needed to be escalated to an experienced customer success team, whether that's the founder or a dedicated team. Being able to recruit globally doesn't magically make building that team any easier.
  • dominotw 6y ago
    > Offshoring existed before remote work was popularized. For the many of "your jobs" up to be "taken" that shift has already occurred. This is different though, because those companies weren't 'remote' so offshoring is not viable without that prerequiste. But if company goes 'remote' much more work becomes outsourcing worthy.
    • roosterdawn 6y ago
      > But if company goes 'remote' much more work becomes outsourcing worthy. Again, there's a difference between "outsourcing worthy" and "can reliably outsourced for enough cost savings for the whole thing to not be ROI negative". And, that's my point. Companies going remote doesn't magically jump start geographic labor arbitrage from zero. That geographic labor arbitrage has been ongoing for a long time.
• Spooky23 6y ago
  1995 wants their article back. The horse is out of the barn there. I remember working with HP, Microsoft and IBM people in 1999 whose management chains were in South Dakota, Phoenix, etc.
• Communitivity 6y ago
  True, but... Anyone can already take your job, as long as they are willing to relocate, or your company opens a new office near them. It is more important than ever to differentiate yourself. To do that you need to find something to do that you love, and then find (or more often make) a niche in that that that you become one of the top ten people in within your context. By context I mean you don't need to be the best in the world, you can be the best at X within the Y industry, or within defense consulting, or in the U.S. And you don't need to be the best (though see the quote about being the only), but at least in the top 10. There are two quotes I am fond of that say similar things much better than I can: "Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it." - Steve Jobs "You do not merely want to be considered just the best of the best. You want to be considered the only one who does what you do." - Jerry Garcia
  • rb808 6y ago
    > Anyone can already take your job, as long as they are willing to relocate, This where immigration restrictions make a difference. A Brazilian developer has trouble working in SV, but no trouble working remote.
    • jedberg 6y ago
      You vastly underestimate the tax and legal implications of an American company hiring and paying a Brazilian in Brazil.
      • filleduchaos 6y ago
        You vastly underestimate the difficulty of immigrating to the United States (or even just _visiting_ it legally).
      • the_svd_doctor 6y ago
        That really seems like something that can be figured out, especially if the result is 3x less in wages. Unlike immigrating to the US, which is sometimes plain impossible.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• christiansakai 6y ago
  Timezones, sanctions, taxes, labor laws. Yeah, there's no way the governments of nations will let their companies outsource their IT more and more that easily.
• mekoka 6y ago
  Side question. I have noticed for a few weeks now that since I don't have a Medium account I'm prevented from reading certain articles (like this one), but I still have access to some other articles on the platform. Does it mean that some authors require that the readership be part of the network too? What are the rules?
• bamboozled 6y ago
  As someone who has worked remotely and worked for remote teams for some time now, I can say that you need hire a higher caliber people with excellent communication skills who you can really trust to deliver. I think remote work will just make sure good people are in higher demand, which means that the market may even get hotter for better people. Companies who just complete on price will fail spectacularly. Bring it on.
• jamil7 6y ago
  I'm a remote freelancer, no one has taken my job(s) yet. I also don't make Bay Area money so maybe this never applied to me.
• sabujp 6y ago
  remote work should mean that software engineers should get payed exactly the same anywhere on earth. If they had to go through the same interview process to get a job and are literally doing the exact same job then they should be payed the same as a SWE in SV or NYC
  • SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    You can try paying software engineers exactly the same anywhere on Earth, but SV and NYC engineers generally won't work at "anywhere on Earth" prices.
• quxpar 6y ago
  Pre-remote, I was afraid of a random person walking in off the street and doing my job. I don't think I ever worked for a successful company that wasn't continually hiring people in my role. I don't think the author realizes that large businesses that rely on software see tech as a team sport, in which camaraderie plays a huge role. Subconsciously, they're willing to pay another $40k for a better social/emotional experience. Who is a theoretical startup hotshot going to prefer? Option A, who is also in San Francisco, who talks about concerts and cool events they went to every weekend, who stays up late hacking on fun side projects, etc etc. Option B, ives in Omaha, nice enough person but pretty much always logs off at 5pm. Has 3 kids screaming in the background of every Zoom call. Likes board games. That's not to say B has zero chance of employment. In my experience, B can existed at a company but has to have some seriously strong technical chops, know the higher-ups really well, AND be an integral part of the company in terms of how critical infra is maintained.
  • joelbluminator 6y ago
    I'd take B over you anytime buddy. You sound like you're 19, not that there's anything wrong with being 19. But your preference isn't everyone's preference.
    • sb52191 6y ago
      Option B sounds far more likely to stick around the company for a long period of time, option A sounds more like the type to leave after 1-2 years for something more "attractive".
  • briandear 6y ago
    I work for a FANG company and we literally don’t care what “cool” concert you went to and some of our top folks have “kids screaming in the background” of calls. We do have some really interesting people on the team but I never found out how interesting until after they had been on the team for awhile. Hiring people because they are “cool” is an amateur move. Even screening for “coolness” is a bit ridiculous.
  • BubRoss 6y ago
• tluyben2 6y ago
  As someone who basically never worked in an office since I began working as a dev in the early 90s; you have to protect yourself and carve out niches and knowledge that takes actual time and elbow grease to catch up to. Sure many people anywhere in the world can do what I do, but with the deep knowledge I have about some subjects (banking/payments/insurances backends & production firmware), it is not very likely to get a better deal as I speak the same language of all parties involved and I did it many times already. So it is not trial and error. It simply takes actual time to sit down and suffer for years/decades. You can hire entire teams cheaply with great looking resumes and fail because some of these things are not hard/difficult per-se but you have to have done them before to succeed fast. But yes, if you shoot with hail and focus on the latest and greatest, you might be easily replaced. I am surprised how cheap (embarrassingly so) I can find good react/node devs; that tells me it is really bad to specialise in that...
  • joelbluminator 6y ago
    try to find cheap react/node devs in the U.S, good luck with that. The cost of skills doesn't always translate to how hard it is to acquire it. I mean, some medical nurses study for 5-10 years and specialise and specialise only to earn 1/2 what a react dev earns in the U.S
    • tluyben2 6y ago
      I think we were talking about work-from-home/remote people and for me that is ‘earth’; I can find really good people for next to nothing because everyone jumped on the bandwagon. And this is not a stab at the technology; it is saying that it is a not a niche; I have maintained an yoy upward income for over 25 years by picking things that are valuable always. And, in line with this article, if I can have excellent react/node (and Go.. and C# and Java...) people for $1k/mo or less, then that is not for me. It might work well now; I want things to work out longterm. Because, you know, shit happens and they might kick everyone but the bottomline out...
      • thewarrior 6y ago
• csours 6y ago
  Nobody can take my job because they couldn't pay someone enough to do my job. That said, my job could simply go away, and I'm working hard to make that happen. When my job goes away, hopefully the value I demonstrated in doing that will be enough for me to get another job.
• LockAndLol 6y ago
  That's a nice sentiment. Every country is looking for skilled IT workers. The amount of positions isn't going to magically decrease to create an overflow of ITers. There'll still be a shortage. Having personally seen the quality of outsourced code and the effort needed to clean up the mess in order to make the product stable, companies are going to be in for a nice surprise if they think that short-changing devs and simply going remote will work in their favor. Interesting times are ahead.
• m3kw9 6y ago
  And you can take anyone’s. The scale is bigger but is hard to argue if the ratio isn’t similar but just at a larger scale. I think the bigger difference is the option to WFH is not just an after thought, but a real option now.
• licebmi__at__ 6y ago
  I've been working remote with an on-site team for a few years, and well, I'm not sure as everyone of that remote will be the default as the pandemic ends. At least on my current team, I could notice a lot of communication gaps that definitely impacted the velocity of the release that management should definitely be aware, and they are expecting going back to normal. As I can see, that remote working might be a novelty, but I expect the inertia to push back after the lockdowns ease up.
• JBiserkov 6y ago
  "If you cannot be replaced, you will never be promoted."
  • MattGaiser 6y ago
    Don't most tech people leave to get their promotions?
• gexla 6y ago
  The bigger issue right now is the total cratering of the world economy. Then there's also the unknown resets which will come with that. Trends which were in slow motion and maybe barely noticeable may have gone into overdrive. Now we don't know where we're at. To say that you're role is at risk because anyone around the world can take that role is as much guesswork as anyone else can give. This is just another prediction in a storm of unknowns. From the article... > If you thought globalization was fun for manufacturing, buckle up. Remote work is about to globalize a bunch of service jobs as well. This makes sense from what I knew a few months ago. What doesn't sit right with me is that we're also possibly looking at a world in which globalization will be reversing. Supply chains may be rejiggered to operate closer to home. Will remote work go MORE globalized while everything else possibly reverses? > Like any big economic change, there’ll be winners and losers, and it’s not exactly clear from the outset who will end up benefiting from the change. So, we don't know what's going to happen, this is just his prediction. This is a complex subject. Software doesn't operate like textiles. If the textile company charges twice as much, then the consumer pays more. Facebook engineers charging X more than engineers from SE Asia doesn't make the service more expensive. It's still "free" for the customer. There are other things to optimize on before you get to cost of workers. Another potential bigger issue for US workers is the possible change of the center of gravity for software development. US workers need to stay competitive. This will be challenged not so much by cheaper workers, but by global competition to US companies. Which should US workers worry about more? Workers from around the world taking US jobs? Or ByteDance challenging Facebook? US workers have already been dealing with outsourcing. The big change would be US workers applying for foreign jobs. Right now the US has a load of strong talent these companies could be mopping up.
  • ph0rque 6y ago
    > Will remote work go MORE globalized while everything else possibly reverses? I think this is the right approach. Global bits, local atoms.
• GnarfGnarf 6y ago
  Everyone would have to sit two meters apart, which means two times the square feet No... it's four times the square feet.
  • klmadfejno 6y ago
    four pi times the square feet?
    • downerending 6y ago
      Hmm. Could use hex packing, but still need aisles. And there are probably fire escape regulations.
• erosenbe0 6y ago
  Many service workers will still want to live in or around relatively expensive areas. I live just outside of Chicago: 10 minutes to the beach; 20 minutes to downtown; 20 minutes to a hub airport; 15 minutes to top class sports, theatre, and concert options; A+ school district with reasonable diversity; ice rink, gymnastics center, bike trails, parks, music lessons, and art lessons within a mile or two. Sure, my taxes are through the roof and my house is small, but quality of life here, particularly for families, is just unbeatable. If you go more than another 10 miles out to get the massive sq. footage you are giving something up.
• one2know 6y ago
  More like anyone can rip off employers. When you are dealing internationally, you are out of the bounds of US law. There is no guarantee that your code won't simply be stolen. You have no recourse except travel twelve time zones to a place you have no power in. No one need worry about outsourcing. It's been proven that the only work going to outsourcing is low risk service labor like phone support.
  • josho 6y ago
    As a counter example IP laws in Canada are aligned with US and is the same timezone, yet with currency exchange salaries are discounted by 30%.
    • username90 6y ago
      > yet with currency exchange salaries are discounted by 30%. It doesn't work that way. Salaries are lower in Canada, but that is not due to the currency exchange.
    • pashamur 6y ago
      Canada is only ~10% of the U.S. population. I'm not sure in terms of developer numbers, but if percentages are comparable, that's a pretty small effect on the overall market.
      • josho 6y ago
        I wouldn't consider increasing the labor pool by 10% a small effect. Regardless, and once a company has figured out hiring remote for Canada, then why not add Mexico which through NAFTA/USMCA has sorted out IP type issues. Then once MX has worked well why stop there and repeat across South America. So, the reality is likely increasing the labor pool size every year for the next decade. Those annual small changes compound and lead to dramatic changes over the long term. Take a look at what happened to manufacturing jobs in the US over the past few decades. Remote work has the potential to transform things just as much.
• mlthoughts2018 6y ago
  Let’s flip this around. If [anyone] can take [your] job, then it stands to reason that remote work means I can take someone else’s job. But what would this mean for me? First off it would mean doing all the same work to prepare myself as a candidate. Take Machine Learning for example, which is my area. I need to prepare my resume based on my current projects. I need to brush up for nauseating leet-code hazing trivia dumb shit (probably on a virtual whiteboard now). I need to research companies that have roles I’d be interested in. Now I do all that, let’s say I do well in the interview. Am I going to take less money to take the job? No. In fact, I’ll probably want more money than I am earning now if I am going to risk switching jobs. Am I going to accept my salary to be adjusted by geographic region or cost of living data? No. My compensation is about the value I add to your company. It has nothing to do with where I live. If I want to do lifestyle arbitrage on my high salary, that’s purely my business and is a private matter my employer does not get to know about or consider. Given this, how many employers are really likely to want to hire me? I’m going to demand a NYC salary no matter where I live. They won’t get to replace their existing NYC-salary-person with a cheaper competitor, because nobody is cheaper, and a lot of people are more expensive. In essence, supply went up if you can hire from anywhere, but the price for that supply did not go down, it’s just permanently higher. I think if companies are looking to trade employees for a cheaper model, they are going to be surprised that hiring remote doesn’t facilitate this at all. The people from rural Kansas who can do the same job are not idiots happy to take 1/2 the pay because of where they live. It’s stupid to expect they would be.
  • colinmhayes 6y ago
    Maybe the people in Kansas won't be taking a pay cut, but workers who were previously limited by immigration laws would definitely be happy to. Indians speak english, Mexico and a handful of other central/south american countries are in the same time zone as the us. People in those situations would be incredibly happy to work for half of what you make now. There are definitely problems with hiring those people, but your argument that supply won't expand is incredibly naive.
    • mlthoughts2018 6y ago
• stakkur 6y ago
  Having worked many years with globally distributed teams, especially offshored IT in India, I'd say...LOL.
• y-c-o-m-b 6y ago
  I had this same fear a few years back. I don't have any notable personal projects on GitHub and my skills are pretty standard (Full Stack .NET) these days. I don't even have a degree. Nothing really stands out in my resume that screams "hire this person". I figured I would hardly get a response when applying to remote companies let alone an offer. The competition is surely way more qualified than I am. Furthermore I was applying on StackOverflow where talent pools are endless. I applied anyway. Well, I was wrong. I've had many interviews from that platform and so my last two jobs have been fully remote companies. The compensation has been even better than what I get locally (Portland, OR). It seems there is still a strong desire for experienced professionals and cultural fit; both of which many candidates don't posses. Despite the immense number of applications these companies received, they still complained that good talent and good personalities are hard to come by. What that tells me is even an average Joe like me doesn't need to worry about "anyone taking my job" because there's always a demand for it somewhere that's not being fulfilled.
  • josho 6y ago
    I appreciate your short term perspective, and agree with you that today remote work doesn't have these fears. However, the author is thinking about a longer time horizon. As an example, with agreements between Canada/US and similar culture it would be very easy for your company to start hiring remote workers in Canada. Suddenly due to currency differences their salaries are 30% cheaper, and with a strong social safety & gov. subsidies likely even cheaper for similar talent. Then some time later after your company has had success with some international workers they branch out farther and hire a few juniors from South America in the same time zone. Repeat this cycle over the next decade and now salaries have been eroded even for high paying information workers. I'm starting to feel globalization is a race to the bottom for everyone but the owners.
    • sb52191 6y ago
      But then there's nothing stopping American workers from moving to cheaper COL places and still competing for these jobs. And with reduction in salary costs, the product becomes cheaper as well, meaning more people have access to it and (potentially) opening up new opportunities than before. I'm not saying it's going to be a completely painless process, but I'm far more optimistic about the ultimate end point.
• jorblumesea 6y ago
  Anyone who has ever worked with off shore teams or international engineering offices knows that it's not technical skill, but things like communication, cultural norms, expectations, requirements, project management. So while it's true that "anyone can take your job" the reality is that it's harder than you think. Companies have already had the ability to outsource talent for decades. It's proven much less beneficial than anticipated. Everyone has had "that email" from an overseas office where it makes little to no sense. Or, that code review that completely misses the feature request. Remote work will not change that significantly. Companies might be more distributed, if they can make the organizational structure work. But moving to a "remote focused" organizational is an incredible amount of work and hard to execute properly.
• gregkerzhner 6y ago
  Real time, remote communication through tools like zoom, slack, and lucidchart (in my humble opinion) has been solved. It might take some getting used to, but in the right environment a group of properly motivated individuals can achieve the same productivity as their peers in a conference room. Asynchronous communication across timezones has not been solved, and I struggle to see how it would be. A lot of collaboration requires a conversation and instant feedback from another party. You can't collaborate like this when there is a delay of 8 hours instead of 8 seconds between responses. So "anywhere" is a bit of a stretch. That being said, absolutely this will happen across the United States. There is nothing that makes developers in San Francisco more talented than their counterparts living in Tennessee, so if those can be gotten cheaper, I can see how the overall price would go down. Presumably though, such an effect would also cause rents and property values to go down in big cities. I can see how the natural evolution of such an idea is that wealth will be more evenly spread out throughout the country, instead of being concentrated in cities. I still think the Facebooks and Googles will pay a lot more - someone has to be the "top dog" attracting the top talent. The question is, how much more?
  • ed25519FUUU 6y ago
    > Real time, remote communication through tools like zoom, slack, and lucidchart (in my humble opinion) has been solved. It might take some getting used to, but in the right environment a group of properly motivated individuals can achieve the same productivity as their peers in a conference room. What is not solved, of course, is how a remote-only employee can build trust and relationships with peers. In my opinion that’s the reason a lot of remote work is working well right now. Everybody already knows each other.
    • wolco 6y ago
      Through projects? I'm working remotely and it's the same as in person. First few months is about everyone feeling each other out once you understand more you give people more trust in those areas.
      • 6y ago
• dnissley 6y ago
  Any reason someone better suited for it shouldn't be able to take my job?
  • JacksonGariety 6y ago
    The idea is that they will accept significantly lower pay and do the job well enough to get by. Then again, what's wrong with that? Theoretically it just levels the playing field. The real inequality is higher up the food chain anyway...
• ken 6y ago
  And non-remote work means a virus already did.
• Noos 6y ago
  I think you can see this in something like commission art. If you wanted to draw commission artwork for a book cover or what have you, you now compete with almost everyone in the world; there are plenty of russian or south american artists for example who have both stunning quality and lower prices. If the job is something that is task-based and doesn't really require as much real-time communication on demand, yeah I can see this happening. I think HN always tends to focus on being the best, and much less on "it's good enough."
• globular-toast 6y ago
  No they can't. They don't have the experience that I have. They can't possibly have it because they don't already work for the company I work for. I think some people in "the valley" are starting to brick it knowing that they'll be competing with people with far lower salary demands from around the world. But really the only think you'll have to worry about if your job goes remote is having to move somewhere more affordable.
• drawkbox 6y ago
  Remote work also means companies can get the best people for that company anywhere. Remote work means life changes can happen and you can retain the best people for that company. With jobs and life, changes happen, people move, have families, want to be close to family, want to change scenery, get a new significant other, go to school, buy a house, all of these things can mean you might have to quit if you have to physically always be in the office. Even when companies have remote/different city offices, virtual communication is very important anyways. Clients and customers are almost always remote with some sprinkled in meetings but mostly virtual communication and communication through the work. Companies would be wise to switch to remote first thinking and processes with a focus on virtual communication and a nice to have of physical meetups, integration sessions etc. Remote work helps companies focus on their external view not just their internal machinations. For truly unique talents and workers, location has never really mattered.
• code4tee 6y ago
  Yes, but with caveats. This is what happened with call centers in the US which broadly went to places like India with big outsourcing firms. That back-fired big time when the quality of service went to crap with companies rushing to bring these services back home. Similar stories with tech outsourcing. There are things that have been successfully outsourced some functions to places like India, but there’s also a reason why high performing companies actually don’t seem to offshore key IP development efforts. The labor might be cheap but the true cost of bad quality is sky high. So this will happen to an extent but cost can’t be the only factor driving decisions if the goal is long term success.
  • non-entity 6y ago
    > That back-fired big time when the quality of service went to crap with companies rushing to bring these services back home. Ofc now many of these have gone to crap again now with full automation.
• ravenstine 6y ago
  Anyone can already take your job. Since there is a growing number of businesses that are accepting remote work, that means that more potential work is available to remote workers. Seems like people are trying to justify their preference for working in an office. Not to diss those people, but remote workers know the kind of position they are in if more people work remotely. Personally, I'd rather live in a world where I'm not so dependent on one particular employer, and where I can change jobs without having to worry about moving away from friends and family. Who cares if someone can "take my job"? Businesses already outsource to other parts of the world where labor is cheap, and they get what they pay for most of the time.
• elicash 6y ago
  Remote Work Means Anyone Can Give You A Job
• delphinius81 6y ago
  Article doesn't cover the fact that many companies are not setup to deal with taxation issues related to payroll for foreign employees. There's opportunity for a payroll company to step in there and make this less painful, but tax reporting will always be a barrier.
• bachmeier 6y ago
  > Now, you can either hire someone from San Francisco and subsidize their obscene rent, or you can hire someone from Omaha. You can get the same work done, but cheaper. What would you choose? This depends on the assumption that there's a big supply of workers in Omaha that are able to step in and do the job. I'm an outsider, but I'd guess that the people worth $600,000 Facebook salaries are already living there and working for Facebook. And then there's the question of whether those jobs are the ones that can be done remote as well as in a specific location. You have to ask why, if there were such big savings on the table, these companies hadn't already moved in this direction. I don't think it's as clear-cut as many are making this out to be.
  • imsofuture 6y ago
    > I'm an outsider, but I'd guess that the people worth $600,000 Facebook salaries are already living there. Myopic
  • protonimitate 6y ago
    Yup, all these op-eds reek of FUD. I also think people are overestimating the impact that FAANG going full remote will have on the tech world. I know that they're trend setters, but a lot of companies have already been operating full remote/remote friendly and offering perfectly fine wages. I really only see net-positive from this cultural shift. Frankly its obscene that location matters more than talent currently.
  • jasondigitized 6y ago
    Within software at least, there are simply more people that have significant 'clock time' working within well run software companies in San Francisco, Seattle, Austin, etc. It's no different than college football players that spend their four years in well run systems that run pro style offenses. Sure, there may be a kid that has insane athletic ability that is playing at Calhoun Community College, but someone like Jerry Juedy ( wide receiver for Alabama ) is the player that the Denver Broncos will choose if they can get him. There simply aren't as many well run software companies in Omaha as there are in Seattle. And one could argue that the best free agents are going to be the ones coming out of those cities who can command higher market rates because companies believe there is higher ROI.
• knorker 6y ago
  … and you can take anyone's job.
• takizawa11 6y ago
  The article also ignores the legal and tax implications of outsourcing work. At least currently, you can't just hire individuals from other countries indiscriminately.
  • dragandj 6y ago
    You can’t hire them as employees, but you can absolutely hire them to perform tasks that you pay them for. For some types of tasks it’s even better for both sides becausethere’s less obligations and overhead expenses.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• johnward 6y ago
  "Everyone would have to sit two meters apart, which means two times the square feet, which means two times the rent." Ugh. If the office isn't already sitting me 6 feet apart from someone then I don't want to work there.
  • BryanBigs 6y ago
    Before we left,a former employer was about to force my team (with allin probably average individual compensation of $600000) from 81sq foot cubes to rows of connected desks of 36" width. This in a city with $20sq ft office rental rates. The official name of the model of the desk layout: the harvest table. That was the catalyst to begin looking for a new home...
• troughway 6y ago
  You can "solve" the timezone issue by having chain of command changes. Think about all those distributed teams that are all over the place, how do they work? They've been doing this for years now, are successful, and they must have done something right. From what I have seen: reporting structures are different, team sizes tend to be smaller. In some circumstances, particular cities have "hubs" for employees if anything needs to be done on-site. It's not rocket surgery, it's not blindly obvious either, but there is a solution here. I don't like the tone of these articles because they have such a negative, fear-porn driven bait title that it mars whatever good wisdom the author wants to impart.
• kriro 6y ago
  I'm looking down at my half full glass and all I can think is....fantastic news. Remote work means I can take any job I want.
• toohotatopic 6y ago
  It should be "Anyone _Could_ Take Your Job" It's the Jevons_paradox [1]. More available workers will lead to more demand for workers. It's a two edged sword. Unlike unskilled labour, remote workers can switch employers, too. This turns an employer market into a worker market. Actually it is even true for unskilled if there is a local surplus of unskilled work. The world is essentially in an intelligence war for resources. No player can pass on brain soldiers. We see a decline in wages because there are still people not connected to the internet. I would expect that once that transition period is over, remote work becomes a liability to a company. Companies will have to create unique and enticing work environments to bind workers. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
• this_na_hipster 6y ago
  Assuming a theoretical point of view as pointed by the article, there are multiple pieces still missing in my head. Lets say a traditional software team has these 5 types of people: - Design / XD - Software Engineer - Software Manager - Product Manager - Data analyst or Data Scientist If you assume all of these roles can be collaborated on a async basis and from within different timezones - that makes progress extremely slow right? Someone emails, someone has a question, someone has a clarification, etc. Now if we assume same locale, that drastically changes the game since everyone can communicate at the same time even if remote. Therefore, my point#1 is, a global distributed teams that are across time zones really don't make sense. Keeping in line with the article, let's say a company decides to outsource all these different professions. That would mean, you're even outsourcing management, people that need to oversee are needed to the same region. How high does one go? All the way to directors of each respective field or Vice President? Maybe we go as far as till we reach an owner for a service or product for that region. This is what happens basically today (pre-covid). Each region has a focus in a deliverable. India team is working on X, China team is working on Y, etc. So point#2, outsourcing has to happen not only for people that are executing work, but for people that are overseeing the execution as well. That finally gets me to the last point. If we have these vertical's of people localized to specific regions, you cannot have specific outsourcing of jobs. You would need a batch outsourcing of jobs from IC's to managers. However, each region a company is in, requires locale specific folks to solve specific problems. Amazon US is very different than Amazon India pay after you receive package, for example. So my point#3, I don't believe we will see too much of a shift for jobs to other countries. We might see a shift in jobs from California to Texas for example. By now, you might understand where i'm going :-). If you hired enough of a presence in mid-west, suddenly, you now have a pool of candidates that competitors, and other companies can also hire from. You as a company, unless you can spin an entirely new vertical, will back-fill employees from the mid-west again since the remaining team is located in that region. Thereby creating a pocket of talent. Enough pockets of talents will create many companies that want to hire that talent. This is what we effectively have today in major cities. The only difference is, you have a larger area vs a smaller city.
• hindsightbias 6y ago
  Lets see everyones release schedules so far this year. And this is with your A-team. No doubt hiring out cheaper will bring the synergy and velocity organizations pine for. We should all be writing stuff like this to kneecap our competitors.
• deagle50 6y ago
  I moved into sales partly as a hedge against this. It doesn't help much now as nobody is taking in-person meetings but I suspect (and hope) that companies will still prefer to hire account teams in close proximity to their customers.
  • justQandA 6y ago
    This is an interesting angle. Did you move from software development to sales? Is this technical sales, "Sales engineer", or something different? I'm curious how one transitions without any sales experience.
    • deagle50 6y ago
      Yep, sales engineer. I was a infrastructure consultant and SRE before that. It happened through meeting the sales teams of the vendors I worked with. Eventually one of them asked me if I wanted to apply for a sales engineer role. He then referred me and vouched. Always be nice to your vendors and partners.
• wildmanx 6y ago
  The basic premise of this post is "the key edge that you have over your worldwide competition is that you are local". That premise is false, or at least heavily overblown. If the only detail barring you from working for a company which otherwise totally really would hire you, then there are often times way around this already. I moved half-way around the world for my current job. My competition was therefore people from all over the world. My job won't be "taken" by "anyone" now more than pre-Covid.
• jandrewrogers 6y ago
  A lesson learned in other markets applies here: you can avoid a race to the bottom by effectively competing in one of the many dimensions other than price. If you don't want to be a commodity, you have to be able to answer the question of what is the one thing you do better than almost anyone else, and sell that. Geographical proximity isn't a great answer in a market where everyone is going remote. It doesn't even need to be technical in nature for a developer. Different companies place inordinate value on different things, so it is partly a game of matching your exceptional dimensions to companies that place a lot of value on those dimensions. How many people here are using the cheapest laptop that will technically do the job? The developers that are at risk are those that are "average" in every dimension that an employer might care about.
• huffmsa 6y ago
  Means I can take anyone's job.
• blunte 6y ago
  Oh the irony.
• rootusrootus 6y ago
  This thought isn't new. The company I work for now has been around a while, and they went through an entire phase of remote work. They have walked it back lately. We still have plenty of people working from various corners of the country, but new hires are on site at one of our office locations. I won't be surprised to see a renewed push for remote work, but the tools are still pretty mediocre compared to in person collaboration, so I also won't be surprised to see some pushback as organizational leaders decide getting people in a room is worth paying extra for.
• 29athrowaway 6y ago
  Anyone can take your job? Not so fast. - People on the same or adjacent timezones, or people willing to adapt to another vastly different timezone. - People with language fluency and proficiency. - People that can pass an interview. Apply those 3 filters and the pool of people to pick from is greatly reduced.
• Hokusai 6y ago
  Bold flashy predictions usually fail. The main threat to your job is today the same that it was last year. China is growing its influence and technical capacity. TikTok could have been an American (or European, ...) company with American employees, it is not. It’s easier to create a company in China and produce software there than to hire individual developers. That may work for very small companies with special needs, but it’s very inefficient. If Chinese citizens are allowed to purchase American video games, hire AWS and Azure services, etc. then it is not a big deal. Other wise the draining of jobs will continue like has been happening for the pas two decades. Another option is to be more protective of critical industries. As the pandemic shows how vulnerable is the west in the supply chain. I expect a future similar to what we had one year ago. With some more jobs moving to China and some light increase in protectionism to avoid too much job bleeding.
• ArtDev 6y ago
  Remote work means you can take anyone's job. Without having to move to a crappy US city where they can't find any talent. I have been a remote contractor for 7+ years so, for me, this is a great thing!
• Justsignedup 6y ago
  I have a strong opinion on this, but it starts at a lower level... A good developer is a developer that makes themselves obsolete. By making themselves obsolete the developer has made themselves invaluable. How can both of those things be true? This is basically because you find that great developers write code and patterns that make it easy for anyone to jump in an understand. Even if complicated. I strive to do this as much as possible. The more I do this the faster development becomes for myself and my team. However the more I do this, the more my team leads realize that without me, things won't progress in the right direction. But theoretically they can fire me any time and find a cheaper worker to do my job. The point is, I see lots of managers treat engineers as commodities. However if that is their outlook, then they will always look to outsource because they see no value in you. Good managers realize that things are smooth and maintainable because of the people who put effort into doing that, not that because things are smooth and maintainable everyone is expandable. Every time I see the latter being the mindset there's always a HUGE slowdown because the wrong things start being built.
  • runawaybottle 6y ago
    I think the thing you are describing might be seen as a scalar quantity by management. They may just see speed, and not why something is fast. This is unfortunate because if they are operating with scalar conversions then you might misleadingly believe they see the why and how, but in reality are just seeing the what (price or speed or quantity, but not value, impact).
    • Justsignedup 6y ago
      well yes, however good management works to check up on that. it is foolish to assume everything is smooth because it is smooth, you want to know why things are going well just like you want to know why they are not. at a high level this is really hard to know. but it is important to know who your talent is, otherwise you replace the talent. many in upper management assume engineering is like factory work, which is how you end up with the most terrible software and no path to fix it :(
  • luckylion 6y ago
• k__ 6y ago
  Why? I wasn't running around begging companies to hire me, they came to me and asked if I'd work for them.
• tagami 6y ago
  2 meters apart means 4x the square feet, not 2x
• jmspring 6y ago
  Despite a market for cheap labor, especially around CRAuD apps, companies doing complex things require a certain level of experience and skill. Outsourcing firms thrive on having one “knowledgeable” person who interfaces with a client, and a bunch of cheap worker bees behind that person. Generally the quality and deliverable are influenced by how much you sit on top of and manage them. As for low caliber remote talent taking jobs, the same applies... there will be certainly a threshold where that can happen. At a certain point, though, experience and competence are necessary. That could be anywhere, but it’s hard to amass such remotely.
• kemiller 6y ago
  Timezone and cultural compatibility still matter, as we've collectively discovered over the last 30 years. Offshoring was already happening before this and will continue to do so, but there will remain demand for people onshore. Presumably the world will eventually have enough software developers, but it's showing no signs of it in the foreseeable future.
• buboard 6y ago
  There is only one way out of it: Regulation. So far, entities have been gatekeeping people into SV: at first it was stanford degrees, later it's just relocation to SV. With that gone, there s no other route than regulation, like so many other professions.
• znpy 6y ago
  this article is paywalled.
• shanemhansen 6y ago
  This topic comes up so much and there's such a variety of misconceptions. Everyone thinks they are an expert despite mixing up basic terms. (remote/outsource/offshore) For the last 12 years or so I've worked extensively in all arrangements and here's what you need to know. Outsource: Generally this conflates 2 actions. One is paying for a cheaper labor market. The second is paying for less skilled people. Most of the projected cost savings come from the latter. Most of those projected cost savings don't appear. I remember folks hiring $10/hr DBAs in India and the result was about what you'd expect. India is full of great DBAs and they ain't charging $10/hr or at least they haven't for a long time. It is the case that you can access a cheaper labor pool. Most people do this and then negate that savings by not creating a remote-first culture and introducing massive language and time zone barriers and friction due to multiple companies interacting. Offshoring: The key difference here is that these are part of your company. In the US it's totally possible to set up an office in central/south america in-timezone and staff it with amazing people and save some money. Well, except for most of those folks who are willing to relocate will eventually accept offers with FANG companies either locally or relocate. So it's a nice scheme while it works. (Hi to all my tico friends now at Google and Amazon) Remote: this is what most people confuse for the above two things. Remote is about doing 2 things. 1) Expanding your hiring pool beyond a 30 minute commute from your office (turns out that the other 99.99% of the world's population also has some great folks). 2) Making your company culture remote-first. But that's synonymous with writing things down and documenting things. Sure interpersonal relationships can be trickier to bootstrap and that's a real cost. But see #1, nobody talks about that cost. The final thing to keep in mind is that for most big companies, there's no way to avoid the remote cost. As soon as you open up an office in another location you're a remote company. Hell, as many people can attest as soon as you ask people to attend meetings on another floor or an adjacent building you find out you're a remote company.
• KoftaBob 6y ago
  It also means the supply of jobs available to you will greatly increase, as you won't be limited to positions location in the area/areas you can live. For some reason, so many of these articles and blogposts only factor in the increased supply of applicants, and completely ignore the other side of the coin. I think this will lead to a new equilibrium that's beneficial to both parties. Companies based in the bay area won't be forced to keep salaries in line with the astronomical cost of living there, while job seekers outside of the bay area who can't or don't want to move there, will now have access to high paying jobs that they previously didn't.
• mister_hn 6y ago
  The biggest change will be that anyone who is cheaper will take your job but low price means usually less quality. Let's fight against lower salaries once for all.
• runawaybottle 6y ago
  I think software developers need to think about this obsessively because we don’t want to get blind sided like cab drivers were with ride sharing.
• royaltheartist 6y ago
  Nobody ever "takes" anyone else's job. Management makes the decision to fire some workers and hire others to save costs. And they'll keep doing this to save more and more money. As long as every company is driven by their rapacious desire for profit, they will continue to screw over workers to net more for themselves. Thinking in terms of another worker taking something from you lets the decisions of those above you off the hook.
• atemerev 6y ago
  And this is good. Why you should hold yourself invulnerable when there is talent and competition? I lived and worked in 6 different countries; I am all for diversity.
• A4ET8a8uTh0 6y ago
  Eh, my boss's boss not that long ago suggested that if I really want to quit, they won't have a problem replacing me. His statement is technically true, but then a new person would have to go through the same training and it would take time before they were competent even if they already had experience in the same domain. Remote does mean the pool of candidates expanded, which sucks for me as that usually means my salary has a potential to go down, but the overall skill set did not change. It is not that cannot be replicated, but it does require training, which most businesses avoid like a plague these days. edit: But then I am in banking, which is its own little world.
  • koheripbal 6y ago
    Most company geographic re-alignments happen through attrition - which averages around 10% per year (+/- 5% by industry). A company could move a large chunk of its workforce to lower cost locations in only a couple of years without the need for layoffs.
• taylodl 6y ago
  There's a negative way of looking at things. Another way of looking at it is remote work means I can take anyone's job!
• danans 6y ago
  The article title is intentionally click-baity. The extent to which it's true entirely depends on what "your job" is. Routine, non-creative work that can be performed asynchronously, with limited contact with others - the tech equivalent of craft piecework - sure, that can usually be done from anywhere: things like answering (simple) tech support requests, maintaining a static codebase with no new requirements, or implementing a feature for which the requirements and technical design have already been specified by others. Having myself worked on teams that located such tasks in lower-cost-of-labor regions, I can attest that most of those cost savings have already been realized. But creative work, like proposing the problems to solve in the first place, facilitating the discussion of how to solve them, and designing the technical and human solution - especially for problems at the intersection of technology and culture - those are not easily shifted to remote work. If the outsourced/remote worker is competent enough to work in that kind of capacity remotely, they will cost as much the non-remote worker.
• ilaksh 6y ago
  That's one of the reasons I outsourced myself to Mexico and adopted a lifestyle that works with a Mexican salary. Lol.
• ozim 6y ago
  If you ignore trust and need for stable income then maybe. Companies don't hire people remote first and especially junior people. Now it will be even harder for junior people to get a job, any job, companies will stick to who they have and even fire some. Employees don't want to work with company on the other side of globe, because company might just cut them off with no pay and what they are going to do? How do you sue a company from another continent? There is also a lot more in terms of laws and regulations, where even hiring people from another country in EU is not just "hire and forget". Last note, there are people who want to live in high expense areas, want to live in big cities because that is a lifestyle they like. I see on HN that mostly people argue like everyone would like to live in some forgotten small town only to pay less rent. I am not big fan of big cities but somehow I like to have a cinema or selection of pubs bigger that one or two.
  • blaser-waffle 6y ago
    > Last note, there are people who want to live in high expense areas, want to live in big cities because that is a lifestyle they like. I see on HN that mostly people argue like everyone would like to live in some forgotten small town only to pay less rent. I am not big fan of big cities but somehow I like to have a cinema or selection of pubs bigger that one or two. +1 for this. I've been 100% remote 5+ years now and I regularly contemplate going rural -- like far, far away rural -- but always hesitate because the lack of amenities and things to do is fairly limited. Fear of losing a job and not being able to get another remote gig is also a concern; being near-ish to a big city gives me some fallback options.
• sequoia 6y ago
  > If you’re working on Wi-Fi at home, that means your job is literally up in the air. This statement is hyperbolic and meaningless enough that I'm comfortable calling it "stupid." I've been working remotely for a long time and guess what? I moved to a big city to be closer to jobs. I am a US citizen and well qualified but I can tell you from experience most employers do not want to hire remotes. Anyone who thinks you can just replace your colocated North American dev team with lower-cost employees across Asia must not have tried doing this. I've worked with highly qualified, competent programmers in India whom I respect and admire, and communication & timezones were still major issues. How do you establish the rapport you need to resolve disagreements and come to compromises with someone you've never met? How to you collaborate with a team 13.5 hours apart from you in time? Furthermore, having worked in highly cross-cultural and international teams for a good amount of time (even colocated in an office) I can tell you that language/English proficiency is not some non-issue, it can be a big issue. I went into a recent job with the attitude of "language issues are no big deal! We can make it work" but over a couple years of running a team it became clear that having a team comprised of people with varied levels of English abilities and from different countries is a big deal. Think of how difficult it can be to resolve interpersonal conflicts and miscommunications with your coworkers, then imagine the two parties don't share a native tongue and multiply the number of miscommunications by 10, then multiply that by the number of non-native speakers/learners on the team. [content warning: bad metaphor] It's like carrying around a beanbag chair–it doesn't seem hard for a few minutes but do it all day for a week and I promise it will become exhausting. As a side-note, hiring in South America for North American teams is cheaper & can still be same timezone (and easier to fly in!); I think there's a lot of growth potential there.
• INTPenis 6y ago
  This is a loaded topic. On one hand I do work for a large European enterprise with a branch in India. I know for a fact that it adds a lot of social and cultural overhead to co-operate with a remote branch who barely speak English. They're great for specific tasks, like 24/7 ops and monitoring. As long as there are clear instructions. On the other hand I'm an idealist at heart who believes that borders should go away and we should work together as one world. But it might be a bit too naive to think that utopia is around the corner just because IT techs are working remotely. So I'd have to say that OP is wrong. For more than one reason. We're also contractually obliged to hire citizens for certain private sector clients. And in some cases we have to go even further and security rate them. But regardless of my experiences there will always be people who shine and hopefully get picked up by a remote employer who treats them well. Our branch might be ~60 people, I've worked with only a handfull of them for 3 years and still managed to meet one or two who really went above and beyond to show that they cared about their work.
• toss1 6y ago
  >"Remote work means anyone can take your job" It also means you can take anyone else's job It is up to us to provide better value than competitors It is up to managers to recognize that value is barely related to initial cost/sticker price/hourly rate Time will tell how those trends sort
• Barrin92 6y ago
  People are arguing a lot about if the claims in the post are true or not but I feel like this misses the point. Assuming they're all true that's still a good thing. I expect competitiveness in every sector of the economy I don't work in, so I have to measure myself by the same standards. If someone can do my work for less money, hire them. We can talk about welfare for displaced workers but employment isn't charity, the best worker who can do the work for the least amount of money should do it, and we're all better off. Removing geography and mobility as a limiting factor is a boon for innovation. It will give an unprecedented amount of people a shot at a great job. Not to mention that increased competiton for existing jobs will create a huge incentive for entrepreneurship. Without all those cozy well paying tech jobs lined up, there's a real incentive to starting your own company.
• technick 6y ago
  I don't think much changes for most people in technology. We've always had cross hairs on our back when working at companies without values.
• mbrodersen 6y ago
  Remote work means you can quit any time and get a better job.