8 ms·

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.

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.