5 ms·

I'm not sure about more job opportunities in the future, remote work is going to accelerate jobs moving out to lower wage countries and put downward pressure on

I'm not sure about more job opportunities in the future, remote work is going to accelerate jobs moving out to lower wage countries and put downward pressure on salaries here.

cpach 6y ago
People has been saying that for twenty years. Yes, some jobs are now done in India, Romania, etc. At the same time the pie has expanded.
- bosswipe 6y ago
  I don't see how you can rely on the past to predict massive historic trend shifts in the workplace. Previously offshoring created an in-group and an out-group with shitty communication between them. Post-pandemic everybody is in the same virtual group with the same shitty communication tools.
- rtlfe 6y ago
  It's a lot easier for a bay area company to successfully have remote workers in Idaho than in Romania. The time difference is minimal, cultural differences are less, and it's easy for the person to visit the office.
- vkou 6y ago
  "Sure, some manufacturing is being done in China now, but the total amount of manufacturing has expanded." -Some soon to be unemployed factory worker in what is now known as the rust belt, circa 1988.
  - cpach 6y ago
    Time will tell. PS. Even now, not all manufacturing is done in China.
wildrhythms 6y ago
If the only incentive to source talent locally was having butts in seats in an office building, what does that say about the current state of office jobs? Sincere question.
- derefr 6y ago
  It's not butts-in-seats per se; rather, it's middle-managers being able to create backchannel fiefdoms to increase the leverage they have over rivals. "People who trust only you" is to managers as "code nobody else understands" is to engineers: job security, and a springboard for making you look like a hero and so getting you recognition/promotions. And it's hard to develop relationships like that, if you can't just wander over to those people and have in-person (i.e. not on-the-record in the company's logs) conversations. To exactly the degree that your company resembles a feudalist society, you'll see managers excited to have their own physically distinct office units/departments/working groups, where they can most-effectively hoard and develop private talent pools on the company's dime. And you'll see them heavily resist anything that makes that talent-pool of theirs less private, e.g. WFH, cross-departmental collaboration, "war rooms" during emergencies, etc.
tdfx 6y ago
I don't expect this to be true in the short to medium term, as the large shift would take place in larger companies who have already attempted this and demonstrated quite clearly that they do not know how to outsource work to lower cost countries. There are certainly opportunities where workers in developing countries can do the same job for substantially less money, but very few companies do the hard work of really integrating these workers with their existing teams so it's just colonialism 2.0 where westerners who are trusted by management are told to create robotic tasks for the cheap labor in such a way that no one can meaningfully fuck it up. It creates a predictable result. On more of a 25-50 year perspective, it has always been impossible for the majority of the world to be lifted out of poverty without those people eventually competing with us. The 20th century economic advantage and resulting broad equality of prosperity in the US and western Europe was a historical fluke of right place, right time that will likely never be repeated. I expect developed countries to start looking a lot more like developing countries do now in terms of economic equality.
fridek 6y ago
Maybe, but I'd theorise a big part of the outsourcing trend has reached its economic conclusion by now. I started my career in Poland, just before the foreign startups decided it's an interesting market to outsource to. A number of US owned startups and medium-sized tech companies started offering salaries 2-3x higher than the local firms. I moved from a place where my last conversation was "No web developer can hope for more than $4/h rate, come on" to, well, a $10/h place. A lot of this was made easier by EU, a lot was just US companies being encouraged by the economic growth, stability and the prospect of saving the half of their bottom line. With salaries at ~$20-30k a year everyone was happier than before. Then a natural thing happened, the market became increasingly competitive. Ten years later, a good senior developer in Poland could earn $60k, but crucially, costed the company close to $100k due to employer taxes and other costs of running business. Some companies are fine with it, but some understand that it's ever closer to what an employee in their HQ costs, and some are slowing down the growth or moving out alltogether. Surprise, over-the-pond communication is not so easy even on a good day, and there are cultural differences to deal with too. Some moved further east, I'm curious to see how that plays out. Going back to the remote work pushing down the salaries, I think that's unlikely to be the reason, because lower wage locations are rarely saving that much in the long run. Maybe we see a temporary dip, but I also look forward to moving out of big city and lowering my cost of living. What I think is more likely is that the economy shrinks and the endless supply of engineering jobs dries out, moving us back to employer's market. That can have all kinds of ripple effects on the local and outsourced jobs.
- abhayb 6y ago
  This is what I hear out of Bangalore too. Maybe even further? Like you can command Valley level comp (or at least base+bonus) if you can clear the right hurdles. Though maybe in Poland too, the issue is that there are far more people one rung down. Cut distance from from 110m to 100m and suddenly there's a lot more competition
imtringued 6y ago
If they could do the same job with the same amount of skill they would charge as much as you do.

I'm not sure about more job opportunities in the future, remote work is going to accelerate jobs moving out to lower wage countries and put downward pressure on salaries here.

cpach 6y ago

People has been saying that for twenty years. Yes, some jobs are now done in India, Romania, etc. At the same time the pie has expanded.

bosswipe 6y ago
I don't see how you can rely on the past to predict massive historic trend shifts in the workplace. Previously offshoring created an in-group and an out-group with shitty communication between them. Post-pandemic everybody is in the same virtual group with the same shitty communication tools.
rtlfe 6y ago
It's a lot easier for a bay area company to successfully have remote workers in Idaho than in Romania. The time difference is minimal, cultural differences are less, and it's easy for the person to visit the office.
vkou 6y ago
"Sure, some manufacturing is being done in China now, but the total amount of manufacturing has expanded." -Some soon to be unemployed factory worker in what is now known as the rust belt, circa 1988.
- cpach 6y ago
  Time will tell. PS. Even now, not all manufacturing is done in China.

wildrhythms 6y ago

If the only incentive to source talent locally was having butts in seats in an office building, what does that say about the current state of office jobs? Sincere question.

derefr 6y ago
It's not butts-in-seats per se; rather, it's middle-managers being able to create backchannel fiefdoms to increase the leverage they have over rivals. "People who trust only you" is to managers as "code nobody else understands" is to engineers: job security, and a springboard for making you look like a hero and so getting you recognition/promotions. And it's hard to develop relationships like that, if you can't just wander over to those people and have in-person (i.e. not on-the-record in the company's logs) conversations. To exactly the degree that your company resembles a feudalist society, you'll see managers excited to have their own physically distinct office units/departments/working groups, where they can most-effectively hoard and develop private talent pools on the company's dime. And you'll see them heavily resist anything that makes that talent-pool of theirs less private, e.g. WFH, cross-departmental collaboration, "war rooms" during emergencies, etc.

tdfx 6y ago

I don't expect this to be true in the short to medium term, as the large shift would take place in larger companies who have already attempted this and demonstrated quite clearly that they do not know how to outsource work to lower cost countries. There are certainly opportunities where workers in developing countries can do the same job for substantially less money, but very few companies do the hard work of really integrating these workers with their existing teams so it's just colonialism 2.0 where westerners who are trusted by management are told to create robotic tasks for the cheap labor in such a way that no one can meaningfully fuck it up. It creates a predictable result. On more of a 25-50 year perspective, it has always been impossible for the majority of the world to be lifted out of poverty without those people eventually competing with us. The 20th century economic advantage and resulting broad equality of prosperity in the US and western Europe was a historical fluke of right place, right time that will likely never be repeated. I expect developed countries to start looking a lot more like developing countries do now in terms of economic equality.

fridek 6y ago

Maybe, but I'd theorise a big part of the outsourcing trend has reached its economic conclusion by now. I started my career in Poland, just before the foreign startups decided it's an interesting market to outsource to. A number of US owned startups and medium-sized tech companies started offering salaries 2-3x higher than the local firms. I moved from a place where my last conversation was "No web developer can hope for more than $4/h rate, come on" to, well, a $10/h place. A lot of this was made easier by EU, a lot was just US companies being encouraged by the economic growth, stability and the prospect of saving the half of their bottom line. With salaries at ~$20-30k a year everyone was happier than before. Then a natural thing happened, the market became increasingly competitive. Ten years later, a good senior developer in Poland could earn $60k, but crucially, costed the company close to $100k due to employer taxes and other costs of running business. Some companies are fine with it, but some understand that it's ever closer to what an employee in their HQ costs, and some are slowing down the growth or moving out alltogether. Surprise, over-the-pond communication is not so easy even on a good day, and there are cultural differences to deal with too. Some moved further east, I'm curious to see how that plays out. Going back to the remote work pushing down the salaries, I think that's unlikely to be the reason, because lower wage locations are rarely saving that much in the long run. Maybe we see a temporary dip, but I also look forward to moving out of big city and lowering my cost of living. What I think is more likely is that the economy shrinks and the endless supply of engineering jobs dries out, moving us back to employer's market. That can have all kinds of ripple effects on the local and outsourced jobs.

abhayb 6y ago
This is what I hear out of Bangalore too. Maybe even further? Like you can command Valley level comp (or at least base+bonus) if you can clear the right hurdles. Though maybe in Poland too, the issue is that there are far more people one rung down. Cut distance from from 110m to 100m and suddenly there's a lot more competition

imtringued 6y ago

If they could do the same job with the same amount of skill they would charge as much as you do.