4 ms·

Removing geography from the hiring equation is going to fuck American tech workers. Once you’ve gone digital, there’s no (on paper) difference between a program

Removing geography from the hiring equation is going to fuck American tech workers. Once you’ve gone digital, there’s no (on paper) difference between a programmer in the Philippines or in Iowa except the one in Iowa is much more expensive.

twblalock 6y ago
Outsourcing failed 20 years ago and it will fail now for the same reasons it did then.
- future_unclear 6y ago
  The conditions are different now. Infrastructure is better, foreign workers are better trained, American company culture is different (ceos of Microsoft and Google both Indian), and the possibility of American workers creating political friction is becoming non-negligible.
kortilla 6y ago
Unless the workers in the Philippines are willing to work US work hours, they aren’t the same. As someone who has managed teams in India, overnight delays in feedback can easily stretch weeklong epics across months. You just can’t rapidly iterate with timezone latency like that. If your tasks are so well defined that a single feature request ticket can be fulfilled and satisfied on the first try, that’s cool but you’re likely not actually doing anything challenging and you’ve probably already outsourced to India.
- mantas 6y ago
  I did quite a bit of work little overlap. Me in Europe with clients in Japan or US west coast. Meetings on few overlapping hours and pretty much around-the-clock work was pretty good. Lots of time for deep work on both ends. If one side needs something, the other side can prepare it while former sleeps. Maybe my clients and I got lucky because little hands-on management was required and specs were quite lax? But at least in some cases it works just fine.
nanagojo 6y ago
Timezone and language skills my dude. If you are in the same timezone then it becomes much easier.
- future_unclear 6y ago
  There are millions of south Asians who’d be happy to work any hour of the day you ask them to.
  - barry-cotter 6y ago
    True, but how many of them are good programmers? The US is just better at producing them than other places. https://blogs.worldbank.org/education/who-trains-best-computer-scientists https://blogs.worldbank.org/education/who-trains-best-comput... > The United States trains the best computer graduates ― by far: We find that CS seniors in the United States substantially outperform seniors in China, India, and Russia. The average computer science student in the United States ranks higher than about 80 percent of students tested in China, India, and Russia. Seniors in elite institutions in the United States similarly outperform seniors in elite institutions in China, India, and Russia by approximately 0.85 Standard Deviations (SDs). Importantly, the skills advantage of the United States is not because it has a large proportion of high-scoring international students.
    - lawrenceyan 6y ago
      It's important to highlight that the more significant variable here is probably the quality/prestige of universities within the U.S., which in turn then attracts the best talent and students around the world, rather than the other way around.
      - telotortium 6y ago
        > Importantly, the skills advantage of the United States is not because it has a large proportion of high-scoring international students.
cryptica 6y ago
I disagree. It's going to be a net positive because it will make the stock market go up (thanks to lower production costs) and will ensure that our investments can maintain their dominant positions which will benefit everyone and will create more jobs.
gamblor956 6y ago
There are also legal and tax considerations to using a foreign programmer over a local one. Pretty quickly, many companies will discover the pitfalls to outsourcing. Among the big consequences: you lose R&D tax credits. The language and skill barrier is also pretty big; most companies that outsource end up spending so much money on QC that they barely save anything at all. It's theoretically possible to find good programmers in the Philippines as opposed to locally. But seeing as how finding local programmers is still not a solved issue, expanding the job pool to include the entire world isn't going to make that task any easier.
- beambot 6y ago
  > But seeing as how finding local programmers is still not a solved issue They've made it pretty clear that they won't be looking for local programers. They're looking domestically. Presumably, the same processes used to hire remote domestic programmers will be equally applicable for most remote non-domestic workers too.
- dheera 6y ago
  > you lose R&D tax credits Aren't those negligible compared to the salary gap?
- future_unclear 6y ago
  > Pretty quickly, many companies will discover the pitfalls to outsourcing. Probably true, however by then they will already have made the decision and it will be priced in to the company’s stock. The System is replete with the consequences of bad short-term decisions that have become more or less locked in. $200k vs $<20k. It’s an extremely large gap to be filled. Surely the people who spend their days looking at numbers on spreadsheets will see this gap and try to take as much advantage of it as they possibly can, and surely the market will reward the massive cuts in operating costs.
  - nikitaga 6y ago
    They could do outsourcing today, yesterday, and 10 years ago just as well. Nothing changed, structurally or technologically (covid is neither), for outsourcing to work better now than it used to be so far. There will always be companies who need to learn on their own how $20K developers are different from $200K developers and what investing in either means 10 years down the road. By the way, good developers with good English and good communication skills can easily earn MUCH more than $20K even today by working remotely. Already today in most countries there are almost no barriers to earning multiples of their national averages other than one's own skills and attitude. And yet dev salaries in America are as high as ever. The industry seems to be growing faster than the labour force even despite globalization, and I don't think that trend will reverse anytime soon. We're still shoving software into more places, industries, and processes, and making it all more complicated.
slykar 6y ago
You forget about the culture, work culture, mentality and education in those countries. I don't see a reason why should I make less for the same job just because I'm from a different country. What if you are a digital nomad? In the end it should be more about who YOU are, not what country you are from. I see a big difference between people from different countries even if the education level and years of experience seem to be the same. You will see difference in education even between cities. Knowing that the market is getting even more global it only encourages me to ask for more money, not less.
- tester34 6y ago
  countries? the gap between living in village in Poland and having major city 160km away where salaries are x4 and more for people with same xp[0] is already sad (and motivating) enough :P [0] measured in years of xp.
  - mantas 6y ago
    Which salaries are that different in Poland rural vs major cities? Up here in Lithuania, in IT, it's not uncommon to live (relatively) bumfucknowhere, work remotely and drive in once or twice a week.
    - tester34 6y ago
      Oh, I just realized that I've probably expressed myself kinda poorly because now it sounds as if that gap was a result of "location adjustments" I meant that "location adjustment" just increases the gap to the already existing gap made of "attractive place(big city) - bigger companies - bigger salaries" factor. >Up here in Lithuania, in IT, it's not uncommon to live (relatively) bumfucknowhere, work remotely and drive in once or twice a week. I'm not exactly aware of how common it is here
      - Tade0 6y ago
        It's very common among people working remotely through various consultancies for Roche. During my time there a typical project would have 30-40% of the personell living either in a small town or in the middle of nowhere.
travbrack 6y ago
Why wouldn't those companies use contract labor right now? There's nothing stopping them.
- mlthoughts2018 6y ago
  You could flip the question around & say, “The fact companies like this, which are mostly rational companies that have ample time & resources to research contracting or outsourcing as alternatives, and yet are choosing not to must mean the economic value of contracting and outsourcing is less than relocating long-term salaried employees.” In other words the question is, “Given that contracting and outsourcing are deemed to be worse options by rational actors, what reasons make this true?”
eru 6y ago
You'd hope the Iowan is more productive. If they are equally productive, then surely they deserve equal pay.
Tade0 6y ago
I don't think this is going to happen. Good developers all over the world know their price, demand it and get what they want because there's just so few of them. Applying the current exchange rate and American standards regarding time off I'm currently making, as a front-end dev with 8 years under his belt, $60k+ before taxes in Poland, and I'm far from the highest earner among my peers. Sure it's considerably less than the median US wage in this field, but still it's not like we're orders of magnitude away from you guys. And note that Poland is a very popular destination for outsourcing.
a_imho 6y ago
Or you can consider the reverse, it is not American tech workers who are overpaid, but remote workers who are actually underpaid. Would it be so bad if $T companies could not discriminate remote workers? https://elsajohansson.wordpress.com/2017/09/13/what-does-a-wage-gap-look-like/ https://elsajohansson.wordpress.com/2017/09/13/what-does-a-w...

twblalock 6y ago

Outsourcing failed 20 years ago and it will fail now for the same reasons it did then.

future_unclear 6y ago
The conditions are different now. Infrastructure is better, foreign workers are better trained, American company culture is different (ceos of Microsoft and Google both Indian), and the possibility of American workers creating political friction is becoming non-negligible.

kortilla 6y ago

Unless the workers in the Philippines are willing to work US work hours, they aren’t the same. As someone who has managed teams in India, overnight delays in feedback can easily stretch weeklong epics across months. You just can’t rapidly iterate with timezone latency like that. If your tasks are so well defined that a single feature request ticket can be fulfilled and satisfied on the first try, that’s cool but you’re likely not actually doing anything challenging and you’ve probably already outsourced to India.

mantas 6y ago
I did quite a bit of work little overlap. Me in Europe with clients in Japan or US west coast. Meetings on few overlapping hours and pretty much around-the-clock work was pretty good. Lots of time for deep work on both ends. If one side needs something, the other side can prepare it while former sleeps. Maybe my clients and I got lucky because little hands-on management was required and specs were quite lax? But at least in some cases it works just fine.

nanagojo 6y ago

Timezone and language skills my dude. If you are in the same timezone then it becomes much easier.

future_unclear 6y ago
There are millions of south Asians who’d be happy to work any hour of the day you ask them to.
- barry-cotter 6y ago
  True, but how many of them are good programmers? The US is just better at producing them than other places. https://blogs.worldbank.org/education/who-trains-best-computer-scientists https://blogs.worldbank.org/education/who-trains-best-comput... > The United States trains the best computer graduates ― by far: We find that CS seniors in the United States substantially outperform seniors in China, India, and Russia. The average computer science student in the United States ranks higher than about 80 percent of students tested in China, India, and Russia. Seniors in elite institutions in the United States similarly outperform seniors in elite institutions in China, India, and Russia by approximately 0.85 Standard Deviations (SDs). Importantly, the skills advantage of the United States is not because it has a large proportion of high-scoring international students.
  - lawrenceyan 6y ago
    It's important to highlight that the more significant variable here is probably the quality/prestige of universities within the U.S., which in turn then attracts the best talent and students around the world, rather than the other way around.
    - telotortium 6y ago
      > Importantly, the skills advantage of the United States is not because it has a large proportion of high-scoring international students.

cryptica 6y ago

I disagree. It's going to be a net positive because it will make the stock market go up (thanks to lower production costs) and will ensure that our investments can maintain their dominant positions which will benefit everyone and will create more jobs.

gamblor956 6y ago

There are also legal and tax considerations to using a foreign programmer over a local one. Pretty quickly, many companies will discover the pitfalls to outsourcing. Among the big consequences: you lose R&D tax credits. The language and skill barrier is also pretty big; most companies that outsource end up spending so much money on QC that they barely save anything at all. It's theoretically possible to find good programmers in the Philippines as opposed to locally. But seeing as how finding local programmers is still not a solved issue, expanding the job pool to include the entire world isn't going to make that task any easier.

beambot 6y ago
> But seeing as how finding local programmers is still not a solved issue They've made it pretty clear that they won't be looking for local programers. They're looking domestically. Presumably, the same processes used to hire remote domestic programmers will be equally applicable for most remote non-domestic workers too.
dheera 6y ago
> you lose R&D tax credits Aren't those negligible compared to the salary gap?
future_unclear 6y ago
> Pretty quickly, many companies will discover the pitfalls to outsourcing. Probably true, however by then they will already have made the decision and it will be priced in to the company’s stock. The System is replete with the consequences of bad short-term decisions that have become more or less locked in. $200k vs $<20k. It’s an extremely large gap to be filled. Surely the people who spend their days looking at numbers on spreadsheets will see this gap and try to take as much advantage of it as they possibly can, and surely the market will reward the massive cuts in operating costs.
- nikitaga 6y ago
  They could do outsourcing today, yesterday, and 10 years ago just as well. Nothing changed, structurally or technologically (covid is neither), for outsourcing to work better now than it used to be so far. There will always be companies who need to learn on their own how $20K developers are different from $200K developers and what investing in either means 10 years down the road. By the way, good developers with good English and good communication skills can easily earn MUCH more than $20K even today by working remotely. Already today in most countries there are almost no barriers to earning multiples of their national averages other than one's own skills and attitude. And yet dev salaries in America are as high as ever. The industry seems to be growing faster than the labour force even despite globalization, and I don't think that trend will reverse anytime soon. We're still shoving software into more places, industries, and processes, and making it all more complicated.

slykar 6y ago

You forget about the culture, work culture, mentality and education in those countries. I don't see a reason why should I make less for the same job just because I'm from a different country. What if you are a digital nomad? In the end it should be more about who YOU are, not what country you are from. I see a big difference between people from different countries even if the education level and years of experience seem to be the same. You will see difference in education even between cities. Knowing that the market is getting even more global it only encourages me to ask for more money, not less.

tester34 6y ago
countries? the gap between living in village in Poland and having major city 160km away where salaries are x4 and more for people with same xp[0] is already sad (and motivating) enough :P [0] measured in years of xp.
- mantas 6y ago
  Which salaries are that different in Poland rural vs major cities? Up here in Lithuania, in IT, it's not uncommon to live (relatively) bumfucknowhere, work remotely and drive in once or twice a week.
  - tester34 6y ago
    Oh, I just realized that I've probably expressed myself kinda poorly because now it sounds as if that gap was a result of "location adjustments" I meant that "location adjustment" just increases the gap to the already existing gap made of "attractive place(big city) - bigger companies - bigger salaries" factor. >Up here in Lithuania, in IT, it's not uncommon to live (relatively) bumfucknowhere, work remotely and drive in once or twice a week. I'm not exactly aware of how common it is here
    - Tade0 6y ago
      It's very common among people working remotely through various consultancies for Roche. During my time there a typical project would have 30-40% of the personell living either in a small town or in the middle of nowhere.

travbrack 6y ago

Why wouldn't those companies use contract labor right now? There's nothing stopping them.

mlthoughts2018 6y ago
You could flip the question around & say, “The fact companies like this, which are mostly rational companies that have ample time & resources to research contracting or outsourcing as alternatives, and yet are choosing not to must mean the economic value of contracting and outsourcing is less than relocating long-term salaried employees.” In other words the question is, “Given that contracting and outsourcing are deemed to be worse options by rational actors, what reasons make this true?”

eru 6y ago

You'd hope the Iowan is more productive. If they are equally productive, then surely they deserve equal pay.

Tade0 6y ago

I don't think this is going to happen. Good developers all over the world know their price, demand it and get what they want because there's just so few of them. Applying the current exchange rate and American standards regarding time off I'm currently making, as a front-end dev with 8 years under his belt, $60k+ before taxes in Poland, and I'm far from the highest earner among my peers. Sure it's considerably less than the median US wage in this field, but still it's not like we're orders of magnitude away from you guys. And note that Poland is a very popular destination for outsourcing.

a_imho 6y ago

Or you can consider the reverse, it is not American tech workers who are overpaid, but remote workers who are actually underpaid. Would it be so bad if $T companies could not discriminate remote workers? https://elsajohansson.wordpress.com/2017/09/13/what-does-a-wage-gap-look-like/ https://elsajohansson.wordpress.com/2017/09/13/what-does-a-w...