4 ms·

Only now you're competing against everyone in the world, not just everyone in your region. I can't see how this is good for the developed world.

theflyinghorse 6y ago
It's good for developers from developing world who are just as educated and just as experienced as their western counterparts. Global wage equilibrium is outright horrible for western developers
- nip180 6y ago
  Global wage equilibrium would be horrible for western labor.
  - api 6y ago
    ... for a while, but then theoretically there would be a massive amount of economic growth. Of course that only works if people all do the free trade thing. US/China broke down because the US was globalist and China was nationalist and protectionist.
  - aeternum 6y ago
    That's not clear from a historic point of view. In general the more participatory the economy, the faster quality of life improves overall. While wages may drop for the west, that should be more than offset by the rate at which goods and services become cheaper and more plentiful. Protectionists often look at only one side of the equation.
    - addicted 6y ago
      Except the US already has basically free movement of goods and services. So people are already reaping the benefits of cheaper and plentiful goods and services. The last 2 years have begun to show the massive benefits of this. The US tariffs have led to a situation where today the US has the largest net trade deficit since 2006 and is paying subsidies of over $40bn simply to keep farming afloat in the Midwest. And there has been no gain in jobs within the US or any benefit whatsoever to those tariffs. The US consumer is only paying a lot more for products they were paying a lot less for a couple of years earlier making everyone here functionally poorer.
      - aeternum 6y ago
        I generally agree that free trade is the way to go and we are reaping the benefits. In the context of free-trade however: How would you handle the intellectual property issue, can you still have free trade with a state that does not treat IP in the same way?
  - jdhn 6y ago
    Would be? Look at the manufacturing sector in the US since outsourcing started. It's an absolute shadow of its former self in terms of people employed and salaries.
- swsieber 6y ago
  I mean it's not wonderful, but timezones and native English skills are a pretty good moat.
  - kinkrtyavimoodh 6y ago
    Developer jobs need strong English, not native English. And with remote work becoming more of a thing they'd need strong written English, which is an easier threshold for lots of foreigners to clear.
  - joelbluminator 6y ago
    I think devs (not just devs, everyone) should save aggressively for rainier days. If it's not offshoring it could be automation or just plain ol economic downturn that could kill scores of jobs in the coming decades.
- nojokes 6y ago
  I think it is not as simple as that. Many companies have tried to move their development to India for example (I have a second hand anecdotal evidence from one) and it is not as simple as it seems. There are huge cultural differences, meaning what is considered not acceptable in the west is common practice somewhere else like getting degree for bribes etc. You have to know how to navigate in such environment. You may think that because your company employs people from multiple cultural backgrounds then the environment of the company is multicultural. In reality the culture of the company is most likely following the protestant work ethics (it is my generalization, there are of course variations and exceptions).
  - joelbluminator 6y ago
    Well, even in Canada / UK / Australia / Germany software developer salaries are about 50% less than in America. There's nothing in terms of workforce education or productivity dictating companies should pay the American 2x more. Offshoring is difficult for small companies to do (taxes, accountants etc) but any unicorn startup has the means to do it.
    - snicker7 6y ago
      Probably has more to do with the cost of doing business in these countries. High taxation / regulation has a real cost.
      - joelbluminator 6y ago
        I think there was no real need to cut on costs for a lot of companies. If every startup can raise 100-200 million easily because of these very low interest rates, why would they care about trying to save 10 million dollars a year in wages? Money is not a problem for them. Who needed the headache of working remote, offshoring etc? But now that some of them were forced to go remote and they saw productivity wasn't hurt, arguably maybe even improved (up for debate of course), they might rethink the whole issue.
- erik_seaberg 6y ago
  The companies found in Silicon Valley have given me problems to solve that nobody I knew in Seattle had faced. Maybe someday experience will be evenly distributed, but the industry has been concentrating it here for a long time.
im3w1l 6y ago
The company you work for is competing against companies from other parts of the world already. Except China I guess, because geopolitics. But certainly European, Indian, African ones.
wiml 6y ago
It always reminds me of that line from Snow Crash, which is set in a future when "the Invisible Hand has taken away all those historical inequities and smeared them out into a broad global layer of what a Pakistani brickmaker would consider to be prosperity".
mabbo 6y ago
There will be just as many jobs for just as many people. There aren't many places where software engineers are unemployed. What's interesting is that there are places where people are paid much less because there's so little demand for labor there- if you're the only employer of software developers in 100 miles, you can pay a pittance. And at the same time, places like Silicon Valley pay a premium for labor because there's a shortage (let's not discuss the reasons around that- I don't feel the need to drink). When the market is merged, it will be leveled. And I cannot imagine those who stay in San Francisco are going to benefit. But the brilliant developer who has been paid terribly at a small software firm in the middle of no where, who can't leave for other reasons, that developer is going to see their fortune changed for the better.
- harimau777 6y ago
  Doesn't that mean that developers will be forced out of living in desirable areas with higher costs of living?
  - athrun 6y ago
    Yes but that's part of the equilibrium I suppose. Places where current wages are low are going to see wage increases (because of higher demand / lower supply), which in turn will lead to an increase in costs of living. Places where current wages are very high are going to see downward pressure on wages (because of lower demand / higher supply), which in turn will eventually lead to a lowering of costs of living. Obviously that's valid in the "fullness of time". How long it can actually take for this new equilibrium to be fully realized is anyone's guess.
    - tincholio 6y ago
      > Places where current wages are low are going to see wage increases (because of higher demand / lower supply), which in turn will lead to an increase in costs of living. I'm not sure that there's so many SW people outside of the big tech hub areas so as to make such a difference. If they are more uniformly distributed across the country, their impact on each community will likely be negligible.
addicted 6y ago
I seriously don’t understand the argument that a remote first world would lead to a move from larger US cities to smaller US cities. If there is any mass movement that is gonna happen, why would it be from big expensive US city with a lot of different entertainment options to a smaller, still fairly expensive US city with almost no entertainment options as opposed to significantly cheaper non US large city with a lot of entertainment options? Why wouldn’t people move to someplace in Mexico, or Brazil instead? If time zones are not an issue, why not move to somewhere in Asia instead, like Bangkok, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, etc.
- _AzMoo 6y ago
  Because there's more to life than work and entertainment. There's language barriers, culinary familiarity, family ties, cultural familiarity, quality of schooling, levels of crime, etc. etc.
collyw 6y ago
Its good if you live in a country that has relatively poor pay.

theflyinghorse 6y ago

It's good for developers from developing world who are just as educated and just as experienced as their western counterparts. Global wage equilibrium is outright horrible for western developers

nip180 6y ago
Global wage equilibrium would be horrible for western labor.
- api 6y ago
  ... for a while, but then theoretically there would be a massive amount of economic growth. Of course that only works if people all do the free trade thing. US/China broke down because the US was globalist and China was nationalist and protectionist.
- aeternum 6y ago
  That's not clear from a historic point of view. In general the more participatory the economy, the faster quality of life improves overall. While wages may drop for the west, that should be more than offset by the rate at which goods and services become cheaper and more plentiful. Protectionists often look at only one side of the equation.
  - addicted 6y ago
    Except the US already has basically free movement of goods and services. So people are already reaping the benefits of cheaper and plentiful goods and services. The last 2 years have begun to show the massive benefits of this. The US tariffs have led to a situation where today the US has the largest net trade deficit since 2006 and is paying subsidies of over $40bn simply to keep farming afloat in the Midwest. And there has been no gain in jobs within the US or any benefit whatsoever to those tariffs. The US consumer is only paying a lot more for products they were paying a lot less for a couple of years earlier making everyone here functionally poorer.
    - aeternum 6y ago
      I generally agree that free trade is the way to go and we are reaping the benefits. In the context of free-trade however: How would you handle the intellectual property issue, can you still have free trade with a state that does not treat IP in the same way?
- jdhn 6y ago
  Would be? Look at the manufacturing sector in the US since outsourcing started. It's an absolute shadow of its former self in terms of people employed and salaries.
swsieber 6y ago
I mean it's not wonderful, but timezones and native English skills are a pretty good moat.
- kinkrtyavimoodh 6y ago
  Developer jobs need strong English, not native English. And with remote work becoming more of a thing they'd need strong written English, which is an easier threshold for lots of foreigners to clear.
- joelbluminator 6y ago
  I think devs (not just devs, everyone) should save aggressively for rainier days. If it's not offshoring it could be automation or just plain ol economic downturn that could kill scores of jobs in the coming decades.
nojokes 6y ago
I think it is not as simple as that. Many companies have tried to move their development to India for example (I have a second hand anecdotal evidence from one) and it is not as simple as it seems. There are huge cultural differences, meaning what is considered not acceptable in the west is common practice somewhere else like getting degree for bribes etc. You have to know how to navigate in such environment. You may think that because your company employs people from multiple cultural backgrounds then the environment of the company is multicultural. In reality the culture of the company is most likely following the protestant work ethics (it is my generalization, there are of course variations and exceptions).
- joelbluminator 6y ago
  Well, even in Canada / UK / Australia / Germany software developer salaries are about 50% less than in America. There's nothing in terms of workforce education or productivity dictating companies should pay the American 2x more. Offshoring is difficult for small companies to do (taxes, accountants etc) but any unicorn startup has the means to do it.
  - snicker7 6y ago
    Probably has more to do with the cost of doing business in these countries. High taxation / regulation has a real cost.
    - joelbluminator 6y ago
      I think there was no real need to cut on costs for a lot of companies. If every startup can raise 100-200 million easily because of these very low interest rates, why would they care about trying to save 10 million dollars a year in wages? Money is not a problem for them. Who needed the headache of working remote, offshoring etc? But now that some of them were forced to go remote and they saw productivity wasn't hurt, arguably maybe even improved (up for debate of course), they might rethink the whole issue.
erik_seaberg 6y ago
The companies found in Silicon Valley have given me problems to solve that nobody I knew in Seattle had faced. Maybe someday experience will be evenly distributed, but the industry has been concentrating it here for a long time.

im3w1l 6y ago

The company you work for is competing against companies from other parts of the world already. Except China I guess, because geopolitics. But certainly European, Indian, African ones.

wiml 6y ago

It always reminds me of that line from Snow Crash, which is set in a future when "the Invisible Hand has taken away all those historical inequities and smeared them out into a broad global layer of what a Pakistani brickmaker would consider to be prosperity".

mabbo 6y ago

There will be just as many jobs for just as many people. There aren't many places where software engineers are unemployed. What's interesting is that there are places where people are paid much less because there's so little demand for labor there- if you're the only employer of software developers in 100 miles, you can pay a pittance. And at the same time, places like Silicon Valley pay a premium for labor because there's a shortage (let's not discuss the reasons around that- I don't feel the need to drink). When the market is merged, it will be leveled. And I cannot imagine those who stay in San Francisco are going to benefit. But the brilliant developer who has been paid terribly at a small software firm in the middle of no where, who can't leave for other reasons, that developer is going to see their fortune changed for the better.

harimau777 6y ago
Doesn't that mean that developers will be forced out of living in desirable areas with higher costs of living?
- athrun 6y ago
  Yes but that's part of the equilibrium I suppose. Places where current wages are low are going to see wage increases (because of higher demand / lower supply), which in turn will lead to an increase in costs of living. Places where current wages are very high are going to see downward pressure on wages (because of lower demand / higher supply), which in turn will eventually lead to a lowering of costs of living. Obviously that's valid in the "fullness of time". How long it can actually take for this new equilibrium to be fully realized is anyone's guess.
  - tincholio 6y ago
    > Places where current wages are low are going to see wage increases (because of higher demand / lower supply), which in turn will lead to an increase in costs of living. I'm not sure that there's so many SW people outside of the big tech hub areas so as to make such a difference. If they are more uniformly distributed across the country, their impact on each community will likely be negligible.

addicted 6y ago

I seriously don’t understand the argument that a remote first world would lead to a move from larger US cities to smaller US cities. If there is any mass movement that is gonna happen, why would it be from big expensive US city with a lot of different entertainment options to a smaller, still fairly expensive US city with almost no entertainment options as opposed to significantly cheaper non US large city with a lot of entertainment options? Why wouldn’t people move to someplace in Mexico, or Brazil instead? If time zones are not an issue, why not move to somewhere in Asia instead, like Bangkok, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, etc.

_AzMoo 6y ago
Because there's more to life than work and entertainment. There's language barriers, culinary familiarity, family ties, cultural familiarity, quality of schooling, levels of crime, etc. etc.

collyw 6y ago

Its good if you live in a country that has relatively poor pay.