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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 outrig

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.

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.