5 ms·

That works both ways though. The 6x places might move to, say, 4x over time, but the 1x and 2x places will salary upwards to compete. As someone who works in t

That works both ways though. The 6x places might move to, say, 4x over time, but the 1x and 2x places will salary upwards to compete. As someone who works in the Midwest USA, I don't see anything but upside for people like myself.

toomuchtodo 6y ago
Indeed. The only folks in trouble are the ones who decide to remain in VHCOL geographies.
SomewhatLikely 6y ago
I'm not sure sure about that. The 6x places can pay that because of high revenue per employee. It's not like the 1x places will suddenly see a higher revenue per employee to pay higher compensation.
- therealdrag0 6y ago
  If the company comes to you it might. It’s like how a Cuban can move to Miami and have their “productivity go up”, but with remote work the employee can stay where they are and the company can “move to them”. Of course the flip side of this is offshoring where the company can raise someone else’s productivity more cheaply than someone making US wages already.
- jb775 6y ago
  There's people scattered all over the country making 2x-3x rates that could have been earning 6x, but moving to San Fran or NYC was never a feasible option. The 6x companies will offer them 4x, settle on 4.5x, and both parties are happy. It will inevitably drive down the 6x pay, but drive up the 1x-3x pay. However, the companies will be the real winners though unless there's some type of coordination between all employees...Not only will they have massive payroll cost savings, buy they will reduce office rent expenses, electricity use, etc.
  - chmod600 6y ago
    What happens when that pattern repeats into highly-educated parts of Eastern Europe and Southern Asia?
  - jld 6y ago
    In a world where employees need to show up to 6X Co HQ everyday to work, the cost of living and the cost of hiring is directly linked (6x). But in a world where people can work anywhere, salaries will be disconnected from housing costs and we may see a lot of 6x companies happily slide lower. It will come down to how many employees meet the 6X Co's hiring bar and how good 6X Co is at turning new hires into productive employees. If there are enough available people above their current headcount, the floor will be closer to 1x. How close to 1x (2x? 4x? 5.5x?) is hard to know. I don't think it's simple to know where the market will fall after a remote work revolution.
    - kshacker 6y ago
      Great points and I will add: It is easy for a thousand engineers to train in Bay Area and move elsewhere. But could another locale train a thousand engineers to be ready to employed in the Bay Area companies? In many cases, the value (initial value) comes from assimilating in the culture and while a lot of bigCos could still make people work in Bay Area before sending them home, the challenge is for these locations to evolve to be capable themselves.
      - JoeAltmaier 6y ago
        I believe most Engineers in the Bay Area did train somewhere else. California has 1/4 immigrants from other countries, and some similar amount moved there from other states.
      - wcarss 6y ago
        This forwards an over-inflated notion of the cultural and knowledge value that working at a Bay Area company imparts. The Bay Area does not have a monopoly on good culture or experts: at times it may even notably lack them. There are many experts there and much good culture to learn from, but there are also many idiots and charlatans, and it is just as likely you'll find one of them first. How does a beginner tell the difference? There is no locational bound on where people can learn to write great software, on where they can write great software, on where they can teach others to write great software, or on where a strong culture can be grown and shared, i.e. one of good ethics, responsibility, fun, art, innovation, trust, etc. The Bay Area is not magical; it is just a place where a lot of money and a useful attitude toward spending it (on risky technology ventures) got cyclically concentrated over time.
PragmaticPulp 6y ago
A company that goes fully remote might simply choose to close offices in the 4-6x places. > As someone who works in the Midwest USA, I don't see anything but upside for people like myself. I worked for a large tech company that started going remote before COVID. Once they started pulling out of expensive cities and opening offices in cheaper foreign countries, it became an uphill battle to hire anyone in the United States at all. Why hire a $100K Midwest US engineer when you can hire two good international engineers for the same salary and not have to pay for their health insurance? There will always be some demand for US engineers and time zones put some limits on outsourcing, but opening the floodgates to full-remote companies means that even engineers in the cheapest US cities are now competing against increasingly qualified engineers who will happily take half the compensation to do the exact same work.
- yowlingcat 6y ago
  > Why hire a $100K Midwest US engineer when you can hire two good international engineers for the same salary and not have to pay for their health insurance? As I mentioned in another comment on this thread, engineer salaries are bimodal. I believe this is because labor demand is bimodal. It sounds the company you are describing has this hiring philosophy: we prefer to hire as many mode 1 engineers as we can for the dollar. However, there are also companies that have a counterparty hiring philosophy: we would rather have a smaller, more mode-2 engineer centric organization than a larger more mode-1 engineer centric organization. What's more, I've noticed that the small, more deliberately leveraged organizations have a strong bias towards the latter hiring philosophy, because it applies not just to their technology divisions, but to the organization as a whole. In finance, it's the boutiques; in technology, it's the startups. Large companies that are able to maintain mode-2 centric culture exist, but generally only when they have high-profit revenue based on R&D.
- mc10 6y ago
  > Once they started pulling out of expensive cities and opening offices in cheaper foreign countries, it became an uphill battle to hire anyone in the United States at all. Facebook, Google, etc. have offices around the world, but that hasn't led them to close any of their US offices. If there were enough equally qualified candidates in these areas that would accept compensation at a fraction of Bay Area salaries, why wouldn't they follow suit?

toomuchtodo 6y ago

Indeed. The only folks in trouble are the ones who decide to remain in VHCOL geographies.

SomewhatLikely 6y ago

I'm not sure sure about that. The 6x places can pay that because of high revenue per employee. It's not like the 1x places will suddenly see a higher revenue per employee to pay higher compensation.

therealdrag0 6y ago
If the company comes to you it might. It’s like how a Cuban can move to Miami and have their “productivity go up”, but with remote work the employee can stay where they are and the company can “move to them”. Of course the flip side of this is offshoring where the company can raise someone else’s productivity more cheaply than someone making US wages already.
jb775 6y ago
There's people scattered all over the country making 2x-3x rates that could have been earning 6x, but moving to San Fran or NYC was never a feasible option. The 6x companies will offer them 4x, settle on 4.5x, and both parties are happy. It will inevitably drive down the 6x pay, but drive up the 1x-3x pay. However, the companies will be the real winners though unless there's some type of coordination between all employees...Not only will they have massive payroll cost savings, buy they will reduce office rent expenses, electricity use, etc.
- chmod600 6y ago
  What happens when that pattern repeats into highly-educated parts of Eastern Europe and Southern Asia?
- jld 6y ago
  In a world where employees need to show up to 6X Co HQ everyday to work, the cost of living and the cost of hiring is directly linked (6x). But in a world where people can work anywhere, salaries will be disconnected from housing costs and we may see a lot of 6x companies happily slide lower. It will come down to how many employees meet the 6X Co's hiring bar and how good 6X Co is at turning new hires into productive employees. If there are enough available people above their current headcount, the floor will be closer to 1x. How close to 1x (2x? 4x? 5.5x?) is hard to know. I don't think it's simple to know where the market will fall after a remote work revolution.
  - kshacker 6y ago
    Great points and I will add: It is easy for a thousand engineers to train in Bay Area and move elsewhere. But could another locale train a thousand engineers to be ready to employed in the Bay Area companies? In many cases, the value (initial value) comes from assimilating in the culture and while a lot of bigCos could still make people work in Bay Area before sending them home, the challenge is for these locations to evolve to be capable themselves.
    - JoeAltmaier 6y ago
      I believe most Engineers in the Bay Area did train somewhere else. California has 1/4 immigrants from other countries, and some similar amount moved there from other states.
    - wcarss 6y ago
      This forwards an over-inflated notion of the cultural and knowledge value that working at a Bay Area company imparts. The Bay Area does not have a monopoly on good culture or experts: at times it may even notably lack them. There are many experts there and much good culture to learn from, but there are also many idiots and charlatans, and it is just as likely you'll find one of them first. How does a beginner tell the difference? There is no locational bound on where people can learn to write great software, on where they can write great software, on where they can teach others to write great software, or on where a strong culture can be grown and shared, i.e. one of good ethics, responsibility, fun, art, innovation, trust, etc. The Bay Area is not magical; it is just a place where a lot of money and a useful attitude toward spending it (on risky technology ventures) got cyclically concentrated over time.

PragmaticPulp 6y ago

A company that goes fully remote might simply choose to close offices in the 4-6x places. > As someone who works in the Midwest USA, I don't see anything but upside for people like myself. I worked for a large tech company that started going remote before COVID. Once they started pulling out of expensive cities and opening offices in cheaper foreign countries, it became an uphill battle to hire anyone in the United States at all. Why hire a $100K Midwest US engineer when you can hire two good international engineers for the same salary and not have to pay for their health insurance? There will always be some demand for US engineers and time zones put some limits on outsourcing, but opening the floodgates to full-remote companies means that even engineers in the cheapest US cities are now competing against increasingly qualified engineers who will happily take half the compensation to do the exact same work.

yowlingcat 6y ago
> Why hire a $100K Midwest US engineer when you can hire two good international engineers for the same salary and not have to pay for their health insurance? As I mentioned in another comment on this thread, engineer salaries are bimodal. I believe this is because labor demand is bimodal. It sounds the company you are describing has this hiring philosophy: we prefer to hire as many mode 1 engineers as we can for the dollar. However, there are also companies that have a counterparty hiring philosophy: we would rather have a smaller, more mode-2 engineer centric organization than a larger more mode-1 engineer centric organization. What's more, I've noticed that the small, more deliberately leveraged organizations have a strong bias towards the latter hiring philosophy, because it applies not just to their technology divisions, but to the organization as a whole. In finance, it's the boutiques; in technology, it's the startups. Large companies that are able to maintain mode-2 centric culture exist, but generally only when they have high-profit revenue based on R&D.
mc10 6y ago
> Once they started pulling out of expensive cities and opening offices in cheaper foreign countries, it became an uphill battle to hire anyone in the United States at all. Facebook, Google, etc. have offices around the world, but that hasn't led them to close any of their US offices. If there were enough equally qualified candidates in these areas that would accept compensation at a fraction of Bay Area salaries, why wouldn't they follow suit?