8 ms·

People pay software engineers higher wages because of the risk of them leaving and taking all of their domain knowledge with them. Not because of their "cost of

• mensetmanusman 6y ago
  There will be some interesting equilibrium. If people hire and pay remote workers exactly the same, they are saying that, for their particular type of work, there is absolutely no value of seeing people in person. I can imagine this being true in programming, but not being true for R&D where equipment and experiments with materials and prototypes are done.
  • EdwinLarkin 6y ago
    Believing that everything will shift to remote work and borders will disappear is in my opinion naive.
    • minikites 6y ago
      Borders and nationalism are pretty recent developments on the timeline of human civilization, I don't see why both ideas couldn't fade over time.
      • EdwinLarkin 6y ago
        Coming from a nation whose borders shifted all the time I definitely dont see it like that.
      • pm90 6y ago
        It would require a sea change in thinking, or get people comfortable with the idea of not belonging to nations. As you point out Nationalism has been a pretty recent development. It has mostly been enforced by indoctrination in the education systems and culture. While it has had many many issues, we have seen it reduce the number of conflicts and wars by a lot, and thus it appears to be a reasonable solution. Whatever solution aims to replace it would have to not only overcome all of these barriers, but provide better results as well.
    • meheleventyone 6y ago
      Working for a fully distributed company it definitely feels like it's not naive. Certainly everything won't go this way but it's a lot easier than most people think. Apart from at setup time and with public holiday schedules those borders are not very apparent.
      • EdwinLarkin 6y ago
        And does your company employ hundreds of people or is it a small biz < 99 ppl?
        • meheleventyone 6y ago
          Companies with 1000s of people have been remote forever. I worked at Autodesk in a team across two multinational companies which on our side were through Toronto to us in Iceland and on to Shanghai. If you think big teams aren’t distributed you’ve not worked in a big team.
  • kache_ 6y ago
    At the risk of doxxing myself, (who am I kidding), I have experience working with a global, fully remote team. My experience is that, when you select for talent in a larger pool (globally) you get people who are incredibly skilled and driven, so much so that that the effective reduction in productive capacity is eclipsed by talent of the team that you can form. However, this is anecdotal & I may be biased due to luck with landing with an exceptionally talented team. Remote work actually is a drawback for the employee rather than the employer. Human contact is something that is quite important for relationships to form. Some people adapt well to it because they grew up on computers & grew up making friends on the internet, but for others in person communication is quite important.
    • blakesterz 6y ago
      > Remote work actually is a drawback for the employee rather than the employer. I'd say it's a drawback for SOME employees, yes, but some others (Maybe the majority of the prepandemic remote force?) it's not, at all. It's awesome, and there are many of who never want to work in an office and deal with the commute every day again. We (somehow I'm speaking for all of us now) get enough human contact through our online relationships with our coworkers, and seeing them once or twice a year IRL. > luck with landing with an exceptionally talented team. For sure! I do consider it pretty lucky when you're able to do that. We seem to have done the same thing where I work, we just had someone leave for the first time in about 6 years!
      • donnythecroc 6y ago
        I'm in this boat one hundred percent. Guess what happens when two hours a day isn't commuting. You spend more time with real friends rather than passing work acquaintances.
    • bryanrasmussen 6y ago
      >My experience is that, when you select for talent in a larger pool (globally) you get people who are incredibly skilled and driven, so much so that that the effective reduction in productive capacity is eclipsed by talent of the team that you can form I would think that you would also increase the risk of bad hires if you had any sort of inefficiency in your hiring process because then you would be less able to actually know the quality of who you were hiring by local reference.
  • dcolkitt 6y ago
    This is only true if you believe there’s no productivity benefits to remote. Commutes to the office mean that employees start the day sleep deprived and stressed out. Spending the day surrounded by one’s spouses, children and pets improves emotional resilience. People working from home have access to healthier meal options and avoid the afternoon brain fog that comes with catered lunches. Remote workers probably have a big, beautiful house in a sunny LCOL that is more pleasant to work in than an office in a typical overcast, drizzly tech metro. So there might still be downsides from less efficient collaboration, but that’s outweighed by improved environment leading to better individual productivity.
    • bumby 6y ago
      I would’ve been skeptical of this two years ago thinking it’s just chatter from people who can’t suck it up and be productive at work. But after being forced to work remotely for 1+ years I’ve found everything in your post to ring true for me personally. In addition, productivity is better because there are so many less interruptions (maybe only relevant to certain jobs requiring a lot of focus and a home environment without distractions)
  • analog31 6y ago
    I think there's already a clue about this: Hardware engineers and scientists get paid less than programmers, meaning that we are of lower value. Amusingly, when the lockdown began, I was fortunate to have space in my house to move my entire lab home. My colleagues and I have been making good use of rapid prototyping services and the FedEx truck to move stuff around. Hardware keeps getting "softer," and truth be told, 90% of what I do is coding anyway, because hardware runs on code. We are also learning to manage hardware remotely, so we don't always have to be co-located with it. We also use software contractors, though it's been a huge learning curve for us. A side benefit is that, being un-located, there's no reason for me to be tied to a particular work site within a global business, or to be dependent on only the skill sets available at that site.
  • ghaff 6y ago
    >there is absolutely no value of seeing people in person It's not binary. Companies with remote workers can still fly them to HQ or off-sites on a semi-regular basis (in normal times).
• lappa 6y ago
  >People pay software engineers higher wages because of the risk of them leaving and taking all of their domain knowledge with them Why is it that software engineers tend to get substantial raises by changing companies while receiving only small raises when they stay at the same company?
  • sokoloff 6y ago
    Two main reasons, IMO: 1. Because companies are often run by financial types who have a hard time imagining that one SWE could be a multiple more valuable than another (either inherently or because of company-specific domain experience). Why pay this current, good SWE 1.5x what they were making, when the salary study that I have in my inbox says...? 2. An employee seeking a raise at their current company is negotiating with one company. An employee seeking a raise at all possible companies has more flexibility. They don't need all companies (or one specific company) to be willing to pay them more, just one out of all of them.
    • tech_tuna 6y ago
      Great response. . . I have some friends (let's call them A and B) who worked together years ago, both solid engineers. One of them (A) is perhaps not a 10x engineer (I kind of have a problem with that term and the way it's tossed around) but pretty damn close. B told me one day that when A left, the company foolishly failed to offer him a counter offer to stay. The way B put it was "they literally could have paid A one million dollars per year and dumped the rest of the team but they couldn't wrap their heads around that and of course didn't. When A left, the team went right down the toilet and they closed that whole branch of their product line" A bit of an extreme example, but yes as you pointed out, not one that "the suits" can really grok, or HR for that matter.
      • JAlexoid 6y ago
        It's not uncommon, for people who know their value, to screw a poorly paying employer. I had an experience where I refused to extend a contract because one engineer left the project.... The whole team left within three days of that engineer announcing his departure.
• Maximus9000 6y ago
  Hey, I'm also from Ontario and looking to change jobs for the right price. Any suggestions for where I should start? Should I be looking mostly at American companies with USD pay? Should I be using a Canadian recruiter? My current title is Sr. QA Automation engineer. I think I could easily be lead or even QA Manager.
  • kache_ 6y ago
    Just apply :) and don't forget to read https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/ https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/
• jariel 6y ago
  You've misunderstood Supply and Demand a little bit and by not adjusting your price, you're probably hurting yourself. In 'Supply and Demand' - developers in high cost of living areas will have a different 'supply curve'. So the 'market clearing price' for developers in 'high cost of living' areas will be higher. "In Canada, skilled negotiators will be able to increase their salaries to be more in line with their american counterparts." No, actually, 'skilled negotiators' who understand 'Supply and Demand' will realize that their position to demand salary is systematically weakened by the fact their costs are lower. Their price will be 'higher' than that for local jobs, but lower than their American counterparts, and definitely lower than Bay Area prices. Finally - your comment is missing the Giant Elephant in the room. There are 50x more developers out there in much lower cost of living centres than Canada. You literally cannot afford to accept a job for <$40K a year - but developers in Poland can. If we are going with the premise that 'Talent is Now Global' (And BTW I don't agree with this mostly, but for the purposes of this comment, assume it is true) - then the 'lower cost of developers' in other countries will affect those in 2cnd tier (i.e. relatively wealthy but not NYC/SF) cities. I'm based in Canada and just hired a bunch of E. European developers for 1/3 the cost of local devs. and they are great - at least for the work I'm having them do. Try to take a more nuanced approach. Edit: imagine if you were selling widgets. Same widget. The price in USA is $1 per widget, by manufacturers made in USA. Their cost is probably 90 cents to make. You live in Ukraine and your cost of making widgets is 50 cents. There are a bunch of other widget makers in Ukraine with the same cost. When you and your competitive peers in Ukraine take your widgets to market, do you think you're going to be able to sell for the same $1 as the US sellers? No. Because some of your 'peers' will lower their price a little bit in order to generate sales and that will bring the price down to where operating margins are tolerable. Probably 57 cents or something like that. So this notion that a 'Foreign Dev' is going to earn the same salary as those living in SF/NYC - all other things being equal - just is not true. It's not a 'lesson that companies need to learn' - the market already has that built in.
• deleted 6y ago
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• SubiculumCode 6y ago
  Conversely, you begin to compete even more with individuals in India etc willing to work for much less.
• somerandomqaguy 6y ago
  I'm not so certain about that. Government of Canada is aiming at increasing immigration to around 400,000 to 420,000 new immigrants per year, most of whom are going to skilled workers. ************************** October 30, 2020—Ottawa—The Honourable Marco Mendicino, Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, tabled the 2021‒2023 Immigration Levels Plan today, which sets out a path for responsible increases to immigration targets to help the Canadian economy recover from COVID-19, drive future growth and create jobs for middle class Canadians. The pandemic has highlighted the contribution of immigrants to the well-being of our communities and across all sectors of the economy. Our health-care system relies on immigrants to keep Canadians safe and healthy. Other industries, such as information technology companies and our farmers and producers, also rely on the talent of newcomers to maintain supply chains, expand their businesses and, in turn, create more jobs for Canadians. [...] [T]he global travel restrictions and capacity constraints led to a shortfall in admissions over the last several months. To compensate for the shortfall and ensure Canada has the workers it needs to fill crucial labour market gaps and remain competitive on the world stage, the 2021 to 2023 levels plan aims to continue welcoming immigrants at a rate of about 1% of the population of Canada, including 401,000 permanent residents in 2021, 411,000 in 2022 and 421,000 in 2023. The previous plan set targets of 351,000 in 2021 and 361,000 in 2022. ************************** https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/news/2020/10/government-of-canada-announces-plan-to-support-economic-recovery-through-immigration.html https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/ne...
  • pm90 6y ago
    I love it when people point to skilled immigration as somehow being bad for wages. Whats more likely to happen in that Canada may finally get a robust and dynamic technology labor market. With its sensible immigration laws, I know that a lot of my international peers are seriously considering moving to Canada. New immigrants will favor Canada over the immigrant hostile, gun-obsessed and anti-science US.
    • 908B64B197 6y ago
      > New immigrants will favor Canada over the immigrant hostile, gun-obsessed and anti-science US. I've been hearing that for a long time, especially during the last 4 years. Yet it has not materialized. Often, for international workers, attorneys will file twice: one in Canada and one in the US. If the US one gets slapped with RFEs or isn't strong enough to qualify, the Canadian one is used and is systematically approved. > Whats more likely to happen in that Canada may finally get a robust and dynamic technology labor market. Negotiating easier free trade with the US as well as matching US law would be more productive, as it would dramatically expand the customer base. But what's crucially lacking is a strong investment culture of venture capitalism and risk taking.
• 908B64B197 6y ago
  This is very optimistic, and not taking into account the out of control immigration quotas currently in place. About 10x per capita as compared to the United States.