4 ms·

What people miss in these discussions about going full remote is that the market for software developers is very good right now but this won't last forever. Man

by durovo 5y ago

What people miss in these discussions about going full remote is that the market for software developers is very good right now but this won't last forever. Many companies are surely going to embrace full-remote once they have built up the right processes and infra. When that happens, it is not going to matter whether you live in California or Mexico or Brazil. It is much easier to replace an employee who is working remotely, the burden of looking for employees in the locality of your office is gone. Wages will stop growing. While WFH is very convenient, the strong market is giving developers a false impression that they won't become replaceable cogs in the future.

hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
I think you are very much correct - for all the people lambasting working in an office, I hope they realize it will mean they will be competing against a much larger swath of humanity. Also, I'm glad you highlighted "Mexico or Brazil". Unlike decades past where lots of outsourcing was done to India, I think many people now realize the inherent inefficiencies when teams are 12 time zones apart. The Americas don't have that problem for US-based businesses. In fact, I often see lots of complaining on HN that Canadian dev salaries tend to be much lower than in the US - seems like a no-brainer to work remotely for a US company if you are in Canada if it results in a big salary increase.
- perl4ever 5y ago
  >I think many people now realize the inherent inefficiencies when teams are 12 time zones apart Having people 12 hours offset from the US is useful if you would otherwise have to recruit US employees to work a night shift.
- gmadsen 5y ago
  I think realistically this is very far a way. South America does not have schools that compete with MIT and Stanford.
  - throwawayboise 5y ago
    Very few employers need a full staff of MIT and Stanford grads, if any at all.
  - hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
    Some of the best software developers I've ever worked with were from Brazil.
- sensanaty 5y ago
  It's not really as simple as larger pool -> easy replacements though. You might find a great remote candidate with great technical skills; but there's an 8-hour timezone difference, they speak poor English (or whatever language your team mostly speaks), don't understand the market that you're working with etc. Granted that there's not much of a difference when it comes to Canadians VS USA-ians, but that's where labor laws might complicate things. There's usually stringent laws when it comes to hiring people (depending on where you are, I guess). The company I work for, for example, had to sponsor my work permit in the Netherlands for it to be legal to hire me, since I'm not a EU citizen. That's a stressful, expensive and time consuming process for everyone involved, and in general it's just easier for them to hire local talent since they don't have to bother with all the extra steps. I'm not sure of how that works exactly in the US, but I can't imagine it's any simpler or more convenient. Now, companies might move onto hiring more freelancer type workers to circumvent these issues, but that also has its slew of problems. They're usually more expensive, you have to spend time and resources onboarding them onto the project, they have to get used to the project and its intricacies, they have to learn how the team works, the process for paying them might be different than your usual workflow, they tend to leave just as quickly as they came which compounds the other issues even more. I think things will mostly progress as they always have. Sure, there will be more competition, but that doesn't necessarily mean that hiring non-local talent is the easiest way to go for most companies, plus as can be seen from any discussion about WFH on HN, there's a sizable group of people that don't enjoy WFH and would rather stay in offices anyways. The WFH crowd like me will be free to pursue a company that suits their needs, and the ones that enjoy WFO will still be able to choose those companies that prefer that. Win-win, in my eyes.
  - BridgetJones 5y ago
    > There's usually stringent laws when it comes to hiring people (depending on where you are, I guess). These laws tend to exist when the people you hire want to live in the country you are operating from. I'm a non-EU citizen working in the EU, and am definitely worried that my residence country will kick me out, since WFH means I could very well do my job from my home country (and I'm now grateful that at least I'm paying a lot of tax to my country of residence).
ilaksh 5y ago
One of the reasons I moved from California to Mexico a few years ago. Much more affordable and can live on outsourcing wages while working from home.
- mixmastamyk 5y ago
  Might I ask any details about how taxes work in that situation and what cities are good etc.
  - ilaksh 5y ago
    The US still wants to screw me with excessive 'self-employment' taxes and if I put the local address into Upwork, Mexico wants to take an additional 20% for their own taxes which Upwork is happy to do off the top since they enjoy spending my money more than anything. I like Ensenada. Thinking about La Paz at some point maybe. Supposedly the water is warmer there.
onion2k 5y ago
the market for software developers is very good right now but this won't last forever It will last as long as the software industry keeps growing, or until AI can do the job of a dev. I don't see either happening for a long time.

by durovo 5y ago

hn_throwaway_99 5y ago

I think you are very much correct - for all the people lambasting working in an office, I hope they realize it will mean they will be competing against a much larger swath of humanity. Also, I'm glad you highlighted "Mexico or Brazil". Unlike decades past where lots of outsourcing was done to India, I think many people now realize the inherent inefficiencies when teams are 12 time zones apart. The Americas don't have that problem for US-based businesses. In fact, I often see lots of complaining on HN that Canadian dev salaries tend to be much lower than in the US - seems like a no-brainer to work remotely for a US company if you are in Canada if it results in a big salary increase.

perl4ever 5y ago
>I think many people now realize the inherent inefficiencies when teams are 12 time zones apart Having people 12 hours offset from the US is useful if you would otherwise have to recruit US employees to work a night shift.
gmadsen 5y ago
I think realistically this is very far a way. South America does not have schools that compete with MIT and Stanford.
- throwawayboise 5y ago
  Very few employers need a full staff of MIT and Stanford grads, if any at all.
- hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
  Some of the best software developers I've ever worked with were from Brazil.
sensanaty 5y ago
It's not really as simple as larger pool -> easy replacements though. You might find a great remote candidate with great technical skills; but there's an 8-hour timezone difference, they speak poor English (or whatever language your team mostly speaks), don't understand the market that you're working with etc. Granted that there's not much of a difference when it comes to Canadians VS USA-ians, but that's where labor laws might complicate things. There's usually stringent laws when it comes to hiring people (depending on where you are, I guess). The company I work for, for example, had to sponsor my work permit in the Netherlands for it to be legal to hire me, since I'm not a EU citizen. That's a stressful, expensive and time consuming process for everyone involved, and in general it's just easier for them to hire local talent since they don't have to bother with all the extra steps. I'm not sure of how that works exactly in the US, but I can't imagine it's any simpler or more convenient. Now, companies might move onto hiring more freelancer type workers to circumvent these issues, but that also has its slew of problems. They're usually more expensive, you have to spend time and resources onboarding them onto the project, they have to get used to the project and its intricacies, they have to learn how the team works, the process for paying them might be different than your usual workflow, they tend to leave just as quickly as they came which compounds the other issues even more. I think things will mostly progress as they always have. Sure, there will be more competition, but that doesn't necessarily mean that hiring non-local talent is the easiest way to go for most companies, plus as can be seen from any discussion about WFH on HN, there's a sizable group of people that don't enjoy WFH and would rather stay in offices anyways. The WFH crowd like me will be free to pursue a company that suits their needs, and the ones that enjoy WFO will still be able to choose those companies that prefer that. Win-win, in my eyes.
- BridgetJones 5y ago
  > There's usually stringent laws when it comes to hiring people (depending on where you are, I guess). These laws tend to exist when the people you hire want to live in the country you are operating from. I'm a non-EU citizen working in the EU, and am definitely worried that my residence country will kick me out, since WFH means I could very well do my job from my home country (and I'm now grateful that at least I'm paying a lot of tax to my country of residence).

ilaksh 5y ago

One of the reasons I moved from California to Mexico a few years ago. Much more affordable and can live on outsourcing wages while working from home.

mixmastamyk 5y ago
Might I ask any details about how taxes work in that situation and what cities are good etc.
- ilaksh 5y ago
  The US still wants to screw me with excessive 'self-employment' taxes and if I put the local address into Upwork, Mexico wants to take an additional 20% for their own taxes which Upwork is happy to do off the top since they enjoy spending my money more than anything. I like Ensenada. Thinking about La Paz at some point maybe. Supposedly the water is warmer there.

onion2k 5y ago

the market for software developers is very good right now but this won't last forever It will last as long as the software industry keeps growing, or until AI can do the job of a dev. I don't see either happening for a long time.