4 ms·

wait till the even wider proliferation of offshoring of remote technical roles. The wealth will be even more concentrated, except only the executives, while the

wait till the even wider proliferation of offshoring of remote technical roles. The wealth will be even more concentrated, except only the executives, while the workers will have even less

namdnay 5y ago
why even less? remote work has been a great boost for lots of workers. I see the effect of it here in Europe, in the past year average hire salaries have gone up by at least 10% due to the competition with fully remote orgs
- gowld 5y ago
  Even less for US workers, they mean.
  - namdnay 5y ago
    I imagine the effect is similar for the job market in small US towns? If you're in the middle of Idaho or whatever you've suddenly gone from having a single tech employer within a 1h radius to having hundreds of remote opportunities
chrisco255 5y ago
Yeah been waiting for that to happen for the past 20 years...
- gmadsen 5y ago
  well the last 20 years didn't have a mass forced remote work event
eru 5y ago
Why would the company splurge on executives, and not drive down their wages, too, if that's so easy? Executive cost money, too. They are also employees.
- bigbillheck 5y ago
  Who do you think decides executive wages?
  - eru 5y ago
    Directly: executives higher up. And at the highest level, the shareholders. The last is a bit tenuous because shareholder capitalism is more of an aspiration than reality. But that line of argument could only argue for extravagant CEO pay, not high pay for executive in general. (Especially since CEOs get a lot of their pay in shares, so are incentived to get the shareholders more money; eg by driving lower ranking executives' pay down.) Indirectly: competition between companies and workers (including executives) determines pay.
    - bigbillheck 5y ago
      > (Especially since CEOs get a lot of their pay in shares, so are incentived to get the shareholders more money; eg by driving lower ranking executives' pay down.) This would imply a coupling between corporate expenses and share price that is much tighter than I understand to be the case.
      - eru 5y ago
        But if there's no coupling, than the argument for why ordinary workers' wages would fall also goes out the window. You can't have it both ways.
ashtonkem 5y ago
I’m old enough to remember this being a threat a few decades ago. Most of those roles came back to the US. If it was that easy, they would’ve moved long before Covid.
- gmadsen 5y ago
  the difference is the mass forced remote work has made companies do the necessary work to effectively do this
  - ashtonkem 5y ago
    I disagree. It was already possible and cheap to setup satellite offices in foreign countries in order to exploit labor differences, and so far this effort has usually failed. There’s no reason to believe that Covid has knocked down the final barrier to offshoring more work. More frankly, I think that the cost savings in offshoring are a false promise. You can hire very cheap programmers in India and similar, and they are not very good. Those programmers that are very good at their job either immigrate to the US, and start earning an American salary, or they raise their prices high enough so that the benefits of offshoring are less clear cut. As far as working with remote employees off shore, time zone and language regularly remains the biggest barrier; Covid hasn’t fixed that.
    - roguas 5y ago
      Language? I know a lot of people more fluent than a typical US dev. Besides that, how much language do you actually need, some basic vocabulary and grammar to communicate. Time zone? US has 2 continents + you typically need a maximum of 3 hours overlap a day. This is possible even in Europe-EastCoast setup, I typically wake up 11. In US that's 6am sure, but I end my day at 7pm which at US is 2pm. Covid has knocked down a lot. The biggest wall to crush was the psychological ones. So its now, not only genius contractors who could negotiate reasonable flexibility. Also when 60% is WFH now, there is little point in fighting/readjusting. If this was 10% you could try and battle or continue to limit that.
      - 5y ago

wait till the even wider proliferation of offshoring of remote technical roles. The wealth will be even more concentrated, except only the executives, while the workers will have even less

namdnay 5y ago

why even less? remote work has been a great boost for lots of workers. I see the effect of it here in Europe, in the past year average hire salaries have gone up by at least 10% due to the competition with fully remote orgs

gowld 5y ago
Even less for US workers, they mean.
- namdnay 5y ago
  I imagine the effect is similar for the job market in small US towns? If you're in the middle of Idaho or whatever you've suddenly gone from having a single tech employer within a 1h radius to having hundreds of remote opportunities

chrisco255 5y ago

Yeah been waiting for that to happen for the past 20 years...

gmadsen 5y ago
well the last 20 years didn't have a mass forced remote work event

eru 5y ago

Why would the company splurge on executives, and not drive down their wages, too, if that's so easy? Executive cost money, too. They are also employees.

bigbillheck 5y ago
Who do you think decides executive wages?
- eru 5y ago
  Directly: executives higher up. And at the highest level, the shareholders. The last is a bit tenuous because shareholder capitalism is more of an aspiration than reality. But that line of argument could only argue for extravagant CEO pay, not high pay for executive in general. (Especially since CEOs get a lot of their pay in shares, so are incentived to get the shareholders more money; eg by driving lower ranking executives' pay down.) Indirectly: competition between companies and workers (including executives) determines pay.
  - bigbillheck 5y ago
    > (Especially since CEOs get a lot of their pay in shares, so are incentived to get the shareholders more money; eg by driving lower ranking executives' pay down.) This would imply a coupling between corporate expenses and share price that is much tighter than I understand to be the case.
    - eru 5y ago
      But if there's no coupling, than the argument for why ordinary workers' wages would fall also goes out the window. You can't have it both ways.

ashtonkem 5y ago

I’m old enough to remember this being a threat a few decades ago. Most of those roles came back to the US. If it was that easy, they would’ve moved long before Covid.

gmadsen 5y ago
the difference is the mass forced remote work has made companies do the necessary work to effectively do this
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  I disagree. It was already possible and cheap to setup satellite offices in foreign countries in order to exploit labor differences, and so far this effort has usually failed. There’s no reason to believe that Covid has knocked down the final barrier to offshoring more work. More frankly, I think that the cost savings in offshoring are a false promise. You can hire very cheap programmers in India and similar, and they are not very good. Those programmers that are very good at their job either immigrate to the US, and start earning an American salary, or they raise their prices high enough so that the benefits of offshoring are less clear cut. As far as working with remote employees off shore, time zone and language regularly remains the biggest barrier; Covid hasn’t fixed that.
  - roguas 5y ago
    Language? I know a lot of people more fluent than a typical US dev. Besides that, how much language do you actually need, some basic vocabulary and grammar to communicate. Time zone? US has 2 continents + you typically need a maximum of 3 hours overlap a day. This is possible even in Europe-EastCoast setup, I typically wake up 11. In US that's 6am sure, but I end my day at 7pm which at US is 2pm. Covid has knocked down a lot. The biggest wall to crush was the psychological ones. So its now, not only genius contractors who could negotiate reasonable flexibility. Also when 60% is WFH now, there is little point in fighting/readjusting. If this was 10% you could try and battle or continue to limit that.
    - 5y ago