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Tech firms have "adapted"(*) to capital gains taxes through using tax havens and they will surely adopt to declining green cards. As I am applying to US softwa

Tech firms have "adapted"(*) to capital gains taxes through using tax havens and they will surely adopt to declining green cards. As I am applying to US software consultancy firms as a remote dev I see more or less 80% of them will explicitly mention that they have an office in Eastern Europe or in India. I have heard stories of managers on H1b asked to open and manage offices back in their home countries. Industrial production has successfully left United States for bad policies and better opportunities. So will the tech scene.

ashtonkem 5y ago
This is directly contrary to my experience. I see no evidence of a shift towards international talent, even with remote work, if anything I’ve seen the exact opposite. Oh, and it’s “adapt” not “adopt”.
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- VictorPath 5y ago
  Walking around Sunnyvale over 20 years ago, I expected Silicon Valley to diffuse, at least across the US. If anything, tech is more centralized in the Bay than ever. Tech isn't even diffuse across the US or California, never mind people who speak another language 10 time zones away.
  - ashtonkem 5y ago
    We'll see post-covid, the push towards remote among line level workers is very strong, but the most "diffuse" possibility I see is that each region ends up with its own tech hub. Denver, Austin, New York, etc. There is very little chance that these will ever fully replace SV though, but they let tech hire people who would refuse to move to SV. The time zone issue you mentioned is the real killer. Working across time zones is hard. It's easy to dismiss them until you've had to work with a Ukrainian team who is a solid 9 hours off phase with you.
    - anyfactor 5y ago
      You have more first hands experience than I have as an offshore remote dev. My experience is that to immigrate to America you have to study there first or be incredibly talented so that businesses have confidence to bring you there. After hundreds of applications to American companies that hires for fully remote roles, I got 3-4 replies on my application. One of them asked me to reach out to their offshore offices rather than HQ at states. And that is from a funded startup with a 7 figure investment.
      - burntoutfire 5y ago
        I'm not incredibly talented and have worked fully remote for 3 American startups already. Lots of other people do as well (I'm in Eastern Europe).
        anyfactor 5y ago
        Can you give me some pointers? Give my github a view if you can.
        burntoutfire 5y ago
        In my case, what go me the jobs were: Job 1: Knowing a very niche domain (that I happened to work on as a serious hobby for a couple of years) and lucking into a startup that works in that very domain (not really replicable). Job 2: Applying to a startup which interviewed solely based on algorithmic puzzles, and apparently acing all of them. Job 3: Knowing a fairly uncommon technology (Scala) and getting into a startup which had a super-hard time hiring Scala devs in Bay Area. None of which is directly replicable, but I guess the more you develop your skills, the more likely you're to get in one way or another. I didn't even have a github account back then FWIW.
        anyfactor 5y ago
        I work in a niche that is so niche that I couldn't find a full time job. So I work on a per project basis of automation, data analytics (pandas) and general purpose programming & API development (Python). So, trying to pivot to a more full service role of Data Analytics or SQL/Python Developer. I have been doing freelancing for 5 years now. Not sure how can I develop my skills any further, unless I just study statistics for data modeling and build various projects which I am already doing right now. Project building has its limitations. My hobby projects wouldn't scale up to a position where I have to learn and apply anything that is intermediate-ish. I can look into learning cloud services but I will never get good at it as I don't have a product based on that. Edit: I might sound I am making up problems and I am a defeatist person but I am working on web applications as I have nothing else to do. But those projects have very little chances to be a showcase of my skillset as they are not scaled to use cloud services effectively and complicated SQL db.
VictorPath 5y ago
> Industrial production has successfully left United States for bad policies Industrial production is a Chinese farmer screwing bolts on an assembly line for $3 an hour after the harvest is done. Software is (among other things) soliciting and reviewing specifications and then coding it up with dependency injection, unit/e2e/integration testing, interface contracts and so forth. An assembly line is the same thing over and over, software is different for each spec.
- dan-robertson 5y ago
  I think this is just a stupid description of industrial production (as well as software development.) I think silly to assume that assembly-line workers in China are somehow more stupid than their counterparts in the U.S. (which I think is what you were hinting at by describing a Chinese farmer, though I’m also confused as to why you think farmers are particularly stupid too.) Indeed in the U.S. most more educated people have more opportunities whereas in China factory work can be a better choice leading to certain higher qualities of workers. Though obviously the average education standard in China is lower. Industrial production involves expensive inputs, energy, the procurement and maintenance of large, very expensive machines, and some skilled and unskilled labour. Many of those do better with scale and within the borders of a single country. Perhaps it was once true that the only advantage of Chinese manufacturing was cheaper labour, but I don’t think that is true anymore. Why would so many hi-tech devices be manufactured in China? The margins are often large so they could be produced in richer countries, and labour is cheaper in other countries too so perhaps costs could be reduced elsewhere too. I think the answer lies in all the existing expertise in, and production of high tech goods and components in (certain parts of) China.
  - baybal2 5y ago
    > Though obviously the average education standard in China is lower. It is higher that in the most of the West, US included. I have not yet seen a single worker struggling with basic arithmetics the way even university grads in the US do. > The margins are often large so they could be produced in richer countries, and labour is cheaper in other countries too so perhaps costs could be reduced elsewhere too. In fact, skilled assembly labour in South China was hovering in between 10000 and 15000 CNY (without pension/insurance/provident fund payments,) the later is higher than the price of factory labour in the US in flyover states. Skilled assemblers are becoming an increasingly scarce resource. People work for 5-10 years on such job, and then leave for something (or increasingly somewhere) better. Indians, and Bengalis are importing Chinese engineers in droves these days. Guangzhou-Dhaka flight was booked full through the whole pandemic period. It was one of very few such flights in entire China.

ashtonkem 5y ago

This is directly contrary to my experience. I see no evidence of a shift towards international talent, even with remote work, if anything I’ve seen the exact opposite. Oh, and it’s “adapt” not “adopt”.

deleted 5y ago
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VictorPath 5y ago
Walking around Sunnyvale over 20 years ago, I expected Silicon Valley to diffuse, at least across the US. If anything, tech is more centralized in the Bay than ever. Tech isn't even diffuse across the US or California, never mind people who speak another language 10 time zones away.
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  We'll see post-covid, the push towards remote among line level workers is very strong, but the most "diffuse" possibility I see is that each region ends up with its own tech hub. Denver, Austin, New York, etc. There is very little chance that these will ever fully replace SV though, but they let tech hire people who would refuse to move to SV. The time zone issue you mentioned is the real killer. Working across time zones is hard. It's easy to dismiss them until you've had to work with a Ukrainian team who is a solid 9 hours off phase with you.
  - anyfactor 5y ago
    You have more first hands experience than I have as an offshore remote dev. My experience is that to immigrate to America you have to study there first or be incredibly talented so that businesses have confidence to bring you there. After hundreds of applications to American companies that hires for fully remote roles, I got 3-4 replies on my application. One of them asked me to reach out to their offshore offices rather than HQ at states. And that is from a funded startup with a 7 figure investment.
    - burntoutfire 5y ago
      I'm not incredibly talented and have worked fully remote for 3 American startups already. Lots of other people do as well (I'm in Eastern Europe).
      - anyfactor 5y ago
        Can you give me some pointers? Give my github a view if you can.
        burntoutfire 5y ago
        In my case, what go me the jobs were: Job 1: Knowing a very niche domain (that I happened to work on as a serious hobby for a couple of years) and lucking into a startup that works in that very domain (not really replicable). Job 2: Applying to a startup which interviewed solely based on algorithmic puzzles, and apparently acing all of them. Job 3: Knowing a fairly uncommon technology (Scala) and getting into a startup which had a super-hard time hiring Scala devs in Bay Area. None of which is directly replicable, but I guess the more you develop your skills, the more likely you're to get in one way or another. I didn't even have a github account back then FWIW.
        anyfactor 5y ago
        I work in a niche that is so niche that I couldn't find a full time job. So I work on a per project basis of automation, data analytics (pandas) and general purpose programming & API development (Python). So, trying to pivot to a more full service role of Data Analytics or SQL/Python Developer. I have been doing freelancing for 5 years now. Not sure how can I develop my skills any further, unless I just study statistics for data modeling and build various projects which I am already doing right now. Project building has its limitations. My hobby projects wouldn't scale up to a position where I have to learn and apply anything that is intermediate-ish. I can look into learning cloud services but I will never get good at it as I don't have a product based on that. Edit: I might sound I am making up problems and I am a defeatist person but I am working on web applications as I have nothing else to do. But those projects have very little chances to be a showcase of my skillset as they are not scaled to use cloud services effectively and complicated SQL db.

VictorPath 5y ago

> Industrial production has successfully left United States for bad policies Industrial production is a Chinese farmer screwing bolts on an assembly line for $3 an hour after the harvest is done. Software is (among other things) soliciting and reviewing specifications and then coding it up with dependency injection, unit/e2e/integration testing, interface contracts and so forth. An assembly line is the same thing over and over, software is different for each spec.

dan-robertson 5y ago
I think this is just a stupid description of industrial production (as well as software development.) I think silly to assume that assembly-line workers in China are somehow more stupid than their counterparts in the U.S. (which I think is what you were hinting at by describing a Chinese farmer, though I’m also confused as to why you think farmers are particularly stupid too.) Indeed in the U.S. most more educated people have more opportunities whereas in China factory work can be a better choice leading to certain higher qualities of workers. Though obviously the average education standard in China is lower. Industrial production involves expensive inputs, energy, the procurement and maintenance of large, very expensive machines, and some skilled and unskilled labour. Many of those do better with scale and within the borders of a single country. Perhaps it was once true that the only advantage of Chinese manufacturing was cheaper labour, but I don’t think that is true anymore. Why would so many hi-tech devices be manufactured in China? The margins are often large so they could be produced in richer countries, and labour is cheaper in other countries too so perhaps costs could be reduced elsewhere too. I think the answer lies in all the existing expertise in, and production of high tech goods and components in (certain parts of) China.
- baybal2 5y ago
  > Though obviously the average education standard in China is lower. It is higher that in the most of the West, US included. I have not yet seen a single worker struggling with basic arithmetics the way even university grads in the US do. > The margins are often large so they could be produced in richer countries, and labour is cheaper in other countries too so perhaps costs could be reduced elsewhere too. In fact, skilled assembly labour in South China was hovering in between 10000 and 15000 CNY (without pension/insurance/provident fund payments,) the later is higher than the price of factory labour in the US in flyover states. Skilled assemblers are becoming an increasingly scarce resource. People work for 5-10 years on such job, and then leave for something (or increasingly somewhere) better. Indians, and Bengalis are importing Chinese engineers in droves these days. Guangzhou-Dhaka flight was booked full through the whole pandemic period. It was one of very few such flights in entire China.