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Everyone should keep in mind that water seeks its own level. And think of this on a global scale. I've been working remotely for almost a decade as a senior

Everyone should keep in mind that water seeks its own level. And think of this on a global scale. I've been working remotely for almost a decade as a senior software engineer. Now, post-Covid, almost everyone realizes they can do the same. Salaries are going to drop in the "rich world", and it's not just because people are now fleeing places like SF/SV to lower cost of living areas. We are also beginning to compete globally, far more than ever before with the ease of remote work. Qualified engineers can be found for 1/10th of the price with "near shore" companies in the "rich world". I know because I've worked with them throughout various roles, both as peers and as a PM/Team Lead. The money may start flowing from the "rich world" to the "poor world" soon, no need for H1B visas or anything else. The gold rush days may be over.

fukpaywalls2 5y ago
"Salaries are going to drop in the "rich world", and it's not just because people are now fleeing places like SF/SV to lower cost of living areas." People have been saying this since the 1990's
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- jltsiren 5y ago
  And they were right. Mid-income people in the rich world were the losers of globalization. There are fewer jobs now where you can buy a house and support a family by working 40 hours/week. Especially for those with no specialized skills. The same may hit some highly-paid professionals in the future. If tech keeps making things easier while the rest of the world grows wealthier and more competitive, they may find that their skills are no longer in demand. The job is not as demanding as it used to be, and there are more people in the market capable of doing it just as well. Those at the top are safe, but the top is slowly getting narrower.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    > Those at the top are safe, but the top is slowly getting narrower. This has been happening for decades. It is an inherent property of technology AIG automation driving down marginal costs and increasing yields, all benefiting owners of capital or those who have the ability to help automate.
notadoc 5y ago
Yes, people who don't see this coming are in for a potentially rude awakening. The US tech worker is about to get NAFTA'd.
- tragictrash 5y ago
  What is getting NAFTA'd?
jliptzin 5y ago
I have worked with remote developers from Poland, Romania, and Portugal, each making approx $20-50/hr, producing code of far higher quality than stuff I’ve seen from $500k/year software engineers here. Also, their English was almost indecipherable from a native speaker.
- siva7 5y ago
  To be fair, 50$/hr is considered in those countries the absolute top-tier pay of almost any profession. You don’t wanna know how much a physician earns in poland or romania…
- Ekaros 5y ago
  I get the feeling as well. Mid and high tier Eastern Europeans or even Portugal are entirely different from cheapest Indians. And they likely aren't even going to try to sell those. Or if they sell it is same as USA based company. With still cheaper prices.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- sokoloff 5y ago
  I normally wouldn’t nitpick wording, but did you mean “indistinguishable” in your last sentence, which means nearly the opposite in context?
  - jliptzin 5y ago
    Yes I did thank you! I guess my own English isn't so great as a native speaker!
jimbob45 5y ago
What is a “near shore” company?
- Raidion 5y ago
  For US, it's south America. Same time zone, cheaper labor costs.
  - wyclif 5y ago
    Specifically Chile or Peru, judging from where some of my friends in the industry are living now.
  - rsj_hn 5y ago
    Interesting. I've been thinking about spending some time in Chile -- what is the English situation in Chile or Peru?
    - helloguillecl 5y ago
      Younger people speak English but it depends what you want to do. People are friendly so they will normally try to help you out anyways. Let me know if you need any advice: guillermog|at|netnotion|dot|com
- extr 5y ago
  I'd be curious to know as well, but I'm guessing he means Europe. I used to work with other Data Scientists based in Europe and was always shocked to learn how little they got paid, usually less than 50% of american counterparts. And for work like DS where objectives are more abstract and harder to specify, Europeans have enough cultural and literal fluency to be able to fully replace someone from the US. This is in comparison to the situation as I understand it for India-based pure software development, where communication/cultural barriers requires tighter management to use the talent effectively (this is going off what I've heard, I have no personal experience here. so feel free to correct me if my understanding isn't accurate). So previously being able to utilize offshore talent was basically a skill unto itself. Now you did two interviews with similarly skills candidates and one wants 50% less pay, they just have a british accent.
icelancer 5y ago
>> We are also beginning to compete globally, far more than ever before with the ease of remote work. Qualified engineers can be found for 1/10th of the price with "near shore" companies in the "rich world". Yep. I've said it many times here and basically anywhere I can: Clamoring for remote-only work, maximum-introvert, never fly somewhere, don't value in-person communication/meetings/etc is a dangerous game to be playing. People vastly overestimate how talented they are and how hard the problems they are solving may be. Not today, and not tomorrow. But if face to face communication, meetings, and the other sociable stuff goes away, it won't take long for domestic management to realize where the cost savings could come from, and international management to realize they need to upskill their people in English and code quality to earn "huge" [0] salaries consistently. [0] Huge salaries to them being a high-five figure salary.
- Tade0 5y ago
  As an Eastern European I can assure you that high five figures(is dollars) are by no means considered "huge" around here. It's actually more or less the market rate.
- EMM_386 5y ago
  > Yep. I've said it many times here and basically anywhere I can: Clamoring for remote-only work, maximum-introvert, never fly somewhere, don't value in-person communication/meetings/etc is a dangerous game to be playing. What's interesting is that I flew in for a meeting with my company recently, the first I've had since I've been hired. This took hours upon hours of my time. Time I could have spent working. We spent it between a conference room and at restaurants, and much of the time was spent discussing things with the larger team that were not relevant to me. So I spent that time on my laptop fixing bugs, in the conference room. There was zero benefit to any of this outside of a solid handshake and getting to "meet people in person". However, I have 3 meetings a week with the entire team on HD video, so I already knew exactly who I was meeting and what their mannerisms and personalities were. That included walking through an office where people jumped out of the cubicles and offices when they saw me and said "hey! Great to finally see you in person!" without a second thought. They knew exactly who I was without having ever met me. Is this really necessary? This was a huge waste of company money that I could have spent working.
fartcannon 5y ago
Same for tech giants. No need to rent an office to compete anymore. Global small teams can form overnight, grow and shrink dynamically. Entrepreneurs paradise.
- spaetzleesser 5y ago
  "Global small teams can form overnight, grow and shrink dynamically. " This is freakishly hard to manage effectively. Sounds good in theory but most will fail trying.
spaetzleesser 5y ago
I think time zones and tax laws may slow this a little. I find it a real pain to work with people whose time zones are 10 hours away from the company timezone. When things need to get done quickly or a problem can only be resolved by talking directly somebody has to work late in the evening or night. I guess the companies don't care but it's very hard for the workers in the long term. In my company it's also very difficult to hire a full time employee in another country due to all kinds of regulations and the overhead they entail. My prediction is that in the long run a lot of companies will still prefer people who are close. Managing remote people effectively is very difficult. A lot of managers will fail doing so. And a lot of people are also not cut out for remote work and need interaction at the office. I remember when offshoring became popular in the 90s it looked all work would go to India but this didn't happen either.
- athenot 5y ago
  This time zone difference can also be an asset if your business is 24/7. "When things need to get done quickly or a problem can only be resolved by talking directly"... and that problem occurs at night in my timezone, a team mate who's awake can deal with it with a rested head and no burnout in her or his day. Admittedly, there are many companies who don't need 24x7 business continuity and are perfectly content with 10x5. For them, this is unnecessary complexity.
- paulcole 5y ago
  I work at a very small remote-only (purely as a result of COVID) company in the United States. We only hire people who live in our state because the burden of complying with tax and labor laws in other states just doesn’t interest us right now. As long as we can find good enough people in our state, it’s just not worth the hassle to add more HR challenges than we have to.
- InitialLastName 5y ago
  > When things need to get done quickly or a problem can only be resolved by talking directly somebody has to work late in the evening or night. On the other side of this, I feel like I'm seeing I'm seeing "leverage time zone differences to accelerate the development process" in hardware engineering job postings with increasing frequency. I can definitely see where there's an efficiency gain for heavily sequential tasks like PCB design bring-up to have teams working in shifts without anybody losing brain power by working outside of normal hours.
MisterBastahrd 5y ago
Probably not. Communication is still a gigantic issue to overcome. So is managing teams and availability during the work day. If anything, it might push more really smart people to start their own companies instead of working for someone else to achieve a lesser level of prosperity.
- EMM_386 5y ago
  > Communication is still a gigantic issue to overcome. So is managing teams and availability during the work day. Communication is huge but I can assure you I've worked with teams on the opposite side of the globe asynchronously without issue. The concept of "workday" can be tossed aside if we are thinking 9-5 M-F. Global teams can adjust schedules and work effectively. I know because I've managed teams like this in very complex software projects and it has worked.
  - theshadowknows 5y ago
    100% agree. Before my current job I worked with tons of remote teams and it was great. Even now, the majority of my interactions are with people on the west coast or offshore teams in India. My boss is in the mid west and his boss is in the south east. And so far we’re doing great.
leetcrew 5y ago
I kind of agree, especially with regards to smaller companies who maybe only have one office and struggle to hire locally. being able to recruit across the whole US, let alone the whole world, is a major game changer for them. on the other hand, it's interesting to take note of what the big tech companies are doing. for the most part, they seem to have developed an increase tolerance for WFH, but continue to invest heavily in building new offices. not sure what that says long term. even pre-COVID, big tech companies had offices outside the US. if you could already find enough engineers worth hiring to set up an office in brazil, how much does full remote change things? either way, talent is pretty densely clustered in the biggest cities to begin with.
VirusNewbie 5y ago
I've been hearing this argument for 20 years. I was doing ASP/Perl programming while I was in high school in 2000, and I remember being told that I need to move into management because soon all the jobs would be offshored to India. Then in 2008 when the economy crashed I had one bizdev guy tell me that pretty soon everyone was going to be able to code with these new 'no code apps' and that I was going to be a fossil and I should move into management. Then in 2012 people talked about how many brilliant chinese programmers there were and how all the jobs were going to be outsourced to china. I think about this sometimes, because while I did have a successful stint as a team lead, now i'm just a senior SWE. Things have turned out pretty well so far. I've only seen salaries go up.
- VirusNewbie 5y ago
  Just in case anyone misreads my point, I want to emphasize I've worked (and continue to work with) brilliant, great, Indian and Chinese programmers, both immigrants and remote. It's just that good people aren't cheap, even remote ones. And they're hard to find.
- EMM_386 5y ago
  > I think about this sometimes, because while I did have a successful stint as a team lead, now i'm just a senior SWE. Things have turned out pretty well so far. I've only seen salaries go up. This is different because Covid-19 has shown to everyone that they can do their jobs remotely. And if they can do their jobs remotely, why can't an equally skilled engineer in a country with a cost of living 1/10th of the "rich countries" do the same? They are realizing they can, and handing this off. I too was around in 2000, writing applications in C# beta before 1.0. Still here but noticing the trends.
  - spsoto 5y ago
    > This is different because Covid-19 has shown to everyone that they can do their jobs remotely. Citation needed.
    - EMM_386 5y ago
redisman 5y ago
Ok so we’re back to offshoring as a silver bullet. Consider me extremely skeptical having lived through the last offshoring scare. I do think the global best engineers are about to get a big raise though.
- logosmonkey 5y ago
  Yeah, that's what I am seeing. The talk feels just like it did back then.
- bob1029 5y ago
  > I do think the global best engineers are about to get a big raise though. It really does feel like there is a gigantic competency bubble that is about to pop. The amount of people who are willing to learn the hard systems and businesses is dwindling by the day. You think its difficult to find airline pilots and truckers? Try to find a developer with both the domain knowledge and technical skills to fix a custom piece of code in a community bank's core system that was written in 1994. Oh, and we need it fixed before close of business or our fedwire files are going to be totally fucked... The amount of money they will have to offer to capture the appropriate talent to keep their businesses running is going to become astronomical. The executives sometimes try to take a quick path out of this hell and usually wind up with 1 additional reason they have to stay. The most common mistake is attempting a full vertical swap-out, followed by paying some firm to explain that your shit sucks by way of installing some middleware in your infrastructure and telling you things you already know.
  - cyberlurker 5y ago
    I mean, isn’t that what’s happening in general? The community banks are just switching to service providers and ditching the 1994 systems.
siquick 5y ago
This doesn't seem to be the case in Australia. The lack of migrant workers coming into the country has made it incredibly difficult to recruit skilled employees in 'office roles' and the market is insane for pretty much every industry. This sure doesn't reflect companies having an appetite for global employees. I've spoken to a lot of recruiters over the last year and they're primarily indicating that a hybrid 2 days in the office model is the preference. Integrating new staff is hard at the best of times, let alone half fully-remote and half hybrid.
shp0ngle 5y ago
It depends. The rich countries still prefer to hire in rich countries, because of: * similar timezone/working hours * similar work culture * less language barriers * rich countries still got better skilled workers * less legislative overhead with employments, payments, firing * if you get a really good person in third world, he will in the end cost similarly as good person in first world
- Aeolun 5y ago
  > if you get a really good person in third world, he will in the end cost similarly as good person in first world Inevitably. Because a person like that will very quickly move to the first world.
  - shp0ngle 5y ago
    Yep. We used to hire remotely in Nigeria, and that was almost always the case. The ones that we wanted to keep always got to richer countries and multiplied their prices.
  - rsj_hn 5y ago
    Exactly. Companies will fall over themselves to sponsor a visa. And he will jump at the chance to take it. Maybe not in 100 years, but right now that's how it is.
    - redisman 5y ago
      Exactly. Poor countries have huge problems other than low salaries. Corruption, crime, lack of freedoms, bad infrastructure, poor investment options, etc. As much as many Americans like to think their country sucks, it’s a literal dream land for a large percentage of the world population.
ootsootsoots 5y ago
This could be made into a problem for corporations too. Stop going to work. Switch to open source projects. Let social media crash. K8s clusters with Kilo hosted on laptops, desktops. We have the tools to blackout the web and bring a whole huge part of the economy down. Zuckerberg could be Pauperberg if the internet gathered round chanting “this is the new way”. I mean you know DC has no clue how anything works beyond quid pro quo.
siva7 5y ago
I can’t count the times how often i’ve heard this story in some variation over the decades. It never happened. You can replace Covid with any other catastrophic event, the story always read almost the same including the remote worker cliche.
bluekite2000 5y ago
I doubt it (even though I run a dev shop w/ Vietnam based engineers). US companies will continue hiring US based engineers. And when Covid is over people will go to the office again.
- rsj_hn 5y ago
  I think some people will work from home permanently. But yeah, a lot of people will go back. Not 100%. Maybe 70%.
jupiter90000 5y ago
It could have been done before COVID so it would’ve already been done. Business people aren’t dumb and if they could have offshores development, they would have (and they also have been doing this for years anyway). So why would they hire workers in their own country? People in this thread already have said it. Time zones, cultural business norms and understanding, native communication ability, tax and legal issues regarding employment (already annoying enough to hire employees in other states in the US for example), ability to connect with clients in the same locale, etc. Now I’ll give you that this MIGHT shift things to a degree. I don’t think it’ll be the race to the bottom you and others are saying.
- siva7 5y ago
  Well said. It’s tiring hearing this cliché every year again almost as “Now this is really the year of Linux Desktop”.
herval 5y ago
> The gold rush days may be over. Maybe in the "rich world", but not globally :-) I've been hearing lots and lots of stories of growing salaries across places that were historically underpaid (Brazil, Portugal, Berlin, etc) - maybe we'll have a thousand gold rushes, as the water level rises to meet the "rich world" levels!
- oleg_antonyan 5y ago
  True. 2 years ago $5000/month was super rare, now it's the lowest bound for a senior role. Still nothing compared to the "rich world" but not complaining at all :)
  - siva7 5y ago
    I believe many are missing the fact that for us not in the SV-Bubble earning 30.000$/month, sure we would be happy getting the same paycheck but on the other side our wages are also rising and we are often the top-earners for senior roles in the respective country.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
bob1029 5y ago
> We are also beginning to compete globally, far more than ever before with the ease of remote work. Qualified engineers can be found for 1/10th of the price with "near shore" companies in the "rich world". Sounds familiar... I think you still get what you pay for. There are certainly a lot of products where it doesn't matter at all, but in other areas you really need to be careful with what you send to the contractor and what you do in-house.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
tw04 5y ago
> The money may start flowing from the "rich world" to the "poor world" soon, no need for H1B visas or anything else. The gold rush days may be over. You seem to believe there are no political dynamics to this situation. On a small scale, sure. On a large scale I think you’ll find the political stability that executives in the US have come to rely on will quickly disappear. The 2016 elections were already a reflection of the general populace growing tired of offshoring jobs. When that hits the middle and upper middle class as well, shit will hit the fan globally.
- joelbluminator 5y ago
  It's more than that. It's one thing to offshore some shoe factory to China while keeping most of the quality jobs and R&D at home. It's another story completely if 70% of U.S tech will be off shored; the knowledge escapes, the patents, sometimes IP can be stolen etc etc. Slowly but surely the competitive edge the U.S has will disappear.I'm pretty sure there will be political objection to it and laws to make it less appealing to offshore if that is the case.
_fat_santa 5y ago
Like others have said, this story has been repeated numerous times in some variation in the past and has never panned out. I think the reason is that many people conflate "remote" with "asynchronous". Having a company go fully remote is one thing, having a company move to a culture of asynchronous work is something completely different. Some tech companies will be able to do this, but the problems really arise for companies that have to keep "business hours" here in the US. Take a major chain store, a healthcare company, a <insert traditional buisness> software provider. These businesses have to balance and on-shore workforce with an off-shore workforce. There will be people that work on the ground, and they will obviously have to be on-shore, so will upper management most likely. What about the other layers in the organization. From a high level it sounds simple but when you dive down into which teams support which teams and report to which managers and yada yada yada, where you draw the line all of a sudden becomes much harder and fuzzier. Most companies that will do what you are talking about have already done so. The reason the water hasn't leveled off more to other parts of the world like you are saying is either due to existing business constraints or risk aversion to possible constraints an offshore team may impose.
- redisman 5y ago
  Asynchronous is the real difficult part. A lot of companies already have offices in locations with good engineering talents and they usually work as a independent unit. It’s just really hard to coordinate a project when you have 0-1h of possible overlap time for meetings
GhostVII 5y ago
But for big tech companies at least I don't think money is really a significant concern. It's probably better for them to pay 10x for an engineer if that engineer has twice the chance of being a very strong performer than the one they could hire for 1x.
8eye 5y ago
that is true but there is regulation that has been set to protect that type of offshoring. realistically though, we will get to a point of one of the goals of capitalism, and that is equilibrium. whatever that looks like, i am an optimistic, (some would view it as pessimistic), but work or work as which we know it will cease to be relevant in a post human production society. nearly 8 billion people connected is new, i know we are all not connected yet, but to assume or pretend that will never happen is only operating at half consciousness and the experience it has to offer. i believe in work, it will exist for awhile but our interpretation of work will at some point change.
arpa 5y ago
yeah, no. Salaries are going to rise all over the world, especially if you talk about salaries. Is it true that a junior dev can have $240k/y in US for example? screw decades of my experience, imma be a junior dev :D You also have to take into account that working for US company is not that desirable because of the employer culture, for example. Some of us like worker protection laws, for example, or government-mandated guaranteed vacation time or double pay for overtime or some weeks off when you have a newborn on your hands. Or be informed months in advance about your lay-off and be compensated hansomely for that (if the company isn't folding). In the US these things are under the employers' discretion, and it's considered something amazing and impossible, like ambulance rides that don't cost more than your kidney on black market. And lose that over 1/10th of what you guys get? Hahaha, oh wow, you're insane. If I have no guarantees, I want to be compensated accordingly! So don't get your knickers in a knot and perpetuate the "omg remote is killing workers" meme. Remote is better for everyone. Oh and by the way, you know what protects you from %worker apocalypse reason%? UNIONS. There's a reason the bald fuck's afraid of them. Jesus.
- EMM_386 5y ago
  > yeah, no. Salaries are going to rise all over the world. Jesus. That's not how global economics works.
  - arpa 5y ago
    That's exactly how global economics work, albeit not instantly.
user3939382 5y ago
I don’t see it. Cultural barriers and lost in translations are huge, I’m surprised anyone who’s worked with foreign teams doesn’t think so. It’s not cheap or easy to collaborate with people you have a hard time communicating with.
01100011 5y ago
You may be right or you may be wrong, and it will depend on supply and demand as it always has. You are implying that globalization will suddenly bring top notch talent into the reach of American software companies, but hasn't that always been the case thanks to outsourcing and H1-B visas? I understand your fear as a fellow older software engineer, but I do not share your pessimism. I am much, much more afraid of technologies which will make programmers 50% more efficient than I am of foreigners depressing my wages. If you are at the lower end of the skills distribution then sure, I can understand your worry. Talented engineers don't have much to fear, however.
jpgvm 5y ago
As someone that has worked remotely for the last 10 years I hate to break it to you but skill levels just aren't the same. The reason I moved from Australia to San Francisco was because there were no companies in Australia that could reasonably stretch my skillset anymore (that I wanted to work at atleast, there was local Google office and Atlassian). I moved back when I reached a point where my skills were good enough that I could secure a job remotely due to social proof/references. The thing people are missing here is that not everyone that is living everywhere in the world is equally good and those that are 10x as good get paid between 4-5x as much (it should be more but the world is inefficient, overpays for poor quality, underpays for high quality in many cases). I'm not worried that increasing remote hiring will affect my compensation.

fukpaywalls2 5y ago

"Salaries are going to drop in the "rich world", and it's not just because people are now fleeing places like SF/SV to lower cost of living areas." People have been saying this since the 1990's

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
jltsiren 5y ago
And they were right. Mid-income people in the rich world were the losers of globalization. There are fewer jobs now where you can buy a house and support a family by working 40 hours/week. Especially for those with no specialized skills. The same may hit some highly-paid professionals in the future. If tech keeps making things easier while the rest of the world grows wealthier and more competitive, they may find that their skills are no longer in demand. The job is not as demanding as it used to be, and there are more people in the market capable of doing it just as well. Those at the top are safe, but the top is slowly getting narrower.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  > Those at the top are safe, but the top is slowly getting narrower. This has been happening for decades. It is an inherent property of technology AIG automation driving down marginal costs and increasing yields, all benefiting owners of capital or those who have the ability to help automate.

notadoc 5y ago

Yes, people who don't see this coming are in for a potentially rude awakening. The US tech worker is about to get NAFTA'd.

tragictrash 5y ago
What is getting NAFTA'd?

jliptzin 5y ago

I have worked with remote developers from Poland, Romania, and Portugal, each making approx $20-50/hr, producing code of far higher quality than stuff I’ve seen from $500k/year software engineers here. Also, their English was almost indecipherable from a native speaker.

siva7 5y ago
To be fair, 50$/hr is considered in those countries the absolute top-tier pay of almost any profession. You don’t wanna know how much a physician earns in poland or romania…
Ekaros 5y ago
I get the feeling as well. Mid and high tier Eastern Europeans or even Portugal are entirely different from cheapest Indians. And they likely aren't even going to try to sell those. Or if they sell it is same as USA based company. With still cheaper prices.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
sokoloff 5y ago
I normally wouldn’t nitpick wording, but did you mean “indistinguishable” in your last sentence, which means nearly the opposite in context?
- jliptzin 5y ago
  Yes I did thank you! I guess my own English isn't so great as a native speaker!

jimbob45 5y ago

What is a “near shore” company?

Raidion 5y ago
For US, it's south America. Same time zone, cheaper labor costs.
- wyclif 5y ago
  Specifically Chile or Peru, judging from where some of my friends in the industry are living now.
- rsj_hn 5y ago
  Interesting. I've been thinking about spending some time in Chile -- what is the English situation in Chile or Peru?
  - helloguillecl 5y ago
    Younger people speak English but it depends what you want to do. People are friendly so they will normally try to help you out anyways. Let me know if you need any advice: guillermog|at|netnotion|dot|com
extr 5y ago
I'd be curious to know as well, but I'm guessing he means Europe. I used to work with other Data Scientists based in Europe and was always shocked to learn how little they got paid, usually less than 50% of american counterparts. And for work like DS where objectives are more abstract and harder to specify, Europeans have enough cultural and literal fluency to be able to fully replace someone from the US. This is in comparison to the situation as I understand it for India-based pure software development, where communication/cultural barriers requires tighter management to use the talent effectively (this is going off what I've heard, I have no personal experience here. so feel free to correct me if my understanding isn't accurate). So previously being able to utilize offshore talent was basically a skill unto itself. Now you did two interviews with similarly skills candidates and one wants 50% less pay, they just have a british accent.

icelancer 5y ago

>> We are also beginning to compete globally, far more than ever before with the ease of remote work. Qualified engineers can be found for 1/10th of the price with "near shore" companies in the "rich world". Yep. I've said it many times here and basically anywhere I can: Clamoring for remote-only work, maximum-introvert, never fly somewhere, don't value in-person communication/meetings/etc is a dangerous game to be playing. People vastly overestimate how talented they are and how hard the problems they are solving may be. Not today, and not tomorrow. But if face to face communication, meetings, and the other sociable stuff goes away, it won't take long for domestic management to realize where the cost savings could come from, and international management to realize they need to upskill their people in English and code quality to earn "huge" [0] salaries consistently. [0] Huge salaries to them being a high-five figure salary.

Tade0 5y ago
As an Eastern European I can assure you that high five figures(is dollars) are by no means considered "huge" around here. It's actually more or less the market rate.
EMM_386 5y ago
> Yep. I've said it many times here and basically anywhere I can: Clamoring for remote-only work, maximum-introvert, never fly somewhere, don't value in-person communication/meetings/etc is a dangerous game to be playing. What's interesting is that I flew in for a meeting with my company recently, the first I've had since I've been hired. This took hours upon hours of my time. Time I could have spent working. We spent it between a conference room and at restaurants, and much of the time was spent discussing things with the larger team that were not relevant to me. So I spent that time on my laptop fixing bugs, in the conference room. There was zero benefit to any of this outside of a solid handshake and getting to "meet people in person". However, I have 3 meetings a week with the entire team on HD video, so I already knew exactly who I was meeting and what their mannerisms and personalities were. That included walking through an office where people jumped out of the cubicles and offices when they saw me and said "hey! Great to finally see you in person!" without a second thought. They knew exactly who I was without having ever met me. Is this really necessary? This was a huge waste of company money that I could have spent working.

fartcannon 5y ago

Same for tech giants. No need to rent an office to compete anymore. Global small teams can form overnight, grow and shrink dynamically. Entrepreneurs paradise.

spaetzleesser 5y ago
"Global small teams can form overnight, grow and shrink dynamically. " This is freakishly hard to manage effectively. Sounds good in theory but most will fail trying.

spaetzleesser 5y ago

I think time zones and tax laws may slow this a little. I find it a real pain to work with people whose time zones are 10 hours away from the company timezone. When things need to get done quickly or a problem can only be resolved by talking directly somebody has to work late in the evening or night. I guess the companies don't care but it's very hard for the workers in the long term. In my company it's also very difficult to hire a full time employee in another country due to all kinds of regulations and the overhead they entail. My prediction is that in the long run a lot of companies will still prefer people who are close. Managing remote people effectively is very difficult. A lot of managers will fail doing so. And a lot of people are also not cut out for remote work and need interaction at the office. I remember when offshoring became popular in the 90s it looked all work would go to India but this didn't happen either.

athenot 5y ago
This time zone difference can also be an asset if your business is 24/7. "When things need to get done quickly or a problem can only be resolved by talking directly"... and that problem occurs at night in my timezone, a team mate who's awake can deal with it with a rested head and no burnout in her or his day. Admittedly, there are many companies who don't need 24x7 business continuity and are perfectly content with 10x5. For them, this is unnecessary complexity.
paulcole 5y ago
I work at a very small remote-only (purely as a result of COVID) company in the United States. We only hire people who live in our state because the burden of complying with tax and labor laws in other states just doesn’t interest us right now. As long as we can find good enough people in our state, it’s just not worth the hassle to add more HR challenges than we have to.
InitialLastName 5y ago
> When things need to get done quickly or a problem can only be resolved by talking directly somebody has to work late in the evening or night. On the other side of this, I feel like I'm seeing I'm seeing "leverage time zone differences to accelerate the development process" in hardware engineering job postings with increasing frequency. I can definitely see where there's an efficiency gain for heavily sequential tasks like PCB design bring-up to have teams working in shifts without anybody losing brain power by working outside of normal hours.

MisterBastahrd 5y ago

Probably not. Communication is still a gigantic issue to overcome. So is managing teams and availability during the work day. If anything, it might push more really smart people to start their own companies instead of working for someone else to achieve a lesser level of prosperity.

EMM_386 5y ago
> Communication is still a gigantic issue to overcome. So is managing teams and availability during the work day. Communication is huge but I can assure you I've worked with teams on the opposite side of the globe asynchronously without issue. The concept of "workday" can be tossed aside if we are thinking 9-5 M-F. Global teams can adjust schedules and work effectively. I know because I've managed teams like this in very complex software projects and it has worked.
- theshadowknows 5y ago
  100% agree. Before my current job I worked with tons of remote teams and it was great. Even now, the majority of my interactions are with people on the west coast or offshore teams in India. My boss is in the mid west and his boss is in the south east. And so far we’re doing great.

leetcrew 5y ago

I kind of agree, especially with regards to smaller companies who maybe only have one office and struggle to hire locally. being able to recruit across the whole US, let alone the whole world, is a major game changer for them. on the other hand, it's interesting to take note of what the big tech companies are doing. for the most part, they seem to have developed an increase tolerance for WFH, but continue to invest heavily in building new offices. not sure what that says long term. even pre-COVID, big tech companies had offices outside the US. if you could already find enough engineers worth hiring to set up an office in brazil, how much does full remote change things? either way, talent is pretty densely clustered in the biggest cities to begin with.

VirusNewbie 5y ago

I've been hearing this argument for 20 years. I was doing ASP/Perl programming while I was in high school in 2000, and I remember being told that I need to move into management because soon all the jobs would be offshored to India. Then in 2008 when the economy crashed I had one bizdev guy tell me that pretty soon everyone was going to be able to code with these new 'no code apps' and that I was going to be a fossil and I should move into management. Then in 2012 people talked about how many brilliant chinese programmers there were and how all the jobs were going to be outsourced to china. I think about this sometimes, because while I did have a successful stint as a team lead, now i'm just a senior SWE. Things have turned out pretty well so far. I've only seen salaries go up.

VirusNewbie 5y ago
Just in case anyone misreads my point, I want to emphasize I've worked (and continue to work with) brilliant, great, Indian and Chinese programmers, both immigrants and remote. It's just that good people aren't cheap, even remote ones. And they're hard to find.
EMM_386 5y ago
> I think about this sometimes, because while I did have a successful stint as a team lead, now i'm just a senior SWE. Things have turned out pretty well so far. I've only seen salaries go up. This is different because Covid-19 has shown to everyone that they can do their jobs remotely. And if they can do their jobs remotely, why can't an equally skilled engineer in a country with a cost of living 1/10th of the "rich countries" do the same? They are realizing they can, and handing this off. I too was around in 2000, writing applications in C# beta before 1.0. Still here but noticing the trends.
- spsoto 5y ago
  > This is different because Covid-19 has shown to everyone that they can do their jobs remotely. Citation needed.
  - EMM_386 5y ago

redisman 5y ago

Ok so we’re back to offshoring as a silver bullet. Consider me extremely skeptical having lived through the last offshoring scare. I do think the global best engineers are about to get a big raise though.

logosmonkey 5y ago
Yeah, that's what I am seeing. The talk feels just like it did back then.
bob1029 5y ago
> I do think the global best engineers are about to get a big raise though. It really does feel like there is a gigantic competency bubble that is about to pop. The amount of people who are willing to learn the hard systems and businesses is dwindling by the day. You think its difficult to find airline pilots and truckers? Try to find a developer with both the domain knowledge and technical skills to fix a custom piece of code in a community bank's core system that was written in 1994. Oh, and we need it fixed before close of business or our fedwire files are going to be totally fucked... The amount of money they will have to offer to capture the appropriate talent to keep their businesses running is going to become astronomical. The executives sometimes try to take a quick path out of this hell and usually wind up with 1 additional reason they have to stay. The most common mistake is attempting a full vertical swap-out, followed by paying some firm to explain that your shit sucks by way of installing some middleware in your infrastructure and telling you things you already know.
- cyberlurker 5y ago
  I mean, isn’t that what’s happening in general? The community banks are just switching to service providers and ditching the 1994 systems.

siquick 5y ago

This doesn't seem to be the case in Australia. The lack of migrant workers coming into the country has made it incredibly difficult to recruit skilled employees in 'office roles' and the market is insane for pretty much every industry. This sure doesn't reflect companies having an appetite for global employees. I've spoken to a lot of recruiters over the last year and they're primarily indicating that a hybrid 2 days in the office model is the preference. Integrating new staff is hard at the best of times, let alone half fully-remote and half hybrid.

shp0ngle 5y ago

It depends. The rich countries still prefer to hire in rich countries, because of: * similar timezone/working hours * similar work culture * less language barriers * rich countries still got better skilled workers * less legislative overhead with employments, payments, firing * if you get a really good person in third world, he will in the end cost similarly as good person in first world

Aeolun 5y ago
> if you get a really good person in third world, he will in the end cost similarly as good person in first world Inevitably. Because a person like that will very quickly move to the first world.
- shp0ngle 5y ago
  Yep. We used to hire remotely in Nigeria, and that was almost always the case. The ones that we wanted to keep always got to richer countries and multiplied their prices.
- rsj_hn 5y ago
  Exactly. Companies will fall over themselves to sponsor a visa. And he will jump at the chance to take it. Maybe not in 100 years, but right now that's how it is.
  - redisman 5y ago
    Exactly. Poor countries have huge problems other than low salaries. Corruption, crime, lack of freedoms, bad infrastructure, poor investment options, etc. As much as many Americans like to think their country sucks, it’s a literal dream land for a large percentage of the world population.

ootsootsoots 5y ago

This could be made into a problem for corporations too. Stop going to work. Switch to open source projects. Let social media crash. K8s clusters with Kilo hosted on laptops, desktops. We have the tools to blackout the web and bring a whole huge part of the economy down. Zuckerberg could be Pauperberg if the internet gathered round chanting “this is the new way”. I mean you know DC has no clue how anything works beyond quid pro quo.

siva7 5y ago

I can’t count the times how often i’ve heard this story in some variation over the decades. It never happened. You can replace Covid with any other catastrophic event, the story always read almost the same including the remote worker cliche.

bluekite2000 5y ago

I doubt it (even though I run a dev shop w/ Vietnam based engineers). US companies will continue hiring US based engineers. And when Covid is over people will go to the office again.

rsj_hn 5y ago
I think some people will work from home permanently. But yeah, a lot of people will go back. Not 100%. Maybe 70%.

jupiter90000 5y ago

It could have been done before COVID so it would’ve already been done. Business people aren’t dumb and if they could have offshores development, they would have (and they also have been doing this for years anyway). So why would they hire workers in their own country? People in this thread already have said it. Time zones, cultural business norms and understanding, native communication ability, tax and legal issues regarding employment (already annoying enough to hire employees in other states in the US for example), ability to connect with clients in the same locale, etc. Now I’ll give you that this MIGHT shift things to a degree. I don’t think it’ll be the race to the bottom you and others are saying.

siva7 5y ago
Well said. It’s tiring hearing this cliché every year again almost as “Now this is really the year of Linux Desktop”.

herval 5y ago

> The gold rush days may be over. Maybe in the "rich world", but not globally :-) I've been hearing lots and lots of stories of growing salaries across places that were historically underpaid (Brazil, Portugal, Berlin, etc) - maybe we'll have a thousand gold rushes, as the water level rises to meet the "rich world" levels!

oleg_antonyan 5y ago
True. 2 years ago $5000/month was super rare, now it's the lowest bound for a senior role. Still nothing compared to the "rich world" but not complaining at all :)
- siva7 5y ago
  I believe many are missing the fact that for us not in the SV-Bubble earning 30.000$/month, sure we would be happy getting the same paycheck but on the other side our wages are also rising and we are often the top-earners for senior roles in the respective country.

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bob1029 5y ago

> We are also beginning to compete globally, far more than ever before with the ease of remote work. Qualified engineers can be found for 1/10th of the price with "near shore" companies in the "rich world". Sounds familiar... I think you still get what you pay for. There are certainly a lot of products where it doesn't matter at all, but in other areas you really need to be careful with what you send to the contractor and what you do in-house.

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tw04 5y ago

> The money may start flowing from the "rich world" to the "poor world" soon, no need for H1B visas or anything else. The gold rush days may be over. You seem to believe there are no political dynamics to this situation. On a small scale, sure. On a large scale I think you’ll find the political stability that executives in the US have come to rely on will quickly disappear. The 2016 elections were already a reflection of the general populace growing tired of offshoring jobs. When that hits the middle and upper middle class as well, shit will hit the fan globally.

joelbluminator 5y ago
It's more than that. It's one thing to offshore some shoe factory to China while keeping most of the quality jobs and R&D at home. It's another story completely if 70% of U.S tech will be off shored; the knowledge escapes, the patents, sometimes IP can be stolen etc etc. Slowly but surely the competitive edge the U.S has will disappear.I'm pretty sure there will be political objection to it and laws to make it less appealing to offshore if that is the case.

_fat_santa 5y ago

Like others have said, this story has been repeated numerous times in some variation in the past and has never panned out. I think the reason is that many people conflate "remote" with "asynchronous". Having a company go fully remote is one thing, having a company move to a culture of asynchronous work is something completely different. Some tech companies will be able to do this, but the problems really arise for companies that have to keep "business hours" here in the US. Take a major chain store, a healthcare company, a <insert traditional buisness> software provider. These businesses have to balance and on-shore workforce with an off-shore workforce. There will be people that work on the ground, and they will obviously have to be on-shore, so will upper management most likely. What about the other layers in the organization. From a high level it sounds simple but when you dive down into which teams support which teams and report to which managers and yada yada yada, where you draw the line all of a sudden becomes much harder and fuzzier. Most companies that will do what you are talking about have already done so. The reason the water hasn't leveled off more to other parts of the world like you are saying is either due to existing business constraints or risk aversion to possible constraints an offshore team may impose.

redisman 5y ago
Asynchronous is the real difficult part. A lot of companies already have offices in locations with good engineering talents and they usually work as a independent unit. It’s just really hard to coordinate a project when you have 0-1h of possible overlap time for meetings

GhostVII 5y ago

But for big tech companies at least I don't think money is really a significant concern. It's probably better for them to pay 10x for an engineer if that engineer has twice the chance of being a very strong performer than the one they could hire for 1x.

8eye 5y ago

that is true but there is regulation that has been set to protect that type of offshoring. realistically though, we will get to a point of one of the goals of capitalism, and that is equilibrium. whatever that looks like, i am an optimistic, (some would view it as pessimistic), but work or work as which we know it will cease to be relevant in a post human production society. nearly 8 billion people connected is new, i know we are all not connected yet, but to assume or pretend that will never happen is only operating at half consciousness and the experience it has to offer. i believe in work, it will exist for awhile but our interpretation of work will at some point change.

arpa 5y ago

yeah, no. Salaries are going to rise all over the world, especially if you talk about salaries. Is it true that a junior dev can have $240k/y in US for example? screw decades of my experience, imma be a junior dev :D You also have to take into account that working for US company is not that desirable because of the employer culture, for example. Some of us like worker protection laws, for example, or government-mandated guaranteed vacation time or double pay for overtime or some weeks off when you have a newborn on your hands. Or be informed months in advance about your lay-off and be compensated hansomely for that (if the company isn't folding). In the US these things are under the employers' discretion, and it's considered something amazing and impossible, like ambulance rides that don't cost more than your kidney on black market. And lose that over 1/10th of what you guys get? Hahaha, oh wow, you're insane. If I have no guarantees, I want to be compensated accordingly! So don't get your knickers in a knot and perpetuate the "omg remote is killing workers" meme. Remote is better for everyone. Oh and by the way, you know what protects you from %worker apocalypse reason%? UNIONS. There's a reason the bald fuck's afraid of them. Jesus.

EMM_386 5y ago
> yeah, no. Salaries are going to rise all over the world. Jesus. That's not how global economics works.
- arpa 5y ago
  That's exactly how global economics work, albeit not instantly.

user3939382 5y ago

I don’t see it. Cultural barriers and lost in translations are huge, I’m surprised anyone who’s worked with foreign teams doesn’t think so. It’s not cheap or easy to collaborate with people you have a hard time communicating with.

01100011 5y ago

You may be right or you may be wrong, and it will depend on supply and demand as it always has. You are implying that globalization will suddenly bring top notch talent into the reach of American software companies, but hasn't that always been the case thanks to outsourcing and H1-B visas? I understand your fear as a fellow older software engineer, but I do not share your pessimism. I am much, much more afraid of technologies which will make programmers 50% more efficient than I am of foreigners depressing my wages. If you are at the lower end of the skills distribution then sure, I can understand your worry. Talented engineers don't have much to fear, however.

jpgvm 5y ago

As someone that has worked remotely for the last 10 years I hate to break it to you but skill levels just aren't the same. The reason I moved from Australia to San Francisco was because there were no companies in Australia that could reasonably stretch my skillset anymore (that I wanted to work at atleast, there was local Google office and Atlassian). I moved back when I reached a point where my skills were good enough that I could secure a job remotely due to social proof/references. The thing people are missing here is that not everyone that is living everywhere in the world is equally good and those that are 10x as good get paid between 4-5x as much (it should be more but the world is inefficient, overpays for poor quality, underpays for high quality in many cases). I'm not worried that increasing remote hiring will affect my compensation.