9 ms·

>> 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 w

>> 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.
- icelancer 5y ago
  >> This took hours upon hours of my time. Time I could have spent working. What engineers and people on this site seem to not grasp is that "working" is not a strict definition that maps to "writing code" to management, business operations, marketing, sales... basically every non-engineering department. If that concept starts to take root in the mind, then it becomes a bit more clear why people like the office. Engineers on HN seem to be incapable of considering that the social aspect of work is important to most non-introvert non-engineers in an office and that a lot of "work" is forming bonds, developing relationships, and yes, "playing politics" to some extent. I don't doubt that the 10x engineer is well-represented on this site and that their worth is quite high for their work output. Lesser engineers and developers who work on glorified CRUD apps and mobile adware can easily be replaced, and the issue is that often they think they are also elite 10x engineers who have the same type of nobility and don't have to play the office game. Time will tell if they're right, but I'm betting not. Especially since I know a lot of hiring managers exploring outsourcing during the Great Resignation and Remote Work Only craze and finding results being... quite good.
  - pronlover723 5y ago
    That's what the metaverse is for, or at least that seems to be what Meta is banking on.
  - ilammy 5y ago
    Considering slightly broader aspect of why the work is done in the first place – to bring profits to the company – people should also factor in the creative part of work, and nonlinearity of individual contributions to that case. It's one thing if your job is to stay at the assembly line punching holes in metal sheets 40 hours a week. And another thing if you have the capacity for improving the overall process (and profits), while still spending 10 hours punching holes part-time because it brings you joy. From management perspective, it's those 10 hours that are wasted. Or if you're taken out of your dear assembly line and flown to the other part of the country in business class, to attend a week-long series of meeting with a customer. Somehow that ends up helping to secure a huge contract, just because your presence affected the customer's perception. From your perspective, that might look like the company has wasted a fine week of your work on useless meetings and communication. From company's perspective, just with that they have made more money than you'd bring them in a two years otherwise.
jodrellblank 5y ago
> "[0] Huge salaries to them being a high-five figure salary." CheckSalary.co.uk puts the average salary for "a programmer" in the UK at £43K, Reed.co.uk says £41k, Glassdoor says £35K, Payscale says £31K... maybe devs here should upskill in English? https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/Salaries/programmer-salary-SRCH_KO0,10.htm https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/Salaries/programmer-salary-SRCH_...
- judge2020 5y ago
  programmer is very vague, and glassdoor does show the jobs bringing that down as php/web development, which is highly saturated and competitive.
  - hawk_ 5y ago
    nice! shots fired.
  - panda88888 5y ago
    Doesn’t Facebook use Hack, a PHP derivative, internally?
    - judge2020 5y ago
      Sure, but that’s not where their high-paying engineering jobs are at. HHVM itself is in C++.
- oleg_antonyan 5y ago
  Russian remote programmer here. The language is a small part, cultural difference is the most painful one. Americans never give direct negative feedback and expect this from you, for example. Many US companies hire only people from US and pay them more b/c cultural and timezone difference is another hidden cost and not every company wants to pay it - they rather pay 200k more in $. But personally for me that's fine, even miserable salary by US standards is great, and it has grown significantly in the past year thanks to covid. Some companies offer salaries close to 100k$/yr which was unreachable 5 years ago.
ZephyrBlu 5y ago
I would tend to agree, but there are large cultural differences as well which I don't think are easily overcome.
- icelancer 5y ago
  The problem is that cultural differences are most often in conflict during lots of communication, especially face to face in meetings and so forth. The more you eliminate synchronous communication, in-person interaction, and office work... the less those cultural differences are going to matter.
  - truffdog 5y ago
    I don't think thats true, having worked with teams in Russia, Belgium, and India. The cultural differences can be a huge deal and sink projects.
  - arp242 5y ago
    Strong disagree with that one; I think it's the exact opposite in fact. The more direct communication is, the easier it is to avoid and/or quickly clear up misunderstandings and the like. Some email that was sent and misunderstood? Your entire project can go off-rails. People can hold grudges over something that was not intended at all. Etc. You're much more likely to catch these things early in face-to-face communication due to body language, tone of voice, etc. Text communication is pretty hard to get right in general and text communication in a non-native language is even harder, doubly so when you're talking to a native speaker and there's an asymmetry in language skills, which there often is, even with fairly proficient non-native speakers. Add to that cultural differences on what is or isn't "appropriate" or different interpretations on various things and it can become quite tricky to communicate effectively. This table is a good example of this: https://hbr.org/resources/images/article_assets/2014/02/anglodutch_final.gif https://hbr.org/resources/images/article_assets/2014/02/angl...
logosmonkey 5y ago
Honestly, I doubt much will be considerably different for most US based companies. In SV firms, maybe, but in corporate America it will be years before they would even consider another run at mass off shoring. Lots of corporations are still dealing with the fall out of the off shore/consultant boom of the early to mid 00s.
- hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
  Group video chat makes an enormous difference. And most of the early to mid 00s offshoring was to India, perhaps also places like Russia or China, where the time difference to US can make things exceedingly painful. Now, though, I've worked with many super talented developers in Central and South America where the time difference is minimal.
makeitdouble 5y ago
> domestic management to realize where the cost savings could come from Management has been looking at off-shoring whatever they can for the past decades already. Having a bigger pool of talent willing to work remotely is a boon, but most of the new influx is not from lower level countries (they already were 99% ok with full remote), and more from places with high level salaries. Management will find cheaper people, but only marginally, and not that different from the people they already had. Except most of the people they will find will be the ones playing the full-remote "dangerous game" you warn about
- icelancer 5y ago
  >> Management will find cheaper people, but only marginally, and not that different from the people they already had. This is a dangerous assumption rooted in past failures. I can personally tell you that I have a lot of evidence that points to it no longer being true. Eastern European developers are good enough to do CRUD and basic work that is massively overpaid here in the US, and speak English quite well. I would tread lightly. It's still very early.
  - makeitdouble 5y ago
    I am not sure what you see as past failures, in the last decade I've already seen first hand long term outsourced projects with Romanian teams and Vietnamese team, and we weren't even their main clients. I don't think engineers in France or London (and I assume the US) are getting paid big bucks for actual basic work, that ship has long sailed IMO.
  - joelbluminator 5y ago
    How do you define CRUD? Most Cloud/Web based companies we hear about are CRUD. Shopify/Github/Square/Twitter/Stripe it's all CRUD in different scales. What I mean is that 90% of their programmers write software in high level languages that talk to a database and the end product is usually some html/json. The current "modern" web stack isn't that much easier than writing C/C++ imo, it's just different.
matchagaucho 5y ago
"maximum-introvert" What seems missing from this discussion are the social connections remote workers pursue in the absence of water cooler conversations and company social events. For many office workers, their co-workers are their main source of social interaction. For remote workers, it's a deliberate decision to keep their social lives separate from work. They very well may be extroverts in their personal social activities.

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.

icelancer 5y ago
>> This took hours upon hours of my time. Time I could have spent working. What engineers and people on this site seem to not grasp is that "working" is not a strict definition that maps to "writing code" to management, business operations, marketing, sales... basically every non-engineering department. If that concept starts to take root in the mind, then it becomes a bit more clear why people like the office. Engineers on HN seem to be incapable of considering that the social aspect of work is important to most non-introvert non-engineers in an office and that a lot of "work" is forming bonds, developing relationships, and yes, "playing politics" to some extent. I don't doubt that the 10x engineer is well-represented on this site and that their worth is quite high for their work output. Lesser engineers and developers who work on glorified CRUD apps and mobile adware can easily be replaced, and the issue is that often they think they are also elite 10x engineers who have the same type of nobility and don't have to play the office game. Time will tell if they're right, but I'm betting not. Especially since I know a lot of hiring managers exploring outsourcing during the Great Resignation and Remote Work Only craze and finding results being... quite good.
- pronlover723 5y ago
  That's what the metaverse is for, or at least that seems to be what Meta is banking on.
- ilammy 5y ago
  Considering slightly broader aspect of why the work is done in the first place – to bring profits to the company – people should also factor in the creative part of work, and nonlinearity of individual contributions to that case. It's one thing if your job is to stay at the assembly line punching holes in metal sheets 40 hours a week. And another thing if you have the capacity for improving the overall process (and profits), while still spending 10 hours punching holes part-time because it brings you joy. From management perspective, it's those 10 hours that are wasted. Or if you're taken out of your dear assembly line and flown to the other part of the country in business class, to attend a week-long series of meeting with a customer. Somehow that ends up helping to secure a huge contract, just because your presence affected the customer's perception. From your perspective, that might look like the company has wasted a fine week of your work on useless meetings and communication. From company's perspective, just with that they have made more money than you'd bring them in a two years otherwise.

jodrellblank 5y ago

> "[0] Huge salaries to them being a high-five figure salary." CheckSalary.co.uk puts the average salary for "a programmer" in the UK at £43K, Reed.co.uk says £41k, Glassdoor says £35K, Payscale says £31K... maybe devs here should upskill in English? https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/Salaries/programmer-salary-SRCH_KO0,10.htm https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/Salaries/programmer-salary-SRCH_...

judge2020 5y ago
programmer is very vague, and glassdoor does show the jobs bringing that down as php/web development, which is highly saturated and competitive.
- hawk_ 5y ago
  nice! shots fired.
- panda88888 5y ago
  Doesn’t Facebook use Hack, a PHP derivative, internally?
  - judge2020 5y ago
    Sure, but that’s not where their high-paying engineering jobs are at. HHVM itself is in C++.
oleg_antonyan 5y ago
Russian remote programmer here. The language is a small part, cultural difference is the most painful one. Americans never give direct negative feedback and expect this from you, for example. Many US companies hire only people from US and pay them more b/c cultural and timezone difference is another hidden cost and not every company wants to pay it - they rather pay 200k more in $. But personally for me that's fine, even miserable salary by US standards is great, and it has grown significantly in the past year thanks to covid. Some companies offer salaries close to 100k$/yr which was unreachable 5 years ago.

ZephyrBlu 5y ago

I would tend to agree, but there are large cultural differences as well which I don't think are easily overcome.

icelancer 5y ago
The problem is that cultural differences are most often in conflict during lots of communication, especially face to face in meetings and so forth. The more you eliminate synchronous communication, in-person interaction, and office work... the less those cultural differences are going to matter.
- truffdog 5y ago
  I don't think thats true, having worked with teams in Russia, Belgium, and India. The cultural differences can be a huge deal and sink projects.
- arp242 5y ago
  Strong disagree with that one; I think it's the exact opposite in fact. The more direct communication is, the easier it is to avoid and/or quickly clear up misunderstandings and the like. Some email that was sent and misunderstood? Your entire project can go off-rails. People can hold grudges over something that was not intended at all. Etc. You're much more likely to catch these things early in face-to-face communication due to body language, tone of voice, etc. Text communication is pretty hard to get right in general and text communication in a non-native language is even harder, doubly so when you're talking to a native speaker and there's an asymmetry in language skills, which there often is, even with fairly proficient non-native speakers. Add to that cultural differences on what is or isn't "appropriate" or different interpretations on various things and it can become quite tricky to communicate effectively. This table is a good example of this: https://hbr.org/resources/images/article_assets/2014/02/anglodutch_final.gif https://hbr.org/resources/images/article_assets/2014/02/angl...

logosmonkey 5y ago

Honestly, I doubt much will be considerably different for most US based companies. In SV firms, maybe, but in corporate America it will be years before they would even consider another run at mass off shoring. Lots of corporations are still dealing with the fall out of the off shore/consultant boom of the early to mid 00s.

hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
Group video chat makes an enormous difference. And most of the early to mid 00s offshoring was to India, perhaps also places like Russia or China, where the time difference to US can make things exceedingly painful. Now, though, I've worked with many super talented developers in Central and South America where the time difference is minimal.

makeitdouble 5y ago

> domestic management to realize where the cost savings could come from Management has been looking at off-shoring whatever they can for the past decades already. Having a bigger pool of talent willing to work remotely is a boon, but most of the new influx is not from lower level countries (they already were 99% ok with full remote), and more from places with high level salaries. Management will find cheaper people, but only marginally, and not that different from the people they already had. Except most of the people they will find will be the ones playing the full-remote "dangerous game" you warn about

icelancer 5y ago
>> Management will find cheaper people, but only marginally, and not that different from the people they already had. This is a dangerous assumption rooted in past failures. I can personally tell you that I have a lot of evidence that points to it no longer being true. Eastern European developers are good enough to do CRUD and basic work that is massively overpaid here in the US, and speak English quite well. I would tread lightly. It's still very early.
- makeitdouble 5y ago
  I am not sure what you see as past failures, in the last decade I've already seen first hand long term outsourced projects with Romanian teams and Vietnamese team, and we weren't even their main clients. I don't think engineers in France or London (and I assume the US) are getting paid big bucks for actual basic work, that ship has long sailed IMO.
- joelbluminator 5y ago
  How do you define CRUD? Most Cloud/Web based companies we hear about are CRUD. Shopify/Github/Square/Twitter/Stripe it's all CRUD in different scales. What I mean is that 90% of their programmers write software in high level languages that talk to a database and the end product is usually some html/json. The current "modern" web stack isn't that much easier than writing C/C++ imo, it's just different.

matchagaucho 5y ago

"maximum-introvert" What seems missing from this discussion are the social connections remote workers pursue in the absence of water cooler conversations and company social events. For many office workers, their co-workers are their main source of social interaction. For remote workers, it's a deliberate decision to keep their social lives separate from work. They very well may be extroverts in their personal social activities.