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I feel like when it comes to remote work the great divider will be 'cost of living' versus attained wages (and not 'talent.') As in: suppose I live in India whe

I feel like when it comes to remote work the great divider will be 'cost of living' versus attained wages (and not 'talent.') As in: suppose I live in India where the cost of living is low. Due to wage arbitrage I can satisfy my cost of living quite easily by taking on low skilled software contracts. In this position, I am happy to take on the work because it more than covers my basic needs. On the other hand, if I want to take on more skilled work I'll have to specialize. Specialization means spending even more time to learn skills at the expense of earning money. So it costs money to specialise. And in poorer countries where the population is high, the competition for jobs will be high, and the less money there will be left over to invest in specialization. So by virtue of being born in a poorer country one is less well-off when it comes to specialization. The West won't be at risk of 'losing' jobs to remote work because we're not competing for the same jobs. Specialization will set the bar for hiring as it always has done, and the same scarce pool of talent will have to be used to fill these jobs. There will be a greater number of choices for specialized engineers to fill-- and it will mean more local jobs get filled by a more diverse pool of candidates. Looking at just local jobs would seem to imply that we're worse off, but not when you compare the number of new jobs that will be open to qualified engineers as a whole.

nine_zeros 5y ago
This is a good point but from what I understand about the tech ecosystem in India and China - they are both producing so many engineers that some are bound to specialize. And they are. You will find amazing cloud provider specialists in those countries these days.
LAC-Tech 5y ago
In countries like New Zealand and (to a lesser extent) Australia, cost of living is Higher while local wages are lower. This may seem like a pedantic point, but companies don't base compensation on anything as 'fair' as CoL. It's all about market rates.

nine_zeros 5y ago

This is a good point but from what I understand about the tech ecosystem in India and China - they are both producing so many engineers that some are bound to specialize. And they are. You will find amazing cloud provider specialists in those countries these days.

LAC-Tech 5y ago

In countries like New Zealand and (to a lesser extent) Australia, cost of living is Higher while local wages are lower. This may seem like a pedantic point, but companies don't base compensation on anything as 'fair' as CoL. It's all about market rates.