Assuming you are talking about a US remote job - short answer: the talent is not the same on average, and search costs are high. While pure coding talent may b

Assuming you are talking about a US remote job - short answer: the talent is not the same on average, and search costs are high. While pure coding talent may be on par, unless you are a solo dev you must be part of a team. Therefore communication skills are more than half the job. This is vastly underweighted by IT folks in general, and by gross stereotype, by the graduates of Indian technical schools. An American company might be willing to hire someone, but it takes tremendous work to recruit, train, retain, and manage an employee. Especially at 12 hours time difference. So those are real costs. And this is why you rarely see "real" cost savings from outsourcing IT functions.