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Well that's exactly my point. There is great educational infrastructure in America, so all else being equal Americans have astounding opportunities to become hi

by Bakary 4y ago

Well that's exactly my point. There is great educational infrastructure in America, so all else being equal Americans have astounding opportunities to become highly paid knowledge workers and the American society will produce many of these individuals. However, that does not make the typical competent American dev that much smarter than the mass of competent employees elsewhere. What will cause the discrepancy in salary is that there is much more money swirling into America per capita, and that immigrating to the US is very difficult. This becomes obvious if you consider the salary difference between Canadians and Americans, despite them being nearly identical in many relevant respects other than the amount of capital involved in their respective countries. If you combine that with the multiple reasons that might lead an American company in hiring American talent or at least talent based in America, you end up in a situation where you want a portion of America-based employees even though you have to pay them more, but if any individual employee leaves the territory the reason to pay them American market rates erodes away, even if they have the American nationality. They no longer meet the need that led the company to paying those prices in the first place. Keep in mind that if that need didn't exist, and salary was the sole consideration, they would have more than enough great devs around the world to never have to hire in America to begin with. The nomadic employee has fewer cards in hand because they want to live in a different country and also have a near American salary, which leads to a compromise where their salary is decreased. If they start to make too much trouble to the point where starting the hiring process anew is worth it, they can be replaced by an equally intelligent and capable local dev who will quietly accept the salary in question.

chrisseaton 4y ago
> but if any individual employee leaves the territory the reason to pay them American market rates erodes away, even if they have the American nationality. They no longer meet the need that led the company to paying those prices in the first place. This doesn't make sense to me. If my company employs me because it wants me to write a Ruby compiler, and there are only so many people in the world who can or want to write Ruby compilers and can communicate effectively about it, then exactly which 'reasons to pay them American market rates' do you think have gone if I move? They weren't paying for that in the first place. They were paying to get something done. It's still getting done no matter where I am. Me moving doesn't mean that someone else suddenly becomes able to do my job for less money if they weren't before. Companies pay to get things done. If the find the best people to do that is people who happen to be in the US then they hire there.
- Bakary 4y ago
  If we take the premise that companies will hire solely based on getting the job done vs. the cost of hiring, the current market we have wouldn't make sense. It would not make sense for a junior American dev to ever be paid equally or as much as a senior non-US based dev in the same company, or even more than a junior dev is some other developed region, yet that is an extremely common if not universal occurrence. It also wouldn't make sense that American salaries would be much higher in general to begin with, since the corresponding premise that America-based devs are that much more naturally talented than the entire rest of the world is not plausible, even if obviously there are massive concentrations of talent in the US. This latter concentration suffers in itself from chicken-and-egg circularity, since people came to the US due to the salaries involved. The only plausible explanation is that for historical and geopolitical reasons there is a disproportionate amount of capital flowing into the US, and American companies have an incentive to hire US-based talent regardless of the tasks needing to be addressed. Try to reverse the analysis here: if the market rate factors aren't gone if you move, why would Atlassian ever 'adjust' salaries for remote workers who leave the US? You're still doing the same job, so it can't be that they were paying you solely for it to be done.
  - chrisseaton 4y ago
    > It would not make sense for a junior American dev to ever be paid equally or as much as a senior non-US based dev in the same company, or even more than a junior dev is some other developed region, yet that is an extremely common if not universal occurrence. This does make sense - they have better technical skills (because of better education - you said this yourself) and better communication skills (because of cultural context) and also in general I think better attitude and aspiration. > why would Atlassian ever 'adjust' salaries for remote workers who leave the US? In a foolish attempt to save money that doesn't make any sense, based on the same misconception you have. If they could hire people for less money to do the same job then why weren't they already doing that?
    - Bakary 4y ago
      >This does make sense - they have better technical skills (because of better education - you said this yourself) and better communication skills (because of cultural context) and also in general I think better attitude and aspiration. This isn't a plausible explanation if you are at all familiar with the tech world outside of the US, or even higher education systems. It's easier for an American to get a good education, but the quantity of quality educated people is high in every developed country. Besides, for the explanation to make sense, the Americans wouldn't have to be slightly better, they would have to be multiple standard deviations better to merit the current salaries. >If they could hire people for less money to do the same job then why weren't they already doing that? Because the whole point is that locality is a factor in the hiring practices of tech companies, though this is changing significantly

by Bakary 4y ago

chrisseaton 4y ago

> but if any individual employee leaves the territory the reason to pay them American market rates erodes away, even if they have the American nationality. They no longer meet the need that led the company to paying those prices in the first place. This doesn't make sense to me. If my company employs me because it wants me to write a Ruby compiler, and there are only so many people in the world who can or want to write Ruby compilers and can communicate effectively about it, then exactly which 'reasons to pay them American market rates' do you think have gone if I move? They weren't paying for that in the first place. They were paying to get something done. It's still getting done no matter where I am. Me moving doesn't mean that someone else suddenly becomes able to do my job for less money if they weren't before. Companies pay to get things done. If the find the best people to do that is people who happen to be in the US then they hire there.

Bakary 4y ago
If we take the premise that companies will hire solely based on getting the job done vs. the cost of hiring, the current market we have wouldn't make sense. It would not make sense for a junior American dev to ever be paid equally or as much as a senior non-US based dev in the same company, or even more than a junior dev is some other developed region, yet that is an extremely common if not universal occurrence. It also wouldn't make sense that American salaries would be much higher in general to begin with, since the corresponding premise that America-based devs are that much more naturally talented than the entire rest of the world is not plausible, even if obviously there are massive concentrations of talent in the US. This latter concentration suffers in itself from chicken-and-egg circularity, since people came to the US due to the salaries involved. The only plausible explanation is that for historical and geopolitical reasons there is a disproportionate amount of capital flowing into the US, and American companies have an incentive to hire US-based talent regardless of the tasks needing to be addressed. Try to reverse the analysis here: if the market rate factors aren't gone if you move, why would Atlassian ever 'adjust' salaries for remote workers who leave the US? You're still doing the same job, so it can't be that they were paying you solely for it to be done.
- chrisseaton 4y ago
  > It would not make sense for a junior American dev to ever be paid equally or as much as a senior non-US based dev in the same company, or even more than a junior dev is some other developed region, yet that is an extremely common if not universal occurrence. This does make sense - they have better technical skills (because of better education - you said this yourself) and better communication skills (because of cultural context) and also in general I think better attitude and aspiration. > why would Atlassian ever 'adjust' salaries for remote workers who leave the US? In a foolish attempt to save money that doesn't make any sense, based on the same misconception you have. If they could hire people for less money to do the same job then why weren't they already doing that?
  - Bakary 4y ago
    >This does make sense - they have better technical skills (because of better education - you said this yourself) and better communication skills (because of cultural context) and also in general I think better attitude and aspiration. This isn't a plausible explanation if you are at all familiar with the tech world outside of the US, or even higher education systems. It's easier for an American to get a good education, but the quantity of quality educated people is high in every developed country. Besides, for the explanation to make sense, the Americans wouldn't have to be slightly better, they would have to be multiple standard deviations better to merit the current salaries. >If they could hire people for less money to do the same job then why weren't they already doing that? Because the whole point is that locality is a factor in the hiring practices of tech companies, though this is changing significantly