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Take it or leave it. US got too expensive to produce and cannot compete with a growing number of correctly prepared engineers willing to work hard and cheaper a

Take it or leave it. US got too expensive to produce and cannot compete with a growing number of correctly prepared engineers willing to work hard and cheaper abroad. To close frontiers and creating new taxes won't be a solution this time. It's just a matter of time for a huge crisis in the industry.

mbustamanter 4y ago
While agreeing on the cost of living, I have to say that the number of engineers will not be growing too much (I say this as a latin american engineer): Most latin american countries are below the replacement level fertility of 2.1, especially the ones who provide the best quality engineers (Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Uruguay) and the ones who aren't such as Bolivia or Ecuador, are barely above replacement. Already college cohorts are 25% smaller than their historic maximum in Chile, and Chile together with Uruguay are facing a dramatic threat of decline since their total fertility rates are lower than 1.3 for 2022 and falling (for Argentina and Brazil it's no more than 1.65 for the same year, just below the TFR of the United States at 1.66). As a result of all this, the economic structure of these aging countries is changing and the decreasing cohorts of engineers will be even more compelled to settle in Europe or the US, the taxes to support non-working parts of the population are leaving less margin for starting businesses and families. So american companies won't be outsourcing for much less for same quality, at least from latin america. I think that the US won't need to be too stringent on foreign remote workers: third-world politicians will push workers out in their thirst for taxing income (and the rationale will be: "They have to pay their fair share!").
alephnerd 4y ago
Depends on the role and the sector in tech you work in. IMO, most HN commentators seem to be generic frontend/backend/fullstack devs working on generic CRUD apps at a handful of FAANGs. With the right domain knowledge, you could earn way more in other sectors or niches within tech even with those skills themself.
- horns4lyfe 4y ago
  Do you have any examples of the type of niches those skills would transfer to?

mbustamanter 4y ago

While agreeing on the cost of living, I have to say that the number of engineers will not be growing too much (I say this as a latin american engineer): Most latin american countries are below the replacement level fertility of 2.1, especially the ones who provide the best quality engineers (Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Uruguay) and the ones who aren't such as Bolivia or Ecuador, are barely above replacement. Already college cohorts are 25% smaller than their historic maximum in Chile, and Chile together with Uruguay are facing a dramatic threat of decline since their total fertility rates are lower than 1.3 for 2022 and falling (for Argentina and Brazil it's no more than 1.65 for the same year, just below the TFR of the United States at 1.66). As a result of all this, the economic structure of these aging countries is changing and the decreasing cohorts of engineers will be even more compelled to settle in Europe or the US, the taxes to support non-working parts of the population are leaving less margin for starting businesses and families. So american companies won't be outsourcing for much less for same quality, at least from latin america. I think that the US won't need to be too stringent on foreign remote workers: third-world politicians will push workers out in their thirst for taxing income (and the rationale will be: "They have to pay their fair share!").

alephnerd 4y ago

Depends on the role and the sector in tech you work in. IMO, most HN commentators seem to be generic frontend/backend/fullstack devs working on generic CRUD apps at a handful of FAANGs. With the right domain knowledge, you could earn way more in other sectors or niches within tech even with those skills themself.

horns4lyfe 4y ago
Do you have any examples of the type of niches those skills would transfer to?