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Offshoring is not the same thing. There are great people in India. It's just more conducive for them to get better pay if they manage to get an H1B and move to
by knorker 4y ago
Offshoring is not the same thing.
There are great people in India. It's just more conducive for them to get better pay if they manage to get an H1B and move to the US.
If they could just "work remote", then you (as an American, or at least someone who can and does work in the US? Well, applies to any western country) are no longer competing with "people from India who manage to get an H1B and have a family situation compatible with moving countries", but suddenly with ALL qualified workers in India.
Big tech in the west employs HUGE numbers of expats from lower paid countries. A very large portion of which Big tech paid for the H1B (or equiv) and relocation costs.
If you are remote, then you're only valued on your output. And I'm not saying you're in a poor position against a random engineer from India (nor presumably from a random engineer in the US), but you'll be in a poor position against the equivalent of your amazing local coworker who moved from India (or hell, any European country with less pay) because that's where the job was.
If the job is "anywhere, because it's remote", then I'm saying that you may not be on the winning side of this change.
Opening up "work from anywhere" is not like offshoring to save costs. More like given two equally valuable people, why should an employer pay a premium to one, just because they chose to live in a higher cost of living country?
- eru 4y agoI don't work in the US nor Europe. > Opening up "work from anywhere" is not like offshoring to save costs. More like given two equally valuable people, why should an employer pay a premium to one, just because they chose to live in a higher cost of living country? Yes, and that's progress! That's good!
- knorker 4y agoSure. I just mostly see this argument made by silicon valley people moving to Texas or whatever, and asking why they should not continue getting silicon valley comp. Most just think they're clever and exploiting the system, and the thought that they'd get paid lowly Texas (or Ohio) salaries never occurred to them.
- eru 4y agoThanks, we seem to mostly agree. Though I do think 'off-shoring' from California to the Ohio vs off-shoring from California to India have important aspects in common. For better or worse, agglomeration effects are real, and for some ineffable reasons software people are more productive when located in Silicon Valley, rather than Ohio. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_agglomeration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_agglomeration However the pandemic forced an investment in making remote-work work. That's not even so much an investment in technology (hardware or software), but more taking the time and effort to figure out what works and doesn't work. It's full of soft factors.