6 ms·

Once you switch to full remote, why not hire from Central and South America at maybe 1/4 the price of a Californian.

Gigachad 3y ago
Americans like to think they have a monopoly on skilled programmers. But the reality is that most countries have them and they will do the same work for a fraction of the price. Everything is done over the internet these days so it doesn't matter that much where you are located.
- whaleofatw2022 3y ago
  We still have a monopoly on good language practices for American english and/or AFAIK how to actually build something that solves business needs rather than requirements. We saw similar between 2005ish-2015ish. Lots of offshoring where you could get whatever you 'wanted' built, but it was exactly what you 'wanted' and not what actually made sense. By this I am referring to contract houses that weren't quite 'code genies' but still would deliver products that were barely workable upon delivery. More than one shop I worked at over the last decade actually -suffered- from this. Magically, most orgs who could figure out how to deliver even semi passable/realistic functional requirements could get the same done in house for a LOT less money.
  - Gigachad 3y ago
    You are probably thinking about dirt cheap outsourcing to places like India. When part of the shift that's happening now is internal hiring of full time developers in places like Australia or the UK where the language skills and culture is pretty much the same but the wages far lower.
    - whaleofatw2022 3y ago
      The cost of Australian software historically gives me pause to at least part of your comment. That said, yes a lot of counties can provide very competent software development and houses.. but the communication time gap is often still present. Another shop I worked at had EU devs that were competent, but that communication gap was still a big hurdle.
    - rhaway84773 3y ago
      Indian developers are far superior to Australian and UK developers. It’s just that you’re hiring a million Indian developers for every 1000 UK developers, so is it surprising that the average Indian developer doesn’t seem as good?
      - bbg2401 3y ago
        Tone down your racism and ethno-nationalism.
- jimbob45 3y ago
  99% of what makes a developer valuable is their skill in communication, not their skill in coding.
  - wyclif 3y ago
    This is precisely what the parent commenter doesn't understand. He thinks the job of a programmer is all about technical skills. In fact that is only a part of the job. You need to be able to write, speak, and communicate in fluent English to be effective. And most Indian nationals, Peruvians, Columbians, et al cannot rise to that level.
    - Gigachad 3y ago
      There are a huge number of English speaking countries with cultures very similar to the US which have much lower average wages.
      - pb7 3y ago
        Large gaps in timezones though which impacts communication.
    - jeffbee 3y ago
      92.2% of the American-born native English speakers I work with can't write worth a damn, either.
      - Spivak 3y ago
        You're standards are to high. The kinds of mistakes native speakers make are often technical -- not using commas correctly, dangling they're participles, switching affect/effect. And that's because they're transcribing the voice in there head. Annoying to grammer prescriptivists but the meaning ends up being clear and understood. A'int gonna end up being authors or technical writers for sure but it doesn't get in the way of actually communicating.
        3y ago
- PragmaticPulp 3y ago
  > and they will do the same work for a fraction of the price. For a while. I worked with some excellent remote developers in other countries, but it always felt like a revolving door as the pivoted from one remote job to the next so they could get a $5K increase here and a $5K increase there. Eventually we had applicants demanding salaries equivalent to MCOL United States salaries, so we just went back to hiring local for a lot of the roles. Hiring and managing remote workers comes with a lot of financial and managerial overhead. Once companies catch on, it's just to easy to go in and snipe entire teams from one company by giving them nominal raises.
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  > Americans like to think they have a monopoly on skilled programmers. Almost no American in the tech industry thinks that, given how many of our co-workers aren't (or at least weren't born as) American. > But the reality is that most countries have them and they will do the same work for a fraction of the price. At the high end of the tech labor market, it is actually a world market for talent, meaning the talent goes where they can make the most money, and bargains are hard to find because people are not so immobile (e.g. due to H1Bs). > Everything is done over the internet these days so it doesn't matter that much where you are located. This is true, but top talent is still going to demand top dollar, even if you let them live in a LCOL region, since they can just move to a HCOL region otherwise.
  - rhaway84773 3y ago
    > Almost no American in the tech industry thinks that, given how many of our co-workers aren't (or at least weren't born as) American. And yet nearly every American is vehemently against the H1B visa which is the only way for 99% of non American tech workers to work in the U.S. and not do the same work outside the US.
    - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
      > And yet nearly every American is vehemently against the H1B visa That is a very broad generalization, considering 27% of Americans are foreign born. Yes, the MAGA crowd is largely against H1Bs (and even here you'll find lots of exceptions), but they didn't win the last election. > which is the only way for 99% of non American tech workers to work in the U.S. and not do the same work outside the US. And yet, America has a lot of H1Bs and greencard holders, unlike China or India themselves (I say this having worked on a Z work visa in China for 9 years).
howinteresting 3y ago
We're talking about workers immigrating to the US, not offshoring. Workers immigrating to the US contribute to the US economy.
- jleyank 3y ago
  So do the ones being laid off to reduce the corporation's aggregate salary load.
makeitdouble 3y ago
I'm with you on principle. To my knowledge, the main barriers are managing the payroll: how do you deal with each countries' laws and obligations for each of your remote employees ? The traditional way to do that at scale is to go through a local proxy company that abstracts the complexity and is the legal entity responsible for the workers in that country. Except you have to pay that middle-men, maintain an ongoing relationship, and if for instance a tenth of your engineers are managed by them, their bargaining power will be pretty high and the cost will rise. If as a company you deal with each individual employee instead, you have to also directly manage all the legal aspects. Hiring freelance workers only can partially alleviate that, but this comes with its own can of worm, and the complexity stays the same in case of conflict (imagine getting sued by the worker in their own country)
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- bitL 3y ago
  You don't have to. Your foreign workers can be independent consultants receiving money from you, paying their own taxes. You just need their W-8BEN every year.
  - thaumasiotes 3y ago
    In my experience, there is nothing an employer hates more than the idea of letting employees become contractors.
    - SoftTalker 3y ago
      They love having contractors, what they hate is having contractors and the IRS later telling them "no, they are employees, and you owe payroll taxes and penalties for the last 5 years"
      - bitL 3y ago
        That risk is eliminated with foreign contractors. It's import/export of services.
wanttocomment 3y ago
Because they also have vastly different cultures and shared understandings which often require skilled management.
briantakita 3y ago
It would be great if the cost of living in the US was 1/4 what it is, just like another country. Best gig for a US programmer is remote work from Bali or another beautiful place with reasonable prices. That being said, these companies don't really provide much as far as stable US jobs go so it would be better to encourage entrepreneurial activity for US programmers. Another word of advice for programmers. Do what you can to own the IP of your work. Whether it's open source or your own proprietary IP. Work for hire where the company owns the IP if your work is a dead end job.
lr4444lr 3y ago
This specter of this has been raised for over 20 years now, and it never seems to pan out.
- ThrowawayR2 3y ago
  COVID-19 forced businesses to cope with remote work and a work force that insists they'll never go back to the office, so it might just start panning out this time.
ajmurmann 3y ago
I hired a team in Colombia and they've been nothing but great. Till the recent tech burst, demand there also was going through the roof and some US companies reportedly started paying in USD to give extra stability to workers there who deal with high inflation. I hope for them that demand there keeps rising and their comp gets closer to US. Great devs and excellent time zone!
caskstrength 3y ago
> Once you switch to full remote, why not hire from Central and South America at maybe 1/4 the price of a Californian. Because interview process in bigtech has been subverted by people benefiting from it and who are already skilled in it. I bet absolute majority of people that I worked with and considered them very good couldn't solve knapsack problem on whiteboards in 15 minutes, don't know Z algorithm by heart and won't be able to correctly project Amazon leadership principles with (made up bullshit) examples from their previous jobs.

Americans like to think they have a monopoly on skilled programmers. But the reality is that most countries have them and they will do the same work for a fraction of the price. Everything is done over the internet these days so it doesn't matter that much where you are located.

whaleofatw2022 3y ago
We still have a monopoly on good language practices for American english and/or AFAIK how to actually build something that solves business needs rather than requirements. We saw similar between 2005ish-2015ish. Lots of offshoring where you could get whatever you 'wanted' built, but it was exactly what you 'wanted' and not what actually made sense. By this I am referring to contract houses that weren't quite 'code genies' but still would deliver products that were barely workable upon delivery. More than one shop I worked at over the last decade actually -suffered- from this. Magically, most orgs who could figure out how to deliver even semi passable/realistic functional requirements could get the same done in house for a LOT less money.
- Gigachad 3y ago
  You are probably thinking about dirt cheap outsourcing to places like India. When part of the shift that's happening now is internal hiring of full time developers in places like Australia or the UK where the language skills and culture is pretty much the same but the wages far lower.
  - whaleofatw2022 3y ago
    The cost of Australian software historically gives me pause to at least part of your comment. That said, yes a lot of counties can provide very competent software development and houses.. but the communication time gap is often still present. Another shop I worked at had EU devs that were competent, but that communication gap was still a big hurdle.
  - rhaway84773 3y ago
    Indian developers are far superior to Australian and UK developers. It’s just that you’re hiring a million Indian developers for every 1000 UK developers, so is it surprising that the average Indian developer doesn’t seem as good?
    - bbg2401 3y ago
      Tone down your racism and ethno-nationalism.
jimbob45 3y ago
99% of what makes a developer valuable is their skill in communication, not their skill in coding.
- wyclif 3y ago
  This is precisely what the parent commenter doesn't understand. He thinks the job of a programmer is all about technical skills. In fact that is only a part of the job. You need to be able to write, speak, and communicate in fluent English to be effective. And most Indian nationals, Peruvians, Columbians, et al cannot rise to that level.
  - Gigachad 3y ago
    There are a huge number of English speaking countries with cultures very similar to the US which have much lower average wages.
    - pb7 3y ago
      Large gaps in timezones though which impacts communication.
  - jeffbee 3y ago
    92.2% of the American-born native English speakers I work with can't write worth a damn, either.
    - Spivak 3y ago
      You're standards are to high. The kinds of mistakes native speakers make are often technical -- not using commas correctly, dangling they're participles, switching affect/effect. And that's because they're transcribing the voice in there head. Annoying to grammer prescriptivists but the meaning ends up being clear and understood. A'int gonna end up being authors or technical writers for sure but it doesn't get in the way of actually communicating.
      - 3y ago
PragmaticPulp 3y ago
> and they will do the same work for a fraction of the price. For a while. I worked with some excellent remote developers in other countries, but it always felt like a revolving door as the pivoted from one remote job to the next so they could get a $5K increase here and a $5K increase there. Eventually we had applicants demanding salaries equivalent to MCOL United States salaries, so we just went back to hiring local for a lot of the roles. Hiring and managing remote workers comes with a lot of financial and managerial overhead. Once companies catch on, it's just to easy to go in and snipe entire teams from one company by giving them nominal raises.
seanmcdirmid 3y ago
> Americans like to think they have a monopoly on skilled programmers. Almost no American in the tech industry thinks that, given how many of our co-workers aren't (or at least weren't born as) American. > But the reality is that most countries have them and they will do the same work for a fraction of the price. At the high end of the tech labor market, it is actually a world market for talent, meaning the talent goes where they can make the most money, and bargains are hard to find because people are not so immobile (e.g. due to H1Bs). > Everything is done over the internet these days so it doesn't matter that much where you are located. This is true, but top talent is still going to demand top dollar, even if you let them live in a LCOL region, since they can just move to a HCOL region otherwise.
- rhaway84773 3y ago
  > Almost no American in the tech industry thinks that, given how many of our co-workers aren't (or at least weren't born as) American. And yet nearly every American is vehemently against the H1B visa which is the only way for 99% of non American tech workers to work in the U.S. and not do the same work outside the US.
  - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
    > And yet nearly every American is vehemently against the H1B visa That is a very broad generalization, considering 27% of Americans are foreign born. Yes, the MAGA crowd is largely against H1Bs (and even here you'll find lots of exceptions), but they didn't win the last election. > which is the only way for 99% of non American tech workers to work in the U.S. and not do the same work outside the US. And yet, America has a lot of H1Bs and greencard holders, unlike China or India themselves (I say this having worked on a Z work visa in China for 9 years).

howinteresting 3y ago

We're talking about workers immigrating to the US, not offshoring. Workers immigrating to the US contribute to the US economy.

jleyank 3y ago
So do the ones being laid off to reduce the corporation's aggregate salary load.

makeitdouble 3y ago

I'm with you on principle. To my knowledge, the main barriers are managing the payroll: how do you deal with each countries' laws and obligations for each of your remote employees ? The traditional way to do that at scale is to go through a local proxy company that abstracts the complexity and is the legal entity responsible for the workers in that country. Except you have to pay that middle-men, maintain an ongoing relationship, and if for instance a tenth of your engineers are managed by them, their bargaining power will be pretty high and the cost will rise. If as a company you deal with each individual employee instead, you have to also directly manage all the legal aspects. Hiring freelance workers only can partially alleviate that, but this comes with its own can of worm, and the complexity stays the same in case of conflict (imagine getting sued by the worker in their own country)

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
bitL 3y ago
You don't have to. Your foreign workers can be independent consultants receiving money from you, paying their own taxes. You just need their W-8BEN every year.
- thaumasiotes 3y ago
  In my experience, there is nothing an employer hates more than the idea of letting employees become contractors.
  - SoftTalker 3y ago
    They love having contractors, what they hate is having contractors and the IRS later telling them "no, they are employees, and you owe payroll taxes and penalties for the last 5 years"
    - bitL 3y ago
      That risk is eliminated with foreign contractors. It's import/export of services.

wanttocomment 3y ago

Because they also have vastly different cultures and shared understandings which often require skilled management.

briantakita 3y ago

It would be great if the cost of living in the US was 1/4 what it is, just like another country. Best gig for a US programmer is remote work from Bali or another beautiful place with reasonable prices. That being said, these companies don't really provide much as far as stable US jobs go so it would be better to encourage entrepreneurial activity for US programmers. Another word of advice for programmers. Do what you can to own the IP of your work. Whether it's open source or your own proprietary IP. Work for hire where the company owns the IP if your work is a dead end job.

lr4444lr 3y ago

This specter of this has been raised for over 20 years now, and it never seems to pan out.

ThrowawayR2 3y ago
COVID-19 forced businesses to cope with remote work and a work force that insists they'll never go back to the office, so it might just start panning out this time.

ajmurmann 3y ago

I hired a team in Colombia and they've been nothing but great. Till the recent tech burst, demand there also was going through the roof and some US companies reportedly started paying in USD to give extra stability to workers there who deal with high inflation. I hope for them that demand there keeps rising and their comp gets closer to US. Great devs and excellent time zone!

caskstrength 3y ago

> Once you switch to full remote, why not hire from Central and South America at maybe 1/4 the price of a Californian. Because interview process in bigtech has been subverted by people benefiting from it and who are already skilled in it. I bet absolute majority of people that I worked with and considered them very good couldn't solve knapsack problem on whiteboards in 15 minutes, don't know Z algorithm by heart and won't be able to correctly project Amazon leadership principles with (made up bullshit) examples from their previous jobs.