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> And if they do come back, they’re likely expecting an average pay bump of 25%, Wong added Single tech position gets like 100 applications, thousands of its r

> And if they do come back, they’re likely expecting an average pay bump of 25%, Wong added Single tech position gets like 100 applications, thousands of its remote. I think this guy is out of reality! Devs in countries like Poland are now thriving, many of those jobs moved into cheaper regions!

jacobkg 3y ago
Would love to see statistics on how many and which software jobs are moving from US to other countries now that these roles are 100% remote. Anyone know where to find this data?
- taylodl 3y ago
  Let's not pretend life offshoring is a new phenomena. It's been going on for 30 years now. It's been going on long enough that many of those jobs came back onshore and legions of books have been written as to why somehow the purported savings never materialized.
  - SoftTalker 3y ago
    Yes but the pandemic forced nearly everyone to figure out how to get work done with nearly everyone remote. A lot of the roadblocks to remote work in the last two decades finally got solved. There are really no technical barriers of any kind anymore.
    - taylodl 3y ago
      There aren't technical barriers but two huge social barriers immediately come to mind: - Timezone - Culture Working with people in vastly different timezones is difficult. Just ask anybody working with people from the the US East coast and West coast. That's only a 3 hour time difference and it gets difficult. Culture is another barrier. One of the things that's been hard for US-based companies to learn with working with people from India is in their culture it's impolite to say "no." They use other signals to indicate no. Americans miss those cues. They don't hear what the think is pushback and so they proceed as though everything were fine. Americans also find it difficult to work with Germans as their bluntness is seen as being rude. This is just scratching the surface for the culture barriers that abound. This is why I say remote work != offshoring. They're two completely different animals.
  - matwood 3y ago
    The big win for US companies going remote isn't offshoring, but hiring people outside of big cities. The southeast and midwest are much cheaper than CA and the company doesn't have to deal with language, culture, and timezone issues.
    - erik_seaberg 3y ago
      I expect some cultural and experience differences between people who did and didn’t relocate to prioritize their careers, in some ways more than people who tried to immigrate but couldn’t get permission.
- Tade0 3y ago
  I don't think remoteness changed things that much. Google did a hiring spree for its Warsaw office last year because yes, they require people to show up there on a daily basis. The pay was uninspiring though - something around $75k reportedly. Meanwhile ClickUp offered close to twice that when it was present on Polish[0] job boards recently. Remote contracts land somewhere in between in terms of salary. [0] it's useful to note that these are also functionally Ukrainian boards, considering how the Russian invasion affected businesses.
0xy 3y ago
Let me give you some insight. Out of 100 applications, 60 don't meet even the most basic resume standards (zero experience, not in country, blatant errors). Of the 40 remaining, 20 do not have adequate experience in the field. Of the 20 left, 10 fail the phone screen, 5 fail the interview loop and a single applicant is far better than the other 4 who got this far. You are not competing with 100 other applicants (unless you put zero effort into your resume and have no experience, in which case you have bigger issues). The amount of blatant errors I've seen in resumes is massive.
clnq 3y ago
A lot of people are talking about the numbers. But top senior engineers are hard to find. The ones who were let go also took institutional knowledge with them. This is why they are in demand, they are “proven” and they can operate much better in that role than their replacements. I was not let go, but I left a company along with a wave of others (mostly those senior enough to be certain that they’ll find great work) when the company U-turned on their remote work promises. The team I was on was responsible for a major feature of the product, and only had two very senior software engineers, who both left in protest when it was ultimatum-style demanded that they’d move into commutable distance. It’s almost like we were let go. Like many people, we had moved away from an expensive city during the pandemic and were not looking to come back. The company has replaced us with more than 15 contractors of junior to mid skills. Despite this, they are now periodically emailing us to come back, and work remote. It started as “come back, we will let you be remote”, and has evolved to much more appealing offers over time. The difference between us and many more contractors is not that we’re John Carmacks and the contractors are graduates. It’s part seniority, but much larger part - a ton of knowledge about the systems the company had and the types of systems in the industry used for the feature we were responsible for. Good luck replacing institutional knowledge with cheap labor. Every company thinks they’re special and they’ll have a great time with this footgun. And good luck to them! But I don’t know anyone who has found good employment now and wants to return to that. Some layoffs could be more “amicable”, so I can imagine people wanting to return. But it will be hard for those in the industry who legitimately got much better jobs, which a lot of seniors that dedicated long tenures to the footgun company did. On the other hand, juniors might be easier to swap out than long-time seniors, though there are still costs to training them. It’s a lot of extra work before one employee is fully replaced by another.
- bb88 3y ago
  > Despite this, they are now periodically emailing us to come back, and work remote. It started as “come back, we will let you be remote”, and has evolved to much more appealing offers over time. I'm not sure that's a genuine ask. As soon as you help train the newbs up, they'll lay you off all over again. But also realize that you and your co-worker were n=2 out of maybe 1000. You might be rounding errors on the effects management were looking for.

jacobkg 3y ago

Would love to see statistics on how many and which software jobs are moving from US to other countries now that these roles are 100% remote. Anyone know where to find this data?

taylodl 3y ago
Let's not pretend life offshoring is a new phenomena. It's been going on for 30 years now. It's been going on long enough that many of those jobs came back onshore and legions of books have been written as to why somehow the purported savings never materialized.
- SoftTalker 3y ago
  Yes but the pandemic forced nearly everyone to figure out how to get work done with nearly everyone remote. A lot of the roadblocks to remote work in the last two decades finally got solved. There are really no technical barriers of any kind anymore.
  - taylodl 3y ago
    There aren't technical barriers but two huge social barriers immediately come to mind: - Timezone - Culture Working with people in vastly different timezones is difficult. Just ask anybody working with people from the the US East coast and West coast. That's only a 3 hour time difference and it gets difficult. Culture is another barrier. One of the things that's been hard for US-based companies to learn with working with people from India is in their culture it's impolite to say "no." They use other signals to indicate no. Americans miss those cues. They don't hear what the think is pushback and so they proceed as though everything were fine. Americans also find it difficult to work with Germans as their bluntness is seen as being rude. This is just scratching the surface for the culture barriers that abound. This is why I say remote work != offshoring. They're two completely different animals.
- matwood 3y ago
  The big win for US companies going remote isn't offshoring, but hiring people outside of big cities. The southeast and midwest are much cheaper than CA and the company doesn't have to deal with language, culture, and timezone issues.
  - erik_seaberg 3y ago
    I expect some cultural and experience differences between people who did and didn’t relocate to prioritize their careers, in some ways more than people who tried to immigrate but couldn’t get permission.
Tade0 3y ago
I don't think remoteness changed things that much. Google did a hiring spree for its Warsaw office last year because yes, they require people to show up there on a daily basis. The pay was uninspiring though - something around $75k reportedly. Meanwhile ClickUp offered close to twice that when it was present on Polish[0] job boards recently. Remote contracts land somewhere in between in terms of salary. [0] it's useful to note that these are also functionally Ukrainian boards, considering how the Russian invasion affected businesses.

0xy 3y ago

Let me give you some insight. Out of 100 applications, 60 don't meet even the most basic resume standards (zero experience, not in country, blatant errors). Of the 40 remaining, 20 do not have adequate experience in the field. Of the 20 left, 10 fail the phone screen, 5 fail the interview loop and a single applicant is far better than the other 4 who got this far. You are not competing with 100 other applicants (unless you put zero effort into your resume and have no experience, in which case you have bigger issues). The amount of blatant errors I've seen in resumes is massive.

clnq 3y ago

A lot of people are talking about the numbers. But top senior engineers are hard to find. The ones who were let go also took institutional knowledge with them. This is why they are in demand, they are “proven” and they can operate much better in that role than their replacements. I was not let go, but I left a company along with a wave of others (mostly those senior enough to be certain that they’ll find great work) when the company U-turned on their remote work promises. The team I was on was responsible for a major feature of the product, and only had two very senior software engineers, who both left in protest when it was ultimatum-style demanded that they’d move into commutable distance. It’s almost like we were let go. Like many people, we had moved away from an expensive city during the pandemic and were not looking to come back. The company has replaced us with more than 15 contractors of junior to mid skills. Despite this, they are now periodically emailing us to come back, and work remote. It started as “come back, we will let you be remote”, and has evolved to much more appealing offers over time. The difference between us and many more contractors is not that we’re John Carmacks and the contractors are graduates. It’s part seniority, but much larger part - a ton of knowledge about the systems the company had and the types of systems in the industry used for the feature we were responsible for. Good luck replacing institutional knowledge with cheap labor. Every company thinks they’re special and they’ll have a great time with this footgun. And good luck to them! But I don’t know anyone who has found good employment now and wants to return to that. Some layoffs could be more “amicable”, so I can imagine people wanting to return. But it will be hard for those in the industry who legitimately got much better jobs, which a lot of seniors that dedicated long tenures to the footgun company did. On the other hand, juniors might be easier to swap out than long-time seniors, though there are still costs to training them. It’s a lot of extra work before one employee is fully replaced by another.

bb88 3y ago
> Despite this, they are now periodically emailing us to come back, and work remote. It started as “come back, we will let you be remote”, and has evolved to much more appealing offers over time. I'm not sure that's a genuine ask. As soon as you help train the newbs up, they'll lay you off all over again. But also realize that you and your co-worker were n=2 out of maybe 1000. You might be rounding errors on the effects management were looking for.