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I was a sofware director at a Fortune 500 company. I had engineers in Silicon Valley, Santa Cruz, Canada, the Netherlands, Russia, UK, Taiwan, and Wuhan (!) Ch
by aworks 3y ago
I was a sofware director at a Fortune 500 company. I had engineers in Silicon Valley, Santa Cruz, Canada, the Netherlands, Russia, UK, Taiwan, and Wuhan (!) China. I also had individual engineers in Romania, Ireland, Portugal and Germany. Since it was already a global company, it was feasible to hire wherever we could find talent. Some of the Russia team moved to Armenia last year when the office in St. Petersburg was closed. We considered other countries like Vietnam since we had Vietnamese-American engineers but this is where we ended up.
Cost was one of multiple variables determining which site we hired at. At the extremes, it was a 10x difference. The higher the salary, the more senior the team. The competition to hire and retain software engineers caused salaries to go up everywhere, but at a faster rate in the low-cost countries. And low-cost countries were our go-to source for new grads. The profiles of say Russia and China universities varied significantly e.g. experience with open source, mathematical rigor, English skills, credentials, initiative, teamwork, and relevant courses.
The core product develpoment was done in the US but over time, other sites took on more product responsibility. In some of the countries, we also wanted to be closer to our customers, in expanding markets.
It's hard to measure quality, productivity and contribution on an individual basis but it was reasonably correlated with salary. There were outliers though.
So geographically-based staffing was complicated.
- orzig 3y agoAs a senior IC formerly in a similar situation, I’ll affirm this is brilliantly written and even deeper than it looks. I’ll add: Many of the Indian ICs I worked with were fine, but there was at least one manager who was an absolute disaster and the American executives had very little ability to fix the situation. Given that financial capital is here, executives will be here, and so some part of the org chart has to bridge across cultures, which is going to be a slight friction that compounds over the years of the project.
- moneywoes 3y agoultimately, are the days of a blue collar engineer in the west limited? you mentioned the new grad pipelines have already moved what advice would you give to a engineer in the west hcol, pivot to product?
- blagie 3y agoPersonally, I see the opposite trend: decreased differences in salary and cost-of-living. As developing countries develop, they'll look more and more like the US. Put another way: Since WWII, we've been moving from US engineers (used broadly) with US as the only country who can afford our products to global engineers with everyone buying products. There's no magic "US is a superpower fairy" which guarantees US salaries, cost-of-living, etc. will be 10x higher than everywhere else forever. I can't predict the future, so I don't know what that will do for jobs outlook, but it's not as simple as "they're coming for our jobs." My biggest worry is that the US is increasingly training incompetent engineers (again, used broadly). Much of the rest of the world has much better math and science in K-12. In winner-takes-all markets, 7-figure salaries can make sense sometimes to get the best over low 5-figure ones in the developing world, but if we're not the best....
- MuffinFlavored 3y ago> As developing countries develop, they'll look more and more like the US. A one bedroom apartment in my city rents for $1,800/mo - $2,200/mo and it's very "nothing burger" in terms of what you get. I'd imagine the rest of the world has a lot of catching up to do in that department?
- blagie 3y agoFirst place on a web search in... Shanghai: https://www.smartshanghai.com/housing/apartments-rent/1569779 https://www.smartshanghai.com/housing/apartments-rent/156977... $1200. Delhi: https://bnnbreaking.com/world/india/navigating-the-maze-of-budget-friendly-one-bedroom-rentals-in-delhi/ https://bnnbreaking.com/world/india/navigating-the-maze-of-b... $330 Nairobi: https://propertypro.co.ke/property-for-rent/houses/in/nairobi/1-bedroom https://propertypro.co.ke/property-for-rent/houses/in/nairob... $20 Bangkok: https://propertyscout.co.th/en/spectacular-high-rise-1-br-apt-near-mrt-queen-sirikit-national-convention-centre-1145216/ https://propertyscout.co.th/en/spectacular-high-rise-1-br-ap... $560 Lagos, Victoria Island: https://nigeriapropertycentre.com/for-rent/flats-apartments/lagos/victoria-island/showtype?bedrooms=1 https://nigeriapropertycentre.com/for-rent/flats-apartments/... $400 Ann Arbor, MI: https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_rent/condo,apartment_duplex_type/?searchQueryState=%7B%22isMapVisible%22%3Atrue%2C%22mapBounds%22%3A%7B%22west%22%3A-83.68445239374881%2C%22east%22%3A-83.55956874201541%2C%22south%22%3A42.19630825852001%2C%22north%22%3A42.29371268177791%7D%2C%22filterState%22%3A%7B%22fr%22%3A%7B%22value%22%3Atrue%7D%2C%22fsba%22%3A%7B%22value%22%3Afalse%7D%2C%22fsbo%22%3A%7B%22value%22%3Afalse%7D%2C%22nc%22%3A%7B%22value%22%3Afalse%7D%2C%22cmsn%22%3A%7B%22value%22%3Afalse%7D%2C%22auc%22%3A%7B%22value%22%3Afalse%7D%2C%22fore%22%3A%7B%22value%22%3Afalse%7D%2C%22beds%22%3A%7B%22min%22%3A1%2C%22max%22%3A1%7D%2C%22sf%22%3A%7B%22value%22%3Afalse%7D%2C%22tow%22%3A%7B%22value%22%3Afalse%7D%2C%22mf%22%3A%7B%22value%22%3Afalse%7D%2C%22land%22%3A%7B%22value%22%3Afalse%7D%2C%22manu%22%3A%7B%22value%22%3Afalse%7D%2C%22sort%22%3A%7B%22value%22%3A%22days%22%7D%7D%2C%22isListVisible%22%3Atrue%2C%22pagination%22%3A%7B%7D%2C%22mapZoom%22%3A14%7D https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_rent/condo,apartment_duplex... A bit under $1000 It's actually quite all over the map.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]