4 ms·

This is not what I want to happen, but I have to think the American tech worker gets screwed in the world where remote work is the norm. If you make the labor m

by __loam 3y ago

This is not what I want to happen, but I have to think the American tech worker gets screwed in the world where remote work is the norm. If you make the labor market global, there's a lot of really smart Europeans who will work for half or a third of what American devs will. Can anyone refute this line of thinking? I'd love to be wrong.

npsomaratna 3y ago
1. Labor law is local. This adds (on a per-country basis) legal risk and compliance costs, as well as operational costs (e.g., you might need to have specific policies that apply to employees in specific countries). 2. Taxation regimes. These too vary by country, and add compliance and operational costs. 3. Other laws (both U.S. and foreign) that make hiring foreign nationals complex in certain situations, e.g., ITAR. When considered together, these costs and operational obstacles can be significant.
- lemme_tell_ya 3y ago
  I work for a small tech company in the US (~25 employees) and a few of them are in Europe. My boss didn't seem to have any issue hiring them and he wears a lot of hats, and we didn't hire them due to cost but to their very specific expertise.
- redcobra762 3y ago
  No, sorry. These are all defeated by hiring contractors. The real issues are, ironically, the collaborative barriers. Different cultures have different standards of work, a different working culture, and honestly different time zones. The “24 hour dev shop” is a risk, but work moving overseas is only a problem at the commodified software level, like a SaaS b2b where a shit tool with one little innovation saves five minutes can scale to millions in savings.
  - npsomaratna 3y ago
    Not necessarily. Consider this situation: you hire a contractor. They work for you for several years, and then you fire them. The contractor goes to the labor court in their country and files a claim stating that, yes, their contract says that they are an independent contractor, but no, since you've employed them "full-time" for several years continuously, they are a defacto/de jure employee. (Which is a valid argument under the labor laws of certain countries) What will you do: - Spend the time and money refuting their claim? (You need to find a good lawyer in that foreign country; lawyers are expensive; and someone on your side needs to spend their time coordinating with them) - Ignore the claim? (Not a good idea if you ever want to visit that country in the future) The claim itself might be nonsense; that's immaterial. You're faced with a Hobson's choice if said contractor drags you to court. (Addendum: this is why I made the point that labor law is local. When you hire a national of a foreign country, in general, you subject yourself to the jurisdiction of the courts of that country for labor related disputes. I am not sure if a clause in an employment contract stating that the agreement is governed by U.S. law would be accepted by a local court; and even if it did, in litigation, you'd most likely have to represent yourself before the local court to make that objection.)
    - redcobra762 3y ago
      You don’t fire contractors, their contract just ends. Additionally, the contract is often with the company, not the individual, so their employees aren’t in any legal sense working “for” you. If an employee wants to litigate, they’re opposing the contracting company, not you. This comes with some downsides of its own, but generally this circumvents most labor issues. And of course anyone can sue for any reason, but if the argument is that the individual will pester you with lawsuits, can’t anyone do that to anyone else about anything?
      - npsomaratna 3y ago
        Fair enough, yes. If you're contracting with a third-party company that takes up the risk of hiring the employee, that does circumvent these issues. Re: the lawsuits—yes, the barrier to initiate litigation is low (in most countries); but in my experience, most folks only start litigation when they feel significantly wronged. Problem is, given the difference in cultures (something you pointed out earlier), an act by the company that is perfectly standard in the U.S. might be interpreted very differently by someone from another country.
lemme_tell_ya 3y ago
We started down this path before COVID, it's just accelerating now. I think language, accents[0], time zones, and culture are the main things providing any resistance to this happening even quicker than it should. [0]We once had a person on our team from India, sharp guy but his accent was extremely difficult to parse over audio. We ended up doing most communication over email and chat.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
esafak 3y ago
One consideration that helps local workers is the time zone; a remote company may yet choose to hire locally to reduce the time zone span. Another is communication; companies want to hire people that can communicate fluently in a shared language. But the best solution is to just become better at your job. The best programmers are all in the US, so it is easier to learn from them and join their ranks. If you are no better than the competition, then a company is justified in hiring in the cheaper labor.
- ssl-3 3y ago
  In a vacuum, both of those first two considerations are easily resolved by hiring even more remote workers from an area with low pay (and low cost of living), and who share similar timezones and primary language. But still: As you say, the best way to defend against this is to simply be the best. (The second best way is to become very fluent in technical use of the correct second language and learn to sleep on a different schedule, so that foreign workers can be closer to peers. Americans have been good at working weird shifts, and our society historically supports that to a fair extent, but the language thing is something that we have not generally been very good at.)
prmoustache 3y ago
If it could smoothen the inequalities between countries (and even within a country) in term of income, real estate/education/healthcare prices, I am all for it.
mlrtime 3y ago
This topic keeps coming up when remote work is discussed and I think a lot of commenters are showing their age. Off Shoring is not new. I managed a team of 7 Indains (6 dev, 2 QA) in Hyderabad as contract workers (not company employees) in 2007, 17 years ago! Before zoom, slack, meet, teams. They were great at what they did, they were cheaper than 8 US employees, but the relationship definitely had pros/cons that are not easily understood. The biggest pro was actually the timezone, I could ask for fixes/features and when I came into the office in the morning they'd be done. The cons were many, including quality of work and efficiency.
- __loam 3y ago
  Totally understand offshoring went out of fashion prior to remote work and Covid. I'd be curious to know how management is evaluating that post Covid. I have to imagine many of them didn't learn their lesson, and I also imagine the quality of software engineers outside the US has risen in the meantime.

by __loam 3y ago

npsomaratna 3y ago

1. Labor law is local. This adds (on a per-country basis) legal risk and compliance costs, as well as operational costs (e.g., you might need to have specific policies that apply to employees in specific countries). 2. Taxation regimes. These too vary by country, and add compliance and operational costs. 3. Other laws (both U.S. and foreign) that make hiring foreign nationals complex in certain situations, e.g., ITAR. When considered together, these costs and operational obstacles can be significant.

lemme_tell_ya 3y ago
I work for a small tech company in the US (~25 employees) and a few of them are in Europe. My boss didn't seem to have any issue hiring them and he wears a lot of hats, and we didn't hire them due to cost but to their very specific expertise.
redcobra762 3y ago
No, sorry. These are all defeated by hiring contractors. The real issues are, ironically, the collaborative barriers. Different cultures have different standards of work, a different working culture, and honestly different time zones. The “24 hour dev shop” is a risk, but work moving overseas is only a problem at the commodified software level, like a SaaS b2b where a shit tool with one little innovation saves five minutes can scale to millions in savings.
- npsomaratna 3y ago
  Not necessarily. Consider this situation: you hire a contractor. They work for you for several years, and then you fire them. The contractor goes to the labor court in their country and files a claim stating that, yes, their contract says that they are an independent contractor, but no, since you've employed them "full-time" for several years continuously, they are a defacto/de jure employee. (Which is a valid argument under the labor laws of certain countries) What will you do: - Spend the time and money refuting their claim? (You need to find a good lawyer in that foreign country; lawyers are expensive; and someone on your side needs to spend their time coordinating with them) - Ignore the claim? (Not a good idea if you ever want to visit that country in the future) The claim itself might be nonsense; that's immaterial. You're faced with a Hobson's choice if said contractor drags you to court. (Addendum: this is why I made the point that labor law is local. When you hire a national of a foreign country, in general, you subject yourself to the jurisdiction of the courts of that country for labor related disputes. I am not sure if a clause in an employment contract stating that the agreement is governed by U.S. law would be accepted by a local court; and even if it did, in litigation, you'd most likely have to represent yourself before the local court to make that objection.)
  - redcobra762 3y ago
    You don’t fire contractors, their contract just ends. Additionally, the contract is often with the company, not the individual, so their employees aren’t in any legal sense working “for” you. If an employee wants to litigate, they’re opposing the contracting company, not you. This comes with some downsides of its own, but generally this circumvents most labor issues. And of course anyone can sue for any reason, but if the argument is that the individual will pester you with lawsuits, can’t anyone do that to anyone else about anything?
    - npsomaratna 3y ago
      Fair enough, yes. If you're contracting with a third-party company that takes up the risk of hiring the employee, that does circumvent these issues. Re: the lawsuits—yes, the barrier to initiate litigation is low (in most countries); but in my experience, most folks only start litigation when they feel significantly wronged. Problem is, given the difference in cultures (something you pointed out earlier), an act by the company that is perfectly standard in the U.S. might be interpreted very differently by someone from another country.

lemme_tell_ya 3y ago

We started down this path before COVID, it's just accelerating now. I think language, accents[0], time zones, and culture are the main things providing any resistance to this happening even quicker than it should. [0]We once had a person on our team from India, sharp guy but his accent was extremely difficult to parse over audio. We ended up doing most communication over email and chat.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

esafak 3y ago

One consideration that helps local workers is the time zone; a remote company may yet choose to hire locally to reduce the time zone span. Another is communication; companies want to hire people that can communicate fluently in a shared language. But the best solution is to just become better at your job. The best programmers are all in the US, so it is easier to learn from them and join their ranks. If you are no better than the competition, then a company is justified in hiring in the cheaper labor.

ssl-3 3y ago
In a vacuum, both of those first two considerations are easily resolved by hiring even more remote workers from an area with low pay (and low cost of living), and who share similar timezones and primary language. But still: As you say, the best way to defend against this is to simply be the best. (The second best way is to become very fluent in technical use of the correct second language and learn to sleep on a different schedule, so that foreign workers can be closer to peers. Americans have been good at working weird shifts, and our society historically supports that to a fair extent, but the language thing is something that we have not generally been very good at.)

prmoustache 3y ago

If it could smoothen the inequalities between countries (and even within a country) in term of income, real estate/education/healthcare prices, I am all for it.

mlrtime 3y ago

This topic keeps coming up when remote work is discussed and I think a lot of commenters are showing their age. Off Shoring is not new. I managed a team of 7 Indains (6 dev, 2 QA) in Hyderabad as contract workers (not company employees) in 2007, 17 years ago! Before zoom, slack, meet, teams. They were great at what they did, they were cheaper than 8 US employees, but the relationship definitely had pros/cons that are not easily understood. The biggest pro was actually the timezone, I could ask for fixes/features and when I came into the office in the morning they'd be done. The cons were many, including quality of work and efficiency.

__loam 3y ago
Totally understand offshoring went out of fashion prior to remote work and Covid. I'd be curious to know how management is evaluating that post Covid. I have to imagine many of them didn't learn their lesson, and I also imagine the quality of software engineers outside the US has risen in the meantime.