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If businesses were perfectly rational economic actors then all bay area/sv devs would be out of jobs. > When you travel to a country cheaper than yours, do you
by zokier 3y ago
If businesses were perfectly rational economic actors then all bay area/sv devs would be out of jobs.
> When you travel to a country cheaper than yours, do you pay every restaurant, store, and taxi driver the same way you would at home?
> No, you don't. Because that would be foolish. You pay local rates, which are less.
But if you could magically teleport to store or restaurant anywhere in the world, would you pay high prices to go to SV restaurant or store? No, that would also be foolish.
So local prices make sense of physical businesses because people pay premium for convenient access, for not needing to fly half-way across the world to do your groceries or whatever. But that same does not apply to full-remote developers; the work(/value) is getting delivered to the business all the same regardless where the employee happens to be physically sitting.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- qznc 3y agoIf the work/value delivered would be the same, then all software development would have migrated to Vietnam already. For some reason, companies think it is important that some developers are physically in Silicon Valley and they pay a lot to get that. Is it about language and timezone barriers? No, because there are plenty of alternatives in the US as well.
- zokier 3y agoIf physical location is significant then it's not full remote position. Beyond that, this is not just about sv vs rest of world, but about doing per-location adjustment based on local economic conditions. And it is pretty difficult to argue that the value of a developer to business is in anyway linked to their cost of living