4 ms·

We have some devs in other countries. We pay them about $80K/yr. We have been trying to hire locally. The positions have been advertised for about 6 months at $

We have some devs in other countries. We pay them about $80K/yr. We have been trying to hire locally. The positions have been advertised for about 6 months at $140K/yr. We have only had unqualified people apply so far. We then bumped the salary to $160K. Still no go. Again, we get takers, but they can't match the skill level of overseas devs at double the salary. Will we pay the 20% tax/fine? Grudgingly yes. Particularly if this stuff becomes law and local labor force becomes even more expensive than it is now. I can also see people coming up with creative ways to circumvent having to pay the tax. It is possible that some companies will move out entirely or create a legally separate entity offshore that is responsible for all the work that they wish to outsource. The same sort of thing happened with manufacturing jobs. You can wish for those jobs to come back all you want. It is not happening in any significant numbers.

sumedh 1y ago
Can you share the job ad posts here?
testrun 1y ago
Have you tried training devs locally?
- thedevilslawyer 1y ago
  Training would perhaps be at 50K/yr USD in current environment, and it would be not too many taking up in US environments. In developing nations you can get equivalent training talent at 10K USD/yr, and equivalent fully-trained at 50-80k USD/yr en-mass. (now potentially 20% higher)
- izacus 1y ago
  Training would cost 140k/yr and then the dev would skip to a company that can pay more because they don't invest in training.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - wakawaka28 1y ago
    If you hire someone to train them, you can pay less (say perhaps $70-80k) and also include in the contract some penalties if they stay a specific amount of time, say longer than 6 months and less than 2 years. And the so-called training is probably bullshit anyway. The problem here is probably not the pool of candidates. It's probably the wage not matching the market, the location of the gig, the gig itself, or the company being too picky.
didibus 1y ago
I would say that's fine. The law can do two things, incentivizes you to try to hire locally, and if you can't, prop up the tax payer coffins with a 25% tax, then maybe use that to generate other jobs, provide services, etc. The more important question is if it will hurt the economy in the area. So your mentions of bypassing it, companies leaving to go elsewhere, and so on. Personally, I think it would make more sense to tax companies that want to sell in Ohio, and offer tax credit to those who also employ in it. Though it's hard to predict how any such idea would play out. Otherwise it seems to hurt local companies the most as their cost to compete goes higher.
JumpCrisscross 1y ago
> You can wish for those jobs to come back all you want. It is not happening in any significant numbers It started happening with batteries and energy infrastructure. Then the GOP killed that because its base prefers to own the libs.
- alephnerd 1y ago
  IMO, the barrier to entry for battery and power systems manufacturing has been Capex moreso than the IP. Innovating new battery chemistries or a new BMS is hard, but cell, module, and pack assembly is fairly straightforward. Basically, my opinion is our blocker in the space wasn't lack of IP or domain knowledge, but the extremely high upfront costs to start, which is what IRA helped remediate. With significant portions of the tech industry, it's the other way around - we may have coders, but we increasingly don't have the domestic domain experience at the entry and mid-level.
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    > the barrier to entry for battery and power systems manufacturing has been Capex moreso than the IP Yes. The CHIPS Act and IRA provided avenues to that capital, directly and indirectly.
    - alephnerd 1y ago
      Absolutely - and I'm a big booster of industrial policy a la CHIPS/IRA! But a CHIPS or IRA style policy wouldn't work if trying to bring services or IP-first industries back to the US. In my vertical (cybersecurity/DevSecOps) much of the domain experience has been hollowed out domestically for almost 10-15 years now. If you're offshoring for the sake of R&D and IP generation, cost isn't a significant pressure (eg. Top Cybersecurity talent in Israel can demand US level salaries, and similar talent in India can demand EU level salaries). There's a much larger pipeline and skills problem in several subdomains in the tech industry that are highly underestimated by HNers.
      - 1y ago
postepowanieadm 1y ago
Maybe your hiring process is broken? Your offshore hiring process is handled externally?
klipklop 1y ago
I am highly skeptical that there are no US applicants that can do the job and accept $160k TC. I think you guys just enjoy the wage arbitrage and this is an inherit bias in your hiring process.
- alephnerd 1y ago
  In cybersecurity and DevSecOps it's a very common occurrence. It's very hard to find software engineers and PMs with a security background in the US, which makes delivery difficult, while in countries abroad, finding a candidate who has a background in eBPF, OS internals, computer hardware, networking, C/C++, and CloudOps/DevOps topics like K8s or IAM all at once is fairly easy to find. Since the mid-2010s, American CS programs have increasingly dropped OS, CompArch, and Networking classes or provide a single summary class that most students promptly forget after the class is complete, because LeetCode-driven hiring simply didn't incentivize this kind of knowledge. Meanwhile, in Israel, Romania, India, and Poland, these skills are fairly table stakes requirements in a CS degree. You see this reflected in Cybersecurity startups as well - almost all early stage startups in the space are now Israeli or Indian founded, with either a small office of diaspora in the Bay or in the old country. It's even worse on the chip design side, because the salaries in the field are low in the US ($80-110k), margins are low in the industry being hardware based, AND students increasingly don't take Computer Design, Circuits, DSP, and Logic Design because CS is increasingly segregated from ECE, and EE/CE enrollment is falling. Meanwhile, a course like DSP is made a CS requirement as well as an EE requirement in India, China, Israel, and Eastern Europe
  - BergAndCo 1y ago
    [dead]
glimshe 1y ago
If you can't find a qualified candidate at 160K/year, the problem isn't the candidate... It's your company and your interview process. There are many places in the US where you could find that person, especially now with so many people in our field still unemployed.
Eddy_Viscosity2 1y ago
> I can also see people coming up with creative ways to circumvent having to pay the tax. Oh it won't take long if some company with deep pockets wants out of this. An 'exemption category' will be quietly put in and those who paid the right people will qualify. This is Trumpinomics now at the state level; put out harsh new rules and then let people pay you off to get exempted from them.
AaronAPU 1y ago
Let me guess the candidate has to agree to live in one of the most expensive cities on the planet and dodge knife wielding homeless people and their feces on the way to work every day.
wakawaka28 1y ago
>Will we pay the 20% tax/fine? Grudgingly yes. Particularly if this stuff becomes law and local labor force becomes even more expensive than it is now. This is the point. They could just BAN outsourcing. But letting it just be more expensive is a compromise to allow companies to find people when overseas is the only way to do it. >The same sort of thing happened with manufacturing jobs. You can wish for those jobs to come back all you want. It is not happening in any significant numbers. If the tariffs stick, and get set to a sufficiently high rate, then the jobs will come back. In the meantime, investors are scared to be screwed over on new factories in the US which would be uncompetitive without tariffs.
JonnyDigital 1y ago
Where are you actually putting the job posts?

sumedh 1y ago

Can you share the job ad posts here?

testrun 1y ago

Have you tried training devs locally?

thedevilslawyer 1y ago
Training would perhaps be at 50K/yr USD in current environment, and it would be not too many taking up in US environments. In developing nations you can get equivalent training talent at 10K USD/yr, and equivalent fully-trained at 50-80k USD/yr en-mass. (now potentially 20% higher)
izacus 1y ago
Training would cost 140k/yr and then the dev would skip to a company that can pay more because they don't invest in training.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- wakawaka28 1y ago
  If you hire someone to train them, you can pay less (say perhaps $70-80k) and also include in the contract some penalties if they stay a specific amount of time, say longer than 6 months and less than 2 years. And the so-called training is probably bullshit anyway. The problem here is probably not the pool of candidates. It's probably the wage not matching the market, the location of the gig, the gig itself, or the company being too picky.

didibus 1y ago

I would say that's fine. The law can do two things, incentivizes you to try to hire locally, and if you can't, prop up the tax payer coffins with a 25% tax, then maybe use that to generate other jobs, provide services, etc. The more important question is if it will hurt the economy in the area. So your mentions of bypassing it, companies leaving to go elsewhere, and so on. Personally, I think it would make more sense to tax companies that want to sell in Ohio, and offer tax credit to those who also employ in it. Though it's hard to predict how any such idea would play out. Otherwise it seems to hurt local companies the most as their cost to compete goes higher.

JumpCrisscross 1y ago

> You can wish for those jobs to come back all you want. It is not happening in any significant numbers It started happening with batteries and energy infrastructure. Then the GOP killed that because its base prefers to own the libs.

alephnerd 1y ago
IMO, the barrier to entry for battery and power systems manufacturing has been Capex moreso than the IP. Innovating new battery chemistries or a new BMS is hard, but cell, module, and pack assembly is fairly straightforward. Basically, my opinion is our blocker in the space wasn't lack of IP or domain knowledge, but the extremely high upfront costs to start, which is what IRA helped remediate. With significant portions of the tech industry, it's the other way around - we may have coders, but we increasingly don't have the domestic domain experience at the entry and mid-level.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > the barrier to entry for battery and power systems manufacturing has been Capex moreso than the IP Yes. The CHIPS Act and IRA provided avenues to that capital, directly and indirectly.
  - alephnerd 1y ago
    Absolutely - and I'm a big booster of industrial policy a la CHIPS/IRA! But a CHIPS or IRA style policy wouldn't work if trying to bring services or IP-first industries back to the US. In my vertical (cybersecurity/DevSecOps) much of the domain experience has been hollowed out domestically for almost 10-15 years now. If you're offshoring for the sake of R&D and IP generation, cost isn't a significant pressure (eg. Top Cybersecurity talent in Israel can demand US level salaries, and similar talent in India can demand EU level salaries). There's a much larger pipeline and skills problem in several subdomains in the tech industry that are highly underestimated by HNers.
    - 1y ago

postepowanieadm 1y ago

Maybe your hiring process is broken? Your offshore hiring process is handled externally?

klipklop 1y ago

I am highly skeptical that there are no US applicants that can do the job and accept $160k TC. I think you guys just enjoy the wage arbitrage and this is an inherit bias in your hiring process.

alephnerd 1y ago
In cybersecurity and DevSecOps it's a very common occurrence. It's very hard to find software engineers and PMs with a security background in the US, which makes delivery difficult, while in countries abroad, finding a candidate who has a background in eBPF, OS internals, computer hardware, networking, C/C++, and CloudOps/DevOps topics like K8s or IAM all at once is fairly easy to find. Since the mid-2010s, American CS programs have increasingly dropped OS, CompArch, and Networking classes or provide a single summary class that most students promptly forget after the class is complete, because LeetCode-driven hiring simply didn't incentivize this kind of knowledge. Meanwhile, in Israel, Romania, India, and Poland, these skills are fairly table stakes requirements in a CS degree. You see this reflected in Cybersecurity startups as well - almost all early stage startups in the space are now Israeli or Indian founded, with either a small office of diaspora in the Bay or in the old country. It's even worse on the chip design side, because the salaries in the field are low in the US ($80-110k), margins are low in the industry being hardware based, AND students increasingly don't take Computer Design, Circuits, DSP, and Logic Design because CS is increasingly segregated from ECE, and EE/CE enrollment is falling. Meanwhile, a course like DSP is made a CS requirement as well as an EE requirement in India, China, Israel, and Eastern Europe
- BergAndCo 1y ago
  [dead]

glimshe 1y ago

If you can't find a qualified candidate at 160K/year, the problem isn't the candidate... It's your company and your interview process. There are many places in the US where you could find that person, especially now with so many people in our field still unemployed.

Eddy_Viscosity2 1y ago

> I can also see people coming up with creative ways to circumvent having to pay the tax. Oh it won't take long if some company with deep pockets wants out of this. An 'exemption category' will be quietly put in and those who paid the right people will qualify. This is Trumpinomics now at the state level; put out harsh new rules and then let people pay you off to get exempted from them.

AaronAPU 1y ago

Let me guess the candidate has to agree to live in one of the most expensive cities on the planet and dodge knife wielding homeless people and their feces on the way to work every day.

wakawaka28 1y ago

>Will we pay the 20% tax/fine? Grudgingly yes. Particularly if this stuff becomes law and local labor force becomes even more expensive than it is now. This is the point. They could just BAN outsourcing. But letting it just be more expensive is a compromise to allow companies to find people when overseas is the only way to do it. >The same sort of thing happened with manufacturing jobs. You can wish for those jobs to come back all you want. It is not happening in any significant numbers. If the tariffs stick, and get set to a sufficiently high rate, then the jobs will come back. In the meantime, investors are scared to be screwed over on new factories in the US which would be uncompetitive without tariffs.

JonnyDigital 1y ago

Where are you actually putting the job posts?