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It bears repeating that if you're a tech worker in the US, your greatest asset is your physical location. You might think you like remote jobs, but you will ha

It bears repeating that if you're a tech worker in the US, your greatest asset is your physical location. You might think you like remote jobs, but you will have competition from South America, Western and Eastern Europe, etc. as well as people in the US living in flyover states in the middle of nowhere with cheap rent. If the focus also shifts more to raw input-output task accomplishmentbas opposed to in person social interaction, your cultural capital will also lose value. There is a vast gulf between the salaries in the US and even Western Europe in tech. Americans seem unaware, but if you insist on remote work, you'll lose that advantage quick. If you think that everyone overseas is simply less intelligent, you'll have a rough awakening.

ajjahs 1y ago
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phrotoma 1y ago
> you will have competition from South America, Western and Eastern Europe Based on this Canadian's browsing of the average Who's Hiring thread, it seems that a very small fraction of US based remote friendly jobs are open to being filled by foreigners. They do exist, just not many. You're bang on about competition from domestic candidates in lower cost of living areas though.
dboreham 1y ago
If the entire organization is offshore then fine, but the time zone difference between they west coast and Europe is too big for close collaboration. South America is ok but there aren't many software developers there.
- disgruntledphd2 1y ago
  > but the time zone difference between they west coast and Europe is too big for close collaboration This is definitely part of it, but if you have east coast or central teams, this is totally doable. In fact, often the European employees get more done as they get a whole morning before the US based pings/meetings start.
varispeed 1y ago
The argument doesn’t hold water. Companies aren’t pushing RTO because they want to pay higher salaries to office-bound staff in expensive metros. If raw “input–output” and cheap labour were the only metric, they’d go fully remote, tap global markets, and slash payroll overnight. RTO is about control and optics, not cost optimisation. It’s management preference, real estate sunk costs, and the illusion of productivity through visibility. Actual delivery of work is the only thing that matters in tech - and remote delivery has already proven itself at scale. The idea that “physical location is your greatest asset” is backwards. If that were true, San Francisco developers wouldn’t already be competing with contractors in Bangalore and Bucharest. They are - yet the jobs remain, because employers value capability, not postcode. In short: RTO doesn’t protect American tech workers from global competition. It just wastes time in traffic and props up bad management.
- us-merul 1y ago
  It also turns remote work into a negotiated benefit, which may be preferred over actual raises.
  - AnimalMuppet 1y ago
    Well, if we're going to negotiate, let's negotiate both ways. You want me in the office? Then I have to commute, and my time's not free. Are you going to pay me for my commute time?
    - us-merul 1y ago
      Right. If employers set RTO as the default, you may be able to negotiate remote time instead of a pay raise. They’re less willing to pay you more to commute and would rather see the commute as the expectation.
      - varispeed 1y ago
        Salary isn’t a meter ticking from 9 to 5, and it’s not a line item of “WFH credits” vs. “commute debits.” Salary is simply the number that convinces you to show up and do the work. Whether you sit in an office, in your kitchen, or on the beach is irrelevant - the company pays because they need outcomes, not because of your postcode or chair type. That’s why all this “WFH as benefit / RTO as cost” chatter is sleight of hand. It nudges you into negotiating around scraps instead of the only thing that matters: total compensation for total output. Companies push that framing precisely because it distracts you from asking for a bigger number.
xienze 1y ago
> If you think that everyone overseas is simply less intelligent, you'll have a rough awakening. Counterpoint, developer offshoring has been happening since at least the late nineties with eh, limited success. It's hard to get around major timezone differences and thick accents. This isn't even getting into the fatal mistake that everyone makes -- thinking that there's, for example, a billion more "Brilliant Indian Guy in Our Office" clones out there in India.
SR2Z 1y ago
I think that folks overseas aren't as capable of communicating with Americans as other Americans are. I think that American tech companies would prefer a motivated at-will employee at 3x the cost of an unfirable European with a statutory month off every year. I think that none of this will magically make it easier to raise money outside the US. There are obviously plenty of brilliant people outside the US. Unfortunately, intelligence is not the only factor that revenue per employee emerges from - or else the US would not dominate the tech sector and it would be uncommon to find remote-first companies based entirely in the US.
- disgruntledphd2 1y ago
  > I think that folks overseas aren't as capable of communicating with Americans as other Americans are. This is sortof absurd on the face of it. For context, I'm a European who's been working for US based companies for well over a decade now, and rarely do I have communications issues (and they're generally with non-native English speakers, mostly Europeans living in the US). > I think that American tech companies would prefer a motivated at-will employee at 3x the cost of an unfirable European with a statutory month off every year. It's important to note that not all Europeans are unfireable. In fact, none of them are, it's just that you need to 1) give a verbal warning, 2) give a written warning and 3) fire them if things don't improve. Granted, you can't fire them for not laughing at your jokes but the same sort of process gets followed in California where most US tech companies are headquatered. > I think that none of this will magically make it easier to raise money outside the US. This is the actual reason. There's so much capital available in the US that it sucks in a lot of ambitious people. > There are obviously plenty of brilliant people outside the US. Unfortunately, intelligence is not the only factor that revenue per employee emerges from - or else the US would not dominate the tech sector and it would be uncommon to find remote-first companies based entirely in the US. In fact, it's normally easier to get a better person outside the US, as they have less options at big-tech level wages. The US dominates the tech sector because of availablity of capital, not availability of talent.
  - oblio 1y ago
    Yeah, the magical American is the reason for US tech dominance. There's a reason why the biggest software companies come from big countries: 1. large internal markets provide more funding and more competition at the start 2. which leads to better product-market fit 3. which leads to more dominance as the natural software monopolies happen 4. which leads to easier taking over of smaller foreign markets Biggest software companies? American and Chinese. Also Indian ones are starting to rise, too. In comparison Europe is super fractured. Ignoring big US companies, the average French person buys stuff from a totally different website than the average German, for almost category you can imagine.
benterix 1y ago
As a person working with Americans, if I may express my honest opinion, this is BS. Your advantage is the fact that you are professional, hard-working, are able to question the demands in a positive way, can communicate with American management more easily, live in the same time zone and in general you can get on with the rest of American team more easily. I would never say physical location is an asset (although I might be biased as I work for corporations that have multiple offices in various continents, for small startups it might be different).
BobaFloutist 1y ago
>There is a vast gulf between the salaries in the US and even Western Europe in tech. American companies are welcome to start offering Western European level benefits (and compensate for missing government benefits) at any time. I would happily accept 30-50% less pay for a very solid health insurance plan, pay for my childcare 30 days of paid vacation a year that I'm actually entitled to take, 6 months of paid maternity leave + some paternity leave, a contract that restricts my working hours and makes it meaningfully legally difficult to frivolously fire me and practically impossible to lay me off of the company isn't failing, and an hour paid lunch every day. Nobody seems to be offering that, for whatever reason. The closest is non-profits, who lack the cash to meet standard salaries but try to make up with benefits (which are, after all, cheaper), but for profit companies seem to prefer to pony up and retain the control at-will employment grants them
- red-iron-pine 1y ago
  > Nobody seems to be offering that, for whatever reason. different NDA rules, HR rules, non-compete rules, expectations about unions, hiring & firing rules, etc. etc. etc. non-starter for a lot of fairly obvious reasons if you've done hiring before. it's an issue with any offshoring, but 4.14/hr for India offsets that risk compared to 2/3s of NA salary for EU and all sort of hoops.
zappb 1y ago
First of all, companies have already outsourced all that they could a couple decades ago. Then when it comes to hiring in different countries, this gets extremely complicated due to taxes and regulations. While some remote-first companies can navigate this complexity (usually through some sort of HR as a service type company), most companies are not structured in such a way to feasibly hire people outside their incorporated area.
- thedevilslawyer 1y ago
  >companies have already outsourced all that they could a couple decades ago Amateur armchair stuff. 9% YoY growth for decades. https://truelist.co/blog/outsourcing-statistics/ https://truelist.co/blog/outsourcing-statistics/ (Graph 20)

ajjahs 1y ago

[dead]

phrotoma 1y ago

> you will have competition from South America, Western and Eastern Europe Based on this Canadian's browsing of the average Who's Hiring thread, it seems that a very small fraction of US based remote friendly jobs are open to being filled by foreigners. They do exist, just not many. You're bang on about competition from domestic candidates in lower cost of living areas though.

dboreham 1y ago

If the entire organization is offshore then fine, but the time zone difference between they west coast and Europe is too big for close collaboration. South America is ok but there aren't many software developers there.

disgruntledphd2 1y ago
> but the time zone difference between they west coast and Europe is too big for close collaboration This is definitely part of it, but if you have east coast or central teams, this is totally doable. In fact, often the European employees get more done as they get a whole morning before the US based pings/meetings start.

varispeed 1y ago

The argument doesn’t hold water. Companies aren’t pushing RTO because they want to pay higher salaries to office-bound staff in expensive metros. If raw “input–output” and cheap labour were the only metric, they’d go fully remote, tap global markets, and slash payroll overnight. RTO is about control and optics, not cost optimisation. It’s management preference, real estate sunk costs, and the illusion of productivity through visibility. Actual delivery of work is the only thing that matters in tech - and remote delivery has already proven itself at scale. The idea that “physical location is your greatest asset” is backwards. If that were true, San Francisco developers wouldn’t already be competing with contractors in Bangalore and Bucharest. They are - yet the jobs remain, because employers value capability, not postcode. In short: RTO doesn’t protect American tech workers from global competition. It just wastes time in traffic and props up bad management.

us-merul 1y ago
It also turns remote work into a negotiated benefit, which may be preferred over actual raises.
- AnimalMuppet 1y ago
  Well, if we're going to negotiate, let's negotiate both ways. You want me in the office? Then I have to commute, and my time's not free. Are you going to pay me for my commute time?
  - us-merul 1y ago
    Right. If employers set RTO as the default, you may be able to negotiate remote time instead of a pay raise. They’re less willing to pay you more to commute and would rather see the commute as the expectation.
    - varispeed 1y ago
      Salary isn’t a meter ticking from 9 to 5, and it’s not a line item of “WFH credits” vs. “commute debits.” Salary is simply the number that convinces you to show up and do the work. Whether you sit in an office, in your kitchen, or on the beach is irrelevant - the company pays because they need outcomes, not because of your postcode or chair type. That’s why all this “WFH as benefit / RTO as cost” chatter is sleight of hand. It nudges you into negotiating around scraps instead of the only thing that matters: total compensation for total output. Companies push that framing precisely because it distracts you from asking for a bigger number.

xienze 1y ago

> If you think that everyone overseas is simply less intelligent, you'll have a rough awakening. Counterpoint, developer offshoring has been happening since at least the late nineties with eh, limited success. It's hard to get around major timezone differences and thick accents. This isn't even getting into the fatal mistake that everyone makes -- thinking that there's, for example, a billion more "Brilliant Indian Guy in Our Office" clones out there in India.

SR2Z 1y ago

I think that folks overseas aren't as capable of communicating with Americans as other Americans are. I think that American tech companies would prefer a motivated at-will employee at 3x the cost of an unfirable European with a statutory month off every year. I think that none of this will magically make it easier to raise money outside the US. There are obviously plenty of brilliant people outside the US. Unfortunately, intelligence is not the only factor that revenue per employee emerges from - or else the US would not dominate the tech sector and it would be uncommon to find remote-first companies based entirely in the US.

disgruntledphd2 1y ago
> I think that folks overseas aren't as capable of communicating with Americans as other Americans are. This is sortof absurd on the face of it. For context, I'm a European who's been working for US based companies for well over a decade now, and rarely do I have communications issues (and they're generally with non-native English speakers, mostly Europeans living in the US). > I think that American tech companies would prefer a motivated at-will employee at 3x the cost of an unfirable European with a statutory month off every year. It's important to note that not all Europeans are unfireable. In fact, none of them are, it's just that you need to 1) give a verbal warning, 2) give a written warning and 3) fire them if things don't improve. Granted, you can't fire them for not laughing at your jokes but the same sort of process gets followed in California where most US tech companies are headquatered. > I think that none of this will magically make it easier to raise money outside the US. This is the actual reason. There's so much capital available in the US that it sucks in a lot of ambitious people. > There are obviously plenty of brilliant people outside the US. Unfortunately, intelligence is not the only factor that revenue per employee emerges from - or else the US would not dominate the tech sector and it would be uncommon to find remote-first companies based entirely in the US. In fact, it's normally easier to get a better person outside the US, as they have less options at big-tech level wages. The US dominates the tech sector because of availablity of capital, not availability of talent.
- oblio 1y ago
  Yeah, the magical American is the reason for US tech dominance. There's a reason why the biggest software companies come from big countries: 1. large internal markets provide more funding and more competition at the start 2. which leads to better product-market fit 3. which leads to more dominance as the natural software monopolies happen 4. which leads to easier taking over of smaller foreign markets Biggest software companies? American and Chinese. Also Indian ones are starting to rise, too. In comparison Europe is super fractured. Ignoring big US companies, the average French person buys stuff from a totally different website than the average German, for almost category you can imagine.

benterix 1y ago

As a person working with Americans, if I may express my honest opinion, this is BS. Your advantage is the fact that you are professional, hard-working, are able to question the demands in a positive way, can communicate with American management more easily, live in the same time zone and in general you can get on with the rest of American team more easily. I would never say physical location is an asset (although I might be biased as I work for corporations that have multiple offices in various continents, for small startups it might be different).

BobaFloutist 1y ago

>There is a vast gulf between the salaries in the US and even Western Europe in tech. American companies are welcome to start offering Western European level benefits (and compensate for missing government benefits) at any time. I would happily accept 30-50% less pay for a very solid health insurance plan, pay for my childcare 30 days of paid vacation a year that I'm actually entitled to take, 6 months of paid maternity leave + some paternity leave, a contract that restricts my working hours and makes it meaningfully legally difficult to frivolously fire me and practically impossible to lay me off of the company isn't failing, and an hour paid lunch every day. Nobody seems to be offering that, for whatever reason. The closest is non-profits, who lack the cash to meet standard salaries but try to make up with benefits (which are, after all, cheaper), but for profit companies seem to prefer to pony up and retain the control at-will employment grants them

red-iron-pine 1y ago
> Nobody seems to be offering that, for whatever reason. different NDA rules, HR rules, non-compete rules, expectations about unions, hiring & firing rules, etc. etc. etc. non-starter for a lot of fairly obvious reasons if you've done hiring before. it's an issue with any offshoring, but 4.14/hr for India offsets that risk compared to 2/3s of NA salary for EU and all sort of hoops.

zappb 1y ago

First of all, companies have already outsourced all that they could a couple decades ago. Then when it comes to hiring in different countries, this gets extremely complicated due to taxes and regulations. While some remote-first companies can navigate this complexity (usually through some sort of HR as a service type company), most companies are not structured in such a way to feasibly hire people outside their incorporated area.

thedevilslawyer 1y ago
>companies have already outsourced all that they could a couple decades ago Amateur armchair stuff. 9% YoY growth for decades. https://truelist.co/blog/outsourcing-statistics/ https://truelist.co/blog/outsourcing-statistics/ (Graph 20)