Comment by gorpomon | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gorpomon | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

This is well-trodden ground as far as discussion around here goes. The common points pro and con always come up: is the quality the same (some say yes, some say no), is co-location or time-zone location important (same parenthetical), what $ amount is ethical to pay, whom is it more ethical to pay (are you a nationalist or a global citizen, etc), what's sustainable, many more etc's.

I've decided that's it's a personal decision to a company. Many find benefits in having some teams in India or Asia, some don't so they don't. We should really divorce politics from this discussion. I'm ok with company A saying they like Indian devs and company B saying they enjoy the benefits of keeping it in their geographical area. I've seen outsourcing backfire. I've seen it succeed. I've seen team leads emerge in India and direct an entire product from 10,000 miles away. I've also seen dead weight that I had to go out of my way to get productivity from. You see it all and you'll get it all, so why the fuss?

> You see it all and you'll get it all, so why the fuss?

Because people are afraid that they won't be able to command 350K a year salaries anymore. The fear is that the "good old days" of SV salaries are over is being materialized.

Imo its overdue, but I also am perfectly happy making an average salary in a HCOL area, with aspirations to move to a low or middle COL area.

Sv is high cost of living because the people want it to be. It is well known in ecconmics how to make most of their costs lower, but they have spent years fighting those things. They get the good and bad side of high cost of living. (yimby says they want to change, but I don't know if they really want it, or just want a minor change, or even yes in the backyard across town)

I live in a low cost of living area and get the good and bad of my choices.

> We should really divorce politics from this discussion.

that's a common technical people pitfall. politics permeates society, and ignoring it is only to your own detriment exposing you form exploitation of those whom play the political game, of which you most assuredly participate in, whether you want an active role in it or not.

There's a difference between "let's try to figure out the best way to do something" and "let's sell the solution we've settled on". That's not an argument for avoiding politics, but there's nothing wrong with veering in the other direction either.

once you figure out the best way, you _still_ have to sell it to stakeholders which are each optimizing for different things, some of which you probably don't even known, and that's when the politics kicks in.

> politics permeates society

No, it's a pitfall people fall into when they read politics into any topic.

the topic is optimizing an arbitrary metric among a group of people with diverging goals and objectives many of which hidden[1] or with far reaching consequences that are impossible to know fully.

that quite literally requires reaching compromises in place of whatever optimal mathematical solution may exists.

[1] including people that might want a certain solution to be implemented _and_ fail. they do exist, especially in older groups where the power structure is fragmented and the dynamic dysfunctional.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics

Politics permeates society, and by design.

Also this thread is about employment and moving jobs across countries, which is an extremely politically changed topic.

Not only does it permeate, but this particular issue touches on a much larger, and more timely discussion: the extent to which companies should be loyal to a nation, and its citizens.

In one view, the one I had for a long time, companies are free agents. They can set up where they want, come and go as they please, hire and fire at will. They add value by creating jobs and profit and society should be thankful for that.

A different view, one I hear a lot in the more intellectual conservative circles (Brexit and some Trump supporters), is that companies have a duty to their people, and society at large. They should train people (through apprenticeship, rather than strip-mining universities / the local market), try to promote stability, avoid huge disruptive layoffs, etc.

I used to think the first but have come around to the second a bit.

Genuine question: I wasn't aware that I added any politics – is there any argument that I made that can be seen as political?

My apologies, you didn't-- I was just discussing further from your comment as opposed to directly replying to it. Perhaps it was not the best place for it.

> We should really divorce politics from this discussion

These decisions have externalities both positive and negative. "Divorcing politics" means ignoring those externalities. It is unlikely to happen.

> We should really divorce politics from this discussion.

I have come to realize that the only people who ever say this are people with no skin in the game, i.e., who aren't in the gunsights. I suspect (actually, know) you'd feel differently if you were training your own replacements just prior to your unemployment.

The personal is very much political, pokémon.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com