Hacker News Reader

Comment by Tade0 | Hacker News Reader

It’s baffling to me that American workers would cheer an acceleration of this trend that would place downward pressure on their wages.

Will it though? Coming from a country(Poland) that is a rather popular target for outsourcing I can tell you that companies pay around $70k per annum(ballpark - don't quote me on this) for contractors over here(the contractors themselves receive 50-80% of that) and there's still plenty of work to go around.

Sure, that's not a lot, but it comes with the additional issue of having the person in a very different time zone, which is not ideal.

I'd say outside of SV your wages are safe.

View on HN

You are comparing outsourced contractors to salaried employees. The low end of typical contract rates here is, IME, ~$100/hr.

Also, as a rule of thumb, a salaried employee cost twice their salary after benefits and other costs are factored in. Given the median salary I recall from a recent placement company, this is in the region of $300k.

If the reduced physical presence of remote work reduces the value that salaried employees can bring, contracting out work will become more attractive.

Also, as a rule of thumb, a salaried employee cost twice their salary after benefits and other costs are factored in.

What kind of benefits? Total cost for the employer is seriously around $300k? I find that hard to believe.

3x is a wide margin. I remember seeing numbers at my last contract job that suggested it was close to 1.75x and was using that number in the process of getting hired directly. I knew the companies costs to hire could be under that 1.75x value but still be a pay bump for me especially as I didn't have any benefits through the contractor saving them costs with no return to me.

For the contracting agency the value of my labor to a third party is how they make money. Seemed simple enough to me but not a racket I wanted to bounce around in.

According to this source [0] the factor is closer to 1.25x - 1.4x or 1.18x - 1.26x depending on which source you listen to.

[0] https://beebole.com/blog/how-to-calculate-the-real-cost-of-a...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com