By the same process, you can also hire a 15 year of experience software engineer from europe or south america for 80k a year, and doing it as a contractor would also mean no payroll taxes.

In the remote game, people living in the US have a formidable economic foe.

But there is a reason why companies haven't done this massively before, both for international remote and US remote. Very few companies pre-Covid were fully remote, and it might just stay that way.