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Comment by EMM_386 | Hacker News Reader

> And the competition for jobs might spike.

And salaries may drop precipitously if you are in one of the higher paid countries, because you are now competing with people who may be equally as qualified as you but can make WAY less and afford a very comfortable standard of living anywhere in the world.

Even within countries. Why may San Fran salaries when you just found someone in Fargo, SD that can do the same job and would prefer to stay there.

I realize companies are discussing keeping Silicon Valley salaries wherever their employees choose to live, but that can't last. You could pack up and move to another country and live like an absolute king.

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I think observed only along the axis of the increase in remote work as a percentage of available software jobs this may true, but may not properly account for the continual geometric increase in demand for highly skilled software developers happening alongside the other shifts.

Or in other words, I suspect demand for developers is going up faster than remote is addressing supply.

Haven't we had basically this with outsourcing ("same" work for way less money)? Was it not, all things considered, nightmare fuel on average?

> I realize companies are discussing keeping Silicon Valley salaries wherever their employees choose to live, but that can't last.

1) Now that managers have realized that the programmers don't need to be in Silly Valley, the next realization is that they can hire outside Silly Valley and pay less. There are a whole lot of people in cities like Pittsburgh who will be happy to get 10% less than Silly Valley to get a remote job. And then 10% less than that to get a remote job. Lather, rinse, repeat until salraies are at the cost of living for the area.

2) Once they do that, they will realize that they can lay off almost everybody with a high salary for no net loss.

If you're just a programmer, life is about to get bad. Hope you banked money while you had it.

Honest question. How many people who can get jobs at SV companies are still sitting in crappy towns in the US? I'm sure there are some, but I'm not sure there as many as people think.

The world wide developer pool is certainly a bigger issue, but that's been around a long time. Remote is only part (and I would argue a small part) of the reason that outsourcing isn't used more often.

I think what we'll see is the super low salary areas rise and the super high areas come down a bit. I don't think it's about to 'get bad' for anyone with the skillset to work at a SV company though. In fact, it's more likely about to get much better for everyone else. I've already seen salaries in my locale go up since local companies are now competing with nearby big cities companies who are now comfortable with remote workers.

> How many people who can get jobs at SV companies are still sitting in crappy towns in the US?

The entire ModCloth Pittsburgh team, for example?

If you see some of the talks by the former ModCloth CTO, he points out that the Pittsburgh team was better and cheaper than the Silicon Valley team by a good margin. Part of that was the fact that the Pittsburgh team had more experience that the Silly Valley team because they didn't jump ship every three years. Part of that was the fact that the Silicon Valley FAANGs absorbed the actually good programmers so what you were hiring in Silicon Valley was the mediocre second tier who thought they were first tier and you had to pay them first tier salaries.

And don't underestimate the number of people who don't want to move. At least 1/3 of my college graduating class didn't want to leave Pittsburgh.

Yeah, when I worked for a FAANG, I was often asked to move to the US, which never worked for me because of family/lifestyle commitments. Even if I do say so myself, I was a lot better than the equivalent US team, simply because we hired less in Europe and paid much better, resulting in a higher quality of candidates.

Now, at a relatively less competent company overall, the difference between the quality of the US employees and the European ones in the same position is much larger (and not in a good for the US kind of way).

Like, almost none of my current colleagues based in SF would have passed a FAANG loop, but they get paid 2x to 3x what I do.

I don't mind, as I like where I live and I get a really good salary for my area, but if I could take one of the now remote FAANG jobs and get an SV salary (even SV-20%) I would do so in a heartbeat.

It's gonna be interesting times ahead for sure, and I'm definitely glad that I don't have any investments in California property.

I have an avg salary for my area but extremely flexible schedule, I work when I want.

However, I am seeing more and more remote friendly options that will double my salary and I don't think my employer is capable of matching that but it is business and I would be dumb not to take advantage of it at some point soon.

> There are a whole lot of people in cities like Pittsburgh who will be happy to get 10% less than Silly Valley to get a remote job.

Do you think people in Pittsburgh shouldn't have jobs?

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