Those equally or more qualified overseas people working for little were in short supply. Why would they work for you for pennies when they could move to Silicon Valley, make tons more, and have potential for much, much more?
With remote work, what makes you think that the market will be inefficient? The overseas equally or more qualified will demand more money and look for more opportunities.
These companies that adjust pay based on location remind me of the wage fixing scheme led by Steve Jobs. Once Mark Zuckerberg refused to play along, compensation exploded. Companies that pay the best for remote workers will have their pick of the best.
Who says all talented engineers overseas can come to the US? There is a huge amount of QA companies in Ukraine that contract their service to the west, for example, can they come to the US? I doubt it. Overseas workers don't get the chance to make demands, US companies have leverage over them. Because there are way more talented engineers than high paying jobs. I have you seen how much people get paid in toptal, and other online contractor companies?
Examples:
former boss's family got out of Russia, had guns pointed at them on the way to the airport
coworker who got an H1-B, was desperate to get out of Russia, we found him because a product he was working on was exceptional
several coworkers from other countries that were math or computer science olympiads
btw these people end up in American colleges as undergrads or grads
Over 10 years ago, I had a coworker who remarked that all her classmates who stayed in China had become rich. She said that it was because it was an open field.
All you had to do was take a proven American concept and apply it to China. Since there was no existing infrastructure or competition, you had the whole market to yourself.
This wasn't just applicable to tech. People were doing things like opening coffee shops (queue the Luckin Coffee fraud 10 years later).
Also, look at Spotify, JetBrains, WhatsApp, and Shopify.
Remote work within borders is one thing, but remote work from different continents is an entirely different beast.
Not to mention the sheer difference in labour-related laws and conventions across the world and how little recourse you may have if - let's say - your employee decides to take your source code with them and resell. Or take the idea and start a product themselves. Or anything similar that you could very easily sue locally. How much trouble would you go to sue? Translate and certificate every document? Comply with local laws regarding representation? Can you even sue?
You may think these are extreme examples, and yes it all tends to work out in general, but even with local employees people sometimes get burn so you need to take these into account when jumping into something uncertain. It's becoming more common for sure but there are risks and they are not null.
One, a lot of what makes India and Pakistan work, or Slovakia, are that there are class natives who can navigate the vetting process. This is huge and there are tons of Indians or Chinese in the valley who can fill this role but who are themselves demonstrated top-tier talent, not just people selling outsourced teams of unknown quality.
Second, English. English is simply an absolute requirement and one of the things that absolutely kills non-US teams is a lack of English skills. Chinese teams have a lot of problems here and it gets even worse elsewhere. Eastern European teams (Poland, Estonia, Solvakia, ...) tend to have competent technical leads (not salesguys) with solid english skills even if the average is zero. I deal with a ton of people who have marginal English skills, but there's a very steep ramp between Bangalore, Chennai, ... and then other options.
Third, and importantly, the populations are large enough that they can provide outsourced work at scale - I'm not talking huge numbers, I'm talking managing a team size of 30-40 people even with departures, etc.
Fourth, there's an honest question of demonstrated competence (or demonstrated good-enough mediocrity, more often than not).
Fifth, there's work culture. I know Indian, Chinese, and eastern european work culture. I know what to expect and there's basically been a selection process at work selecting outsourcing destinations based on what actually works.
I'm probably starting something in a few months. I'd much rather outsource to a common time zone with Pacific or at least eastern time. I wish I could find a way.
If it helps, I can recommend you to take a look at https://nearsoft.com/ it’s a Mexican company, I personally know very talented people working there. They have high standards during interviews, they seem to really care about who they hire (disclaimer, I don’t work there).
Also, even though Costa Rica is a small country they have an interesting growing IT industry, if you haven’t already, you should check it out. I’ve met several great Costa Rican developers.
I hope you find what you’re looking for! :)
Great engineers are human members of a team, and there's more to a team member than their LeetCode score (seriously?) and/or how many GitHub stars they've obtained.
Just some examples off the top of my head:
If you're building products to target US-based consumers, you don't need to provide as much contextual information to a US-based engineer. They will have a stronger intuitive understanding of the product, and there's a better chance that they'll know when it's appropriate to push back and question something. There's a reduced cognitive load in communicating with them. And of course, there's a better chance you're going to enjoy spending hours working with them.
Also I find your answer pretty condescending towards folks overseas, although that's your opinion. In my team at Google, we have people from all over the world, and they are amazing. Don't see how they don't have the "required qualifications" you are referring to.
I wouldn't say it's an overarching concern that would justify turning away overseas (disclaimer: not located in US myself) talent, but can't say he's totally wrong in specific contexts..
Also it wasn’t even slightly condescending of you to declare that US-based engineers are overpaid and ask HN for validation. It was just a brave stance taken by a bold intellectual who knows better than everyone else.
Engineering needs product management. This isn't cheap or easy to do when you're offshoring for cost.
Large companies like NVIDIA/Intel/Microsoft have tried to do it with mixed results. In particular your savings rarely exceed 50%.
There will be exceptions, especially among the most skilled and experienced HN readers. But I am on calls all day with engineers and managers whose salaries may vary by six figures depending largely on their location.
When the results of paying far less are acceptable to companies, companies will pay less and less.
If they could, they would [0].
Those people are already in demand and oversubscribed, so the US-based engineers are still in demand.
Yes, companies would love to pay less, but at the high end it is already a world market for talent.
But coordinating teams across anything more than a 4-ish hour difference is a total pain
This is insanely wrong. What makes you think that?