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Comment by KKKKkkkk1 | Hacker News Reader

I still remember the days when people were posting on Slashdot that software engineering has no future in the US because it's all moving to India. As we know, that turned out not to be the case. Tech companies have been willing to pay literally 10x for engineers to work from their US headquarters. Now folks are again claiming that the era of remote work is upon us. Maybe that's true. But be careful what you wish for.

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I’m actually from India, and since the pandemic started it’s been quite an equaliser. I work for companies in the US, and since I stay up late I can manage a lot of time zone overlap. And I get paid nearly (not 100%, but close) of US salaries. So there’s definitely a case of on the Internet no one knows where you’re from kicking in.

Instead of cheap outsourcing, I’m seeing more of an approach where salaries are cut slightly because they no longer need to be staffed in the Bay Area, and the job then offered to anyone anywhere in the world.

>>And I get paid nearly (not 100%, but close) of US salaries.

99% of Indians who work on outsourced projects, don't make any where close to that money. In fact the very reason outsourcing exists is because of price arbitrage.

FANG's are an exception to this, but that only proves the rule. Bulk of the world needs software written and maintained for cheap.

There are many offshore devs make $30k. There are also many offshore devs making $100k. It's not valley money, but it's good money.

Tech companies have been willing to pay literally 10x for engineers to work from their US headquarters.

Outsourcing is very different to employing remote workers. When you outsource you're essentially giving up a lot of direct control over how work is done, who is doing it, what quality processes are in place, and what the deliverables look like. Companies like to control those things, and will often pay a premium to maintain control over them. Remote work maintains that control.

Part of this is visible because many remote roles are advertised as only being open to people in the same country, or timezone, or even state. Companies want their employees to be able to talk in real time (which is actually a little annoying..)

I don't think there's much similarity between outsourcing and remote work.

> Companies like to control those things

I mean, this is probably true, but in enterprise software, companies are paid by their customers to control those things and enforce various compliance standards like SOC-II. The difference between a piece of workflow SaaS charging $1K/month and $25K/month is fulfilling those compliance standards, so there are clear economic incentives in play.

I think the parent means controlling them with an eye towards making the project successful, on time, high quality, etc. not ticking the compliance checkboxes.

The companies here in the EU of which I heard that they allow remote work pretty much limited their employees to stay within the EU while working. Is this different in the US?

Despite what people think it's difficult for a company to pay someone who is living in a country where the company doesn't have a presence, for tax reasons. We (Red Hat) are mostly remote but we can only hire people who live in countries where we have a local office, and there's no such thing as a nomadic employee, or at least not for more than a few weeks.

Thats interesting. I know of several solutions called PEOs that offer the ability to pay employees in a great variety of countries.

I still think we are at the dawn of widespread adoption of remote work.

I fully expect the pendulum to swing the other way from favoring intra-US remote work like it is now.

Highly competent developers phoning it in from Peru, totally unlike the 1990s, very much seems like it'll be an extremely prominent trend in the future.

What was the 90s situation you're comparing to?

The oft discussed outsource to Infosys wave.

I remember that too and I am was told by a software engineer at the time that that was the future. And it kind of was pre Internet. You had to be in a big box store on a PC. Post Internet, I think we will see a lot of "no code solutions" that develop but I think that there will still be room for software engineers plus software is eating the world so the opportunities are basically limitless. I mean it use to be 10k+ for a website with a form handler and now basically anyone can make a decent one for free if they want.

Apparently, even in China and India tech salaries are increasing. So the demand is so high that even countries with 1 billion+ population need to increase salary.

I fully endorse the outsourcing of labor. The mess foreign companies leave after they complete a contract leaves American workers with years of work to do.

But seriously, even outsourcing to American companies becomes labor-intensive and frustrating. Everyone overpromises, underdelivers, and you spend as much time managing external entities as it would take to do the work yourselves. It is useful and necessary because of the shortage / intractability of senior engineering talent, but it's always better to hire that senior talent than outsource imo.

can you replicate the same culture?

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