Hacker News Reader

Comment by JohnWhigham | Hacker News Reader

In the short term, I think it's going to be a lot harder than this article lets on, but long term, it is abundantly clear: cushy developer jobs in the US are on borrowed time. Salaries may continue to go up for a little while longer, but they will fall to reflect the rest of the world catching up with the US. And that's a scary prospect for those under 35 now. And I don't think there's a way out of it. We embrace remote, but at the cost of demise.

View on HN

For americans this sounds like horror but for the international perspective this sounds wonderful (and a fair readjustment for work that we always felt was no different than our american counterparts). Just pointing out the semi obvious thing that the majority who reads this will see it as fantastic news.

Yep. Every time I see a US-focused article complaining about pay adjustments when people move to new regions to work remotely I just wonder where everybody has been for all these years where their coworkers in London or Vancouver are getting paid 50% of their wage for the same work.

Keep in mind SV is full of immigrants….

I don't see how that is relevant.

Because many of the best people move to SV for better pay and access.

> Salaries may continue to go up for a little while longer, but they will fall to reflect the rest of the world catching up with the US.

This has never happened in US history. The upward trend has stopped. Employment outside the US has grown much faster. Other countries have caught up. But wages in large sectors haven't gone down in any sector I'm aware of. And MAGMA all have over 100,000 software engineer employees and make huge profits on them. Google makes over a million dollars per software engineer. There's a lot of room for wages to go up.

The Internet is global, and there's been nothing stopping someone in India, for example, from starting the next Facebook. Ironically, if the world was catching up to the US then it wouldn't be US companies doing the hiring, making the whole thing a moot point.

I've been hearing a version of this since the early 2000's, always with a PS "this time its going to happen for real guys" .

I disagree, I don't see how the supply/demand ratio of talent will significantly change by remote work.

Companies will pick from a larger pool of people. People will pick from a larger pool of companies.

This is a good point, the ratio increases both ways.

Except that developers from countries that earn on average less than their US counterparts have an incentive to work for a US company remotely but a developer from the US does not have many incentives to work for less for a company abroad

The politicians will fight back with work visas and limits etc. protecting domestic work forces should be a primary concern for politicians.

Advancing the interests of all citizens, not just protecting the outsized benefits of one group, should be the primary concern for politicians. Think of how much boring process automation software could be written for so many businesses, if development were cheaper.

This was the logic used for outsourcing manufacturing. Now we American consumers can get as many low-quality plastic toys as we want at bargain basement prices and throw away perfectly functional electronic devices every few years in order to get newer, shiner ones. The cost was cutting a swath of destruction across hundreds of formerly vibrant towns across the middle of the country, which are now home mainly to hopelessness and drug addiction. I'm not sure the trade-off was worth it.

Visas and similar restrictions are not a factor for remote work.

Yes, they are. Having an LLC based in Texas, trying to hiring a remote employee in NYC. I have to comply with all local NYC laws and taxes. Luckily it's a developer. If it was a sales person, it could make the whole company liable for income tax in New York state.

Even worse when you talk international. An Amazon USA based employee is forbidden from working remotely in India, because of all the legal issues it would cause for Amazon USA.

It's a very complicated issue, in which each individual government is fighting to get a slice of the tax pie. Reference article: https://therealdeal.com/2021/05/07/ny-tax-officials-crack-do...

Why don't you hire them as a contractor?

Not everyone wants to work as a contractor. It also limits the amount of control you have over their output. It also is not a complete failsafe, as the state can say you treated them like an employee, thus they are an employee.

What does any of that have to do with visas?

It is not in the interest of american people to make goods and services consumed by americans more expensive.

See: Tariffs, Mercantilism, Imports.

There's many other companies abroad capable of offering compensations that can compete with the US.

Anecdotal, but plenty of contacts who would have never accepted an on-site position in UAE, Hong Kong, Germany (for reasons ranging from personal, political, or just sheer affordability), and are now contracting as individuals at companies based in such regions, for substantially above the Bay Area average for their experience.

There is quiet some supply but the demand is in capable and a bit more senior people, I'm told. But hey if it means with remote work US tech company can fish for Dutch talent and raise the average pay here in the Netherlands I'm all for it.

Already had a talk with friends about it, before the pandemic remote gig work was hard where we live, but now that working from home is more accepted. It should be a lot more attractive for urban companies to hire remote workers in the rural parts.

> cushy developer jobs in the US are on borrowed time

Maybe. But I've been hearing that since the early 90's.

In 2010, being an independent developer for a startup in the US in argentina meant a 2-3k monthly wage. It is now at 5~6k, and plenty of opportunities to make 10k monthly.

Bear in mind this pays <5% tax and you can maintain a whole family, pay for a house, food etc for 2k a month.

This arbitrage has always been there and its become way easier to manage after the remote shift.

This is overly cynical and alarmist. Outsourcing has been a thing for a long time and its results have also been known for a long time.

Companies, for lack of a better term, have "fucked around and found out" by not going (relatively) local and depending on offshoring (even nearshoring) to their ultimate detriment. This isn't to say that companies that are remote (as in geographically) don't now have a bigger pool but large and high functioning tech companies are not going to all of a sudden abandon home-grown talent for offshoring.

> Outsourcing

This isn't outsourcing, this is hiring to work for the company's own teams based in the US.

> offshoring

This isn't offshoring in traditional terms, the projects stay in the US and are managed from there, with team members from all over the place.

Working from home hasn't changed the dynamics of having team members all over the world. There are countless issues creating an effective team spread around the globe from Language Barriers and Time Zones to Labor Laws (ex. losing Nordic employees for 2 months every summer)

For some people, the solution may be the management track. If developer salaries fall, there will be more developers hired, who will need managers. US candidates (for now) will have the advantage there.

Isn't this assuming that there are enough developers worldwide to satisfy the demand in the US? I think the reality is that there are not and will not for a long time.

Is there any extra cost to hiring non-American workers though? I do wonder if we’ll have some politicians who will try to make it harder for companies to just shortcut to cheap labor and try to never use American workers. But I also see foreign workers at my shop demanding what we make and getting it, which I think is great and I hope that trend holds. Then there’s no cheap labor alternative and comes down to merit.

However… when you mix in the politics of Diversity and Inclusion that is sweeping our industry right now, it will be more enticing and possible to hire someone who isn’t an evil white person.

I think the whole “evil white person” demeans the effort to be inclusive. Nobody is saying white men are evil when they hire a diverse candidate. They are just valuing having a diverse workplace over traditionally looked at traits.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com