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Comment by antattack | Hacker News Reader

This is the next step in work from home movement - outsourcing to lower wage countries. No visa required.

It's one part cheaper labor, it's one part taking over market, it's one part gaining political influence. Just like defense companies have parts made in all 50 states to gain political influence, google does it internationally. The more offices you open up in EU countries, the more political influence you have within the EU. Also, by opening more offices in EU companies, you make sure no EU headquartered google competitor can arise.

For the love of god, why doesn't the EU simply ban/limit google and grow a homegrown google. The EU's incompetence is so astounding. Their population is much larger than our population and they certainly have the talent to create tech giants. China is doing it. Russia is doing it. Why can't the EU do it? At least try. Why are they giving away their market to amazon, apple, google, facebook, etc? They did it with Airbus, why can't they do it with tech? It's much more difficult to create an Airbus than it is to create an amazon, google, apple, facebook, etc. It's insane that after 20+ years after the beginning of the internet/tech boom, the EU is so tech poor. The few that they create have been bought up by american companies.

Oh absolutely, but what I have noticed as well is that companies in lower wage countries have started charging more as well as there's now more demand for outsourced workers.

To be more specific: for example, (non-FAANG) senior dev salaries in Poland are pretty much in line with senior dev salaries in France.

Before the covid, typical senior dev net salary in Poland was around ~12-18k PLN per month, while in France it's about 3k EUR per month (a bit higher in Paris, but also more expensive).

One diff is that IT folks in PL typically work on b2b contracts; the upside is lower tax, and tax deductions on car leasing (hence it's easy to get new and very nice car). Downside: minimal state pension (no one in PL believes in state pensions money being managed well).

You're comparing salaries with consulting rates, there are bigger differences than pension contributions. Salaries are low in France in big part because of all the advantages that come with it - near total job security, maternity/paternity rights, sick pay etc

And a 35 hours work week.

35 hours work week doesn't exist for engineers in France. We are "Cadre forfait jours" which mean we are paid by days, not by hours. Typically an engineer works from 9am to 6pm. A 45 hour work week.

Then we have better in Poland. I work till 6PM, but from 10AM and have a paid lunch inside. I know no one who works 9h regularly.

but with extra days off to compensate (the famous RTT). this is france, after all ;)

Those RTT, 15 additional days off really put the squeeze on hourly productivity. The French workforce that I knew, seems to have fiercely changed since then.

According to levels.fyi, the median salary in Google Munich is 147k USD [1] whereas the median for Warsaw is 82k USD [2]. Central Europe salaries are still quite a bit lower, even if you can be creative with taxes. Those B2B contracts are not quite as prevalent as one might think - larger corporations typically don't use them. And, from my experience, you can get to an even better take home pay with a little bit of time and career progression.

[1] - https://www.levels.fyi/comp.html?track=Software%20Engineer&s...

[2] - https://www.levels.fyi/comp.html?track=Software%20Engineer&s...

Car deductions mostly ended this year with forcing ryczałt and having to pay VAT after paying off leasing.

This is a good thing. Enough with the birthrights.

It's good for the people who are benefitting from it. Birthright or not, it's not nice to be in the locations that will potentially see lower wages in the future.

Nobody wants to lose privilege.

I don't know why you're framing it as birthright or privilege. It just comes across as being bitter because someone else has it better than you.

Or does the realization make you bitter?

What birthrights?

They mean being fortunate enough to be born in the right country. (Or really, get citizenship there.) I'm not sure how much sense that makes within the EU?

Birthright implies you're entitled to something by being born. You aren't entitled to FAANG job by being born somewhere.

The argument being made is that (contingent on you being hired by FAANG for a given role) you are entitled to US salary solely by virtue of being born in the US, whereas you get the much worse Polish salary if you happened to be born there instead. Assuming you're at the same compensation level, your work quality should be equivalent wherever you are.

Nobody in the thread suggested that anyone is entitled to a FAANG job.

Once again pundits turn an economic issue into a social one.

No one is entitled to anything. Are you "entitled" to subsidized healthcare by virtue of being born in a European country?

No, you're not, it's just a consequence of your birth. Maybe its not fair, life isn't fair. I bet every single individual on earth could identify some feature of themselves or their lives that they dislike that came about by chance as a result of their birth.

Not too mention that total income doesn't really matter as much as spending power does. I'd rather make $50k a year in Poland than $100k in SF Bay (at least, hypothetically, I don't actually want to live in any European country).

You should not be entitled to forcing those privileges via laws then.

Agreed.

> Are you "entitled" to subsidized healthcare by virtue of being born in a European country?

Of course. And the US is finally catching up in that regard.

No. No one is entitled to another humams time, energy, and effort.

Cool, so what if anything is anyone entitled to.

How is this outsourcing? Also, how is it any different from Google opening other international offices, which they've been doing for many years?

No one said this is the first time they outsourced work. This is a doubledown of that strategy.

Setting up a remote location to do work at a cheaper wage is outsourcing.

It's far more commonly/correctly called "off-shoring" rather than "out-sourcing" (which is going to a third-party supplier).

That doesn't make any sense in this context. As the article says, they have 1000 engineers there and they've been there for 15 years. It is neither new nor outsourcing.

Alternative take: This is the next step in work from home movement - investing in office space outside of world's most tech-heavy megacities.

We are all already working for your companies and other multinationals.

There is no giant pool of engineers working for "domestic" companies to be poached, other than domestic outsourcing, who already are contracted by multinationals.

It really isn't, just like outsourcing to India didn't kill engineering in the developed world.

It's a death by thousand cuts.

Not sure if the people whose departments got migrated into Wipro, Sasken, TCS would agree, specially those that even had to provide competence transfer sessions.

It seems that you can't just be a US company hiring FTEs from other countries for the most part. You either need to hire contractors or setup a foreign subsidiary.