Airbnb employees can live and work anywhere
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Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31200650
Wonder if this applies only to existing employees and not new hires. These salaries would be game changing in places like Nashville: https://www.levels.fyi/company/Airbnb/salaries/Software-Engi...
I got out of there soon after and found a better place in the new city.
Lets say a 3rd world country, an average salary of SWE is $1000/month. An average salary of a family doctor is $3000/month.
If one day the US/Canada/EU and other 1st world countries manage to finally crack the tax code by outsourcing their work. I can see some things happening:
- SWEs in 1st world countries no longer price-competitive, and they have to either move to 3rd world countries or change career
- People in 3rd world countries no longer want to pursue career as a doctor (and other similarly needed professions like law) (expensive, time consuming, etc) and just pursue SWE jobs
Would this result in people in 3rd world countries have less and less doctors, and people in 3rd world countries would have to go to the 1st world in order to be treated.
This is just a dumb shower thought that I came up with when reading about this. But I wonder what would the implication be for 3rd world countries if we as 1st world manage to crack the outsourcing/tax code.
FWIW, I am a citizen of 3rd world country, now currently reside in the most expensive cities in the US. I also have a familial tie with another 1st world country in Asia that is cheaper than the US. I work as an SWE. I think people like me have the ability to earn US salary and live in 3rd world country, but I'm not sure how other non dual/triple residence would benefit in this type of arrangement.
I'm in Europe so this is my point of view for the outsourcing recipient countries. I suppose US companies might outsource to Latin America for better time zone overlap.
Demand for IT around here still seems very far from topping out, and for every team you have outsourced you also need some support, management and engineering at home.
My anecdote is that the onshore team was reduced via attrition while the offshore team grew significantly.
There was a management imposed maximum onshore:offshore ratio, eventually the onshore dev team started receiving a very small headcount increase again.
I don’t think it will ever truly happen. Not due to the skill of the workers overseas, but all the other intangible stuff around running a business.
Many places I’ve worked at have outsourced work to overseas, but it’s always in a supplementary fashion. I’ve heard of places that went all in but unless you have superb engineering management onshore, it usually ends very badly.
"Outsourcing" is obviously happening, but the word itself is already a big red flag for last generation think. When it comes to produce, already, no one is truly talking about "outsourcing" to China anymore. That's just where chunk of global production, from highest to lowest quality, happens now.
It would be terribly arrogant to assume that, eventually, this is not going to be the case in the highly sophisticated SWE machinery when quite clearly the gap in innovation and execution is shrinking, and rapidly so.
Having employees of your company (or a wholly-owned subsidiary) working alongside other local employees is much easier than outsourcing the work to another company in another location. In the latter case, your interests are less aligned than if you were all working for the same company.
It still takes excellent management in both/all geographies and it’s a different style of work, with communications across geos being slower, harder, and more lossy than an in-person whiteboard chat that you might have come to rely on.
In the Netherlands we have a lot of outsourcing to India and a lot of Indian IT workers moving here. We still have many IT job openings and some companies have been moving development back from India, because cultural differences and language barriers some times cost more than the added salary of a local employee.
> People in 3rd world countries no longer want to pursue career as a doctor (and other similarly needed professions like law) (expensive, time consuming, etc) and just pursue SWE jobs
This assumes that people pursue career paths only for the money. Of the doctors I know, most people did not pick that job for the money, they did it because they wanted to be a doctor.
Then there's the fact that people have different interests and natural skill sets. A family member of mine, for example, is a doctor and asked me: "do you really like computers". She would not become an SWE even if it paid double.
Worst case there's fewer doctors, their salaries increase (steady demand + shrinking supply), and the quality of care increases as does wait times and access to care for the broader population worsens. Realistic case, I don't know if it'll impact doctors numbers as the field isn't particularly related - the overlap of people who are equally considering between SW and medicine is small. Maybe in the longer term it has an impact on students making career choices in high school? Hard to say.
This is confusing. If I work in Nashville is my start compensation the same as if I live in San Francisco? Does San Francisco market-rate determine national salary bands - or are they still different based on location? Cost of living is a thing no matter how you cut it.
So presumably your location of living just isn't a factor in the compensation determination (which I think is the right way to do this, compensation should be based on market, not chosen geography).
If it's a small number of folks, there won't be much impact on anything that doesn't actually have a constrained supply.
For example real estate prices won't be affected much unless the new folks are bidding against each other for the same properties. Without a steady stream of folks coming in, a few sellers immediately getting their asking price will only bump estimated values of the surrounding homes for a while. To get a more permanent RE price bump everyone would have to move into the same neighborhood to get their kids into the same school, or to get the same view, or they all want riverfront property which is in short supply, or something similar.
About the only scenario I can plausibly construct for a real cost increase that actually affects locals (from a small number of well heeled folks moving in) is if all the newcomers move in at the same time and renovate or build their homes simultaneously, then the local cost of construction labor will go up temporarily.
Can you elaborate on what this means? Who exactly will raise the cost of living and how?
Do you mean that these municipalities would somehow intentionally raise the cost of living? That doesn’t really make sense.
On a much smaller scale, if I hire someone to edit my book, I probably won't know or care where they live.
I wonder how much of a headache this creates for taxes. One of the biggest factors that keeps me from venturing abroad (and my company from allowing it) in my remote role is the complicated tax situation that arises.
Anyone have experience with this?
(not an endorsement of any specific legal or immigration actions)
[0] - https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
> “Work” is defined in the Regulations as an activity for which wages are paid or commission is earned, or that competes directly with activities of Canadian citizens or permanent residents in the Canadian labour market.
The key part is that most remote work doesn't compete directly with the Canadian labor market.
> What kind of activities are not considered to be “work”?
> long distance (by telephone or Internet) work done by a temporary resident whose employer is outside Canada and who is remunerated from outside Canada;
90 days is the magic number for almost all countries for the length of a single tourist visa.
The status quo though, is that almost no governments have legal frameworks for a digital nomad to work legally in a country (as a remote employee) on a 90-day tourist visa. Most look the other way for rich, western tourists not "taking jobs from local residents", if it comes up. They mostly use tourist services and the money which could be taxed never enters a local bank account.
I'm curious how AirBnB ends up solving this. Maybe they'll just contract a big consulting firm with broad international exposure to file taxes for each employee paid abroad. It definitely sounds like they're going to try and figure out how to pay taxes on behalf of employees in up to 170 countries, which, will be interesting to watch.
Hopefully some good comes of this.
That's an ... interesting perspective. Put differently, most governments have a legal framework that prevents people from working on tourist visa.
If a someone is on a trip abroad and gets a call/email from a customer from another country, they are technically working. Would that require a work visa?
How many emails per day would require a work visa?
The world is changing and laws aren't really keeping up.
Depends on the country in question of course but many places have different visas:
- Visitor visas: Usually valid for only a couple of days / weeks and geared towards business travelers. These usually allow working in the country.
- Tourist Visas: Usually valid for weeks/months and geared towards tourists.
If you are on the first then working isn't a problem. If you are on the second then (as the name implies) it is kind of assumed that you are a tourist/on vacation and as such won't be doing any work at all.
So to answer your question: If you are on a trip (I interpret this as a couple of days at best) then you won't need a work visa. If you want to stay there for a while though then technically yes.
> The world is changing and laws aren't really keeping up.
Are they though? I think it is fair to say that if you are staying in a country for an extended period of time (longer than a visitor visa) they have a right to tax you.
In your opinion the country would have the right to tax me, since I'm in the country on a Tourist Visa and I'm working?
Not to mention that in a situation like this they probably wouldn't come after you anyways, but i think they should still have the right to.
Also please note: This stems mostly from my personal opinion of not doing work outside of work hours unless explicitly agreed to. If I am on a vacation i don't do work unless everything back home is collapsing in a pile of flaming garbage.
Now, I can have a US income deposited into a US bank account, and decide to temporarily move somewhere for 6-12 months, either with my employers permission, without, or as a freelancer who doesn't need to worry about this.
100% this breaks the rules of a tourist visa, yet it's commonplace. And most governments have no alternative visa. Not because they legitimately want to ban tourists from working for a couple of months from their overpriced AirBnB & spending money like a tourist, but because it's not yet addressed by most travel or immigration frameworks.