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Comment by UncleOxidant | Hacker News Reader

Over the coming months, tens (if not hundreds) of thousands will be laid off. This event will be the call to adventure for those that were disillusioned but hadn’t considered changing their professions.

(Or even just changing their job/company within the same profession.)

The layoffs in tech have started. It won't be as bad as the 2001-2004 dot com debacle. Possibly not as bad as the 2008-2012 period was (which wasn't as bad for tech vs the previous downturn, but was just bad overall). If you've prepared then this will be the pause that refreshes. The break you've been needing for a few years now. A time to regroup, learn new things, rethink your priorities. Recessions need not be fearsome things if you've got a good emergency fund and you can live frugally for a while. I used the '01-'04 downturn to go back to school and get a Masters degree. I view that time positively.

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I suspect it will be much, much worse, for USAians anyway. So many companies have now moved almost fully remote and are looking at their payroll thinking - "Why am I paying an American dev $100,000+ when I can pay a European $50,000, or someone from the developing world $25,000?" Great for devs in the rest of the world of course.

You're going to be shocked at prices these days. Paying some poor soul from some poverty stricken developing country, and expect them to be grateful for just a job, is an archaic notion. In Latin America, the price is near US levels thanks to companies like Amazon heavily investing there these past 5 years or so. Salary at intermediate and above prices are nearly on par with US skill levels, but you do save on employment taxes so there's that.

Uh huh... This is just wrong. So the median Brazilian dev salary is 58000 BRL or about $22000 USD [1]

The median US dev salary is $73900 using the same search criteria on the same site.

In the UK it is $37000. I'm in the UK and this passes the sniff test as a median base salary.

Obviously it's more if you're in certain industries or work for certain companies (faangs).

US software developers are massively overpayed compared to devs internationally. Devs in the Bay Area are massively overpayed compared to devs in the rest of the USA. You all just haven't realised this yet.

[1]https://www.payscale.com/research/BR/Job=Software_Developer/...

You're leveraging historically bad pound/dollar conversion rates to get that figure. In general, US salaries are higher because of the lack of social services. $37k for a UK dev, I don't buy. I worked with Belgian devs, intermediate to senior, ten years ago and they were at $60k/year.

Regardless, that site has some very problematic data. Maybe Brazil does have a lower cost compared to other South American countries, but that site is also claiming Argentinian devs making 3700 USD per year, which is ludicrous. We can't attract even junior ones for any less than 5k per month.

And you're not showing any data at all. Please show some that shows devs in the USA aren't over compensated relative to the rest of the world. Until you do I will assume you are just using anecdata because you want to pretend that what? US devs don't get paid more than devs in the rest of the world? Why?

> And you're not showing any data at all.

And your payscale site is so far off, it can't be called data.

> US devs don't get paid more than devs in the rest of the world?

How in the world did you come to that conclusion? My only point is that your claim of cheap foreign labor comes from Western privilege.

No, it really doesn't. Your denial that Westerners, and especially Americans, get paid more than people in the developing world is western privilege.

I’m based in the UK but always worked for US companies.

Speaking to a British company recently and they were trying to hire for a senior web dev role at £40k (<$50,000)

I found that surprising to say the least given that even entry level dev roles in the US pay more than that.

Lesson of the story: embrace remote work.

Yes, this is the point. If you work for an American company you will probably get paid above local market rates. But you will still likely be paid below US rates for the same company, especially if you're in a developing / emerging / whatever the current proper term that won't get me told off by people richer and better educated than me is.

If you're working for a local company the increased willingness of American companies to hire remote workers is going to raise local dev salaries due to increased competition.

I think this is a good thing. If this also comes at the expense of American devs having their salaries squeezed, frankly I don't care. You're rich. You will be slightly less rich, or even just getting richer at a slightly slower rate.

While some American devs might view this as a personal tragedy, if you subscribe to a maximin view of what a desirable global economic pathway looks like (which I do), then the squeeze on American devs and increased willingness to hire remote workers globally is a good thing.

Time zones are going to be an issue, unless companies start doing nocturnal hours to stay in sync with staff in Eurasia.

outsourcing isn't new. it just doesn't work often requiring rework

CEOs have been clamoring to outsource devs since the 90s. I'll let you guess how that's worked so far.

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