Tech’s Offshore Hiring Has Gone into Overdrive

I posted this comment in another thread:

I've maintained that everyone advocating for permanent remote work should reverse and advocate for office return.

Why? I've been traveling around the world. There are a ton of very talented, hardworking, and eager workers making 1/10th of what remote workers here make. Sooner or later, companies are going to figure out that they can get same, similar, or even better output from hiring workers outside of the US.

Once companies figure it out, there's no going back.

I predict that remote workers will want to return to the office very soon because of this threat.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32344204#32344629

Additional comments:

This is more relevant for software engineers. I believe remote work will eventually lead to a rapid decrease in software engineer salaries in the U.S. Just like how wealth has spread away from San Francisco & Silicon Valley, it'll be the same around the world. In my humble opinion, remote software engineers in the US should demand a return to office asap. You should be drafting an email to send to your tech CEO asking for more office work right now.

Previously, offshoring was happening but was mostly kept in check by having an office. Now that the office is gone or optional, executives should be salivating at hiring talented software developers for a fraction of the cost.

Someone will come along and say that "great engineers" will always be safe. True. But the vast majority are replaceable based on my experience working in Silicon Valley and my experience traveling to different countries and meeting local software developers.

I've had some very positive experiences working with offshore teams, and I do think that large enterprises have plenty of value to derive from offshoring, but I were building a new startup today and knew that my competitors were relying heavily on offshore teams for their development I would be ecstatic.

I was working for a large (American) integrator in Brazil leading a commerce development practice and had a very hard time finding developers in 2021 mainly because so many of them were working for companies in the US and earning 4x what they would with a local company. The hot market in the US, WFH being accepted, Latam being a nearshore option (mostly same timezone) and local currency devaluation played a big role on that.