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Comment by ojkelly | Hacker News Reader

You're confusing the means of communication and collaboration (remote vs office), with the fungibility of engineers.

They are distinct things, and knowledge workers aren't the most fungible things.

A good team is a good team, regardless of how they communicate and collaborate. Replace one person in that team, and you have a different team.

Replacing a team just because they're remote is phenomenally destructive, just like the layoffs are.

> because why not? after all, remote is so efficient

That's not the point of remote. It is a preferred way of working for a significant portion of the industry.

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So... why can't a "good team" be assembled somewhere else that's 10x cheaper? Just like what happened to manufacturing, the Chinese and other nations actually turned out to have good - enough - teams to take a good chunk of the US market. So if I'm building my fully remote team, what advantage does a stateside worker have over Latam, or India, or some other location that has managers on the ground, tons (and growing) of Computer Science graduates, increasing knowledge of English, and in Latam's case, same timezones? Isn't that the culmination of remote?

It absolutely can be! Good talent is global (eg. I'm Australian).

But you suggested getting rid of the existing team in favour of a remote team in another country, because remote is more efficient. You lose more than you'll gain in the cost savings.

I'm fully on board with remote teams across the globe, especially when it means engineers can be on call while the sun is up.

Do it becuase it gives you access to talent, not because it's cheaper or remote is "efficient".

Australia is $$$$$ so for all purposes it falls into the same category as US for what I'm talking about.

In fact, it's even more of an illustration for what i'm trying to say. Let's assume all remote hurdles have been lifted, 100%. So, if I'm hiring for a new group initially based in Australia, what makes me recruit from a pool of 25mil people vs. 250mil people in Pakistan and 1400mil in India? Why in this case even have an Australian engineering team, ever?

The US is often 1.5-4x the engineering salaries we see over here, but the point was we're on the other side of the world.

My point was that remote teams across countries, and in some cases timezones, can work. But replacing a team just becuase you can get cheaper engineers is destructive.

Build a remote team on purpose, or let your team move to locations that requires them to work remote.

The point I'm trying to make is focus on the team and what's best for them. If it's a new team why limit yourself to one country.

> Why in this case even have an _________ engineering team, ever?

The same reason some engineers command more renumeration than others (in the same market), you find good talent and want them on board.

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