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Comment by monero-xmr | Hacker News Reader

As a business owner it’s just so much more economical to hire remote. No office expense, the pool of talent is so much larger, no relocation expenses, people are happier with the flexible schedules.

Entry level employees need to learn how to succeed and grow in this environment because economically it is just so overwhelmingly better for me, the business owner. I predict a surge in downtown living within the next 5 years as offices are converted or destroyed and rebuilt as apartments and condos. Young people will live there and WFH but get their socialization from the critical mass of young people living around them, learning how to make friends post-college outside of work (which is way healthier as well).

It’s way easier to figure out new mechanisms of working to mentor and grow junior employees in a remote environment than it is to fight economics. The economics are just superior and you can’t fight that.

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You’re business owner. But there is whole cohort of middle managers, that need to justify their existence walking in the office and watching over the shoulders as well as asking project status reports. Corporate world also needs to build offices or architectural monuments stating, they are very profitable and can afford that. See it’s lots about egos and not always about economics.

> You’re business owner. But there is whole cohort of middle managers, that need to justify their existence walking in the office and watching over the shoulders as well as asking project status reports. Corporate world also needs to build offices or architectural monuments stating, they are very profitable and can afford that. See it’s lots about egos and not always about economics.

There are also a lot of arrogant American engineers need to justify their inflated salaries compared to Indians, Eastern Europeans and other offshore workers. With the rise of remote work, we should hopefully see those inflated remote salaries settle to the international norm.

As an Eastern European: it went largely the other way and I'm happy that it did.

I mean, I don't make American money - just 50-70% of that, but I also don't have American expenses - especially not on the level seen in SV.

There is an actual difference in quality (though not as much as the salary differential).

Not in small part due to a significant percentage of the best engineers originating in those regions are already here in the United States.

I hire US and Canadian engineers. Canadians working remote aren’t any cheaper when benefits are included than US employees, at least the quality I hire. European engineers are good but the time difference is literally the problem. 5 to 8 hours makes it impossible for me. All in costs are 150k for junior and 280k for top tier including benefits. We have equity but it’s not liquid. If I could hire Indians I would but simply put I have found them to be quite poor quality over many experiences, I assume the good Indian engineers are already employed by solid satellite offices of major US companies or have emigrated.

oh lord... $150k for junior?!

Italian me with 15 years experience and struggling to find a €50k job..

there are platforms like remote.com or deel.com for companies wanting to hire in jurisdictions they don't have a subsidiary in.

Benefits are actually quite generous and expensive when you want to hire top-tier talent. If you factor in good health insurance, payroll tax, 401k match, yearly bonus, various things like cell phone and internet paid for and random free stuff, someone costing 150k cost to me is more like a ~115k salary depending on the region, and of course taxes and retirement expense to the employee will reduce it to more like $70k take-home. But yes, still sounds good to Europeans.

> There are also a lot of arrogant American engineers need to justify their inflated salaries compared to Indians, Eastern Europeans and other offshore workers. With the rise of remote work, we should hopefully see those inflated remote salaries settle to the international norm.

As much as I support remote work, what you suggests is not the norm. Mainly because companies hire much more employees than contractors. Companies cannot just hire employees from dozens of different countries (unless they have branches on such countries or they hire an intermediary company to handle the taxes/health insurance stuff). Companies cannot just hire people who are +-6h away from their timezone.

Companies usually hire remote employees within the country they operate. Which is nice because you can live in a modest town around the nature and work for companies who have originally emerged in the capital.

"unless they have branches on such countries or they hire an intermediary company to handle the taxes/health insurance stuff" is a big caveat - for any non-tiny company it's not a big deal to hire an intermediary company, such companies are readily available and the overhead is small compared to the salary differential; it's not a serious obstacle because you can simply buy a solution to that.

But that's not the case for time zones, of course.

There are a lot of tax complexities around hiring outside the company's country, so I don't think this is going to be as common as you'd like it to be. And if I were you, I would reframe the monetary compensation, rather than saying Westerners are overpaid, perhaps it's non-Westerners who are being underpaid.

I don't understand this weird thought process in the software industry where a certain contingent of developers seek to undervalue their own skills against their self interest...

> Entry level employees need to learn how to succeed and grow in this environment because economically it is just so overwhelmingly better for me, the business owner.

As a business owner, you need to teach those entry level employees to succeed in the remote environment, or your remote hiring is going to get a lot less economical for you in the future.

> I predict a surge in downtown living within the next 5 years as offices are converted or destroyed and rebuilt as apartments and condos. Young people will live there and WFH but get their socialization from the critical mass of young people living around them, learning how to make friends post-college outside of work (which is way healthier as well).

That's probably wishful thinking to a large degree, especially the part about making friends. Some people will figure it out, but many will founder (which IIRC, is borne out in loneliness statistics)

> As a business owner, you need to teach those entry level employees to succeed in the remote environment, or your remote hiring is going to get a lot less economical for you in the future.

Hum... The GP can't solve this problem, and it is a certainty that business owners as a collective won't be competent enough to do it even if they try.

IMO, that looks like a job for a government or something similar.

Huh!? Why can’t business owners find a solution to increasing collaboration and mentorship? It makes zero sense to involve the government in employee training.

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