Hacker News Reader

Comment by WheelsAtLarge | Hacker News Reader

I'm always surprised to see this much desire to work from home all the time. The way I see it. Given a few years, every work from home job will be outsource to some country where the pay is less. Companies are all about cutting costs. If a job can be done at home then it can be done from anywhere in the world. Why not hire the least expensive workforce?

View on HN

I don’t necessarily mind working in an office so long as it’s close to home and I get a cubicle or private office.

I don’t technically need to be there to do my work, and so it makes no sense for me to spend a significant chunk of my day and salary getting to and from the office only to be met with the incessant breaking of focus that comes with open offices.

Lots of companies have learned the hard way that cheaper engineers aren’t always better, or watched others learn it. And great engineers aren’t necessarily willing to work for last decade’s local wages.

Try working with a team composed of people from Bangalore, Philippines, Russia and Brazil and let us know how you went. Besides, the most capable and industrious people from these countries have already moved to better places, so you'll have to wait for the next crop (and hope they don't move to countries with better pay).

Especially Russia since you can't even pay them due to the sanctions and you also risk your guy getting drafted.

Are language and communication skills, timezone, cultural willingness to disagree with bad decisions / report bad news, diligence, and UX skills are fungible?

Either they are, and every company has somehow overlooked them, or they aren’t, and years of failed outsourcing experiments has shown this.

Ousource market is just a market. You will get (to some degree) what you are paying for.

Communication across cultures is a huge problem even when the language is the same, let alone when it’s not. Also being in the same time zone is a big advantage for remote collaboration.

The jobs that were going to be outsourced have already been outsourced. I really don't think physical presence is the big levee that keeps white-collar jobs in America.

> If a job can be done at home then it can be done from anywhere in the world.

Sure, agreed, but ... if a forced-into-the-office job doesn't actually require a warm body in the office (i.e, the jobs that are under discussion), then that in-office role can be done from anywhere in the world as well.

IOW, sure, if you work from home you are proving to the employer that your job can be outsourced easily, but working from the office doesn't provide any evidence that your job cannot be outsourced.

Any competent dev from those cheaper countries has already long since moved into countries or at the very least managed to negotiate deals where they get paid pretty much on-par with richer countries. The only ones left at this point aren't exactly the shining jewels of productivitt, of they're willing to settle for a pittance.

> Given a few years, every work from home job will be outsource to some country where the pay is less

I’ve been hearing this (and worrying about it) for longer then I’ve been working from home. Coming up on 18 years this December.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com