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Comment by LewisVerstappen | Hacker News Reader

> LinkedIn is now ramping up hiring in India, according the person familiar.

So, laying off people in the US and hiring in India?

Is anyone really surprised? Did you think the end result of the WFH movement was going to be companies continuing to pay you to live out of your Bay Area house?

No people thought they could cash Bay Area paycheques while working from low cost rural areas with WFH.

There is one advantage to Bay area when WFH: you can go into the office on request. I go into the office every 3 months or so - it is only a 7 mile bike ride. Sometimes things are better handled in person (I don't live in the Bay area). WFH with the ability to get into the office in a couple hours is valuable. Once you cannot get into the office easily if you need to you are worth less even if the need to get into the office is rare.

If you need to go to the office once every 3 months you can fly in from anywhere in the country. No need to live within commuting distance for that.

I cannot fly and be there with 2 hours notice though. Sometimes flights are full and you can't get there at all with less than a few weeks notice. Often you can, but the cost for same day tickets can be very high.

Planning months in advance is done all the time, but it is hard. It is always easier to plan if you can look at the current most urgent project list and pick the top item. if you have to plan what will be on top in a few months that is a lot harder.

To me the biggest advantage of WFH is that I can choose to live in an area that fits my lifestyle and needs. If a company says "you can work from home but be near the office so that we can call you in whenever we want with zero notice" then that isn't really a remote job. In fact it is the worst of both worlds, because you lose the flexibility of being remote as well as the community and perks of an office.

If "near" is a couple of hours that seems far better. Rather than spending 15-20 hours a week commuting you pop into an office once or twice a month, costing an average 2 hours a week, perhaps avoiding rush hour too.

There are lots of in betweens i'm not going to call any right or wrong, just that whf with fairly quick access to the office is a useful one.

Anecdotally, in my circles, most truly thought that this won't have an impact in the compensation levels. Always struck me as incredibly short-sighted and your comment is actually the first I see that explicitly states what I thought as well.

There is still an argument that, if you truly want top talent, then that top talent might actually want to live in high COL locations like NY or whatever.

In the US maybe, but there is plenty of top talent in Hyderabad, Bangalore, Pune etc. A couple decades ago they would have all been lining up to immigrate to the US, but with the impossible visa situation and a thriving local startup scene no one really wants to leave anymore.

There are a lot of great labor in India, but great does not come cheap. Cheaper than the bay area, or even the midwest, but still not cheap by world standards. You can pay engineers in Germany for similar or less in total compensation. (but good luck finding them)

Yeah but you have strict labour laws in Eu, which basically dont exist in india. This is wet dreams of the corporations.

For great labor it doesn't matter as great engineers know they can demand better treatment. For a average engineers you can get by with a lot more.

> no one really wants to leave anymore.

According to what exactly?

This may be true, but finding these workers will be much more difficult. An American with a CS degree from a state school is a known entity, more or less. Someone with a 9.5/10 GPA from an Indian school is a question mark.

I've had private equity people tell me prior to the pandemic that if a job can be done from home, then it can be done from India. It basically makes sense to me. I know the common rejoinders about time zones (which ignores that there are plenty of cheaper countries south of the US) and culture/language, but I suppose we'll see if the FAANGs can overcome those issues; many companies have gone before in this regard.

It's one of a few reasons I prefer in person work.

For small companies it can be hard finding the "right person" and retaining them remotely in India - but for large companies they've worked out many of the kinks and issues and it's quite powerfully productive now.

Anyone who ignores that is falling victim to "how it used to be" not "how it is now" - just like the American car manufacturers who slept on the horrible but improving Japanese manufacturers decades ago.

> I know the common rejoinders about time zones

Cheat code: most engineers in India will agree to work US hours if they're compensated accordingly. "Compensated accordingly" is still well below even the lowest US engineering salaries, and still in the top 1% income percentile in India.

But this doesn't make sense because there's been outsourcing for over 20 years by now and this is clearly not true. And having somewhat better tools for teleconferencing doesn't materially change the situation.

> Anecdotally, in my circles, most truly thought that this won't have an impact in the compensation levels.

I mean, even if it does, it’s not that big of a deal. Fewer people propping up a ponzi scheme of a real estate market that tries to soak up as much surplus as it can get its hands on

Also, fewer incentives to remain in the US with its shitty excuse of a health care system and public school system

Edit: and shitty life expectancies in the US as well compared to developed countries. Also shitty work culture

Might want, yes, but there is probably more top talent in the world than available housing in those high COL locations.

I would be expect the result to be zero because companies respond to financial incentives, not cultural "movements". Do you really think driving to an office will stop this?

I feel like if US companies are proven to off shore jobs they should take a massive tax hit the same year. Like you are required to pay 5 years worth of the salary of the job you off shored into unemployment or retraining funds.

If there are global markets for products, they should be global markets for employment.

There is no global tax system so you don't have this effect you think you have.

The global market for tech products isn’t that much lower friction than tech employment. India has a lot of tariffs. China has the great firewall and the “local partner” shakedown. US has export controls of many high tech products.

Tariffs may reduce volume slightly but not margins. I doubt Apple is selling it's devices at a loss.

I think you'd get the same result with a lot less overhead by just increasing corporate taxes a fraction of a percent (or just enforcing our current tax laws better) and making vocational training schools tuition-free.

Assuming they pay their taxes and this is how we have to enforce it by a lawsuit which costs the government more.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/11/irs-says-microsoft-owes-an-a...

If the corporate tax would increase then it might be cheaper to litigate.

Microsoft about to swallow a $25bn+ tax hit.

Ow! That's nearly half an Activision...

Funny you say that because this was part of the NAFTA agreement (I know this agreement doesn’t apply to India). I knew engineers that went to college with sponsorship from this agreement when they were laid off as technicians from off shoring due to the agreement. This absolutely should be the status quo.

Protectionism doesn't make an economy more prosperous. Quite the reverse, it makes an economy uncompetitive.

I used to think so, before I understood that we live in a mercantilist world economy. I still think protectionism would be bad in a less distorted economy, and I think it's bad in as-distorted an economy as ours (because people who are subjected to pressure are more likely to be adaptive and dynamic), but it's harder to make the case, don't you think?

Protectionism means you're protecting inefficient industries. In a global marketplace, this means industries in other countries will out-compete yours.

Usually they out-compete yours because they burn coal and you have to buy solar, they commute in packed trains while you drive tesla to work, they live in tiny apartments, while your house has a backyard and frontyard.

Protectionism is not a fix for comparative advantage. Regardless of the motives for protectionism, it will make your economy less competitive and less prosperous.

The East Asian Tigers being a major counterexample:

https://hir.harvard.edu/the-east-asian-miracle-where-did-ada...

It's basically Ha-Joon Chang's whole deal-

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Samaritans:_The_Myth_of_Fr...

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/comment/hajoon-c...

East Asia switched to free markets, which is where their prosperity came from.

Completely unsubstantiated non-response. At least post a link, name a contrary authority, cite some evidence, do something.

What I meant is that in mercantilist world you do have asymmetrical protectionism, and that has real-world effects that require more thought than simply standing by the free market position, because it's not a free market even if you try on your end.

There are no perfect free markets. But the closer you can get to them, the more beneficial they are.

Protectionism hurts yourself just like trade sanctions and embargoes hurt the other guy.

This just really isn't true empirically.

What ends up happening is that countries cannot jump start industries that are already established and competitive in other countries. For countries to get into the renewable energy game, for example, they need to subsidize local industry and put a good bit of government capital on the line to the get to a point where they're productive at globally acceptable levels.

Countries don't need to pick _the_ cheapest products from around the world; getting good-enough local work that provides high value-add and keeps foreign currency reserves from going overseas is something that's objectively preferred by most of the global population. Most people are most definitely willing to accept +/- 15% cost of living changes in order to live in places with good employment and quality tax-funded services and infrastructure over having cheap imported crap.

> This just really isn't true empirically.

But it happens every time.

> For countries to get into the renewable energy game, for example, they need to subsidize local industry and put a good bit of government capital on the line to the get to a point where they're productive at globally acceptable levels.

If it was profitable to invest the capital, there's plenty of capital eager for something profitable to invest in. Having the government forcibly extract tax money and use it to invest pretty much guarantees it will be a lousy investment.

Currently, Washington State imposed a massive gas tax of $.50/gallon. The state is investing a big chunk of that into hydrogen electrolysis plants. The only people who are going to make money off of this are the contractors getting rich off of the construction projects. The state is pretty much guaranteed to get a negative ROI off of it.

Should California impose massive tax hits to businesses that move jobs to other states?

That would be very easy to circumvent.

You can describe effectively the same software engineering job in a way that sounds completely different. "close a project" of the old team, etc.

Companies outsource because they think they can find better workers in another country (where better is some combination of better skills, lower compensation, or harder working). Fair enough. We should welcome that kind of competition, it makes everyone better when we fairly and do our best.

They also outsource because they think they can take advantage of lax labor and/or environmental regulation in other countries. We should impose tariffs to level the playing field when countries don’t have these sort of regulations.

Competition keeps us honest and innovating, it shouldn’t be avoided, it just needs to be fair and non-exploitive.

Google is doing the same thing. Same as my own employer.

Funny that some people think "if we work in the office more, companies won't outsource jobs as much".

Maybe not, but from the company’s perspective if you’re not in the office then it doesn’t matter how far away you are (with some time zone restrictions maybe, but remote work heavily relies on async communication anyway). So they’ll look for the cheapest labor they can get away with.

I guess you can now have RTO in India though?

> they’ll look for the cheapest labor they can get away with

Don't you look for the best deal when you buy things?

That's how markets work.

Yes, I am very much aware of that. My point is that as a worker if you really push for remote / WFH policies, it can backfire on you because location isn’t a constraint anymore. Why pay someone in the Bay Area when I can pay someone in Idaho? Or in this case India. I’m not saying I like it or prefer it, but it makes sense.

If people can work effectively from home, they can work effectively from their homes in Hyderabad.

Bold of you to assume it's the same people, that will deliver the same quality of work

Doesn't need to be the same quality if it's 1/5th the price.

Businesses care about profits - not quality.

That will only last so long until consumers reject the terrible quality and move on to another, higher quality competitor - so the wheel will continue to turn and high quality developers will still be hired to produce high quality work.

An Indian employee's salary being 1/5th of an American's, doesn't mean their cost to the company is only 1/5th. There is a general organizational/overhead cost to taking on more people. This cost, for one additional person, may be higher than even the American's salary

In order to get a baby in 1 month just hire 9 women!

20 years ago when the first wave of outsourcing to India happened, a lot of the engineers there were not great. Nowadays there are amazing engineers in India also. They do know what they are worth though, so you cannot low ball them. But they are still working for quite a bit less than Bay Area folks.

My experience is that qualified engineers in overseas markets are not significantly cheaper than American engineers when all costs are factored in.

I can be at my companies HQ in 2 hours, when the need arises…

Any reason it will work out better this time than it did the last time outsourcing was the new big thing? In my anecdotal experience this is just a rehashing of the last outsourcing craze with a new crowd and will end up the same way.

Microsoft has also been outsourcing parts of core development of other products, like dotnet and Windows components.

This is something my company's internal RTO channels seem to have missed. What if large corporations really *did* collect enough data during covid to justify working from home? Now faang can justify outsourcing the rest of US based jobs.

Force RTO in the US, replace those who leave with less expensive resources.

This is actually a brilliant bit of insight/tinfoil that I'd totally missed, largely because all the things that FAANGs have been saying to justify RTO have been so daft.

You're totally right, though. If the data shows that RTO has negligible benefit — or even, say, just a marginal 5-10% benefit — then the logical move is to force RTO for the most expensive headcount (since a 5% boost there will be the most valuable) and then hire globally-remote headcount for all the rest.

That... really feels quite grim, the more I think about it. Time to go stare at my early-retirement spreadsheets and see where I can squeeze out some more velocity for myself, I suppose.

Why wouldn’t they? It’s like 7-10x cheaper.

The difference is much lesser 7-10x in big tech (Google, Amazon, Msft, etc). Big tech's Indian offices pays about 1/3 to 1/4 of what they would earn in the company's USA office. Levels.fyi will corroborate this.

Yes, while the average software engineer in India might earn 7-10x less than in the US, this isn't the case within major tech companies.

Salaries are 1/4th - but you also don't have as high of pension / payroll costs as in US.

At l3 & l4 - when you factor in benefits (including health care costs), 401k matching, payroll taxes - it's probably 1/5th or less.

Fair points, 1/5th is a good estimate.

Pay in India is variable. They have a lot of great engineers who make good money - not what they would in the US, but the difference is not that much. They also have a lot of "engineers" who shouldn't be engineers doing the simplest tasks who may 10x less than they would in the US. If you just need a simple web app that is just like every other web app except with your logo you don't need the great engineers.

Google L3 SWE in BLR: 36k

https://www.levels.fyi/offer/4bb28696-b3a9-430e-af6b-87e139b...

Google L4 SWE in BLR: 64k

https://www.levels.fyi/offer/3631ce80-f5fa-41e3-bd22-192a98a...

Google L3 SWE in Bay Area: 236k

https://www.levels.fyi/offer/8cb64099-ffcf-437f-baa3-a88ae7d...

Google L4 SWE in Bay Area: 260k

https://www.levels.fyi/offer/4468e21b-6650-4e6c-948b-e90ea1d...

That's a difference between 4x and 6.5x

I think that your 3x difference is definitely a lower bound, and it'll be closer to 6.5x than to 3x or 4x most of the time (though I don't see aggregated data per-company, per-region in levels.fyi (but I didn't bother logging in)

Aggregate for Google is $181k, $272k, $44k, $77k. So between 3.5 and 4.1 times.

Ack, thanks for sharing.

Salaries in India have increased a lot-- they used to be one-tenth that of Silicon Valley but now they are more than one-third and closing in on one-half

Lmao they wont allow remote work in the west but are fine with remote work elsewhere.

That or they are opening local offices overseas and expecting people to work on site there.

The new doublethink

Who says the overseas positions are going to be remote?

There would be communication overhead between teams. If companies are willing to take that, then they shouldn't have any argument against remote work irrespective of location and timezones.

Communication overhead between teams is very different from communication overhead between individual people on a team.

Overseas means remote from the main office. So regardless if they will be forced to be on site at their overseas office they will still be remote compared to their us office.

And guess what - those bros in the us that wanted to be onsite to be creative will now have to communicate clearly with their remote colleagues in india whether they like it or not. But the idiots took away the rights of those in the us while those above them gave zero shits about them anyway and moved lots of jobs abroad.

The winers here? Indians. Good luck and enjoy scuttlebutt, if still employed, suckers.

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