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Comment by fullshark | Hacker News Reader

The economics are undeniable. I also think it means wages will not grow meaningfully for knowledge workers in urban locales, so you almost have no choice but to go remote and move to a LCOL area to increase your real income.

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Unless you want to live in an area where entertainment and restaurants and specialized healthcare and all the other good things are plentiful.

Yep, that stuff only exists in New York, London and the SF Bay Area.

St Louis, Eindhoven and Bordeaux do not have hospitals, good restaurants and entertainment.

Metro areas are more expensive than rural areas. No reason to jump to extremes.

Fair. But in the context of remote tech work, SFBA salaries & costs of living is usually what’s being compared to, and you can get all that stuff in places that are not rural at all (such as the cities I mentioned) at a way lower cost of living.

I don’t know why you’re being downvoted, this is true.

However, as a suburbanite, I have no problem “commuting” to entertainment in the city once every weekend, when previously I had to commute 5 times a week for work. And when I go to the city, it’s a day full of fun/activities because I know I’m not coming back for a week. You can get the best of both worlds that way.

The suburbs aren’t necessarily a low cost of living area, especially suburbs of SF, NY, Seattle, etc. The LCOL areas would be more rural or non-coastal states in general.

It’s all relative. They’re LCOL on a per square foot basis, if you have a family or otherwise need more space.

depend on your social circle. I can barely get my local pals together for lunch once a week. no chance I can arrange a getaway downtown without planning weeks in advance.

The first two are more important when you are young and single. Junior employees working onsite in urban areas does seem to make the most sense.

They seem to be just as important when you‘re not single, maybe even more. Also the type of entertainment may change, but I think people like this at all ages.

Everyone likes those things but if the way to get it is to live in a shoebox or send your kids to bad schools to accomplish it the price doesn’t seem as worth it. Yuppies getting married and moving to the suburbs to raise kids a pretty common eventuality.

Or will those services/businesses pop up in new areas due to the shifting population?

I think it’ll eventually lead to them being paid more, because now you can job search without as much risk to your current employment. Once we hit equilibrium again and demand outpaces availability then they’ll be forced to pay competitive wages or deal with attrition.

Or they'll hire overseas and LCOL.

Everything is supply and demand. Now workers are orders of magnitude more sourceable and fungible, meaning the supply went way up.

Wages will stop going up and even start to slide backwards for new hires. I've already seen it. I was making just over $400k at my last job, and new positions at the same level aren't listed over $200k total comp.

And if hypothetically AI brings down demand in the future (big if), then the wage curve is under even further pressure.

You’re not wrong, but I’m not talking about the highest end of the spectrum. I’m saying that as a whole I believe the employees will benefit. There are many that are underpaid right now because of wages scaled to the employees location. California and New York workers will lose out, I think the rest of us will see an increase when this normalization occurs.

Companies already tried offshoring several years ago. It was a disaster for any core competencies, and companies already make extensive use of offshoring (and near shoring). This isn’t going to happen suddenly.

Education and talent is more widely distributed now, though.

Several years ago, we didn't have remote working tools neither we had remote working cultural norms. All of those were forcibly established during the pandemic. So now is a different time for offshoring. I am seeing a lot of companies having headcount outside the US these days. If remote work works, then why even bother paying someone in the US?

sounds great

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