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Comment by voidwtf | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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?

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