Comment by hnrodey | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hnrodey | Hacker News Reader

I believe the current hiring woes in the US are more nefarious than just being picky.

First, I believe US companies are figuring out how to hire foreign teams at lower cost. I get multiple emails per week from companies offering us their team at low rates. South America and India are common places. I personally witnessed this at my last company where they drastically cut US/North America staff in favor of Indian teams with a pure cost motive. Literally dozens of jobs including SE and supporting roles shipped overseas.

Second, I believe US companies are asserting back control over the labor market. Employees took a lot of control in the Covid era so companies have to be looking to fix that.

I hope something changes soon. I’m in the early stages of a job search and it’s a tad frustrating. I’ve experienced many of things reported by other commenters including ghosting, no response at all or my favorite which is “lack of years of experience for a requirement” (Example must have 3 years experience with .NET 6)

I agree. My employer disproportionately lays off US citizens and preferentially hires in Latin America. I spent part of today looking at my employer’s main competitors. One has a bunch of programming jobs available in Mexico. Another is hiring primarily in India.

It isn’t ChatGPT that will take US engineering jobs. It is cheaper devs in other countries. And plenty of them have reasonable English and programming skills, as much as I wish it were otherwise. I know because I have worked with them.

As a Vietnamese developer currently interested in remote opportunities, I am a little concerned. I hope people like us won't face any discrimination at work due to being thought of as "stealing an American's job".

For what it’s worth, I hold no ill will toward the new hires. I quite like some of them. But it’s obvious what is going, and I know I’m not alone in considering a career change.

We are all just trying to make a buck.

My company employs some VN engineers and they’re great. I’m glad your country is building up such an industry instead of relying on only agriculture and tourism for example.

If you do, it's because they feel threatened - because it's working.

Cost of success.

You'd have a hard time finding a educated tech employee who would discriminate against a population based on regional hiring trends. Like yourself, we can all see through the fog and realize that only the employer is benefiting here.

Everyone's gotta feed their families, you're doing the same work we would do, and all else equal, only the pay is different.

My favorite coworkers to speak with day to day are IN team in analogous role. Very amicable,and we all work to make each other secure.

I've been saying for years that NA software devs should fight to RTO. If you can do do your job remotely, so can people across the world who will do it for 5x less.

RTO doesn't change anything about that. It'll still be cheaper to hire in low cost areas.

RTO won't change everything, but I suppose I agree with the sentiment. US employees will never be the lowest wage compared to foreign labor so we'll have to find ways to compete against the global labor market in which we can win. Being in-office is a solid trump card and upper management loves to see their employees in the office space.

Yes, right. It’s a lot easier to fire someone without any human connection.

Wasn't there stories from the FAANG utopia that people in office found out they were fired by their key cards not working at the doors?

Approach it from the positive. Even with all of the remote tools and fancy apps, the connection of team that is in-person every day is night and day compared to a fully remote team. In-person, we can easily build relationships and have random conversions, assist team members without being a bother and make it easy for the frontline dev teams to meet and get to know their upper management team. Many companies will pay a premium for labor if they believe to be getting something in return for it.

>>First, I believe US companies are figuring out how to hire foreign teams at lower cost.

FWIW - they figured that out ...15? 20? years ago with the first wave of out sourcing to India.

Offshoring and outsourcing aren't new trends. While offshoring to India was tried many years ago, there was a boomerang effect that many of those jobs came back to the US after failed attempts at offshoring.

It feels different this time around. India is still in the mix due to low wages and skilled labor, now South America is showcasing a real capability for skilled SE's. South America has the time zone advantage that most of the team will be online that overlaps their NA managers.

This is not a conspiracy anymore. Just open top 100 companies, compare 3 years back locations with this years. You will see a rise of non-US locations.

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