Worse because we're giving it to India in the US.
For all the pro-WFH/fully remote developers on HN who live in North America, you're going to be in for a surprise when your company decides to replace you with someone living in another country. Why hire you when the company can hire someone who costs 1/5 of you and is willing to work harder without complaining? Both of you are remote anyway. So what if the new hire works at night and sleeps during the day?
For all pro-WFH/fully remote developers living in North America, you should be cheering for return to office mandates. It'll probably save your career long-term.
Remote work during covid improved remote management and communication, which is needed to fully outsource workers.
Important roles at multinationals are therefore hired in the USA. Even though all countries are officially "equal" in the eyes of a multinational, with salary based on market conditions/cost of living, in practice developers at the same job level have very different impacts. This has been true for decades.
I don't think this dynamic will change even in a WFH/remote environment because it's a great excuse for companies to reward engineers differently based on impact while still preserving job title equality.
It's similar to manufacturing in Germany. Salaries are higher so it naturally attracts talent. You can get things cheaper abroad, and many do, but if you want it done right...
I've been working fully remote for 10 years and the company hires people from almost anywhere in the world. They'd get to pick the best candidate regardless of their location. Pay is also not based on where you're living but on the role and your experience.
Outsourcing dev work to India because it's "cheaper" has already maximally happened since decades ago.
So if your theory was correct there'd be almost no western developers by now. And yet there they are, making half a million a year working for big tech in California.
The only way your position can pass even a basic sense check is that you mean you think these companies are paying 5x just to see their devs in person?
Job market is better for seniors right now but that’s mostly because employers can sometimes hire a senior for money they would pay to a junior during late COVID boom.
>So what if the guy works night and sleep days
is what you said in another comment and it has a lot to do with working with others to the point where I see remote jobs specify what time zones you can live in so that you have overlap with the rest of the team. Everyone whose worked with coworkers on a completely different shift than you knows how often simple tasks turn into 3 days events simply from the cycle of
Send request -> clarifying question is sent back -> send clarification taking an entire 24 hours for each step to resolve
I feel like this supports my theory.
You also get into the grey area of if it counts as a remote team if every member of the team is located in a different regional office.
> already maximally happened since decades ago
We just laid off ~4000 employees and are replacing them with hiring in India. Your notion that it already happened decades ago is wrong.
Cycle of life continues
The return to office mandates were mostly a power play and a cost saving measure.
USA based ones have some advantages, like the timezone and the familiarity to the culture but both of these things are actually fixable and when fixed it saves a lot of money. I came to conclusion that US based developers must be thinking that they are better than everyone and that's why they are being paid these salaries.
Then integrating a whole subsystem into the actual product, same deal. I spend as much time holding a wrench or a meter as I do writing code.
This is very hard to outsource.
I skipped the whole webdev movement. Closest I got was using Wt (C++) to make an engineering interface for a system once, so non-engineers could actuate relays and devices.
I do think I’m better than most people at this. I don’t think it can be outsourced, and I am not concerned.
People can argue about the latest js framework or how amazing rust is for the next 15 years, at which point I plan on retiring.
This type of work is largely recession-proof and offshoring-proof.