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Comment by alephnerd | Hacker News Reader

> Companies were already out-sourcing before great video conferencing software or an understanding of how to work with remote teams.

And those experiments failed in the 2000s.

But in the 2020s with an extended pandemic lockdown over 2-3 years, async work was proven to succeed.

I am one of those decisionmakers and the pandemic effect did convince the last stragglers that offshoring by directly managing a subsidiary in Poland, India, Czechia, Israel, etc with ex-American leadership is good enough.

I warned about this during COVID on HN and was downvoted constantly.

Pretending that the 2000s-era experience can inform decisions we make in the 2020s is completely flawed.

Being in denial of the "brave new world" is only going to do you harm as an IC.

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Your experience exactly matches mine as well.

But some of these comments are just like from another planet. Like a comment I responded to saying "All the tools that existed for remote work had been there, largely in the same fashion and capability, for decades", and then when I responded with disbelief about how anyone could think that remote working tools have been static for decades I was chastised for not giving specific examples.

The level of cluelessness on display here is just baffling to me. There used to be tangible benefits for being located in the same city. If I'm just Zooming with my colleagues anyway, it makes zero difference if they are in the same city or thousands of miles away, as long as there is good timezones overlap.

It's insane.

What you now get on your laptop, home internet, and Zoom was only available with $25k a room cisco gear 10 years ago. I don't think remote communication is anywhere near as good as in-person, but it's night and day different from 2015.

>static for decades I was chastised for not giving specific examples.

Any examples, really.

>The level of cluelessness on display here is just baffling to me.

I encourage you to give this thread an honest, deep think about why you feel this way. It's certainly not lack of insight from the other side. The word accountability is relevant here.

There are literally tons of examples lots of people, myself included, have given in this thread. At this point, arguing with you is like arguing with a dining room table. Have fun in your universe.

Yep. I feel like Cassandra warning the Trojans.

All the comments here on this thread feel almost exactly like the same things I heard about Chinese manufacturing or Korean cars back in the 2000s.

At an individual level, it's difficult to make any changes, but at the very least one can start thinking of how to live in this new world.

Just having enough EQ as an Engineer to give an actual business justification about your initiatives or teams (NARR attach rate, developer velocity, actual tangible examples of generating pipeline) along with actually trying to train and mentor new grads and consistently upskilling would in most cases be enough to protect your job, but people here want to stick their head in the sand.

the careers page of most SV darlings or YC startup proves you right.

most roles in the US are staff or senior+. the rest of pleb engineering are either in Eastern Europe or India and a couple in Brazil / Latin America.

few places choose UK, Ireland etc but savings not enough compared to eastern europe / india.

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