I wonder if this is conflating Cambridge, UK with Cambridge in the US?
Hacker News' “Who is Hiring?” thread, part 2, remote and locations
21–30 of 237 posts
Re: Hacker News' “Who is Hiring?” thread, part 2, remote and locations
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, keeping them apart makes no sense. Definitely a single market. If they belong apart, then so do Manhattan and Brooklyn.
Cambridge and Boston should be together, but Silicon Valley and SF shouldn't. I could walk to Cambridge from my house in the city of Boston. There is no way I could walk to Palo Alto from SF.
Yes. Big difference between 20 minute walk and 2 hour drive.
Re: Hacker News' “Who is Hiring?” thread, part 2, remote and locations
#23Surprised not to see DC in the list of cities... usually shows up a lot in the hiring threads...
Re: Hacker News' “Who is Hiring?” thread, part 2, remote and locations
#24Remote is still rare, it seems, because usual sweatshops are traditional habitat for pointy haired bosses and other parasitic "management".
For remote, the way Linux kernel or BSDs are being developed, one needs nothing but git, emacs and browser (well, in case of Linux also a working mail) and no management at all. How could, say, Amazon, even hypothetically switch to remote?
More seriously, there is no market for code - otherwise people would just pay per commit (passed all the tests) nice and easy. The problem is people with money doesn't need a mere good code, they need their positions, their bonuses, their status. They will pay you for filling a slot in the social hierarchy which supports them, not for your good code.
This is why, perhaps, remote works fine for "nonprofits", like FreeBSD, but for corporations it is still a heresy.
Again, there, it seems, is no demand for mere good quality code.
This, by the way, is connected with hiring. Almost no one hire for abilities, everyone is hiring for good school diplomas. (Which diploma Mike Pall has? Igor Sysoev was a college dropout).
If I am wrong, and there is a market for code - solved problem, pushed a commit, all tests passed, money transferred - please tell me, I would participate gladly.
Re: Hacker News' “Who is Hiring?” thread, part 2, remote and locations
#25One additional reason that I've observed to add to the list:
* Declining dominance of the Microsoft/Oracle hegemony in secondary markets
During the '90s Microsoft and Oracle were particularly effective at entering emerging markets and pushing their solutions to such a degree that "computer programmer" became synonymous with "Microsoft/Oracle developer". Thus, if you wanted to become a software developer in one of these markets, it meant learning C#/Java, along with all the ecosystem, tooling, and inevitably...lock-in.
Fast-forward 20 or so years, and the Open Source movement is finally beginning to crack that shell of lock-in. Anecdotally, when I first moved to Turkey 4 years ago, technology job sites almost exclusively listed C#/Java positions. Today, I know many Python, Ruby, Scala, Go, etc. developers living and working in Turkey, and there's been an explosion of related conferences, trainings, events, etc.
The one last hurdle I see that needs to be overcome in these places is the notion that developer education is as much a concern for those that employ developers as for the developers themselves. Pretty much all of the conferences/trainings have to be held over weekends because it is still difficult for developers to get time off during the week to attend. Once that bit of cultural shift happens, I only foresee this trend accelerating.
Re: Hacker News' “Who is Hiring?” thread, part 2, remote and locations
#26I hope some policy makers in the government keep a watch on such threads. They will get an idea about the loss of taxes, that these remote would otherwise pay if they were to be employed in the US. Not to mention the social security and the indirect economic contributions. In fact all the anti-immigration camps should get a reality check at this point. In 5-10 years, most of the US tech jobs will be remote and not a…
Any American citizens working remotely still have to pay US taxes.
There are tax treaties with most (all?) countries whereby you receive a US tax credit. In the case of the UK I believe even National Insurance contributions can be counted towards Social Security.
Re: Hacker News' “Who is Hiring?” thread, part 2, remote and locations
#27I hope some policy makers in the government keep a watch on such threads. They will get an idea about the loss of taxes, that these remote would otherwise pay if they were to be employed in the US. Not to mention the social security and the indirect economic contributions. In fact all the anti-immigration camps should get a reality check at this point. In 5-10 years, most of the US tech jobs will be remote and not a…
Any American citizens working remotely still have to pay US taxes.
Isn't it above 1mln? (US citizen working in London told me he has to make the tax return, but he is not tax for anything below 1 000 000 $)
Re: Hacker News' “Who is Hiring?” thread, part 2, remote and locations
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
Any American citizens working remotely still have to pay US taxes.
Isn't it above 1mln? (US citizen working in London told me he has to make the tax return, but he is not tax for anything below 1 000 000 $)
No, it is $100k. That also only applies to income tax, not social security.
Re: Hacker News' “Who is Hiring?” thread, part 2, remote and locations
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
Any American citizens working remotely still have to pay US taxes.
There are tax treaties with most (all?) countries whereby you receive a US tax credit. In the case of the UK I believe even National Insurance contributions can be counted towards Social Security.
You receive some credits and deductions but the statement that "not a dime of the remote worker's income will reach american shores" is objectively and supremely false. The IRS brings in huge sums of money from Americans living abroad every year.
Re: Hacker News' “Who is Hiring?” thread, part 2, remote and locations
#30Bear in mind that HN has mainly US based readers. So those insights are not reflecting the reality IMO.
If you read the article the author points out, several times, that he does not recommend taking this data as absolute truth throughout tech.