Ask HN: If you are fully/partially remote, would you hire devs in India? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: If you are fully/partially remote, would you hire devs in India?

#51

Post by bruce511 » Wed, May 27, 2020, 4:00 AM UTC

samdamsamm wrote: post #48

bruce511 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But hang on, not all US teams are paid the same either. A dev in kansas gets less than a dev in SV. Are you arguing that all devs everywhere should be paid the same for moral reasons? (genuine question) Is it not more morally ethical to hire 2 devs in denver for the price of 1 in New York, thus providing employment for twice as many americans?

I am simply saying there is no moral justification for any of it. It’s important to take seriously because the logical outcome of this turn to remote work will otherwise be greater class divisions than the world has ever known, within the same economic structures.

I would agree that since there's no agreement of morals or ethics, it's easy to justify or vilify any action. So discussing the morality of employment is fruitless.

Equally Labour entropy suggests that jobs will flow from high-cost locations to low cost locations. Remote work reduces the friction of this flow. If you can work from home in SV you can do the same job from home in ohio, or Latvia or India.

External forces are at work to increase or decrease the friction of this entropy, but for the most part it seems to be flowing in one direction.

Whether this is moral or nor seems to be in the eye of the beholder.

Re: Ask HN: If you are fully/partially remote, would you hire devs in India?

#52

Post by entha_saava » Thu, May 28, 2020, 10:23 AM UTC

ayush--s wrote: post #43

entha_saava wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> sloppy work Or as I have recently taken to call it, geeksforgeeks culture.

if your problem is geeksforgeeks culture (which translates to poor knowledge of software coding standards I guess), then you're clearly not filtering your candidates well enough. Does your interview process has any debugging or refactoring rounds?

Sorry bro. I am a college student in India and that's just my observation.

Re: Ask HN: If you are fully/partially remote, would you hire devs in India?

#53

Post by hiram112 » Thu, May 28, 2020, 10:01 PM UTC

codegeek wrote: post #26

hiram112 wrote: post #18

No. I lived and worked for one of the big offshoring companies in Karnataka and also the US in my 20s. I'm glad I had the experience to do so, and, as an American, I was never treated so well in another country (I've also lived in the EU several times). But the whole experience really showed me that it had nothing to do with diversity, cultural exchange, getting the 'best and brightest, nor all the other bullshit tha…

"has probably had more to do with the growing inequality between the 0.1% and the rest of us than anything else." I disagree. The growing wage inequality between the rich and poor has many other factors. Tech companies are just one small part of it. Before 2004, most of these big techs did not even exist. But wage gap has been increasing for almost last 45 years or so in the US if you look at the data. Take Walmart f…

> I disagree. The growing wage inequality between the rich and poor has many other factors.

I didn't mean just one specific visa, e.g. H1B or any other. I mean that globalization has allowed large companies to play all sorts of games like moving their manufacturing and service centers to the lowest wages countries, their headquarters to tax shelters like Ireland or the Caymans, and lobbied laws to ensure a never-ending supply of foreign workers and recently immigrated citizens to push wages for the jobs that can't be moved.

Meanwhile, employees can't just move to some country to take advantage of lower COL, or declare their 'official' residence in a tax shelter. We can't even import drugs from Canada or pay the same price for digital goods like Steam games offered to low wage nations.

> I agree with you on moral grounds but that is not how capitalism works.

There is no strict rule that says capitalist economies can't enforce equal playing fields for capital and labor. If the US or any other high wage country weren't beholden to the wealthy, they could easily pass laws that forced companies to pay tariffs for any goods and services developed in countries without similar labor laws, environmental protections, and even tax rates.

Re: Ask HN: If you are fully/partially remote, would you hire devs in India?

#54

Post by naruvimama » Sun, May 31, 2020, 1:25 PM UTC

cmdshiftf4 wrote: post #13

Absolutely not. I work hard and pay high taxes without much complaint to try and help enrich both myself and the society I am a part of. Helping companies offshore work destroys local jobs, depresses salaries and helps the rich get all the richer at a time where they've already taken a disproportionate amount of the gains from the increases in productivity since the 70s and in that time, as the panama papers et al. h…

One of the reasons why the quality has gone down drastically is that engineering colleges have started catering to the manpower needs of low-tech, back office and BPO jobs.

Western companies did make a big mistake in not embracing the large talent pool in India early enough for more cutting edge R&D or engineering work. This has worked to harm both sides.

Now it has lost the competitive edge to Huawei which has access to a large and cheap pool of talent. While neither Huawei or Ericsson work on essential/Core R&D in India,

Huawei has a larger presence in India than Ericsson which just runs back office jobs and backend SW development.

India is Ericsson's largest and most promising future market and has been there for 100 years but has always lacked the commitment, thanks to "misplaced nationalism". While I am suspicious of Huawei and China in general, I am happy that Ericsson has competition.

Re: Ask HN: If you are fully/partially remote, would you hire devs in India?

#55

Post by naruvimama » Sun, May 31, 2020, 1:44 PM UTC

Shorel wrote: post #28

I work for a distributed company. This means we have over ten offices all over the world. There is at least one office in India. It used to have many engineers, now it has few. The reasons: Engineers in India have this culture that values position more than skills. They think they must work only three years as developers and move to management as soon as they can, otherwise they are wasting time, or they think they a…

I worked for an Indian IT services company wayback in 2006, I think the culture comes from American companies. American managers want offshore managers reporting to them and not engineers and would pay top dollar for it.

Companies reacted by promoting toadies to be managers with good salaries and paid little to the engineers who did all of the work.

Gate keeping by said managers also helps with miscommunication. Then came the MBA rush too. If only they focused on paying people who did a good job, instead of paying per head/degree/title.

Re: Ask HN: If you are fully/partially remote, would you hire devs in India?

#56

Post by naruvimama » Sun, May 31, 2020, 1:49 PM UTC

samdamsamm wrote: post #8

naveen99 wrote: post #4

I wonder if devs in india would be willing to do night shifts to sync their times with us teams.

Are you paying the same as US teams?

At the end of the day it is a business, and perhaps the customer of the business will also look at a discount.

In a way you are right, you may need to offer a premium.

Re: Ask HN: If you are fully/partially remote, would you hire devs in India?

#57

Post by saket88 » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 11:16 AM UTC

codingdave wrote: post #3

I've led teams from India. The skills and talent were fine, although the interview process to find good talent was harder then in the US. I'll skip the horror stories of people googling interview questions... because that isn't really what you are asking about. There were challenges - The communications needed extra effort, and the results were not as good when they were given autonomy over their work. They also were…

Couldn't disagree more. There are all kinds of people everywhere and there is a term to judge people by nationality/race . I wont tell who is great or not, but if you have a cultural bias dont judge.