Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Remote work means anyone can take your job

marker.medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 458 posts

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#91

Post by api »

toyg wrote: post #53
beager wrote: post #19

The implication from this litter of thinkpieces on HN is that proximity to a tech hub (SV/NY) is your only competitive advantage as a knowledge worker—your butt is close to their chair. This runs counter to the other prevailing wisdom about SV/NY, which is that those areas are hubs—and essential to the tech industry—because the world's top talent is drawn to it. So which is it?

There are multiple layers. I think SV will remain a hub from a commercial standpoint, so if you're fishing for VC money that's still where you want to be. From a purely technical standpoint, we'll see, but tbh, as others have said, outsourcing has been happening for decades now and if anything the wave is currently retreating.

I can count three VCs in my immediate circle of contacts that are expanding up and down the West Coast at least.

The NIMBYs in SF are going to get their wish: shrinking the city and collapsing its major industry. As another poster stated: things that don't make sense get adjusted in bad economic times. Things like paying 7-10X for real estate when you're in a digital industry...

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#92

Post by babesh »

rb808 wrote: post #81
davedx wrote: post #7

Seems like this article ignores the gigantic wave of out-sourcing throughout IT that already happened in previous decades and in many cases returned to near-shore / onsite work. What you actually see if you look at remote work job boards is many (if not most) companies in say, the USA, want remote people from the USA (or at least the same timezone as the USA). I think this is what will happen in other countries too.

> in many cases returned to near-shore / onsite work Do you have any examples? I dont see this at all.

What happened is that most IT never returned but the work that IT was doing is now done by cloud service providers. Because of immense software scaling, it made sense to pay for quality workers.

You can sell each additional software product at very high margins so it makes sense to spend a bit more on the worker for a slightly better product that will result in many more high margin sales.

Sometimes they found that it was more effective to do low cost work in cheaper US locations (American South, etc...) than India.

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#94

Post by yusufnb »

davedx wrote: post #7

Seems like this article ignores the gigantic wave of out-sourcing throughout IT that already happened in previous decades and in many cases returned to near-shore / onsite work. What you actually see if you look at remote work job boards is many (if not most) companies in say, the USA, want remote people from the USA (or at least the same timezone as the USA). I think this is what will happen in other countries too.

Remote work is not the same as out-sourcing. Out-sourcing was a necessary evil and only worked for large/mature companies with carved out business processes that could be offloaded. These companies were never remote-first.

With companies being forced to modify their internal processes to be remote-first, what they will realize is that remote does work once they align to it. And once they realize that, there is no stopping them. Since the benefits of having a remote first company well aligned to working efficiently far out-weigh the benefits of a co-located team.

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#95

Post by jedberg »

hocuspocus wrote: post #78
dudul wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

European countries are outliers due to EU regulations. Any EU "citizen" can work anywhere in the EU, so pragmatically speaking, why would you only want to hire Spanish people instead of opening the door to French, Italian or German candidates? It comes at literally zero cost to the company. Some industries are heavily regulated in the US and having non-US based employees can become a real headache for US companies. A…

> European countries are outliers due to EU regulations. Any EU "citizen" can work anywhere in the EU, so pragmatically speaking, why would you only want to hire Spanish people instead of opening the door to French, Italian or German candidates? It comes at literally zero cost to the company. The employer needs to pay social contributions in the employee's residence country. And more often than not, the employee cann…

It’s the same in the US to hire someone in a different state.

Every state has their own tax scheme. Every new employee in a new state is a big set up cost and ongoing maintenance.

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#96

Post by gexla »

The bigger issue right now is the total cratering of the world economy. Then there's also the unknown resets which will come with that. Trends which were in slow motion and maybe barely noticeable may have gone into overdrive. Now we don't know where we're at.

To say that you're role is at risk because anyone around the world can take that role is as much guesswork as anyone else can give. This is just another prediction in a storm of unknowns.

From the article...

> If you thought globalization was fun for manufacturing, buckle up. Remote work is about to globalize a bunch of service jobs as well.

This makes sense from what I knew a few months ago. What doesn't sit right with me is that we're also possibly looking at a world in which globalization will be reversing. Supply chains may be rejiggered to operate closer to home. Will remote work go MORE globalized while everything else possibly reverses?

> Like any big economic change, there’ll be winners and losers, and it’s not exactly clear from the outset who will end up benefiting from the change.

So, we don't know what's going to happen, this is just his prediction.

This is a complex subject. Software doesn't operate like textiles. If the textile company charges twice as much, then the consumer pays more. Facebook engineers charging X more than engineers from SE Asia doesn't make the service more expensive. It's still "free" for the customer. There are other things to optimize on before you get to cost of workers.

Another potential bigger issue for US workers is the possible change of the center of gravity for software development. US workers need to stay competitive. This will be challenged not so much by cheaper workers, but by global competition to US companies. Which should US workers worry about more? Workers from around the world taking US jobs? Or ByteDance challenging Facebook?

US workers have already been dealing with outsourcing. The big change would be US workers applying for foreign jobs. Right now the US has a load of strong talent these companies could be mopping up.

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#97

Post by jkingsbery »

cameronbrown wrote: post #11

There's some serious irony that traditionally globalist brogrammer types are now whining about outsourcing (to "poorer" areas, or other countries). You guys didn't care when it was happened to blue collar workers, and then go and rag on Trump voters who didn't see any other way out. Then there's the other faction that doesn't understand basic economics and expects Bay Area pay from Bangladesh so they can live like a…

In 2002, when I was looking at colleges and deciding what to do with my life, I received advice that I shouldn't go into programming, because outsourcing was going to make all the programming jobs go away. Fortunately for me, I ignored this advice.

As others have noted, this all is not new (even if it might be different level).

> You guys didn't care when it was happened to blue collar workers

It's a strawman argument to conclude that because someone thinks that a thing is good on the whole (outsourcing), that there can't be bad consequences to it (people losing their jobs). For whatever it's worth, there seems to be a pretty strong pro-tech-union group on HN (which, I happen to disagree with, but that's a whole different story).

Hopefully that's enough evidence that someone took the time to process what you wrote, and you use the feedback to write better.

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#98

Post by y-c-o-m-b »

cameronbrown wrote: post #39
syndacks wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would be curious for you to expand on what you mean by "traditionally globalist brogrammer types."

It's a generalisation to be sure. But many programmers (from Silicon Valley in particular) or other middle class workers like finance, law, etc.. are in this weird bubble totally isolated from reality. The working class has been complaining about outsourcing for decades and I just find it hypocritical that this bubble is only just starting to complain because now it affects them with remote work. It's elitist attitud…

On the contrary - from my own anecdotal experience - programmers have been complaining about outsourcing forever. There was an especially strong distaste for it at Intel where outsourcing was more common. I've seen countless articles and opinions here on HackerNews outlining the tremendous loss of quality and productivity by outsourcing work over the years. Have you considered if you're the one living in the bubble?

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#99

Post by crispyambulance »

mc32 wrote: post #47
davedx wrote: post #7

Seems like this article ignores the gigantic wave of out-sourcing throughout IT that already happened in previous decades and in many cases returned to near-shore / onsite work. What you actually see if you look at remote work job boards is many (if not most) companies in say, the USA, want remote people from the USA (or at least the same timezone as the USA). I think this is what will happen in other countries too.

In the first wave of outsourcing, companies saw that the contract organization provided more or less equivalent results at substantially reduced cost. What they failed to realize is what they outsourced were their bottom tier workers, the unproductive people. They got excited by the reduced cost with minimal reduction in effectiveness. When they try to outsource their better talent that’s where they failed to recogni…

> [...] what they outsourced were their bottom tier workers, the unproductive people.

That might be true to some extent, but I think there's a problem with that line of thought.

People are a "moving target". What may be a bottom-tier worker now, could very well be a valuable employee in 5-10 years. Many folks have built their career by starting at a low level and then getting promoted and upskilled over time through hard work and commitment. Starting at a low position and advancing is becoming, sadly, a rare thing.

The "first wave" and subsequent waves of outsourcing have to a large extent eliminated paths of career advancement for many workers. At first it was unskilled laborers and now it has been creeping up to virtually all technical job descriptions. The wet-dream of MBA's who promote this stuff is corporations consisting of a few C-level people and their board, and then a layer of fab-less product and operations people who just manage supply-chain and services stuff with external vendors. It's an ugly picture but that's what the global supply chain people want.

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#100

Post by rclayton »

davedx wrote: post #7

Seems like this article ignores the gigantic wave of out-sourcing throughout IT that already happened in previous decades and in many cases returned to near-shore / onsite work. What you actually see if you look at remote work job boards is many (if not most) companies in say, the USA, want remote people from the USA (or at least the same timezone as the USA). I think this is what will happen in other countries too.

Communication and cultural differences become significant drags on velocity. Time zone differences exacerbate resolving issues. More importantly, it’s tough communicating technical issues in your non-native language.

It’s also hard to build an engineering culture when you don’t engage with your coworkers often. You have to build credibility so you can work through difficult issues - that’s hard to do when your primary medium of communication is Slack.

Post reply on HN