251–260 of 458 posts
- People on the same or adjacent timezones, or people willing to adapt to another vastly different timezone.
- People with language fluency and proficiency.
- People that can pass an interview.
Apply those 3 filters and the pool of people to pick from is greatly reduced.
True, but... Anyone can already take your job, as long as they are willing to relocate, or your company opens a new office near them. It is more important than ever to differentiate yourself. To do that you need to find something to do that you love, and then find (or more often make) a niche in that that that you become one of the top ten people in within your context. By context I mean you don't need to be the best…
It’s a bit like recommending someone become one of the top 10 basketball players to make money; someone will do it, but the chances are so slim that it’s a bad recommendation.
Also, how do you define “top 10”?
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.
Have been using Upwork for years, even when it was called something else...I forget the name. Useful for CERTAIN types of jobs, especially recurring ones
> Now, you can either hire someone from San Francisco and subsidize their obscene rent, or you can hire someone from Omaha. You can get the same work done, but cheaper. What would you choose? This depends on the assumption that there's a big supply of workers in Omaha that are able to step in and do the job. I'm an outsider, but I'd guess that the people worth $600,000 Facebook salaries are already living there and w…
I'm sure there is not a big supply of folks like me anywhere, and most of us are probably doing work at FAANGs and such. Truth is, FAANGs can't afford me because I'm not jumping ship for anything less than full time remote with good people on a product I think is worthwhile for anything under $600k/yr. I'd actually like to start something around edtech, so maybe I'll look into that if I lose my golden gig.
True, but... Anyone can already take your job, as long as they are willing to relocate, or your company opens a new office near them. It is more important than ever to differentiate yourself. To do that you need to find something to do that you love, and then find (or more often make) a niche in that that that you become one of the top ten people in within your context. By context I mean you don't need to be the best…
Basically, you're saying only the top 1% will be employable.
This is going to be a new experience for a lot of devs in the bay area that have been spoiled with job offers. Those days are over. I'd say it's time to hunker down, save as much as possible because future employment will be scare. And, there's already a vast oversupply of talent. I'd hate to think what it would look like in 5 years time.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
When I was at Intel, they had outsourced graphics driver development to Panang. Within a year they had created a large number of US jobs for folks who had to rebuild the work from Panang and validate/test/fix any new working coming back from Panang. There is a difference between a cheap foreign engineer without formal training and a trained domestic engineer. Anyone who thinks every type of labor can be outsourced to…
Fun fact, you can get good foreign engineers as good as any SF engineer but they also tend to be as costly as their US counterpart maybe slightly less do to lower living costs.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
This is how Microsoft operated for a while. Entire support ecosystems were built around Redmond, from non-core competency support (design, boutique marketing, food services, maintenance) to core competency augmentation (vendor, off shore, near shore, local). They still employ that model but to a lesser extent. They've moved away from it based on labor market trends and local competition (more companies have moved to the greater Seattle competing for resources). So I don't know if its a universal doctrine or model that will be employed, but it does seem to have a time and a place.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
When I was at Intel, they had outsourced graphics driver development to Panang. Within a year they had created a large number of US jobs for folks who had to rebuild the work from Panang and validate/test/fix any new working coming back from Panang. There is a difference between a cheap foreign engineer without formal training and a trained domestic engineer. Anyone who thinks every type of labor can be outsourced to…
Fun fact, you can get good foreign engineers as good as any SF engineer but they also tend to be as costly as their US counterpart maybe slightly less do to lower living costs.
There are excellent engineers in SF, but that's not the standard. It's the result of strict selection processes.
The main threat to your job is today the same that it was last year. China is growing its influence and technical capacity. TikTok could have been an American (or European, ...) company with American employees, it is not.
It’s easier to create a company in China and produce software there than to hire individual developers. That may work for very small companies with special needs, but it’s very inefficient.
If Chinese citizens are allowed to purchase American video games, hire AWS and Azure services, etc. then it is not a big deal. Other wise the draining of jobs will continue like has been happening for the pas two decades.
Another option is to be more protective of critical industries. As the pandemic shows how vulnerable is the west in the supply chain.
I expect a future similar to what we had one year ago. With some more jobs moving to China and some light increase in protectionism to avoid too much job bleeding.