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

261–270 of 458 posts

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#261

Post by rootusrootus »

blululu wrote: post #162
gregkerzhner wrote: post #132

Real time, remote communication through tools like zoom, slack, and lucidchart (in my humble opinion) has been solved. It might take some getting used to, but in the right environment a group of properly motivated individuals can achieve the same productivity as their peers in a conference room. Asynchronous communication across timezones has not been solved, and I struggle to see how it would be. A lot of collaborat…

I don't think that 'Tennessee' is the correct spelling for Shenzhen. The low cost of living states in the US are still expensive compared to low cost of living countries. There is engineering talent around the world, and I don't see how the rural parts of the US are going to compete with more urban populations in other well educated parts of the world.

Offshoring has been a thing for years, we already know how it plays out. There are distinct disadvantages, and a lot of companies have been bringing development back into the US as a result. My company is one of them.

If you really want offshoring to work, you at least have to move 100% of your development staff overseas. Really you need to move 100% of your engineering altogether, and maybe a good chunk of your leadership as well.

Tennessee has a huge advantage over places like China and India simply due to communication. Language fluency, cultural similarity, and a low timezone offset all very much contribute to a successful team.

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#262

Post by Justsignedup »

I have a strong opinion on this, but it starts at a lower level...

A good developer is a developer that makes themselves obsolete.

By making themselves obsolete the developer has made themselves invaluable.

How can both of those things be true?

This is basically because you find that great developers write code and patterns that make it easy for anyone to jump in an understand. Even if complicated. I strive to do this as much as possible. The more I do this the faster development becomes for myself and my team. However the more I do this, the more my team leads realize that without me, things won't progress in the right direction. But theoretically they can fire me any time and find a cheaper worker to do my job.

The point is, I see lots of managers treat engineers as commodities. However if that is their outlook, then they will always look to outsource because they see no value in you. Good managers realize that things are smooth and maintainable because of the people who put effort into doing that, not that because things are smooth and maintainable everyone is expandable. Every time I see the latter being the mindset there's always a HUGE slowdown because the wrong things start being built.

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#263

Post by asdff »

Communitivity wrote: post #38

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…

In a world where everyone has about the same skills, more or less after some onboarding period, network is everything.

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#265

Post by rootusrootus »

isbvhodnvemrwvn wrote: post #222
gregkerzhner wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anectodal, but I spent a year on a recent project collaborating with a group of firmware engineers in Shenzhen, and it was an absolute nightmare. Apart from the timezones, the code quality was horrendous and basically never worked correctly. They also ignored all common standards, and made assumptions about things like ordering of fields in JSON. None of their engineers spoke english, so code communication had to go…

You probably got what your company paid for.

My company has an office in Hyderabad India. My experience is that a US-equivalent developer in India isn't actually that much cheaper, and when you weigh the timezone disadvantage it may not really be worth the hassle.

We still have a thousand developers there and we pay $2500/mo for each of them. There are plenty of nice people, and a few rockstars, but on average this money doesn't buy top talent in India.

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#266

Post by Avicebron »

crispyambulance wrote: post #99
mc32 wrote: post #47

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…

Yea, it's already happened to some extent in the life science industry. It's part of the reason our biotech industry is in shambles. Many of the companies I work with dream of "going virtual", doing research at an unaffiliated lab, taking credit, moving that research to a massive CMO, then dissolving any physical assets, layoffs, and then there is a just a board, execs and profit. It's totally destructive to actual human progress.

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#267

Post by frockington1 »

wayoutthere wrote: post #165
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.

We're in what I'll call the third wave of offshoring now. There are pockets of offshore developers who are actually interchangeable with US-based teams; but the cost difference is more like 25-50% less than the previous waves that were promising 90% cost savings. My last company ended up outsourcing from Mexico, Colombia, Uruguay and Argentina with good results. We often didn't tell clients they were offshore and bil…

How did you decide which clients could use offshore labor? If you did that in financial or defense industries you could be opening yourself up to significant legal liability

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#268

Post by sb52191 »

josho wrote: post #156
y-c-o-m-b wrote: post #129

I had this same fear a few years back. I don't have any notable personal projects on GitHub and my skills are pretty standard (Full Stack .NET) these days. I don't even have a degree. Nothing really stands out in my resume that screams "hire this person". I figured I would hardly get a response when applying to remote companies let alone an offer. The competition is surely way more qualified than I am. Furthermore I…

I appreciate your short term perspective, and agree with you that today remote work doesn't have these fears. However, the author is thinking about a longer time horizon. As an example, with agreements between Canada/US and similar culture it would be very easy for your company to start hiring remote workers in Canada. Suddenly due to currency differences their salaries are 30% cheaper, and with a strong social safet…

But then there's nothing stopping American workers from moving to cheaper COL places and still competing for these jobs. And with reduction in salary costs, the product becomes cheaper as well, meaning more people have access to it and (potentially) opening up new opportunities than before.

I'm not saying it's going to be a completely painless process, but I'm far more optimistic about the ultimate end point.

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#269

Post by nsporillo »

josho wrote: post #156
y-c-o-m-b wrote: post #129

I had this same fear a few years back. I don't have any notable personal projects on GitHub and my skills are pretty standard (Full Stack .NET) these days. I don't even have a degree. Nothing really stands out in my resume that screams "hire this person". I figured I would hardly get a response when applying to remote companies let alone an offer. The competition is surely way more qualified than I am. Furthermore I…

I appreciate your short term perspective, and agree with you that today remote work doesn't have these fears. However, the author is thinking about a longer time horizon. As an example, with agreements between Canada/US and similar culture it would be very easy for your company to start hiring remote workers in Canada. Suddenly due to currency differences their salaries are 30% cheaper, and with a strong social safet…

Globalization is and always was a race to the bottom for everyone but the owners. In my opinion, the idea has always been outsource work to other countries to bootstrap their economies into the modern era so whatever work we didn't outsource could benefit from additional customers.

I think Globalization went a bit too far and left too many American cities in the dust while catapulting strategic competitors into a powerful position. The idea that millions of workers who lost their jobs could just immediately retool and find work higher up the value chain was a disaster. Many argue that Globalization has been a success for lifting millions out of poverty, but to me that just says we ruined some peoples livelihood for the benefit of other countries who seek to simply replace the need for us instead of trade with us.

Post reply on HN