Remote work means anyone can take your job • Hacker News Board

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#301

Post by narrator » Thu, May 28, 2020, 5:49 PM UTC

Avicebron wrote: post #266

crispyambulance wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [...] 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 h…

I don't think outsourcing manufacturing is destructive of human progress. You got huge companies like AMD and NVIDIA , who certainly contribute to human progress, who outsource all their manufacturing to TSMC because only a few companies worldwide can make those kinds of semiconductors.

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#302

Post by betaby » Thu, May 28, 2020, 5:50 PM UTC

jedberg wrote: post #95

hocuspocus wrote: post #78

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. 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.

Why so? I though all payroll/tax details are outsourced to the accounting firms and very straightforward in fact.

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#303

Post by subhobroto » Thu, May 28, 2020, 5:51 PM UTC

Avicebron wrote: post #297

renewiltord wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happened is that it turned out that there are two billion people who can put in an honest day's labour and it no longer matters where they live.

But shouldn't we account for that and adjust accordingly so we aren't ruining society in a race to the bottom? It's all choices, we don't HAVE to allow it to happen.

> so we aren't ruining society in a race to the bottom

Nope.

What is going on here is the person from India gets to now enjoy a much higher quality of life (because 50% of a U.S. salary gets you a lot in India) while the person from California sees their effective take home pay decrease (because their costs continue to grow but not their salary)

Definitely not a race to the bottom but it sucks to be the person from California.

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#304

Post by HarryHirsch » Thu, May 28, 2020, 5:51 PM UTC

nsporillo wrote: post #244

52-6F-62 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally tangential: What makes Albany a shithole? It looks like an attractive town to me...

I am from Syracuse, NY and currently live and work in Rochester, NY - Albany is a straight shot drive along I-90 and has similar socioeconomic conditions. Upstate suffers from high taxes and regulations introduced by the Governor with NYC in mind. Combine that with long winters and urban decay and we see that many bright young professionals born here end up fleeing once their parents retire. I personally am planning…

astronomical property and school taxes

You should try no education and public services at all. Here in the rural South, 70 % of my students are incapable of doing 8th-grade math. These are the nursing school aspirants, and you genuinely fear for your life when you must go to hospital. Same with property taxes. You need functioning city services. Our county roads here are on a 70-year repaving schedule, and it shows. There was a storm a couple of weeks ago, and the town can't afford to haul away the debris. Inequality has a way of affecting even the wealthy. Hope you enjoy the Southernness of Raleigh.

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#305

Post by peterkelly » Thu, May 28, 2020, 5:52 PM UTC

booleandilemma wrote: post #228

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…

...and then find (or more often make) a niche in that that that (sic) you become one of the top ten people in within your context Whatever happened to just getting a normal job and putting in an honest day’s labor? Now we’re expected to become “one of the top ten”... what exactly? How is that supposed to work? What about those of us with families for goodness sake. We can’t all be super Linus Torvalds ninja hackers p…

> > ...and then find (or more often make) a niche in that that that (sic) you become one of the top ten people in within your context

> Whatever happened to just getting a normal job and putting in an honest day’s labor?

That doesn't sound very interesting.

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#306

Post by SomeoneFromCA » Thu, May 28, 2020, 5:55 PM UTC

selimthegrim wrote: post #117

HarryHirsch wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The more highly qualified you are the more at risk to offshoring your job is. A long time ago, Albany Molecular, a contract research organization, highlighted they were based in Albany, NY. A shithole, yes, but a shithole with cheap cost of living. Nowadays, the PhD jobs are based in Shanghai, Szeged and Hyderabad. The only thing that's left stateside is regulatory functions and support. You don't need a PhD for that…

I guess the sweatshop jobs these days are mechanical Turk things in Calcutta, Bhubaneswar, and... New Orleans? https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/16/technology/ai-humans.html

New Orleans has long been third world, should not be news to anyone.

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#307

Post by novok » Thu, May 28, 2020, 5:55 PM UTC

frockington1 wrote: post #267

wayoutthere wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Fortunately, the vast majority of clients are not in those industries!

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#308

Post by znpy » Thu, May 28, 2020, 5:57 PM UTC

this article is paywalled.

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#309

Post by oneplane » Thu, May 28, 2020, 5:58 PM UTC

subhobroto wrote: post #303

Avicebron wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But shouldn't we account for that and adjust accordingly so we aren't ruining society in a race to the bottom? It's all choices, we don't HAVE to allow it to happen.

> so we aren't ruining society in a race to the bottom Nope. What is going on here is the person from India gets to now enjoy a much higher quality of life (because 50% of a U.S. salary gets you a lot in India) while the person from California sees their effective take home pay decrease (because their costs continue to grow but not their salary) Definitely not a race to the bottom but it sucks to be the person from C…

On the other hand, the person in India will relocate thousands of miles for practically any job, while the person in California will pretend that life is hard because of someone else's doing instead of moving to a place they can afford better.

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#310

Post by znpy » Thu, May 28, 2020, 6:00 PM UTC

mc32 wrote: post #185

crispyambulance wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [...] 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…

An additional problem MBAs sometimes miss is that when you export jobs to contract orgs is that this accumulated institutional knowledge is lost—it’s no longer held in-house. Conversely it contributes to the expertise of the contract org. But not all orgs think long term. Or they get enthralled by “core competency”.

> An additional problem MBAs sometimes miss is that when you export jobs to contract orgs is that this accumulated institutional knowledge is lost—it’s no longer held in-house.

This. I have seen consulting companies keeping consulting contract only because the only guy that knew their system inside out was this single consultan that had been there so long that he became the effective sysadmin with the last word on everything related on the subsystem that he had been managing for years.