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Remote work means anyone can take your job

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Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#321

Post by tharne »

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”.

This is 100% spot on. Organizations build up value over the long-haul by learning things and then building on top of those things, learning some more, building on that, and so on.

Look what happened to G.E. They outsourced everything they possibly could and had a decade or two of unparalleled profitability. But, over time the well of ideas and competencies for products and services dried up and they went from being a powerhouse to a cautionary tale.

Don't export knowledge or know-how to save a few bucks. It always comes back to bite you.

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#322

Post by koheripbal »

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…

It is inviting to believe this. It helps me feel as though I'm too good to be outsourced.

...but it's really just a comfortable lie we tell ourselves.

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#323

Post by dbuder »

narrator wrote: post #301
Avicebron wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Bad example, cutting edge semiconductors are not like anything else. Even drug research.

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#324

Post by HarryHirsch »

narrator wrote: post #301
Avicebron wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Back then, Commodore had an advantage over the competition because they had MOS Technologies as a subsidiary and could rapidly iterate on hardware design. Same in the life sciences business. Nothing is easier than dreaming up a compound, but then you encounter reality, some compounds may be difficult to access synthetically, there are unexpected interactions, and these issues are best sorted out when synthetic chemistry, crystallographic support and the life sciences people are all in the same building. Fabless just doesn't work well outside semiconductors.

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#325

Post by sjg007 »

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…

Biotech startups are usually formed around a drug or biological to hedge the risk of preclinical and early trial work. These are usually developed with some kind of novel process. Usually you get a small early IPO if things work out at that stage to raise working capital. This happens because most traditional VCs won’t fund this type of biotech. That’s changing somewhat. Then the company sells to a major pharma or biotech if the product works out.

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#326

Post by Avicebron »

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…

So in short what you're saying is yay globalism? Bring everyone down to a lowest mean existance possible, we shouldn't protect our interests?

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#327

Post by sgt101 »

Avicebron wrote: post #295
pnutjam wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who suck at their job can learn, and become better. Not all, but everyone was bad at something before they leveled up. Highly commoditized positions are also a great way to learn about less commoditized work. How many old rich people used to say they started in the mailroom.

How does one deal with a culture of decreasing vertical mobility within a particular organization. They may suck at their job and be shuffled between the bottom tiers of increasingly flat management structures. If there is no room for growth this model fails, many older people did move vertically but this practice has been almost deliberately been removed from corporate life.

Junior employees must have deliberate exposure to responsibility and challenge in a structured environment that supports them if the are to grow. This is the job of middle management, who are the first target of every MBA driven reorg. Hence the end of development.

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#328

Post by tharne »

danielfoster wrote: post #130
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…

This. Not to mention it has become much easier for anyone motivated to learn valuable skills online-- now there will be more opportunities to apply them. Someone in the Philippines learning Python on Khan Academy today could very well be competitive for a senior engineering job in 10 years if the career path were possible. I've met countless skilled technical people who could not a get job at XYZ company simply due t…

You're probably right about this, but I'm betting we'll see political parties in countries all over the world start putting up roadblocks to this sort of thing.

It's already happening to a degree. There a number of what you might call "reluctant Trump voters" where I work. The most frequent (and often only) argument you'll hear from them in favor Trump is around immigration and H1-B visas. You'll also notice that the Democrats in the U.S. who are surprisingly quit around Trumps efforts to reduce H1-B issuance.

I'd be willing to bet that unrestricted competition for a limited number of high-paying jobs in the developed world would fuel the Nationalist parties and movements that we've been seeing more of in the U.S. and Europe.

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#329

Post by thewarrior »

tluyben2 wrote: post #112
joelbluminator wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

try to find cheap react/node devs in the U.S, good luck with that. The cost of skills doesn't always translate to how hard it is to acquire it. I mean, some medical nurses study for 5-10 years and specialise and specialise only to earn 1/2 what a react dev earns in the U.S

I think we were talking about work-from-home/remote people and for me that is ‘earth’; I can find really good people for next to nothing because everyone jumped on the bandwagon. And this is not a stab at the technology; it is saying that it is a not a niche; I have maintained an yoy upward income for over 25 years by picking things that are valuable always. And, in line with this article, if I can have excellent rea…

So what kind of skills would you recommend ? What have you picked up over the years ?

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#330

Post by vangelis »

gregkerzhner wrote: post #180
blululu wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

I wouldn't higher a developer due to their poor English speaking quality either.
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