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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

#341

Post by cosmie »

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.

To add to this, in over 17 states there are also city or county level income taxes[1] that you have to be set up to handle.

Then there's the potential for each employee's address to be considered a nexus, since each of their homes becomes a de-facto company presence. Potentially subject to local registration, licensing and taxation by local municipal authorities, in addition to just the state level requirements. If you have a presence in the state, and your employee's official work location is that location, then you only have to deal with that local registration once wherever the presence is located. But if you don't have a location the state, or you have employees who are officially designated as work from home (rather than unofficially working from home while being designated as assigned to an office), then this quickly scale into a giant mess of regulation to navigate[2].

[1] https://taxfoundation.org/local-income-taxes-city-and-county...

[2] https://smallbiztrends.com/2018/04/remote-employee-complianc...

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#342

Post by wildmanx »

josho wrote: post #173
ReticentVole wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You drive a car, I use a bus. You eat meat, I eat potatoes. You fly to Disneyworld, I take the train to the seaside. You live in a big house, I live in a small apartment. You pay American income taxes, I don't. You demand clean air and water, I tolerate pollution. There are some fundamental factors which make labour in other parts of the world much cheaper, and people willing to accept a much lower quality of life an…

In addition, there are a couple concerns when branching out to other countries: Currency exchange means some can work at a discount compared to USD Government subsidies hoping to diversify their economy may even pay partial salaries Strong social safety net in other countries means companies may not need to pay for health benefits for remote workers

That strong social safety net does not fall from the sky. People in those countries just pay higher taxes instead, so if you want your employee to have the same net income, you need to increase the salary.

My American friends always rant about the high income taxes in Sweden. But my taxes include health insurance and I pay essentially nothing for kids' daycare, school and university. For people without perfect health and with kids, the total pay is worse in the U.S.

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#343

Post by gregkerzhner »

crazygringo wrote: post #237
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…

> Real time, remote communication through tools like zoom, slack, and lucidchart (in my humble opinion) has been solved. Unfortunately, that's not the case. Remote meetings can be far more frustrating and inefficient because of latency, total lack of turn-taking cues, inability to read emotional expressions of concern or worry on one person or to "read the room", emotional fatigue from lack of cues, and so on. And th…

My hunch though is that virtual meetings don't necessarily add new types of problems to real meetings, they just highlight the problems which already exist.

If you have a meeting with 12 people, and most of them are not engaged, the problem isn't necessarily the video call, its more like the majority of those people shouldn't be in the meeting at all, and would just benefit from a written summary.

If you have a meeting where 4 people are jumping in to share an opinion on one topic, that sounds like too many cooks in the kitchen, not a video call problem.

From my experience with remote meetings, the ones that work the best are those between two or three people where everyone is informed and the subject of discussion is concrete. These kinds of meetings are just as productive as the real thing. The kinds of meetings that tend to not be productive are the ones that have a dozen people in the call, with a few people talking and the rest watching the clock until the hour is over. These kinds of meetings are a drag in the real world as well.

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#344

Post by cosmie »

betaby wrote: post #302
jedberg wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The payroll taxes can likely be taken care of easily by your payroll provider/accountancy firm, but there's potentially local business licensing requirements[1] you become subject to as well. If you have an office, you generally do all of that based on the location of the office, and the employee's home address doesn't come into play. But if the employee is officially a work from home employee, some states/municipalities treat that as a presence subject to business licensing or permitting requirements with the local authorities, as well as potentially triggering sales tax collection requirements that have to be accounted for within your sales/invoicing processes.

[1] https://smallbiztrends.com/2018/04/remote-employee-complianc...

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#345

Post by dragandj »

takizawa11 wrote: post #181

The article also ignores the legal and tax implications of outsourcing work. At least currently, you can't just hire individuals from other countries indiscriminately.

You can’t hire them as employees, but you can absolutely hire them to perform tasks that you pay them for. For some types of tasks it’s even better for both sides becausethere’s less obligations and overhead expenses.

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#346

Post by esoterica »

an_opabinia wrote: post #149
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…

The day before they graduate, a Harvard college student will work on your research project or startup for $0/mo, if it’s interesting enough. The day after, Facebook is ready to pay them $10,000/mo+. They’re the same human being before and after graduation day. Just as talented the day before as the day after. It’s the pedigree variable that explains the vast majority of the salary. You’re saying something similar, it…

Some companies pay their Harvard interns >$10k/month, so this is not really true.

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#347

Post by tharne »

pacala wrote: post #335
tharne wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This may well apply to countries as well. Due to the scales involved, it takes longer to notice the deleterious effects, and is much harder to reverse course.

I'd say it's already happened in the U.S. We're just starting to realize that you can't fully divorce the development and design process from the actual manufacturing process and expect to stay competitive for that long.

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#348

Post by dragandj »

jedberg wrote: post #107
rb808 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anyone can already take your job, as long as they are willing to relocate, This where immigration restrictions make a difference. A Brazilian developer has trouble working in SV, but no trouble working remote.

You vastly underestimate the tax and legal implications of an American company hiring and paying a Brazilian in Brazil.

They don’t hire that Brasilian to be their employee. The Brasilian is a one-man company. They contract the company to render whatever service. The Brasilian company does whatever Brasiliantaxes and procedures are necessary.

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#349

Post by luckylion »

Justsignedup wrote: post #262

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 thi…

I agree, but in my opinion, that's not about greatness, but about mindset and your understanding of your role. You don't need to be great or write very smart code to get there, you just need to have "somebody must be able to take this over if a bus runs me over tomorrow" and "I want to solve this and move on, not managing it to become my permanent job" as guiding principles when you approach problems.

I've seen a very smart developers get fired recently, because he was hogging responsibility and became a bottleneck precisely because he figured that would strengthen his position in the company. "If they need me, they can't fire me". Once "they" figure that out, they will really want to fire you, and if the pain you cause is greater than your value, they will. And it usually always is greater if you're a bottleneck.

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#350

Post by ishjoh »

koheripbal wrote: post #234
bachmeier wrote: post #168

> 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…

Coincidentally, I am from Omaha, and moved to San Francisco for IT work. If I could move back, even for lower pay, I would - to be closer to family. Granted, I am just one data point, but it's hard to imagine I am alone...

I left New York to move and be closer to family about 4 years ago. The local market does not pay well for software developers, but I've managed to find steady contracting work and with the lower cost of living have been saving more money.

If you can find decision-makers and demonstrate quality work to them, and start planting the seeds that you would be available for contracting, there is a good chance you can make your move back to Omaha within a year.

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