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

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#421

Post by josho » Thu, May 28, 2020, 10:52 PM UTC

nsporillo wrote: post #269

josho wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pow…

We were told that globalization made things more efficient. So, if you always saw it as a race to the bottom you are smarter than I and many others because that wasn't what was sold to us.

Maybe the real problem is that in the 60s we were told that our future selves would be filled with leisure time due to automation. That leisure team turned out to be a synonym for unemployment. The problem is that the wealth generated from globalization became centralized instead of benefitting everyone.

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#422

Post by deagle50 » Thu, May 28, 2020, 10:53 PM UTC

justQandA wrote: post #245

deagle50 wrote: post #215

I moved into sales partly as a hedge against this. It doesn't help much now as nobody is taking in-person meetings but I suspect (and hope) that companies will still prefer to hire account teams in close proximity to their customers.

This is an interesting angle. Did you move from software development to sales? Is this technical sales, "Sales engineer", or something different? I'm curious how one transitions without any sales experience.

Yep, sales engineer. I was a infrastructure consultant and SRE before that.

It happened through meeting the sales teams of the vendors I worked with. Eventually one of them asked me if I wanted to apply for a sales engineer role. He then referred me and vouched. Always be nice to your vendors and partners.

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#423

Post by jlokier » Thu, May 28, 2020, 11:14 PM UTC

mnm1 wrote: post #398

eloff wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've only worked remote, initially for the same reason. But I think you're better than you assume, because you got the job out of a very large pool of potential candidates. By definition, you must've beat everyone who applied in that hiring round. Which reminds me of the first rule of finding a job - it's just like dating - is a numbers game. Your chance of success on any attempt might be low, but then you just need…

Even remote companies can only consider so many applicants. In our last three job searches that number started at 100 or so, was whittled down using resumes to 40 or so who were whittled down to a dozen or so by tech screens and finally we interviewed less than ten. One hour interview followed by a take home for the top three. We chose one of the three. No stupid whiteboard. No long ass interviews. The take home was…

> problems with a couple of people's background

What kind of problems with people's backgrounds did you find relevant to doing a developer job?

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#424

Post by mlthoughts2018 » Thu, May 28, 2020, 11:19 PM UTC

colinmhayes wrote: post #157

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #124

Let’s flip this around. If [anyone] can take [your] job, then it stands to reason that remote work means I can take someone else’s job. But what would this mean for me? First off it would mean doing all the same work to prepare myself as a candidate. Take Machine Learning for example, which is my area. I need to prepare my resume based on my current projects. I need to brush up for nauseating leet-code hazing trivia…

Maybe the people in Kansas won't be taking a pay cut, but workers who were previously limited by immigration laws would definitely be happy to. Indians speak english, Mexico and a handful of other central/south american countries are in the same time zone as the us. People in those situations would be incredibly happy to work for half of what you make now. There are definitely problems with hiring those people, but y…

No, you are just wrong. People from around the world are not dumb! If they are worth $X they will demand $X. This mythical idea that they won’t research & understand their worth is so foolish.

If you’re smart enough to write complex software or do complex math, you’re smart enough to ask basic first-order questions about how you will be compensated according to the value you bring to the table.

This dismissive idea that globalizing advanced software jobs leads to vastly cheaper labor is silly. It boils down to literally just assuming foreign people are dumb, don’t value themselves and don’t do basic research.

I don’t know about you, but that sure doesn’t describe the huge cohort of software engineers that I know - from _anywhere_.

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#425

Post by gamblor956 » Thu, May 28, 2020, 11:26 PM UTC

phkahler wrote: post #418

gamblor956 wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fine, as long as the R&D work is done in the US. R&D doesn't require something to be socially innovative; it's evaluated at a per-company level. It's intended to incentivize companies to recreate wheels in-house (if it is otherwise financially reasonable to do so).

Companies should not need a financial incentive to develop new products. They already have an existential incentive to do so. This also creates a barrier to entry for small companies that don't have the resources to ensure compliance and claim the benefit. It also subsidises product development engineers - a profession that is doing well already. I'm an engineer so I appreciate the artificial wage inflation, but if I…

You're missing the context. The point of the R&D credit is for companies to engage in R&D activities in the US as opposed to other countries. Additionally, it was introduced in reaction to other countries introducing R&D credits to steal R&D work from the US.

It does not create a barrier to small companies. If you're not big enough to handle the paperwork for the R&D credit, you're not spending enough to derive meaningful benefit from the credit anyways. And generally, there exist plenty of accounting firms that will prepare the R&D documentation on a % basis (of the allowable R&D credit identified).

It also subsidises product development engineers - a profession that is doing well already

In the software world, sure. There are plenty of industries where product development staff (many of whom aren't engineers) don't make anywhere close to 6 figures.

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#426

Post by Barrin92 » Thu, May 28, 2020, 11:35 PM UTC

People are arguing a lot about if the claims in the post are true or not but I feel like this misses the point. Assuming they're all true that's still a good thing.

I expect competitiveness in every sector of the economy I don't work in, so I have to measure myself by the same standards. If someone can do my work for less money, hire them. We can talk about welfare for displaced workers but employment isn't charity, the best worker who can do the work for the least amount of money should do it, and we're all better off.

Removing geography and mobility as a limiting factor is a boon for innovation. It will give an unprecedented amount of people a shot at a great job. Not to mention that increased competiton for existing jobs will create a huge incentive for entrepreneurship. Without all those cozy well paying tech jobs lined up, there's a real incentive to starting your own company.

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#427

Post by exclusiv » Fri, May 29, 2020, 12:10 AM UTC

gamblor956 wrote: post #415

exclusiv wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did the R&D tax credit this last year and it seems to me the savings for offshoring would drastically make up for the loss in R&D tax credits in most cases. Also, some states, like CA, are very unfriendly which regard to the extra costs required for employees in terms of benefits, wages (salary exempt) and classification of employees with the ABC test [1], so the wins that states make for employees incentivizes man…

Also, some states, like CA, are very unfriendly which regard to the extra costs required for employees in terms of benefits, wages (salary exempt) and classification of employees with the ABC test [1], so the wins that states make for employees incentivizes many employers to look elsewhere instead. This explains why so much R&D happens in CA. Because it's too expensive to do it in this state... The reason R&D happens…

Do you need an entity to contract offshore? If you are merely contracting the resources without a foreign entity it's just an expense no?

I do know that certain countries limit what you can send them as far as $ each month as part of anti-money laundering regulations. And it's a pain.

What other implications are there? Is it because some of the offshoring countries force you to register there to conduct business?

Or is it because they want to create a separate P&L for tax and/or liability purposes? Or to park IP?

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#428

Post by fludlight » Fri, May 29, 2020, 12:17 AM UTC

gizmo686 wrote: post #229

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…

The "moving target" problem is significant for countries (or geographic regions in the case of large countries or open borders). However, for an individual company, it is a tragedy of the commons situation. Why should a company A pay more to train a bottom tier worker into a high tier worker, when said worker will then be able to move to company B who offshore's its low tier workers. In effect, company A is subsidizi…

Attrition significantly drops if you treat people right. Many of the ones that leave run right back.

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#429

Post by fludlight » Fri, May 29, 2020, 12:20 AM UTC

esoterica wrote: post #346

an_opabinia wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The rabbit hole goes deeper: some early stage VCs and angels only invest in Harvard or Stanford dropouts.

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#430

Post by danans » Fri, May 29, 2020, 12:29 AM UTC

luckylion wrote: post #388

danans wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "The room" has lost most of its meaning, hasn't it? I don't think so. Trust and sense of shared purpose and ability are still largely built in person. The continued productivity people claim during the pandemic lockdown is mostly coasting off what was largely established in person before. Websites, chat-rooms, and video calls are no substitute for the environment created by the physical agglomerations of people fou…

Oh sure, for networking and contacts etc, in person is still the thing. I meant for the "being the smartest person in the room" thing. Before the internet, you had to go live in a metropolis to even know of these other people that were also interested in what you like, much less talk to or work with them. That has changed dramatically, and you absolutely can work with very bright people on very advanced things while…

> I meant for the "being the smartest person in the room" thing.

I find the preoccupation over chasing the vaguely defined, but often bandied definition of "smart" a bit dull.

What matters more in my opinion is being in an intellectually stimulating and also psychologically safe environment. Other "smarter" people than me have made this observation too.

I'm not saying it has to be SF, NYC, or London, but the environment matters immensely, and it can turn a motivated person who might not appear "smart" in another context into a much more creative person.

> Oh sure, for networking and contacts etc, in person is still the thing.

It's for far more important things than just yukking it up with people and trading business cards.

> if you can't find a community online where people are smarter than you and/or better than you in whatever you do, you're either a super genius or you're not looking.

I personally have yet to see an purely online community that fosters creativity without some fundamental anchoring in creative communities in the real world. The only exception I can think of are online game-building communities and competitions (i.e. Ludum Dare), but that's an unusual case. Is it impossible to find more example that? No. But I'd argue that strictly or even primarily online creative communities are unusual, and the online part is more about networking and cross-pollinating between in-person creative communities.