Really interesting article! I agree with the thesis 'wage gap with skill + tax irregularities + immigration = gap' but wonder if more remote working will impact this.
Is a trillion dollars’ worth of programming lying on the ground?
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Re: Is a trillion dollars’ worth of programming lying on the ground?
#12I think a large driver is hyothesis 3: in low income countries lots of people become programmers not because they like programming but to get away and/or earn lots of money.
The reason this doesn't show up in the data is that hypothesis 3 assumes that people want to do remote work from their country. What I actually observe is lots of programmers from the Middle East and Asia coming to Germany, the US and probably other high income countries. Obviously emigration is easier for more capable programmers, lowering the average skill of those left behind.
Re: Is a trillion dollars’ worth of programming lying on the ground?
#13It seems to be missing a very big factor: culture.
If your goal is to implement some code for, say, healthcare, it is a lot easier to explain the business process to someone who is already familiar with how stuff is done on a higher level. Whenever you hire someone from a different culture / country, you need to start from the basics by explaining the very core of your society.
An American programmer might not be too concerned if a body temperature measurement returns 45 degrees Celcius. Similarly, a patient height of 95in probably wouldn't immediately raise alarm bells for a European developer.
Your offshore developer team might be perfectly capable of writing the code once they understand what to write, but getting them to understand it is a hell of a lot more difficult.
Add to that the possibility that English is the second language for both sides, and things get messy pretty quickly. Not to mention a time zone difference making communication even harder.
Re: Is a trillion dollars’ worth of programming lying on the ground?
#14I’ll add one to the list: cultural understanding. There are products that are either not common in a specific culture or unavailable due to socioeconomic factors. It can be difficult to meaningful contribute to a product someone may not understand or have access to.
Re: Is a trillion dollars’ worth of programming lying on the ground?
#15This is an odd analysis, because as it highlights, salaries are strongly correlated with wealth of the country. So the question really becomes, not why are salaries different, but "why is programming difficult to offshore". If programming was easy to import and export then either salaries would even out or, more likely, would be relocated to cheaper countries like many kinds of manufacturing. But software is difficul…
If you can buy a finished product that is reliable, it doesn’t matter where it was made. But if you are trying to build the reliable product, it’s like telling a custom house builder how to precisely build your house, but you are never able to physically go to the job site. And that job site is in a foreign country, but you want it built in your local style that is unfamiliar to the builders. It can be done - and effectively - it’s just a lot more difficult.
Re: Is a trillion dollars’ worth of programming lying on the ground?
#16Proposal for a better title: Non scientific article that doesn't find any evidence why salaries of programmers vary based on country.
Re: Is a trillion dollars’ worth of programming lying on the ground?
#17> Programming jobs are silly easy to move around and most of them can be done remotely.
As long as you start with this hypothesis whatever analysis you do will be wrong.
We do have problem coordinate between teams that share the same hall and the same boss, I cannot even imagine what would happen with complete remote team in Vietnam to save money. It would be just better to stop develop software ourselves.
Now with COVID-19 things are changing, but we must wait a full cycles of hires (read 10 years) before we can really tell. At the moment we are all remote, but the conditions are the same of when we left the office. And on-boarding people seems though now...
Re: Is a trillion dollars’ worth of programming lying on the ground?
#18This is an odd analysis, because as it highlights, salaries are strongly correlated with wealth of the country. So the question really becomes, not why are salaries different, but "why is programming difficult to offshore". If programming was easy to import and export then either salaries would even out or, more likely, would be relocated to cheaper countries like many kinds of manufacturing. But software is difficul…
I found it quite difficult to outsource Engineering work to Engineers in another country. It might be a cultural thing, but issues I've ran into- Slow/low prioritization, no movement unless you follow up often, lack of experience. Don't get me wrong, I can be lazy too. But when things are outsourced it's really hard to keep positive relations and get stuff done on time with high quality.
I've experienced those exact problems with a project that was outsourced to a company 20km away. I'm sure there's lots of success stories, but outsourcing isn't easy even when culture and face-to-face meetings aren't an issue. It's very easy to slip into apathy or an us-vs-them mentality.
Re: Is a trillion dollars’ worth of programming lying on the ground?
#19> Programming jobs are silly easy to move around and most of them can be done remotely. As long as you start with this hypothesis whatever analysis you do will be wrong. We do have problem coordinate between teams that share the same hall and the same boss, I cannot even imagine what would happen with complete remote team in Vietnam to save money. It would be just better to stop develop software ourselves. Now with C…
> We do have problem coordinate between teams that share the same hall and the same boss
So perhaps proximity is not the issue?
Re: Is a trillion dollars’ worth of programming lying on the ground?
#20Labor costs, labor costs, labor costs. They dictate everything. Companies will find ways to drive them down. All this remote stuff, the first thought you have should be “labor costs”. Same with “learn to code”