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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?

#251

Post by pdimitar »

heavenlyblue wrote: post #244
heavenlyblue wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Eastern Europe Eastern Europe is not a great example of productivity either. I can totally understand why employees from poorer countries disappear all the time - why wouldn't they? They know they're getting paid peanuts in your country (so you don't expect much) and you're paying them an incredibly competitive salary in their own country (which means their lifestyle is closer to upper middle class). Which means th…

The basic strategy is this: if I can work lazily at 20% the output and get a middle-class lifestyle at 80% my salary. Why would I bother to be better if the only companies from the west are here to cheap out on talent? I can always go work for a new “revolutionary” company that is trying to outsource their talent and barely do any work all over again.

There definitely do exist such people, can't deny reality here. But again, this happens everywhere and is hardly exclusive to Eastern Europe -- at least I've met slackers and seat-warmers of 7+ different nationalities over the course of my career.

Re: Is a trillion dollars’ worth of programming lying on the ground?

#252

Post by lowdose »

kakwa_ wrote: post #90
silvestrov wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another aspect of culture: how one-sided the communication is. Silicon Valley and Scandinavian cultures are very flat, so it is possible for "the man on the floor" to tell management that it doesn't work to put diesel into a gasoline car. In authoritarian cultures this would be a mistake as it's seen as embarrassing the management by saying they made a mistake. If you want to continue being employed then it is much b…

From an European perspective, this has not exactly been my experience working with an international team. The US collective mentality is sometime overly optimistic specially in public. This is sometimes a positive since it removes almost any inhibition regarding challenges, but it can lead to things blowing-up spectacularly, and then having to put in place hacks and brute force to make it kind of work relatively inef…

In this case positivism is a self fulfilling prophecy. A lot of times we are on local not a global maximum.

Last weekend Elon Musk put a couple of people in space at a fraction of the costs NASA originally spent.

I think and hope many industries can still be disrupted in a similar way.

Re: Is a trillion dollars’ worth of programming lying on the ground?

#253

Post by outworlder »

selectionbias wrote: post #247

I think this misses a possibly very important effect: agglomeration. Programmers in the Bay Area were not all born there, many (most?) chose to move there, some from elsewhere in the US, some from abroad. If those programmers who are more skilled tend to move to this area then the resulting greater productivity could explain higher pay. So why might more skilled programmers move to the Bay Area? Perhaps because other…

The siren song of Silicon Valley reaches far and wide, and is difficult to ignore.

Re: Is a trillion dollars’ worth of programming lying on the ground?

#254

Post by YarickR2 »

ambicapter wrote: post #222
gwern wrote: post #202

To toss in a second-hand anecdote: I once asked someone who worked at/with companies screening Africans for diamonds in the rough, smart guys who could do programming but were being paid peanuts, like $10k/year, and paying them a multiple of that for outsourcing, why it wasn't such a great idea, when Africa seems to have so many under-utilized people. He said that despite expectations, they were not much cheaper to h…

Assuming all of this is true (which I believe), it exasperates me that this is yet another indicator that raising the baseline education for all should be the most important priority for any country that is seeking economic growth.

Education has nothing to do with work ethics and general attitude to your job and it's position in your life. You can be educated all the way, but without sufficient motivation your abilities and skills will be left unused - by you

Re: Is a trillion dollars’ worth of programming lying on the ground?

#255

Post by joelbluminator »

skissane wrote: post #239
joelbluminator wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are good things there of course, first and foremost the salaries and the nice suburban houses. It's a good place to consume things I guess. But there are many illnesses as well, what's happening now could be just a preview if things go sour economically. Also you will work more and probably experience more stress for that money than you would in Europe. On average North Europe is way happier than the U.S but no…

> There are good things there of course, first and foremost the salaries and the nice suburban houses Australia has lots of nice suburban houses too. But they are expensive, and you'll struggle to get paid enough to afford one. One advantage the US has over Australia – while it has really expensive areas like the Bay Area or Manhattan, it also has lots of medium-sized cities with affordable housing and plenty of jobs…

I think Australia offers a better life for the average person than the U.S but that's just my opinion (though I've never been there). At the same time it's so far from anywhere else, if you're Indian or Bulgarian you better stick to Europe if you want to keep in touch with your family and friends.

As for North Europe: I think it's several factors keeping people moving there en masse, the language + familiar culture are very important for immigrants. It's just harder to fit in in a place like Sweden when you don't know the language or the local culture. Even if you never set foot in the U.S you know it. You know Trump, Thanks Giving, 4th of July, New York City etc etc. It may be really superficial knowledge and isn't really gonna help you to make friends there, but it's a big part of why people still want to move there.

Re: Is a trillion dollars’ worth of programming lying on the ground?

#256

Post by opportune »

I partially agree with point 3 despite it also not being blanket true. Yes there are good, great, and amazing programmers everywhere. Yet there also does seem to be a positive correlation between pay and ability (gasp!), even between areas, from my personal experience. Sorry I know a lot of people get offended by that.

There are also different cultural aspects about software that change between countries. Growing up in the US and going to college after big tech was already ascendant, probably the main reason I went into technology is that it seemed the best way for me to make a money (esp. given quality of life, eg not having to do the IB grind). Anecdotally a very large portion of the career/money oriented people I knew growing up and in college also went into the technology industry. I assume the same is true in some countries like China and India and less true in countries like Spain. You can see cultural differences regarding how well-regarded being a software engineer is in Western Europe vs. other countries in titles, how software companies are run (eg by former engineers or “business people”), pay, etc. If I had grown up in Spain and for some reason didn’t want to move to Switzerland/US I would probably not have gone into technology.

This also is evidence of/creates a feedback loop where pay->market rate->interest->talent->pay causes regional software markets to diverge.

By all means though, if you think you can get the same work done in another country for less money, do so. I think you’ll find that the $20 you’re picking up off the ground actually comes with a high interest rate. But you won’t believe me until you try it yourself

Re: Is a trillion dollars’ worth of programming lying on the ground?

#257

Post by p_l »

specialist wrote: post #103
crote wrote: post #13

It 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…

Yup. Worked in healthcare IT in the USA. Beans counters were utterly determined to send our work overseas. Old story of training our replacements. We could teach them programming, testing, our stack. But we couldn't teach them our healthcare system. Stupid small stuff that challenged us were completely opaque to our colleagues. Stuff like definitions of "visit" vs "episodes of care" and how each customer had differen…

I suspect that, fortunately, USA is pretty unique in terms of healthcare billing. Even in places with no singlepayer or the like.

Re: Is a trillion dollars’ worth of programming lying on the ground?

#258

Post by rwallace »

systemBuilder wrote: post #148

This very very poorly written article is the number one reason why universities assign advisors to PhD students! If this guy would just talk to one single person who knew something about silicon valley then they wouldn't throw out all these useless theories into a vacuum. You can just look at America for your answers. If you look at the history of silicon valley in the 1970s it was Chip companies in the 1980s it was…

> my friend who started a 20 million dollar software company in Chicago and then moved to Prague to try to repeat it and he knows exactly why software engineering doesn't scale in Eastern European countries

I'm curious, why doesn't it? What went wrong with your friend's enterprise in Prague?

Re: Is a trillion dollars’ worth of programming lying on the ground?

#259

Post by pythonlion »

gwern wrote: post #202

To toss in a second-hand anecdote: I once asked someone who worked at/with companies screening Africans for diamonds in the rough, smart guys who could do programming but were being paid peanuts, like $10k/year, and paying them a multiple of that for outsourcing, why it wasn't such a great idea, when Africa seems to have so many under-utilized people. He said that despite expectations, they were not much cheaper to h…

I bet this anecdote can describe any 2 countries and price of something

Re: Is a trillion dollars’ worth of programming lying on the ground?

#260

Post by robocat »

selectionbias wrote: post #247

I think this misses a possibly very important effect: agglomeration. Programmers in the Bay Area were not all born there, many (most?) chose to move there, some from elsewhere in the US, some from abroad. If those programmers who are more skilled tend to move to this area then the resulting greater productivity could explain higher pay. So why might more skilled programmers move to the Bay Area? Perhaps because other…

They cover that under heading “ 3. Most "good" programmers move to the high-income countries”
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