201–210 of 225 posts
I'm earning roughly 4k USD per month and our developers in India earn 1k USD per month.
The output of the entire 12-people team there including managers etc is the same as output of 1-2 people with a 4k USD salary here, but with a much lower quality and maintainability.
And that's not counting the hours spent negotiating fixes or giving detailed instructions.
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Why should an engineer be paid that value they produce when they assume none of the risk? If the company goes bankrupt, will the engineer be willing to bail the company out? The engineer is paid less than the value they produce because they don't assume any of the risk. If the product they produce turns out to be worthless or break, they don't have to pay their salary back.
> Why should an engineer be paid that value they produce when they assume none of the risk? Engineers are never fired? Not even when the company shuts down? > If the company goes bankrupt, will the engineer be willing to bail the company out? Sometimes yes, with their (and mine) taxes.
Engineers never lose assets because their work doesn't produce value, or destroys value. Engineers aren't liable for the success of their work. Engineers don't have to return their salary if they don't produce value.
> Sometimes yes, with their (and mine) taxes.
This is an argument for everyone capturing the value produced by companies, not the employee. If you want to argue for harder taxation of corporations, or fewer business incentives, then sure. But this is unrelated to the relationship between the engineer and the company.
Uber is done. The only way they survive is if they come up with autonomous driving and the only way to do that is dumping money into hiring the best engineers. Waymo will have taxi service in a couple years and that will be the nail in the coffin for Uber.
Nobody will have self-driving taxi service in a couple of years, maybe not even in 20.
https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/27/17165992/waymo-jaguar-i-p...
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In my experience working with outsourcing agencies - "talent available" in India is filling headcount numbers. Good developers ask for similar wages as EU based ones and are equally hard to find, probably even harder because the market is filled with scammers (eg. on several occasions I would interview a competent guy and then the work would clearly get delegated to someone inexperienced)
Sure, scammers are abound and the bad to good ratio is pretty high but due to the population size, the number of good developers is high as well.
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It is not that hard, however. Every copycat mentioned above replicated it using a few dozen programmers, as did Yandex and Didi and Bolt. The competitive advantage does not lie in the software quality for Uber, but in other things (customer install base, driver base, brand awareness).
That's true for all the FAANGs except Apple and parts of Google. For example, a few dozen programmers can easily whip up a credible competitor to Facebook. The problem is getting enough users to compete.
This is kind of about whether Uber views itself as a FAANG type software company (software as core competency, strong recruiting brand for tech-hub engineers) or a more operational business (software as a cost center). Most companies end up having to choose one. If you're the latter, you absolutely don't try competing with FAANG for the same talent. (I do think Amazon is a rare example of a company that both develope…
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>There is definitely a shortage of good quality Engineers in SF. That's the key reason why the engineering salary is so high. Do we say there's a caviar shortage because it's expensive? Or say there's a CEO shortage because CEO compensation is high?
Good CEOs in good companies makes much more than the average CEOs in average companies. Every company in the USA wants a good CEO. But there are only very limited number of CEOs in the USA that has a good track record of running a successful company. So companies are willing to pay more and more for the top CEOs. It's the same reason why drivers are paid very low. If there were only 100 drivers in SF who were capable…
If this were the case, salaries would rise until the supply equaled demand.
People have been calling this "shortage of engineers" for decades. A shortage means that demand exceeds supply at a given price (salary). If the market were free to adjust there can't be a long-term shortage. Salaries would quickly rise to the point where supply and demand were equal. If there is really a persistent shortage, why hasn't this happened?
When you talk about goods, long-term shortages can happen when either the supply is artificially constrained or there are some kind of price controls in effect. Which one is causing this shortage? There is no labor cartel in software. Nothing like the AMA keeping the supply of doctors limited. Anyone can learn from online sources and become proficient, and universities graduate truckloads of developers. So there's no artificial labor constraint. There is also no externally-mandated maximum salary for developers. So how can there be a long-term shortage?
This is kind of about whether Uber views itself as a FAANG type software company (software as core competency, strong recruiting brand for tech-hub engineers) or a more operational business (software as a cost center). Most companies end up having to choose one. If you're the latter, you absolutely don't try competing with FAANG for the same talent. (I do think Amazon is a rare example of a company that both develope…
I'm surprised Uber considered itself a software company at all. They are a contractor management company.
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I would argue there is no such thing as overpriced labor when its the market that sets the price. You will never get a Mercedes for the price of a Honda. So be skeptical when a politician or mega corp manager utters the words "labor shortage" - there is no such thing.
So what concept is the word "shortage" supposed to communicate?