For some, "US only" means they are working on government contracts, especially defense. Nothing's going to overcome that one. Others may be because, even if the flight time is shorter, international travel is still messier than domestic travel.
Ask HN: What Stops You from Switching Remote US Only to Remote Same Time Zone?
21–30 of 39 posts
Re: Ask HN: What Stops You from Switching Remote US Only to Remote Same Time Zone?
#22Why is it so bad for American companies to hire American workers?
Skills
Re: Ask HN: What Stops You from Switching Remote US Only to Remote Same Time Zone?
#23Why is it so bad for American companies to hire American workers?
Re: Ask HN: What Stops You from Switching Remote US Only to Remote Same Time Zone?
#24I've hired and worked with many dozens of devs around the world. Some I worked with for 10 days, others for years. The only downside that I haven't found a solution for is communication. Even with brilliant people who had been speaking English for decades, a lot gets lost because of language. It's hard enough to talk to other Americans about technical issues. It's harder when the other person is losing small, importa…
Weird. Half Europe (IT industry) speaks broken English and everyone understands each other just fine mainly because the English used is simple, without fancy words and direct to the point.
Re: Ask HN: What Stops You from Switching Remote US Only to Remote Same Time Zone?
#25For some, "US only" means they are working on government contracts, especially defense. Nothing's going to overcome that one. Others may be because, even if the flight time is shorter, international travel is still messier than domestic travel.
Re: Ask HN: What Stops You from Switching Remote US Only to Remote Same Time Zone?
#26The big changes were
- timezone overlap; they were Central Time and working for East and West costs weren't a struggle
- vaguely similar holidays / no surprises because no one in the US knows when Holy is
- level of English was usually better with the Mexicans, though they often had thicker accents; we could always find a Spanish speaker in the office if there were any communication struggles
- level of technical qualifications was usually better, in that Tata would be obligated to find someone who can do [X], and experience has shown that they'll find anyone, while the Mexican support teams usually had solid technical chops.
We had some limited success with a team in Argentina too, but there were a lot of tax and other logistical hoops. We had high hopes for the folks we reached out to in Brazil but they were never really organized, and I gather getting any sort of hardware into the BZ is expensive and complicated, plus they only have like 2 real Telcos and connectivity was problematic (this was like ~8 years ago, so things my have changed).
Re: Ask HN: What Stops You from Switching Remote US Only to Remote Same Time Zone?
#27This is coming from a Canadian that dislikes the "Remote US Only" clauses when I see an awesome company hiring.
Re: Ask HN: What Stops You from Switching Remote US Only to Remote Same Time Zone?
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
Weird. Half Europe (IT industry) speaks broken English and everyone understands each other just fine mainly because the English used is simple, without fancy words and direct to the point.
> everyone understands each other just fine mainly because the English used is simple, without fancy words and direct to the point Fine. So what? Just because it works doesn't mean it's perfect or frictionless. Lots of software and business concepts are not simple. They take a long time to explain, and they're hard to express with a language (English) that was not designed to express them. Like I said, it's a problem…
Damn near caused an outage because the offshore team didn't know that idiom, and I didn't think about how they might not understand that. Told the not to get into the nitty-gritty of the upgrade until we knew more about how the customer was going to build -- but they didn't know what that meant and kept trying to finalize router configs.
Even with fluency little stuff like this can kill. There is a reason NATO makes everyone learn the same phonetic alphabet and radio transmission patters.
Re: Ask HN: What Stops You from Switching Remote US Only to Remote Same Time Zone?
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it's just more cost effective to hire anyone in any other country, thanks to living costs and lack of opportunity in some countries.
But why should I have to compete with developers of the same skill level who can afford to take a much, much lower salary than I can? Especially when I took out American debt to attend an American university so I can live in America and work an American software job.
Re: Ask HN: What Stops You from Switching Remote US Only to Remote Same Time Zone?
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
But why should I have to compete with developers of the same skill level who can afford to take a much, much lower salary than I can? Especially when I took out American debt to attend an American university so I can live in America and work an American software job.
Why should daily wage workers make Nike shoes in Bangladesh for peanuts when they can be manufactured in America for 10x more?