Live data from Hacker News

3 years ago, remote top paying gigs were hard to find. Today they are the norm

twitter.com

41–50 of 147 posts

Re: 3 years ago, remote top paying gigs were hard to find. Today they are the norm

#41
post #20
post #4

Does anybody think this might be a permanent shift? I would love it if I could have the convenience of a top-paying remote job in software development. The twitter thread voiced concerns about this trend being like a pendulum that could swing back to the dominance of in-person work, even within a year. Covid has proved that remote employment is possible, but the question remains: will companies rescind their current…

Yes, but not the utopia devs in big cities want. They're in for a rude awakening when they realize people with way more talent will do the job for less, not only in the US but worldwide. And I don't mean typical outsourcing bodyshops, but truly talented people in say, the midwest US or eastern Europe.

or even western Europe. There are some world class developers in Spain, Italy or France that are paid ~30K€ to 50K€ per year.

Even when factoring in the tax levels and COL, there is still a huge potential for social dumping from the EU

Re: 3 years ago, remote top paying gigs were hard to find. Today they are the norm

#42
post #21

I don't think we'll really know what the future holds until people start coming back to work. When everyone is on zoom, its easy to keep zoom etiquette. Its a lot harder if we revert back to in office meetings and a dial in number if someone happens to be WFH that day.

> start coming back to work.

Hint: they won't. When the office is half-empty, it's useless, people might as well go back home. Remote is a self-reinforcing loop, office isn't

Re: 3 years ago, remote top paying gigs were hard to find. Today they are the norm

#43
post #41
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but not the utopia devs in big cities want. They're in for a rude awakening when they realize people with way more talent will do the job for less, not only in the US but worldwide. And I don't mean typical outsourcing bodyshops, but truly talented people in say, the midwest US or eastern Europe.

or even western Europe. There are some world class developers in Spain, Italy or France that are paid ~30K€ to 50K€ per year. Even when factoring in the tax levels and COL, there is still a huge potential for social dumping from the EU

Spain and Italy are Western Europe by post-WW2 geo-politics, but a better definition would be to say they are Southern Europe which, by developer pay, is even worse than Eastern Europe that most devs there have long moved north to the point where I doubt they're many left there.

Re: 3 years ago, remote top paying gigs were hard to find. Today they are the norm

#44
post #21

I don't think we'll really know what the future holds until people start coming back to work. When everyone is on zoom, its easy to keep zoom etiquette. Its a lot harder if we revert back to in office meetings and a dial in number if someone happens to be WFH that day.

Yes, everyone on Zoom is fine. Half in the room and half on Zoom has never been easy and I am not sure how that will be solved going forward.

The solution that everyone goes on Zoom, regardless of whether or not they are sitting next to each other. Pretend the team is fully remote, but still take advantage of organic, local interaction to skill up new developers. We were coincidentally doing this in my workplace 6 months before COVID took off.

Re: 3 years ago, remote top paying gigs were hard to find. Today they are the norm

#45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. I know companies where management have refused work-from-home PRE-COVID have struggled to deal with their whole company forced to work from home because of lockdowns as they were unprepared. As soon as restrictions were lifted here, these same companies forced workers to come back into the office... and now only a few weeks later, we’re in a lockdown again. In a digital world, and being the primary workers in t…

I agree. But what about the business that aren’t 100% digital? Is it okay to have half your workforce at home? Is it fair? What about roles that thrive off human interaction, do they get written off?

In general, less people using the infrastructure around cities means that traveling is more safer, is generally better for the environment, and also supports small business growth in local communities instead of in a few blocks in the big city.

Even people that don't get to work from home still benefit from work from home. At the very least there's one less person to get annoyed with on the commute.

Re: 3 years ago, remote top paying gigs were hard to find. Today they are the norm

#46

I work at Microsoft and in Azure Cosmos DB, the same org as Steve. Leadership believing in remote makes all the difference. We'd been doing more and more remote hiring in the years before COVID, especially when remote made a specific skillset's talent pool larger. This led to some remote-friendly, bordering on remote-first culture. When COVID hit, we adapted really fast. I had taken a short break from Cosmos DB befor…

Are you paying same in all locations

Re: 3 years ago, remote top paying gigs were hard to find. Today they are the norm

#47
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, everyone on Zoom is fine. Half in the room and half on Zoom has never been easy and I am not sure how that will be solved going forward.

The solution that everyone goes on Zoom, regardless of whether or not they are sitting next to each other. Pretend the team is fully remote, but still take advantage of organic, local interaction to skill up new developers. We were coincidentally doing this in my workplace 6 months before COVID took off.

Exactly.

A lot of teams seem to also struggle with no "face to face" communication. Yeah you can't turn and talk to your colleague but you can press "Call", which arguably is the same amount of effort.

Re: 3 years ago, remote top paying gigs were hard to find. Today they are the norm

#48
post #33

It's always been a no brainer for my team to hire remote and we were majority remote before COVID. There is simple reason for this; The hiring pool is much much wider when you remove geographical restrictions. Trying to hire within the criteria of someone being able to physically transport themselves to a certain location limits greatly your ability to find and recruit talent. Even more so for niche areas where skill…

Unfortunately the CEO of the large streaming company based in Los Gatos has strongly negative feelings about remote work even after COVID: https://www.wsj.com/articles/netflixs-reed-hastings-deems-re...

Ironic in how it has parallels to physical rental stores (aka blockbusters) being a necessity.

Re: 3 years ago, remote top paying gigs were hard to find. Today they are the norm

#49
post #33

It's always been a no brainer for my team to hire remote and we were majority remote before COVID. There is simple reason for this; The hiring pool is much much wider when you remove geographical restrictions. Trying to hire within the criteria of someone being able to physically transport themselves to a certain location limits greatly your ability to find and recruit talent. Even more so for niche areas where skill…

Unfortunately the CEO of the large streaming company based in Los Gatos has strongly negative feelings about remote work even after COVID: https://www.wsj.com/articles/netflixs-reed-hastings-deems-re...

Netflix and FAANGs in general can get away with employee unfriendly practices due to the obscene compensation they offer which provides them with an endless stream of talented candidates knocking on their door.

The problem is, I see these practices slowly creeping in European tech companies, but without the glorious compensation to make up for them: i.e. companies wanting to put you through 3-6 rounds of interviews, full-day on-site interviews, leet-coding, long un-paid take home tests, and all this for 40k/year?! How about no thanks and GTFO!

Re: 3 years ago, remote top paying gigs were hard to find. Today they are the norm

#50
post #41
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but not the utopia devs in big cities want. They're in for a rude awakening when they realize people with way more talent will do the job for less, not only in the US but worldwide. And I don't mean typical outsourcing bodyshops, but truly talented people in say, the midwest US or eastern Europe.

or even western Europe. There are some world class developers in Spain, Italy or France that are paid ~30K€ to 50K€ per year. Even when factoring in the tax levels and COL, there is still a huge potential for social dumping from the EU

> There are some world class developers in Spain, Italy or France that are paid ~30K€ to 50K€ per year

I seriously question that. I hire a lot from EMEA and world class developers don't accept a pay of 30 to 50k, especially in France, Italy and Spain. Perhaps Czech Republic or the Ukraine yes.

Post reply on HN