Tell HN: Don't root for WFH, it might destroy well-paying jobs

There is a vocal crowd on HN cheering for the WFH trend. But that is a big risk for the US SW engineers and a great opportunity for the rest of the SW engineers in Americas.

The crowd cheering for WFH seems to assume that the jobs will be available anywhere the suburban US which is ideal for WFH with big houses with enough space to have an office, gym and whatever. They also assume SV level salaries, maybe with a 10-15% haircut and think they can live like kings.

But from my personal experience at a company going fully WFH, I can say that those are rosy dreams. I am in a position where I know about the company's hiring plans and salaries. Guess where is a majority of new hires going to come from? Other countries! Guess what will be their salaries? Much lower than what we are offering in the non-SV parts of the US.

If the WFH trend continues, it will do to the plum US tech job market what globalization did to manufacturing. In a WFH setup, someone in Mexico is on the same level as someone in Kansas or SV, but much cheaper.

It is time for tech workers to look out for themselves and root for a failure of WFH trend. Else for the short term king-size lifestyle in your remote corner of the US, you will destroy one of the last remaining well-paying job market in the long term.

This will happen anyways. It’s already too late. All I can say is that networking will be more important than ever and that client-facing positions might be saved. This will be bad for the US workers but amazing for the rest of the world. It will be a great equalizer.

So its not nice working amongst people who can be even more talented and picked from a wider pool of people?

Why do you hate the global poor?

Hot take: if you're a mediocre dev, maybe be worried; if you're in a niche and have deep expertise you'll be fine.