41–50 of 165 posts
If it is so easy for US companies to hire good remote developers en masse from places where it is cheaper to live than it is in the major US tech hubs, then why did US companies not start doing it years ago? Are the people who run software companies so cautious that it took mass enforced work from home to make them decide that hiring cheap developers remotely could actually work? I have some doubts about this. Maybe…
Speaking of the long term, it's not hard to imagine it is doomed no matter what individuals choose.
SV exists because there was no efficient way to collaborate remotely. WFH still sucks today, but is much better than before. There are countless startups are trying to fix this, therefore it will get better gradually. Eventually, SV won't make sense anymore other than a cultural symbol, because the high-quality and cheaper talents reserve is all around the world.
Companies will take advantage of things when they see fit, and that does not depends too much on the choice of individuals. The question left is when will it happen rather than will or will not.
If jobs start going to other countries we should bring them back by investing in education and producing the best devs in the world. If we can't compete, good for whoever beats us. Trying to hoard the jobs won't work in the long run anyway.
The main discussion aside, there is a living cost that education doesn’t bridge. If you are living in say London plumbers, mechanics, housing, eggs are more expensive than in say Vietnam. you can be paid more in London and have a lower quality of life
Your post seems more nationalist than anything else. I’ve worked at a geo-distributed company for a long while and let me tell you: The diversity of viewpoints and experiences will make your teams stronger, happier and more resilient. That culture needs to be consciously built though. That won’t happen in and of itself. But it’s so, so worth it. To anyone else reading this: Don’t buy into the "us versus them" rhetori…
That's all well and good until you're the one who loses your job. Then you can root for the non-US worker's family who got your job for half the salary. Enjoy your American-owned employer making more money for its stockholders and executives while it continues not paying taxes, to a country that doesn't federally provide basic social services. There is something to be said for watching out for your community. The onl…
Mate if you're going to try that one don't be defending America with it haha. Gofundme campaigns are a part of your healthcare system..
e: acknowledging your edit and comment, throttling for downvotes does suck. I wont force a back and forth through edits.
It's inevitable the playing field will be leveled, and we never deserved the advantage to begin with.
Shall I begin listing all the consequential technologies that were invented in the US in the post WW2 era? It's an exceptionally long, comprehensive list, spanning from the GUI to the router to the microprocessor to Unix to the transistor to the LED and LCD to DSP to ethernet to RAM to hypertext to streaming media to the digital modem to the PC modem to the cable modem to the modern laser to the supercomputer to the personal computer & mobile computer to the PDA to digital graphics to virtual reality to USB to the cellphone & smartphone to the IBM hard drive & solid state storage to fiber optics to email to GPS to the relational database to Java & C & C++ & JavaScript & Basic to TCP/IP to the spreadsheet to the digital camera to the lithium ion battery all the way down to the mouse. And a zillion more things.
To pretend that the US didn't earn its advantage, is plain bunk. The entire tech industry rides on the shoulders of what the US built up over the past six decades.
Nobody wants to hear it but the truth has never been more clear. There is a HUGE pool of talented, hungry developers around the world who want YOUR job for 1/4th of your pay.
The second US companies open their doors to those engineers, we will see dramatic decline in SW salaries. What has held this at bay so far as definitely been the companies that don't allow remote work, and, the companies that are unwilling to hire across language or timezone boundaries.
I agree with the OP here that this WFH trend will not be the rosy future many picture it as being. Expect much lower salaries across the board, and possible even less job flexibility here in the US as competition for those positions rises dramatically.
BTW - This is NOT meant as a dig toward developers from outside the US. The point I am trying to make is that they are JUST as qualified, if not MORE qualified, than many here in the US. There's no reason they shouldn't have access to good jobs. It's just been a convenient reality for US engineers that the market has been something of a walled garden. That may change sooner than they'd like to admit.
What a horrible take. Globalization of tech jobs is net positive for the whole world including the US. We're all gonna have more thing made cheaper and faster, isn't that great?
I can see how you can argue it's not the case with some industries, e.g steel and coal (see poverty in Appalachia), because it's hurting those communities. But this is tech, we already have it way too easy.
I say let's double down on the whole WFH thing instead and bring opportunity to people all around the world.
This might surprise you but Americans aren't the only people on this forum. But I guess it's okay to leave us all out to pasture if it means you can concentrate just a bit more of wealth.
> But I guess it's okay to leave us all out to pasture if it means you can concentrate just a bit more of wealth. If we're speaking of things like employment, of course people should look out for their own self-interest. Proposing the opposite is to propose suicide. The people of Norway should donate their trillion dollar sovereign wealth fund to Togo? As opposed to continuing to concentrate their extraordinary wealt…