You guys are missing it.
This leads straight to outsourcing.
Remote-first work is taking over the rich world – research hints at why
171–180 of 487 posts
Re: Remote-first work is taking over the rich world – research hints at why
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
> " [0] Huge salaries to them being a high-five figure salary. " CheckSalary.co.uk puts the average salary for "a programmer" in the UK at £43K, Reed.co.uk says £41k, Glassdoor says £35K, Payscale says £31K... maybe devs here should upskill in English? https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/Salaries/programmer-salary-SRCH_...
Russian remote programmer here. The language is a small part, cultural difference is the most painful one. Americans never give direct negative feedback and expect this from you, for example. Many US companies hire only people from US and pay them more b/c cultural and timezone difference is another hidden cost and not every company wants to pay it - they rather pay 200k more in $. But personally for me that's fine,…
This is an issue not just with Russians, but with differences between mainland Europe and Anglo-Saxon culture in general (UK too). Funny enough, it gets worse the better at English you get: if you're obviously not very good at English then people tend to give you the benefit of the doubt. If you're reasonably good at English in such a way that it's not obvious you're not a native speaker at a glance then people tend to be less forgiving. And the whole passive-aggressive culture also means they won't actually tell you, so it can be quite hard to learn and improve.
Of course, attitudes differ wildly from individual to individual, but the average can be quite hard to work with. It took me a few years to really adjust.
Re: Remote-first work is taking over the rich world – research hints at why
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This is not so different as one might believe. Those exact arguments about off-shoring and remote work already existed back then. This is far different than then. In 2000, remote work was almost an impossibility... between bandwidth, protocols and everything else. These days it's as easy as enabling your built-in HD cam and mic and getting to business.
Successful off-shoring isn’t about enabling a bandwith-hungry HD cam streaming your team in 4K. Neither back then nor nowadays. The right communication tools for the job existed back then but that wasn’t the reason why it didn’t work out in 2000 or in 2009. Management isn’t dumb and would happily off-shore to the cheapest remote workers all those last years where nothing of that was a major issue but the problems are…
> Management isn’t dumb and would happily off-shore to the cheapest remote workers
I've had my share of severe pushbacks with "management" over the years.
They've often been burned by shopping projects out to the lowest bidder and suddenly realize you need competent engineers to make it happen.
The problem is you can find competent engineers now across the planet for far less than what you would pay a US-based engineer, forget about whatever is going on in SF/SV.
A lot of people would like to stick their fingers in their ears and say "nah nah nah" rather than realize what is going on, but I deal with it daily.
Re: Remote-first work is taking over the rich world – research hints at why
#174Everyone should keep in mind that water seeks its own level. And think of this on a global scale. I've been working remotely for almost a decade as a senior software engineer. Now, post-Covid, almost everyone realizes they can do the same. Salaries are going to drop in the "rich world", and it's not just because people are now fleeing places like SF/SV to lower cost of living areas. We are also beginning to compete g…
I have worked with remote developers from Poland, Romania, and Portugal, each making approx $20-50/hr, producing code of far higher quality than stuff I’ve seen from $500k/year software engineers here. Also, their English was almost indecipherable from a native speaker.
To be fair, 50$/hr is considered in those countries the absolute top-tier pay of almost any profession. You don’t wanna know how much a physician earns in poland or romania…
Re: Remote-first work is taking over the rich world – research hints at why
#175Not mentioned enough on this topic: not all engineers are software engineers and not all software engineers never need to touch hardware. If you plan to work on/with web frameworks, advertisements, data science, or pure CS topics for your whole career, then there's probably no excuse to force you to come into the office 5 days a week. But good luck doing that as a software engineer at a company like SpaceX, Tesla, In…
Lol I worked for Intel remotely before covid as a full time blue badge... Though I guess I did have a title you mentioned above...
Re: Remote-first work is taking over the rich world – research hints at why
#176Everyone should keep in mind that water seeks its own level. And think of this on a global scale. I've been working remotely for almost a decade as a senior software engineer. Now, post-Covid, almost everyone realizes they can do the same. Salaries are going to drop in the "rich world", and it's not just because people are now fleeing places like SF/SV to lower cost of living areas. We are also beginning to compete g…
yeah, no. Salaries are going to rise all over the world, especially if you talk about salaries. Is it true that a junior dev can have $240k/y in US for example? screw decades of my experience, imma be a junior dev :D You also have to take into account that working for US company is not that desirable because of the employer culture, for example. Some of us like worker protection laws, for example, or government-manda…
> yeah, no. Salaries are going to rise all over the world. Jesus.
That's not how global economics works.
Re: Remote-first work is taking over the rich world – research hints at why
#177You guys are missing it. This leads straight to outsourcing.
Funny enough, as a guy hiring in house developers deliberately and regularly, I got the impression that salaries in previously "cheap" countries are normalising to what folks earn in US/Europe - which could make offshoring less viable over time.
Employees from the same country OTOH have some tactical advantages: Same culture/language and time zone (I noticed a lot of folks care), less legal/accounting hassle, easier/cheaper to meet occasionally for workshops and stuff.
Re: Remote-first work is taking over the rich world – research hints at why
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
Depends on the work, of course. But for me, software is a team sport. My current job is 100% remote; I've never met my coworkers or my users. I love not commuting, but the lack of personal bonding and the need for all communication to be 100% intentional is a real drawback. I think it's especially limiting for people that I don't work very closely with. E.g., I can't just go hang out with users and watch them work. W…
>where I say, "Hey, let me show you something." So... what you like is making it harder for other people to work by forcing them to pay attention to you according to your whims. I much prefer a coworker reaching out to me on Slack and saying "When you have time, let me show you something." And then I get back to them when I've finished what I am working on.
Sure, that's fine - you like that.
Do you have empathy towards 90% of the remainder of a company who doesn't like that?
Re: Remote-first work is taking over the rich world – research hints at why
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would tend to agree, but there are large cultural differences as well which I don't think are easily overcome.
The problem is that cultural differences are most often in conflict during lots of communication, especially face to face in meetings and so forth. The more you eliminate synchronous communication, in-person interaction, and office work... the less those cultural differences are going to matter.
Strong disagree with that one; I think it's the exact opposite in fact. The more direct communication is, the easier it is to avoid and/or quickly clear up misunderstandings and the like.
Some email that was sent and misunderstood? Your entire project can go off-rails. People can hold grudges over something that was not intended at all. Etc. You're much more likely to catch these things early in face-to-face communication due to body language, tone of voice, etc.
Text communication is pretty hard to get right in general and text communication in a non-native language is even harder, doubly so when you're talking to a native speaker and there's an asymmetry in language skills, which there often is, even with fairly proficient non-native speakers. Add to that cultural differences on what is or isn't "appropriate" or different interpretations on various things and it can become quite tricky to communicate effectively.
This table is a good example of this: https://hbr.org/resources/images/article_assets/2014/02/angl...
Re: Remote-first work is taking over the rich world – research hints at why
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> We are also beginning to compete globally, far more than ever before with the ease of remote work. Qualified engineers can be found for 1/10th of the price with "near shore" companies in the "rich world". Yep. I've said it many times here and basically anywhere I can: Clamoring for remote-only work, maximum-introvert, never fly somewhere, don't value in-person communication/meetings/etc is a dangerous game to be p…
> domestic management to realize where the cost savings could come from Management has been looking at off-shoring whatever they can for the past decades already. Having a bigger pool of talent willing to work remotely is a boon, but most of the new influx is not from lower level countries (they already were 99% ok with full remote), and more from places with high level salaries. Management will find cheaper people,…
>> Management will find cheaper people, but only marginally, and not that different from the people they already had.
This is a dangerous assumption rooted in past failures. I can personally tell you that I have a lot of evidence that points to it no longer being true. Eastern European developers are good enough to do CRUD and basic work that is massively overpaid here in the US, and speak English quite well.
I would tread lightly. It's still very early.