Live data from Hacker News

Remote work will break the US monopoly on global talent

devonzuegel.com

241–250 of 534 posts

Re: Remote work will break the US monopoly on global talent

#241
post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are all subjective. I worked on Haskell, without a degree, on interesting problems for an NY salary remotely out of my bedroom in Oxford. I have since moved to the Bay Area and am working for an Eastern European country while earning a Bay Area rate.

>I have since moved to the Bay Area and am working for an Eastern European country while earning a Bay Area rate. If I understood it correctly, you physically live in Bay Area while working remotely for a company located in Eastern Europe, and you are earning Bay Area rates? This seems like the complete inverse of the situation I usually hear of (working for a Bay Area company remotely in a cheaper area and earning B…

Jetbrains?

Re: Remote work will break the US monopoly on global talent

#242

As a developer working in Europe, I would love to work for an American company and make 30 to 50% more. But, it's difficult: - I don't really want to adapt myself to their timezone. Perhaps 1 or 2 or hours of shift from my tz, but not more - I don't want to work as a contractor. I want to be an employee - I want at least 28 business days of vacation per year - I do 9 to 5. No more, no less. I'm not in my 20s anymore…

You should not make any assumptions about work in the US. There's many American software companies that are able to fulfill your requirements. In many tech companies, you have "unlimited" vacation. You can probably take more vacation that you already get in Europe. This is true of my company, mParticle. I can work 9-to-5 as an employee. That is the culture of the company that I work for. People can choose to work rem…

> You can probably take more vacation that you already get in Europe.

I’ve always heard that places like this tend to pressure you into not taking many days or taking a more “normal” amount.

I just started a job with unlimited vacation, so I’ll have to see how it goes. I think best case is I can have more shorter stints through the year.

Re: Remote work will break the US monopoly on global talent

#243
I personally find it strange how gleeful lots of US developers have been about remote work. It means our US salaries are going to be untenable and we'll be paid like the rest of the world. Why pay a Silicon Valley salary when it's remote anyway and 1/4 the price to get someone from elsewhere?

Re: Remote work will break the US monopoly on global talent

#244

Except: - no country pay like the US. Worked for silicon valley companies remotely, and made twice the money I made in France, while being 3 times cheaper than local competition. - no country have the volume of hi-level coding gig job offers the US has. - few countries even have has many interesting projects. If you want to code in Haskell or Lisp in Europe, good luck. - the USA don't care about your diploma, only wh…

> If you want to code in Haskell or Lisp in Europe, good luck.

Uhh... https://trustica.cz/category/tech/racket/

Re: Remote work will break the US monopoly on global talent

#245

Except: - no country pay like the US. Worked for silicon valley companies remotely, and made twice the money I made in France, while being 3 times cheaper than local competition. - no country have the volume of hi-level coding gig job offers the US has. - few countries even have has many interesting projects. If you want to code in Haskell or Lisp in Europe, good luck. - the USA don't care about your diploma, only wh…

> the USA don't care about your diploma, only what you can do That's a total bullshit, unfortunately. Everything else is correct.

Now a days, it's very much true. I've worked for FAANG companies, a number of mid-major sized tech/internet companies, have had a engineering job for 20+ years, been a CTO and co-founded a VC backed company. All without any degree, in fact in the 20+ years in the field I've never once been out of work. Early in my career I was rejected a couple of times for lack of degree but I can't even remember the last time I was asked about a degree. I know a number of other long term successful non-degree engineers also. So unless you have solid data to back that up, I'd agree strongly for it not being bullshit. The only tech field that I can see that argument for is higher level Data Scientists and that's clearly becoming less and less of a requirement also.

Re: Remote work will break the US monopoly on global talent

#246
post #174
post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No diploma here - still have recruiters from at least 3 of the 5 messaging me. Edit: downvoters, care to explain a little? Why would they waste their time on me if they weren't interested in me working there?

Do you / have you ever worked at one?

I am working at one now (kind of, since MSFT doesn't really make it into the abbreviation), and one of the brightest senior engineers on my team had no degree whatsoever, just a high-school diploma (using past tense, because he left for another company a couple of years ago). I also have a bunch of friends who currently work Google (some from college, some former colleagues) and a few at FB, and all of them know at least one coworker without a college degree.

And when our team was recruiting experienced candidates (5-10 years or more), at no point we ever cared about their degree or lack thereof (aside from some specialized research positions that typically require graduate degrees). For entry level though, yeah, if you are in your early 20s without much industry experience, it is gonna be much tougher to get hired without a degree.

Re: Remote work will break the US monopoly on global talent

#247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should not make any assumptions about work in the US. There's many American software companies that are able to fulfill your requirements. In many tech companies, you have "unlimited" vacation. You can probably take more vacation that you already get in Europe. This is true of my company, mParticle. I can work 9-to-5 as an employee. That is the culture of the company that I work for. People can choose to work rem…

By "vacation" you mean fully paid days ? Unlimited?

"Unlimited" in quotes. Sometimes better called "unmetered". That is, you are not granted days of vacation, nor does taking a day off get deducted from any limit. But obviously if you're not showing up to work often enough, you will lose your job.

Re: Remote work will break the US monopoly on global talent

#248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

USA is super expensive. Yes you can get a large paycheck, wait until you see house prices. Also current situation does not inspire confidence in somebody who may be identified as white male.

If you want to be located in a place which pays relatively high in Europe, housing prices are adequate. 10-15 years ago it would be possible to have disproportionally large salary in eastern places like Prague, but that's history now. Even if it still costs less than SF, your paycheck now looks adequate. Covid era raised prices everywhere.

It's possible to work remotely in post-covid era, which allows living in nicer, cheaper locales. No longer it is necessary to move where jobs are.

Re: Remote work will break the US monopoly on global talent

#249
post #228
post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've interviewed at Google twice - passed once, declined continuing the process due to not being super interested in the product. I've declined interviewing at Facebook/Amazon. I haven't talked with Netflix nor Apple. I have not worked for one, but have never gotten any indication that the lack of diploma would be a problem. I gather that a decade of professional experience makes the lack of diploma irrelevant. As be…

My anecdotal data is that I went really far in the process with a FAANG, got a verbal offer, and it was rescinded (never got the official offer). I always suspected it was due to lack of a degree. And no one explicitly ever asked, but they did ask for a rather detailed work/education history, and I never claimed to have one. I really suspect that they SAY they don't care if you have a degree or not, but at the end of…

I would lean towards the position being filled by a better candidate or the team having a hiring freeze. Who can say, though? That's a large waste of everyone's time and the company's money.

Re: Remote work will break the US monopoly on global talent

#250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point isn’t that existing companies in the US or wherever will lose talent, but that the existing companies might retain or even gain talent, and that the workers will reside in locales other than the US. Your points seem to be in favor of the author’s argument that the importance of physically residing in the US will decrease, and that there is an opportunity for other locales/governments to attract remote worke…

The parent's premise is that it will make the US more powerful economically and make its tech companies more dominant. Which is exactly what it will do. The local tech labor supply will go to work for US corporations, which pay better than most everyone else. That will cement the US hegemony globally in tech (the sole major exception being domestic China, and to a far lesser extent domestic Russia). The US tech jugge…

> it will make the US more powerful economically and make its tech companies more dominant. Which is exactly what it will do.

Why wouldn't other nations react accordingly? What power does the US have to stop this?

1) Other nations increasingly have a large supply of high-skill talent.

2) Other nations will use capital and subsidies to launch their own tech firms employing their own workers. There are startup accelerators spinning up all over Europe and Asia to capture, retain, and reward domestic talent. They see how the game is played now.

3) Other nations will create more regulations that limit how much US tech companies can participate in their economy and monopolize their citizens as consumers. This is already happening with major international antitrust rulings hitting Google, Apple, and Facebook. This is the nail in the coffin. They will foster and protect their own industry at the expense of the US.

There are many more international tech companies participating at the global stage these days. Atlasssian, JetBrains, Spotify, SoftBank, TSM, ASML, miHoYo... Not to mention all of the Chinese tech companies popping up. Epic Games is 50% owned by Tencent.

This trend will continue. The US only has 300M people, and it's not growing with the same significant postwar tailwinds it once had. It can't keep the wealth and talent monopoly forever. Just look at how much the middle and lower classes are hurting as a symptom of this global rebalancing.

You can also look to other industries. Automotive, aerospace, etc. The US isn't peerless anymore.

Not saying this is good or bad, but it's definitely happening.

Post reply on HN