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Remote work will break the US monopoly on global talent

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

#271

Post by commandlinefan »

JohnWhigham wrote: post #14

In the short term, I think it's going to be a lot harder than this article lets on, but long term, it is abundantly clear: cushy developer jobs in the US are on borrowed time. Salaries may continue to go up for a little while longer, but they will fall to reflect the rest of the world catching up with the US. And that's a scary prospect for those under 35 now. And I don't think there's a way out of it. We embrace rem…

> cushy developer jobs in the US are on borrowed time

Maybe. But I've been hearing that since the early 90's.

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

#272

Post by darkwizard42 »

echelon wrote: post #250
adventured wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 accelera…

The US has the tech companies MASSIVE wealth to stop this. It is all well and good to subsidize local tech companies, but for a majority of junior/senior devs you can't compete with $250K/yr in pay from FAANG companies whose stock won't stop rising and whose name on resume basically sets you up for life (exaggerating, but its not that far from the truth for a non-US and even US developers)

Your third point doesn't make any sense to me as no country will restrict their own citizens from working for a foreign company...earning massively higher salaries than local jobs (more money earned locally is more money spent locally... all metrics that nations care about will go up). Monopolizing your citizen's attention != monopolizing their talent.

Every company you just mentioned added up doesn't even equal or come close to Google's market capitalization (Atlassian, 150B, Spotify, 55B, TSM, 550B, ASML 350B, JetBrains, private, but some say 7B?, Epic Games, 30B) and of note, TSM and ASML draw much of their valuation from hardware than software.

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

#273

Post by jaegerpicker »

readams wrote: post #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?

Because that is absolutely unlikely in the extreme. I've worked with and lead teams of outsourced non-US developers. It very often (not always but much more often) ends unfavorably compared to local-ish remote teams or local in office teams. Language barriers, culture barriers, infrastructure issues (quality of internet/phone, regional software restrictions, export restrictions, contract work vs regular employees, etc....) are too much to over come in the majority of cases.

Software teams are almost always better run with small groups of highly skilled developers that can and want to work closely together. Think special ops vs regular infantry platoon. Outside of FaaNG not many companies are working on projects that require a large number of devs.

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

#274

Post by initplus »

Nasrudith wrote: post #257
readams wrote: post #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?

We went through that with outsourcing already. There is something about businesses and their communications - don't listen to what they say they need - that is really what they want and are whining for. Instead look at their actions - they take measures to fufill their actual needs. We keep on seeing that scaremongering about "you taking advantage of remote work will be bad for your job oooooo!" but that doesn't make…

Modern remote hiring is very different to the offshoring of old. Hiring individual skilled developers remote is very different from outsourcing an entire project to a consulting shop in India.

Modern offshoring is a very different experience, and likely will have downward pressure on US wages.

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

#275

Post by learc83 »

ozim wrote: post #215
kelnos wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. The "worst" I see happening is some US tech jobs will go to Canada, since the time zones are "compatible" and culture is similar. People from Central and South America will get in the game somewhat as well, but I still think cultural and language barriers cause enough problems that there's still a bit of a moat. We've already been offshoring to Asia and Eastern Europe for decades now, and even though we shoul…

Language and cultural barriers are not a problem if you hire people to directly work in the team. They are not problem if you do hiring directly and select right people. Biggest problem is that companies want to hire bunch of worm bodies and dump trash tasks on them. Managers expect that they will be able to throw vague requirements and bunch of people who are not part of their company will figure out what to do. Wha…

>They are not problem if you do hiring directly and select right people.

Hiring directly in other countries is difficult for all but the biggest companies (who probably already have offices in those countries and have been hiring in those countries for years).

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

#276

Post by simonh »

thriftwy wrote: post #262
simonh wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

facebook is hiring 10,000 developers in the EU to build the Metaverse. https://www.reuters.com/technology/facebook-plans-hire-10000... My daughter is looking to go into software engineering and I was explaining to her that most of the high paying jobs are in the US and there's a big brain drain out of Europe (we're Brits). Not to dissuade her, but that she might consider that as an option on graduation. I was specula…

They do hire in Europe but pick expensive locales such as Switzerland, London or Dublin. I can't stop wondering why not open shop in Italy or Spain - wages may be much lower with way higher life quality.

Are there a big enough talent pool of highly skilled and experienced developers in Italy or Spain? It’s a chicken and egg problem, you need to go where there’s already a market for these skills.

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

#277

Post by neom »

alfiedotwtf wrote: post #260
evancox100 wrote: post #175

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 importance of physically residing in the US will decrease, and that there is an opportunity for other locales/governments to attract remote workers. COVID really did changed everything, and proved working from home not only works well, but more importantly to CFOs, made it significantly cheaper by literally outsourcing real estate costs to employees. The past few months have been interesting. I've been contacte…

I'm on the business side of the house, we keep waiting for rent to drop so we can find more space for growth, and it's not dropping because folks in real estate think there will be a rebound. As soon as I try to get into a negotiation, it's almost like they're MORE sticky on the price than they used to be, I guess because everyone is looking for a deal. I don't know what will happen but it makes no sense for me to pay premium for space when we can just hire people remote, and landlords are still not negotiating in a lot of markets (SF and NYC aside) exacerbating the business side of the house want to push hard into remote.

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

#278

Post by distances »

randcraw wrote: post #265
wesnerm2 wrote: post #226

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…

28 business days of vacation per year? More than 5 weeks? I know of no company in America that offers that, not even informally. Few US companies offer most of the benefits Europeans expect, from free/cheap health care to child care to generous maternity/paternity leave to low tuition to job security to strictly enforced equal opportunity. Combine all of those into one employer in the US? That unicorn doesn't exist.…

> What's more, as soon as US companies hire remotely en masse in Europe, regulators there will surely demand the same benefits & protections for their people from remote employers.

If US company doesn't have a local office in that European country they can't anyway offer a normal employment contract, that has never been possible. Social security, healthcare, pension needs to be paid. So either the employee is a freelancer, or company has an office in the same country to pay the employer's dues.

This applies to intra-EU work too, someone living in Germany can't accept a regular employment position in a Spanish company remotely.

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

#279

Post by foobarian »

lmarcos wrote: post #216

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…

As far as the TZ issue, I just wanted to mention that it is possible a company could really appreciate having you stay on your normal schedule if you have an operational role, because it helps extend coverage and saves US based folks from shifting their schedules.

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

#280

Post by lancemurdock »

readams wrote: post #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?

don't underestimate some of the problems the author listed here. Language barriers & timezone challenges will cause the roadmap to move so much slower that you've lost gains on saving that 3/4 price.
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