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Remote work will break the US monopoly on global talent

devonzuegel.com

331–340 of 534 posts

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

#331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because US immigration policy selects for immigrants with significant wealth or specialized educations and experience. Our policy specifically selects for high earners and the already wealthy. You can see this effect clearly from your own source, where Australian Americans and South African Americans both have higher median incomes than almost all Asian American households, as well as white Americans. Same thi…

Yes, I understand that might be a factor. However, this still invalidates the point that whites are the most privileged group. If we take second/third-generation indians, they, on average, would be wealthier than most whites. Does this mean they are more privileged? I think yes

"However, this still invalidates the point that whites are the most privileged group."

No one made that point. And yes, it's true, if you look at certain much smaller demographic groups you can find groups that are somewhat more economically advantaged than white men.

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

#332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We've tried hiring in these locations (Italy and Spain) with some success, but it's pretty tough because the talent pool is so small. At some point, you weigh whether the lower cost of the salary is worth the extra time/effort spent adding headcount. Which is funny because we have no shortage of Italian and Spanish devs applying for our expensive European city offices. I don't know European urban dynamics that well,…

>We've tried hiring in these locations (Italy and Spain) with some success, but it's pretty tough because the talent pool is so small.

Is it a question of language skills, technical skills, or both?

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

#333
post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

Yandex Labs is a San Francisco company. Technically owned by Yandex, but otherwise not much difference from any other Bay Area company.

Wow, I actually had no idea that Yandex had any presence in the US. Sounds like a pretty interesting setup they got this way, I will have to check it out.

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

#334
post #306
post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

House prices are often even higher in Europe, relative to wages. Check prices in London or Paris to see: you get smaller apartments, smaller houses on smaller lots than in US, and you’ll pay larger percentage of your paycheck for them.

I looked into Paris and the 19th looks very reasonably priced and apex civilized to me. (I've walked all over it.) A two bedroom for say €2000-2500/m with easy access to the Metro. Am I wrong? I was surprised when I looked at the prices, maybe my sources are inaccurate. But then I discovered Montpellier :-), half as expensive. I've lived in Atlanta, Phoenix and SF/MV/Santa Clara, and no, none of those come close to t…

Average household income in Paris is 36k EUR. 2000-2500 EUR/mo is insanely expensive. For comparison, in Sunnyvale, CA, median rent for 2 bedroom is $3k, but median household income is $130k.

Seriously, if you think housing is expensive relative to incomes in Bay Area, or NYC, it will seem like a bargain compared to London or Paris.

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

#335

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."

Sidebar: I don't want to work with any Engineer for whom the programming language plays any role in their choice of career.

I want to work with engineers that want to build solutions for customer problems, solving complicated technical challenges using the best tool for the job. Sometimes that tool is Haskell or Lisp, or Erlang. Sometimes it isn't.

I also want to work with engineers that recognize that they can do more as part of a team than lone-wolfing everything themselves. That also means that sometimes the best tool for the TEAM is not the best tool for them individually.

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

#336

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…

This is overly cynical and alarmist. Outsourcing has been a thing for a long time and its results have also been known for a long time. Companies, for lack of a better term, have "fucked around and found out" by not going (relatively) local and depending on offshoring (even nearshoring) to their ultimate detriment. This isn't to say that companies that are remote (as in geographically) don't now have a bigger pool bu…

> Outsourcing

This isn't outsourcing, this is hiring to work for the company's own teams based in the US.

> offshoring

This isn't offshoring in traditional terms, the projects stay in the US and are managed from there, with team members from all over the place.

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

#337

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 anything, it will make it easier to work FOR the US. So that's kind of the point - those remote workers for US companies will do their daily spending, house construction, etc and pay their taxes outside of USA, boosting the economy and creating the demand for non-developer jobs there instead of USA.

Yeah, but that's a bit like trickle down economics. It's literal trickling, it's not a deluge.

In these cases the top jobs will still tend to stay in the home country. So the most successful of these companies will be able to hire more top level folks and most of these will be in the home country.

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

#338

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…

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.

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

#339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ma…

>no country will restrict their own citizens from working for a foreign company This might surprise you, but some countries manage to achieve something like that. In Austria for example, if you go freelance (self employed) you'll actually end up paying more tax than being a FTE (which has already one of this highest taxes in the EU) while losing all the benefits of being a FTE like PTO, overtime and such. So yeah, tu…

> In Austria for example, if you go freelance (self employed) you'll actually end up paying more tax than being a FTE (which has already one of this highest taxes in the EU) while losing all the benefits of being a FTE like PTO, overtime and such.

This is the case everywhere in Europe. I don't know if it's a literal policy meant to discourage this or it's just that freelancers are easy political targets since they tend to be disorganized/disunited.

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