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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

#351

Post by JanisL »

alfiedotwtf wrote: post #312
neom wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pa…

Must be the area you're in. In Melbourne, office real estate is practically on life support and they'll happily discount

Melbourne Australia is in the third year of population decline now. I know on top of this population shift that a huge number of the major employers have shifted towards much more work from home arrangements due to the pandemic and due to the the 263 days of lockdowns that were imposed I think many of these changes will last for longer than in places that were less disrupted. That said I still think commercial real estate prices here are artificially high/in a bubble because of the high number of vacancies even if there's already been a pullback in prices. Just structurally speaking the demand side for commercial real estate here has substantially fallen, but I'm not sure the same can be said for other parts of the world right now. I'd be curious to know more about what's happening in other locations as I feel like Melbourne is a bit of an outlier in many regards.

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

#352

Post by makeitdouble »

adventured wrote: post #225
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 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 goes both ways: local talent will learn from the biggest companies in the world without having to leave, meaning their know how can be turned to local entities as well.

For the pay, eventually it settles down as more and more companies try to see what they can get away with. US companies won’t be paying boatloads of money eternally (they were already resorting to offshoring to skimp) and local companies will have to align to get people to work for them.

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

#353

Post by tayo42 »

analognoise wrote: post #281
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?

Good luck convincing people who "can do" the work to take 1/4th.

Yeah There's better jobs then programing for 50k a year. Why would I keep doing this then. I'll work a ski lift or something

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

#354

Post by filoleg »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #208
mistrial9 wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I started a conversation with a visiting EU PhD and asked about programming languages. In a very good smelling way, he avoided the question. Apparently it is "blue collar" work to do actual programming? This one PhD did zero actual programming, apparently.

It's slowly changing, but yeah, coding is not considered a high status job here. Now, it's better though, it's not considered a low status job anymore :)

No joke. I lived in the US for a while, but I am from Eastern Europe, and so are my parents. Back in high school about a decade ago, I decided that I want to do either an engineering degree or a CS degree. I got a reaction from my parents that was the opposite of what most of my US peers would have expected to get. For context, we have already been living in the US for quite a bit at that point.

Even my parents, who are neither doctors or lawyers themselves, considered engineering/CS to be a grunt and pretty much blue-collar work (not that there is anything wrong with blue collar work at all, but I was not going to pick that fight with my parents at the time when I lived with them). And even now, once they know how much software devs can actually get paid in the US, the only thing that's changed is that they stopped pestering me about it. But I definitely took a note of how when the conversations with their friends or other relatives go, my parents still try to avoid mentioning what I studied or what I do as my career (aside from namedropping the company names, because apparently big US corps carry some weight with those people). All while also letting me know every single time how awesome their friends' son or daughter is, because they are a doctor or a lawyer. /rantover

I cannot understate how good it feels to me in the US in this aspect, because it feels like most people here on average absolutely don't care which path you took and don't even question it. Sure, some are still judgemental, and some of them still assign weight to the outcomes you got. But I would rather get some weight assigned to the outcomes I got, as opposed to the same weight being assigned to some stupid bs like "oh, your degree isn't of the right class of respect, so no matter what you do, you ain't going to be as much of a respected person as a doctor/lawyer". Just the entire concept of "respectable" degrees makes me feel a certain kind of way that I absolutely hate. If you want to talk about degrees based on any measurable metric, you are welcome to. But "respectability" of a degree is not measurable, and is the most snotty bs that is way too commonplace outside of the US. I had some friends from SK (so not even the same continent as EU), and they echoed fairly similar sentiments in regards to the cultural sentiment about engineers/tech workers in their country.

And the thing is, I cannot even really blame my parents, because it isn't just them, it is pretty much what the majority there believes.

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

#355

Post by downut »

xyzzyz wrote: post #334
downut wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why would I work for 36k? This discussion is about remote work. I'm not worried about making 3x that.

As I mentioned, I've lived in Mountain View and Santa Clara. Sunnyvale is in the middle. I'm a cyclist and loved to climb up the various two lane grades and over the top to the coast and back. I visited MV and San Jose last spring. And SF. It was much more interesting in the '90s. Now the South Bay is just another dead US suburb.

I wouldn't live there again for $500k/year.

We haven't even discussed why most families move to the suburbs: children. We have done the two commute raising a child in the Bay Area. We evacuated when the school logistics became visible, and in hindsight, rightly so.

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

#356

Post by vineyardmike »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #292
thriftwy wrote: post #262

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,…

> Europeans want to live in high COL European cities as much as Americans want to live in high COL American cities.

Makes sense. There is a reason that its high COL

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

#357

Post by Daishiman »

initplus wrote: post #274
Nasrudith wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not really seeing it.

Competent developers at this point are already working directly or indirectly for US companies that pay well. I don't know anyone who wants this kind of work who doesn't have it already.

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

#358

Post by alfiedotwtf »

JanisL wrote: post #351
alfiedotwtf wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Must be the area you're in. In Melbourne, office real estate is practically on life support and they'll happily discount

Melbourne Australia is in the third year of population decline now. I know on top of this population shift that a huge number of the major employers have shifted towards much more work from home arrangements due to the pandemic and due to the the 263 days of lockdowns that were imposed I think many of these changes will last for longer than in places that were less disrupted. That said I still think commercial real e…

Ah! Yeah you're right... I guess the lockdown has given me a bit of a bias.

Slightly on topic speaking of commercial real estate, I was sad to hear York Butter Factory is in liquidation :(

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

#359

Post by satyrnein »

rsj_hn wrote: post #200
nly wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By my estimation, even factoring in the cost of living, medical insurance, tax differences etc, people working in the Bay area are taking home twice what an equally qualified dev would take home in say, London. If anything the contrast is even more stark across the EU

Companies pay the prevailing wage in whatever labor market they participate in. The prevailing wage in the UK is lower than in Silicon Valley, but higher than in, say, Oklahoma City. Not sure why people are still confused about this. But it seems many still don't understand it. The funniest thing is when people try to concoct some sort of fairness argument to explain this, or equally hilarious is when they try to com…

Companies pay the prevailing wage in whatever labor market they participate in.

Well, yes, but the topic under discussion is whether the market is "developers that can commute to the local office" or "developers they can work on that timezone" or "developers anywhere," which all have different implications for the market clearing rate.

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

#360

Post by downut »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #348
downut wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Ah ah ah, €2000-2500/m in France is crazy expensive. In Nice, I would pay 1100€/m for the same thing, and that's also considered an expensive city. In my current country side town, I pay the ridiculously low price of 300€/m for a 3 bedrooms flat. Now that's the lower end of the spectrum, because it's a very poor deep country side village. But yeah, some devs start their career at 2400€ a month as a salary :)

I am really glad to hear this. The first time I looked at housing costs in Montpellier I was astounded. I asked some of my EU friends and they said yup. City center is about the same as Nice apparently, and I consider that dirt cheap. It's not Paris, but... I could dig being near the sea again. Try getting anywhere as near the US Pacific coast, hahahaha.
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