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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

#371

Post by raydev »

LegitShady wrote: post #232
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…

All the qualified Canadians move to the USA for USA incomes. Canada is going to be an immigration station for people companies want to bring in but can't get US visas for. Its already a thing.

This is already slightly out of date. Lots of Bay Area companies hiring in Canada and boosting salaries across the board + RSU grants. The wave started just before COVID and job openings are exploding.

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

#372

Post by i_have_an_idea »

I think US devs that work on high IQ projects have nothing to worry about. It's very hard to find high IQ devs outside of the developed countries - trust me, I've tried. Whilst there are some, they're not nearly enough to influence the jobs market (and they usually charge US rates). I think the local environment plays a big role - stuff like early childhood nutrition, healthcare, clean water and air, a good education system that can recognize and develop talent. That's usually missing in developing countries.

I do think there's a decent chance CRUD-related dev work wages will probably be suppressed. I think that's because the work is easier, so lower IQ people can do it well but also (and probably more importantly) a lot of that work is in the process of being automated anyway.

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

#373

Post by TulliusCicero »

zz865 wrote: post #127
DeathArrow wrote: post #76

I see many people here comparing US with EU in term of wages. But for the comparation to work taxes, healthcare, education, and subsidizing several public services like transport or heating should be taken into account. Also, the comparation should take into consideration PPP. $300 000 pre-taxes in US is not 3x $100 000 after-taxes in EU. Especially if you adjust for other factors.

Also quality of life in Europe is much higher. US everything is bigger, but Europe wins for Food quality, cleanliness, crime & safety, holidays, design.

This is true in some respects, but as someone who recently moved from Munich back to the states, there's definitely some aspects of life that I prefer here.

I'd list them now, but that would just invite the European Defense Squad to come out and tell me how all those problems are specific to Munich/Bavaria/Germany, ignoring how the original comment I was responding to was generalizing the same way.

The truth is that there are some things you can generalize okay on (e.g. healthcare being cheaper in Europe than the US, or the US having poor public transit), but many things really are specific to the particular European country at least. Biking, for example, might be amazing or completely terrible depending on the part of Europe.

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

#374

Post by anonygler »

I'd love to believe this is true, but time differences between East/West Coast US alone makes collaboration incredibly tedious.

I'm really not a believer in distributed, remote teams due to time issues. It's more feasible in a similar time zone +/- 1 hour. Beyond that you end up with people working into their lunch hours, etc.

Global time differences within teams are really just a massive headache and a non-starter for most organizations.

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

#375

Post by i_have_an_idea »

danvonk wrote: post #256
foxyv wrote: post #112

The demand for software developers and experts is a bottomless well right now in EVERY country. Hiring everywhere is a challenge. The problem is that software development is genuinely challenging. Training is a huge problem because programs can't keep up with the new technology. In the past 10 years there have been 3 separate revolutions in our technology stack and 2 in our project management. Everything is moving at…

If it really is a bottomless well everywhere, I must be doing something wrong...I just graduated from a well-regarded university in Germany with a degree in computer science and to be honest, it's not all that easy to get a job. For example, in London, as someone with no experience, you'll probably have to go with a graduate scheme--mostly at tech companies and banks. But when you apply, you'll be barraged first by c…

> All of this machinery to filter out candidates

That's because most of the people that graduate with a CS degree can't code and, what is worse, can't be taught how to code.

As an employer, it is also very expensive and time consuming to hire someone like that, since you're not just wasting money by paying someone who's non-productive, but you're also wasting the productive time of the team (or whoever is in charge of mentoring you) in a potentially fruitless attempt to teach you how to code.

Unless you have work experience, there's no quick way to tell if you'll be able to learn or not. Faced with that problem, a lot of big companies just throw all the cognitive tests they can find at you and hope for the best.

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

#376

Post by oblio »

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,…

> 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.

Are you at Facebook? Because local talent doesn't matter as much. It's not like the Dublin or London office relies on local talent. I've had tons of colleagues from Romania move there. And when they get there, there are a ton of folks from India, Ukraine, China, Estonia, whatever, a huge chunk of them freshly arrived from their home countries.

If Facebook would go to Spain and Italy, even in the more expensive cities, salaries would be so huge that they would completely dwarf the higher cost of living compared to the rest of the country. But places like Madrid or Lisbon would still be cheaper than for example, London. And with definitely better weather :-)

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

#377

Post by jonny_eh »

LegitShady wrote: post #232
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…

All the qualified Canadians move to the USA for USA incomes. Canada is going to be an immigration station for people companies want to bring in but can't get US visas for. Its already a thing.

> All the qualified Canadians move to the USA for USA incomes

This is patently untrue. See how well Shopify is doing in Canada.

> Canada is going to be an immigration station for people companies want to bring in but can't get US visas for. Its already a thing.

This is true though!

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

#378

Post by laurencerowe »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #327
darkwizard42 wrote: post #272

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…

Is more tax really being paid or is it simply that freelancers become responsible for paying employer payroll taxes?

In the US both employees and employers pay social security contributions. Going freelance here means you must pay both of these, double the amount an employee would see withheld from their paycheck. But it's not an extra tax. The government is still getting the same amount of money in total.

As a freelancer you need to set your rates appropriately to account for the payroll tax, PTO, etc. that would be paid if you were an FTE.

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

#379

Post by saratogacx »

twox2 wrote: post #166
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #161

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…

On the topic of diploma - I get the sense this is not exactly true for FAANG

I've worked at both Amazon and Microsoft. I'm not even an HS graduate. I worked my way in through contract gigs until I was able to get an FTE role. After the first one, moving to another place was no big deal. I was asked about it by HR only to make sure their records were correct and never heard of it again.

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

#380

Post by sethammons »

the_only_law wrote: post #242
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…

> 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.

my company seems to honor it pretty well. Last year, I took 7wks not counting company holidays. Half that this year (it was harder as I was spinning up in a new role).
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