The British Are Coming for Your White-Collar Job • Hacker News Board

Re: The British Are Coming for Your White-Collar Job

#21

Post by Rinzler89 » Thu, Apr 04, 2024, 12:05 PM UTC

callamdelaney wrote: post #5

Yes outsourcing to the UK where the average salary is ~$37,000 is I'm sure highly cost effective for US firms. Where we'd reach to say India for cheap labour the US now comes to us. I've seen US Interns get paid more than the vast majority of brits. Even the average dev salary is only say, double that average. Not even accounting for taxes - which supposedly cover healthcare but almost none you can readily access.

>Even the average dev salary is only say, double that average.

Dev salary being double the average national salary is very good by western EU salaries. In Austria for example as a dev you earn just slightly above the national average income.

I think only in the US and cheap countries like Poland, Romania, SE-Asia, etc it's normal for devs to earn several times the average national income because they're hot markets for tech outsourcing and average national wages are on the low side for those not working in tech making the gap really big, but in western Europe dev wages tend to be around national wages out side of big-tech.

Re: The British Are Coming for Your White-Collar Job

#22

Post by NullPrefix » Thu, Apr 04, 2024, 12:08 PM UTC

resolutebat wrote: post #19

rob74 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"hire B-2-B", a.k.a. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_self-employment ?

No, you contract with another business to employ them on your behalf. Legal, common, and much more flexible.

mandatory legal benefits like generous sick and parental leave still apply

Re: The British Are Coming for Your White-Collar Job

#23

Post by Rinzler89 » Thu, Apr 04, 2024, 12:12 PM UTC

rob74 wrote: post #14

Rinzler89 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This is why Israel, India, and parts of Eastern Europe like Romania, Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine became popular for software outsourcing. Not sure about the rest but it's definitely not easy to fire in Romania at all, and workers there get a lot of mandatory legal benefits like generous sick and parental leave. Unless you hire them B-2-B, which is quite common for high wage outsourcing jobs, then yeah.

"hire B-2-B", a.k.a. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_self-employment ?

No, you set up your own legal entity(company) based on the financial/legal framework in your country, and bill your foreign employer for the work you do, but you're not an employee so you have no right to sick days, firing protection, etc. and have to do your own taxes.

Re: The British Are Coming for Your White-Collar Job

#24

Post by seanhunter » Thu, Apr 04, 2024, 12:13 PM UTC

Rinzler89 wrote: post #18

seanhunter wrote: post #9

As someone who lives in the UK it's pretty depressing that we somehow seem to have succeeded in mismanaging ourselves into being a low-wage economy. The 20% or so depreciation in the pound as a result of brexit, and the subsequent futher devaluation as a result of the chaos of Boris -> Liz Truss -> Rishi Sunak definitely played a part in making the UK relatively attractive for firms from the US say, but there are als…

>As someone who lives in the UK it's pretty depressing that we somehow seem to have succeeded in mismanaging ourselves into being a low-wage economy. Not sure where you got this from but the UK is far away from a low-wage economy. I once met a British engineer in a bar here in Austria and he was handing over industrial automation activates for relocation of a auto assembly from the UK to Austria, citing the much lowe…

I got that from TFA where it quotes people like Jamie Dimon saying that JPMC is one of the largest employers in Scotland now because wages are so much lower than they would be for comparable employees in the US.

Re: The British Are Coming for Your White-Collar Job

#25

Post by schnitzelstoat » Thu, Apr 04, 2024, 12:15 PM UTC

lmpdev wrote: post #20

seanhunter wrote: post #9

As someone who lives in the UK it's pretty depressing that we somehow seem to have succeeded in mismanaging ourselves into being a low-wage economy. The 20% or so depreciation in the pound as a result of brexit, and the subsequent futher devaluation as a result of the chaos of Boris -> Liz Truss -> Rishi Sunak definitely played a part in making the UK relatively attractive for firms from the US say, but there are als…

Wasn’t that all set in motion by Thatcher? Especially the deteriorating economic situation for the entirety of the UK outside of London?

In 2007 it was decent.

I feel like we got hit hard by the 2008 crisis and never really recovered. Not just the UK either but most of Europe too.

Back then the USA felt a little bit wealthier, now it feels light-years ahead.

Re: The British Are Coming for Your White-Collar Job

#26

Post by Rinzler89 » Thu, Apr 04, 2024, 12:15 PM UTC

seanhunter wrote: post #24

Rinzler89 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>As someone who lives in the UK it's pretty depressing that we somehow seem to have succeeded in mismanaging ourselves into being a low-wage economy. Not sure where you got this from but the UK is far away from a low-wage economy. I once met a British engineer in a bar here in Austria and he was handing over industrial automation activates for relocation of a auto assembly from the UK to Austria, citing the much lowe…

I got that from TFA where it quotes people like Jamie Dimon saying that JPMC is one of the largest employers in Scotland now because wages are so much lower than they would be for comparable employees in the US.

Well, if you cherry-pick to compare UK only to US, then yeah it's lower wages, but the US is the global outlier here, not the UK.

Almost any other country in the EU mainland(barring maybe Switzerland and Norway) is low wage compared to US.

If you do a more realistic comparison, like UK to EU, wages are not low at all.

Re: The British Are Coming for Your White-Collar Job

#27

Post by returningfory2 » Thu, Apr 04, 2024, 12:16 PM UTC

alephnerd wrote: post #6

Kinda related, but why the heck are all third-party recruiters British? Every single third-party recruiting agency seems to be British

I’ve wondered this too. One theory I have is that in the UK doing an undergraduate degree is a humanities subject has much higher social status than the US. This leads more of the “top” high school students to do these degrees. When they graduate they obviously need a job and recruiting works week due to needing good language and soft skills. Maybe a bs theory though :)

Re: The British Are Coming for Your White-Collar Job

#28

Post by rayiner » Thu, Apr 04, 2024, 12:16 PM UTC

seanhunter wrote: post #9

As someone who lives in the UK it's pretty depressing that we somehow seem to have succeeded in mismanaging ourselves into being a low-wage economy. The 20% or so depreciation in the pound as a result of brexit, and the subsequent futher devaluation as a result of the chaos of Boris -> Liz Truss -> Rishi Sunak definitely played a part in making the UK relatively attractive for firms from the US say, but there are als…

What’s Brexit got to do with anything? If you look at a graph of the devaluation of the pound, it’s a pretty linear decline from 2014 onward. That was two years before the referendum.

The UK actually seems to be stuck in more or less the same malaise that’s hit Italy and France, which is failure to recover from the 2008 crash. If you look at a graph of GDP per capita, all three countries have been totally stagnant on that measure since 2008. It’s similar to the stagnation Japan has experienced since its crash in the mid 1990s.

The US has in theory continued to grow GDP per capita wise, but the growth seems fake. If you take out a handful of global knowledge worker hubs like the Bay Area and NYC, people probably aren’t any better off since then.

Re: The British Are Coming for Your White-Collar Job

#29

Post by lonelyasacloud » Thu, Apr 04, 2024, 12:17 PM UTC

Rinzler89 wrote: post #18

seanhunter wrote: post #9

As someone who lives in the UK it's pretty depressing that we somehow seem to have succeeded in mismanaging ourselves into being a low-wage economy. The 20% or so depreciation in the pound as a result of brexit, and the subsequent futher devaluation as a result of the chaos of Boris -> Liz Truss -> Rishi Sunak definitely played a part in making the UK relatively attractive for firms from the US say, but there are als…

>As someone who lives in the UK it's pretty depressing that we somehow seem to have succeeded in mismanaging ourselves into being a low-wage economy. Not sure where you got this from but the UK is far away from a low-wage economy. I once met a British engineer in a bar here in Austria and he was handing over industrial automation activates for relocation of a auto assembly from the UK to Austria, citing the much lowe…

Unsuitable plant in Oxford, German owners, and the ability to sell cars in Europe post Brexit with fewer hurdles and lower duty likely played a bigger role in that decision.

Re: The British Are Coming for Your White-Collar Job

#30

Post by Rinzler89 » Thu, Apr 04, 2024, 12:17 PM UTC

lonelyasacloud wrote: post #29

Rinzler89 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>As someone who lives in the UK it's pretty depressing that we somehow seem to have succeeded in mismanaging ourselves into being a low-wage economy. Not sure where you got this from but the UK is far away from a low-wage economy. I once met a British engineer in a bar here in Austria and he was handing over industrial automation activates for relocation of a auto assembly from the UK to Austria, citing the much lowe…

Unsuitable plant in Oxford, German owners, and the ability to sell cars in Europe post Brexit with fewer hurdles and lower duty likely played a bigger role in that decision.

That was pre-Brexit though. And the UK plant was JLR afaik, so Indian not German owned.