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Remote-first work is taking over the rich world – research hints at why

economist.com

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Re: Remote-first work is taking over the rich world – research hints at why

#191

Post by Ekaros »

silisili wrote: post #58
tjr225 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you worked with someone in Bangalore? No offense my Bangalore homies, but I’ve only had bad experiences. Same with Bulgaria. Weird communication issues and bad work. This was especially the case in customer facing work. Ive had better experience with people in the NL but still obvious communication issues, bad experiences with Australia and Asia. For better or for worse(I think worse) engineering culture is heav…

In my experience, you get what you pay for there. The problem is, most companies who offshore are being cheapskates, and go bottom barrel. Then we Americans who work with them are thinking 'wow, people from country X are terrible programmers.' But not universally true. Amazing talent exists in India for example, but they command much higher prices.

Why don't they compare to work from cheapest almost finished boot camp graduates doing freelancing work in USA... And then extend that performance to describe your average USA based developer...

Re: Remote-first work is taking over the rich world – research hints at why

#192

Post by elevenoh »

extr wrote: post #17

I always see a lot of hemming and hawing in these threads but it's impossible to underscore just what a HUGE boon remote work is for people who don't want to or can't live in Tier 1 cities like SF or NYC. My career has taken on an entirely new trajectory. Prior to the pandemic I worked at two different companies over 6 years. Since the start of the pandemic I've changed jobs 3 times and my TC has almost tripled. Ther…

'Tier' 1 by what metric?

Re: Remote-first work is taking over the rich world – research hints at why

#193

Post by taneq »

gizmo686 wrote: post #182
lend000 wrote: post #169

Not mentioned enough on this topic: not all engineers are software engineers and not all software engineers never need to touch hardware. If you plan to work on/with web frameworks, advertisements, data science, or pure CS topics for your whole career, then there's probably no excuse to force you to come into the office 5 days a week. But good luck doing that as a software engineer at a company like SpaceX, Tesla, In…

As a software engineer who just spent the past week in an airgapped lab debugging hardware issues, I can still do most of my work from home. 90% of the software I write works just fine in an emulator. We don't even have nearly enough hardware to give every engineer access.

Yep. I do control systems for 20+ tonne hydraulic robot arms (among other things). 90% of the work I don’t have to catch a plane for can be done at home.

Re: Remote-first work is taking over the rich world – research hints at why

#195

Post by dkjaudyeqooe »

oleg_antonyan wrote: post #148
jodrellblank wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> " [0] Huge salaries to them being a high-five figure salary. " CheckSalary.co.uk puts the average salary for "a programmer" in the UK at £43K, Reed.co.uk says £41k, Glassdoor says £35K, Payscale says £31K... maybe devs here should upskill in English? https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/Salaries/programmer-salary-SRCH_...

Russian remote programmer here. The language is a small part, cultural difference is the most painful one. Americans never give direct negative feedback and expect this from you, for example. Many US companies hire only people from US and pay them more b/c cultural and timezone difference is another hidden cost and not every company wants to pay it - they rather pay 200k more in $. But personally for me that's fine,…

You should look at a job with a Dutch company, they're very direct for the most part.

Re: Remote-first work is taking over the rich world – research hints at why

#197

Post by kodah »

01100011 wrote: post #161
outside1234 wrote: post #73

We’ve been through this multiple times and each time we discover how important communication is in software engineering. I don’t doubt that some people will be remote - but the ones that get ahead will be local - and that will draw people back.

Did the developers of the Linux kernel need to share the same physical space on a continuous basis? I think open source software is a testament the the idea that software does not require physical collaboration most of the time.

The Linux kernel also doesn't reorganize itself every year, where most companies find this to be a requirement.

Re: Remote-first work is taking over the rich world – research hints at why

#198

Post by nootropicat »

nigrioid wrote: post #171

You guys are missing it. This leads straight to outsourcing.

Yes. There's no room for current American dev salaries in a world where remote-first jobs are a norm.

Sure there are timezone differences, but EST is doable for Europe. 08:00 EST = 13:00 UTC, so working 8h in EST means 13:00-15:00 -> 21:00-23:00 in European timezones. Some people may even prefer it. Europe has a larger population of devs that's underutilized because it's dispersed among multiple countries. India is too shifted for America but doable for Europe, so the natural next step is to move work completely into a much larger European-Indian worker pool that can remotely work together.

I don't expect it to happen very fast, first part this decade, second next decade. First part is going to fully equalize dev wages between Europe and America. Second part between Europe and India.

Alternatively I may underestimate the willingness of Indian devs to live a nocturnal lifestyle for a high enough pay. In which case the global equalization of dev wages with India is going to happen during this decade.

Re: Remote-first work is taking over the rich world – research hints at why

#199

Post by SturgeonsLaw »

lend000 wrote: post #169

Not mentioned enough on this topic: not all engineers are software engineers and not all software engineers never need to touch hardware. If you plan to work on/with web frameworks, advertisements, data science, or pure CS topics for your whole career, then there's probably no excuse to force you to come into the office 5 days a week. But good luck doing that as a software engineer at a company like SpaceX, Tesla, In…

> SpaceX, Tesla, Intel, AMD, defense contractors

One of those things is not like the other things (it's the one where you build things that are explicitly designed to kill human beings). Not sure if you were calling that the coolest work, I certainly wouldn't call it that.

Re: Remote-first work is taking over the rich world – research hints at why

#200

Post by linspace »

gizmo686 wrote: post #182
lend000 wrote: post #169

Not mentioned enough on this topic: not all engineers are software engineers and not all software engineers never need to touch hardware. If you plan to work on/with web frameworks, advertisements, data science, or pure CS topics for your whole career, then there's probably no excuse to force you to come into the office 5 days a week. But good luck doing that as a software engineer at a company like SpaceX, Tesla, In…

As a software engineer who just spent the past week in an airgapped lab debugging hardware issues, I can still do most of my work from home. 90% of the software I write works just fine in an emulator. We don't even have nearly enough hardware to give every engineer access.

> 90% of the software I write works just fine in an emulator

As it should be. Investing some effort in my development environment has paid back every time.

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