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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

#491

Post by bitL »

simonh wrote: post #276
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.

Are there a big enough talent pool of highly skilled and experienced developers in Italy or Spain? It’s a chicken and egg problem, you need to go where there’s already a market for these skills.

I know a lot of devs that would move to Barcelona in an instant but also know plenty of devs that hate London and don't want to move there despite a FB offer. Never understood why FB from all possibilities picked London - maybe British want to move there, but the rest of EU not.

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

#492

Post by selimthegrim »

bluedino wrote: post #182
kelnos wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet there's still no shortage of developer jobs in the US. In any case, did EDS succeed? I had forgotten about them until your mention. Just because they offshored to India, it doesn't mean it worked and their business is flourishing. I think the model has changed, at any rate. Companies like EDS are mostly obsolete. Sure, professional/technical services companies are still around in the form of IBM and their ilk…

>> Companies like EDS are mostly obsolete. How so? They were bought and sold a few times and sort of exist as DXC right now. They claim to have 134,000 employees, I get approached by their recruiters a couple times a year.

They are insourcing to places like Louisiana

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

#493

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

wins32767 wrote: post #309
echelon wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it will make the US more powerful economically and make its tech companies more dominant. Which is exactly what it will do. Why wouldn't other nations react accordingly? What power does the US have to stop this? 1) Other nations increasingly have a large supply of high-skill talent. 2) Other nations will use capital and subsidies to launch their own tech firms employing their own workers. There are startup accelera…

Engineers alone don't make a great tech company. Because there is a global engineering shortage but not a global sales, marketing, product management, UX, etc. shortage all of the knowledge on how to do those functions effectively won't spread as quickly (if at all) and will have to be learned locally.

> global sales, marketing, product management, UX, etc. shortage

FAANG have already spent years building up these capacities in Europe. Sales in particular is incredibly local (as one might expect).

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

#494

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

oblio wrote: post #485
rad_gruchalski wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d love to hear about those US based companies paying EU based ICs $200k / year and for the respective position to not be a beyond-senior-contributor thing (so maybe 0.0001% of jobs out there).

Switzerland, London, Dublin, Amsterdam, Munich, Luxembourg FAANG.

Without stock appreciation, I don't see that in Dublin.

Like, a friend recently got a FAANG offer for senior IC, which netted out at about 150k total compensation, which is far off from 200k.

You'd be looking at Staff (or years of stock appreciation) to hit 200k TC, which is a lot lower than one would expect in the US.

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

#495

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

Animats wrote: post #295
simonh wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

facebook is hiring 10,000 developers in the EU to build the Metaverse. https://www.reuters.com/technology/facebook-plans-hire-10000... My daughter is looking to go into software engineering and I was explaining to her that most of the high paying jobs are in the US and there's a big brain drain out of Europe (we're Brits). Not to dissuade her, but that she might consider that as an option on graduation. I was specula…

Probably mostly censors. Roblox has about 4000 censors, outsourced to low-wage countries.

> Probably mostly censors.

Facebook already have greater than 10k contractors in Europe for content moderation work.

The announcement is specifically about engineering roles (including DS, PM, UX etc).

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

#496

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

bitL wrote: post #491
simonh wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there a big enough talent pool of highly skilled and experienced developers in Italy or Spain? It’s a chicken and egg problem, you need to go where there’s already a market for these skills.

I know a lot of devs that would move to Barcelona in an instant but also know plenty of devs that hate London and don't want to move there despite a FB offer. Never understood why FB from all possibilities picked London - maybe British want to move there, but the rest of EU not.

Because Google picked London, and they were in a phase of poaching from Google. They're still there because of path dependence.

Also because London is the only European city which everyone in the US has definitely heard of ;)

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

#497

Post by dataexporter »

If the US keeps its skilled immigration H1B process so complicated and painful with lots of unpredictability and randomness for its potential immigrants - it is definitely going to lose the attraction that it had on tech workers.

I have personally seen hundreds of FANG rockstar engineers leave the country to Canada and Australia where their immigration processes are easier and provide an easier path to citizenship instead of keeping them as indentured slaves for an indefinite period.

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

#498

Post by sethammons »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #442
sethammons wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

curious, did you then add medical insurance in? My understanding is that at the highest marginal rates, the two countries are similar, but then you consider that those in the US are also paying additional health insurance premiums.

The people in the US making enough money to pay top marginal rates are not paying for health insurance in any meaningful way. It is paid for by the company as a benefit and very high quality. Even if that wasn’t the case, if you are paying those kinds of tax rates then the cost of the very best insurance is essentially inconsequential relative to your income. An experienced software engineer might take home, after ta…

I'll take your numbers at face value though they seem high to me as take home pay. So $15k/mo at around 35% taxes, and let's skip marginal rate, as that will round numbers in favor of health insurance being negligible. So total pay around $240k/yr. I spend $600/mo or around $7k/yr on health insurance. 7/240 ~= 3%.

So even for a very well paid software engineer, health insurance could effectively push you up 3% as your effective tax rate. Plus all the headaches that go with it.

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

#499

Post by rad_gruchalski »

oblio wrote: post #485
rad_gruchalski wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d love to hear about those US based companies paying EU based ICs $200k / year and for the respective position to not be a beyond-senior-contributor thing (so maybe 0.0001% of jobs out there).

Switzerland, London, Dublin, Amsterdam, Munich, Luxembourg FAANG.

At $200k+ for individual contributor? But it is probably effectively 0.0001% of the jobs across the EU zone.

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

#500

Post by rad_gruchalski »

wyclif wrote: post #477
jjevanoorschot wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Don't get cocky. In Europe you literally can't get a job paying 200.000€ per year as an individual contributor, except for US companies You can find these jobs in London. And there are plenty of examples of this in Amsterdam as well [1]. But the point is that in Europe you don't need to make as much as you'd have to make in the US to have the same or a higher quality of life. If maximising your total compensation i…

I don't think that's necessarily true in terms of QOL. Some European cities are very expensive to live in when you factor in taxes, like Zurich, or real estate, like London. Other places in the US, especially outside of San Francisco, NYC, Chicago, Seattle, LA, &c. are quite economical to live in if you're making the standard US-scale engineer salary and working remote from somewhere less urban (or let's just say les…

> Some European cities are very expensive to live in when you factor in taxes, like Zurich, or real estate, like London.

Yes, but we have generally better public transport in EU so it's easier to live farther away.

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