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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

#61

Post by logosmonkey »

icelancer wrote: post #24
EMM_386 wrote: post #19

Everyone should keep in mind that water seeks its own level. And think of this on a global scale. I've been working remotely for almost a decade as a senior software engineer. Now, post-Covid, almost everyone realizes they can do the same. Salaries are going to drop in the "rich world", and it's not just because people are now fleeing places like SF/SV to lower cost of living areas. We are also beginning to compete g…

>> We are also beginning to compete globally, far more than ever before with the ease of remote work. Qualified engineers can be found for 1/10th of the price with "near shore" companies in the "rich world". Yep. I've said it many times here and basically anywhere I can: Clamoring for remote-only work, maximum-introvert, never fly somewhere, don't value in-person communication/meetings/etc is a dangerous game to be p…

Honestly, I doubt much will be considerably different for most US based companies. In SV firms, maybe, but in corporate America it will be years before they would even consider another run at mass off shoring. Lots of corporations are still dealing with the fall out of the off shore/consultant boom of the early to mid 00s.

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

#62

Post by EMM_386 »

VirusNewbie wrote: post #55
EMM_386 wrote: post #19

Everyone should keep in mind that water seeks its own level. And think of this on a global scale. I've been working remotely for almost a decade as a senior software engineer. Now, post-Covid, almost everyone realizes they can do the same. Salaries are going to drop in the "rich world", and it's not just because people are now fleeing places like SF/SV to lower cost of living areas. We are also beginning to compete g…

I've been hearing this argument for 20 years. I was doing ASP/Perl programming while I was in high school in 2000, and I remember being told that I need to move into management because soon all the jobs would be offshored to India. Then in 2008 when the economy crashed I had one bizdev guy tell me that pretty soon everyone was going to be able to code with these new 'no code apps' and that I was going to be a fossil…

> I think about this sometimes, because while I did have a successful stint as a team lead, now i'm just a senior SWE. Things have turned out pretty well so far. I've only seen salaries go up.

This is different because Covid-19 has shown to everyone that they can do their jobs remotely.

And if they can do their jobs remotely, why can't an equally skilled engineer in a country with a cost of living 1/10th of the "rich countries" do the same?

They are realizing they can, and handing this off.

I too was around in 2000, writing applications in C# beta before 1.0.

Still here but noticing the trends.

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

#63

Post by siquick »

EMM_386 wrote: post #19

Everyone should keep in mind that water seeks its own level. And think of this on a global scale. I've been working remotely for almost a decade as a senior software engineer. Now, post-Covid, almost everyone realizes they can do the same. Salaries are going to drop in the "rich world", and it's not just because people are now fleeing places like SF/SV to lower cost of living areas. We are also beginning to compete g…

This doesn't seem to be the case in Australia. The lack of migrant workers coming into the country has made it incredibly difficult to recruit skilled employees in 'office roles' and the market is insane for pretty much every industry. This sure doesn't reflect companies having an appetite for global employees.

I've spoken to a lot of recruiters over the last year and they're primarily indicating that a hybrid 2 days in the office model is the preference.

Integrating new staff is hard at the best of times, let alone half fully-remote and half hybrid.

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

#64

Post by jtsiskin »

EMM_386 wrote: post #32
icelancer wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> We are also beginning to compete globally, far more than ever before with the ease of remote work. Qualified engineers can be found for 1/10th of the price with "near shore" companies in the "rich world". Yep. I've said it many times here and basically anywhere I can: Clamoring for remote-only work, maximum-introvert, never fly somewhere, don't value in-person communication/meetings/etc is a dangerous game to be p…

> Yep. I've said it many times here and basically anywhere I can: Clamoring for remote-only work, maximum-introvert, never fly somewhere, don't value in-person communication/meetings/etc is a dangerous game to be playing. What's interesting is that I flew in for a meeting with my company recently, the first I've had since I've been hired. This took hours upon hours of my time. Time I could have spent working. We spen…

Some people connect better in person. I felt closer to my team, and more like friends, after having spent a few days with them in person, especially outside of a work setting. If it improves collaboration or retention in any way - maybe subconsciously I’m less pedantic in code review, friendlier in chats, more willing to do extra work to help a colleague, discussing with a team I didn’t normally talk to before, or hesitate a few weeks longer before switching companies - it’s worth it to the company.

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

#65

Post by notadoc »

tjr225 wrote: post #45
notadoc wrote: post #36

Now the developed world will compete with the developing world to lower wages in the developed world. The high salaries and perks for many USA tech jobs may not last much longer. No need for companies to pay more for premium locations / perk offices. No need for companies to deal with the hassle of H1B visas. From a company perspective, why pay someone in the USA $165k/year to work from home in Trendyville when an In…

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…

Similar arguments were made with why factories, tech support, customer service, etc couldn't possibly leave the USA.

And they did anyway.

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

#66

Post by theshadowknows »

ev1 wrote: post #14
taf2 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it’s not just shitty ISPs it’s also pretty bad corporate VPN or “security” features that really just break the internet for home working people… we encounter one network that is like a proxy of sorts… it times out all connections after like 4 minutes- a really shitty feature for voice applications

I absolutely love when the corporate middleboxes make websockets fail, webrtc fail (which is used by virtually all conferencing software), HTTP3 fail, HTTP2 fail, QUIC fail, long lived connections drop automatically

“Yeah so as you can see here on slide thirty-two we’ve outlined a number of tactical steps that we’re planning to take to execute on th”

……………

beep

“Sorry about that so anyway like I was saying…”

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

#67

Post by hodgesrm »

jimbob45 wrote: post #21
EMM_386 wrote: post #19

Everyone should keep in mind that water seeks its own level. And think of this on a global scale. I've been working remotely for almost a decade as a senior software engineer. Now, post-Covid, almost everyone realizes they can do the same. Salaries are going to drop in the "rich world", and it's not just because people are now fleeing places like SF/SV to lower cost of living areas. We are also beginning to compete g…

What is a “near shore” company?

"Near shore" == "Canada"

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

#68

Post by rsj_hn »

notadoc wrote: post #36

Now the developed world will compete with the developing world to lower wages in the developed world. The high salaries and perks for many USA tech jobs may not last much longer. No need for companies to pay more for premium locations / perk offices. No need for companies to deal with the hassle of H1B visas. From a company perspective, why pay someone in the USA $165k/year to work from home in Trendyville when an In…

It's not like outsourcing wasn't possible before. You still have to deal with all the HR issues of hiring someone in a foreign country -- zoom does not change that. You will still need to set up at least a small office there, too.

What it might change for the outsourcing market is reducing office space if people from India can work from home, too. That would allow them to lower costs, just as US firms can lower costs for domestic workers by shedding office space. I'm not sure why those office reductions would be greater in India than in the U.S.

Beyond that, firms have been outsourcing wherever they could for the last twenty years already. Every major tech company has some offices in India already. What's left in the U.S. are those jobs that can't be transferred because productivity is more important than lowering costs. At this point, the differentiator between the 200K job and the 60K job is productivity, not geography.

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

#69

Post by logosmonkey »

redisman wrote: post #56
EMM_386 wrote: post #19

Everyone should keep in mind that water seeks its own level. And think of this on a global scale. I've been working remotely for almost a decade as a senior software engineer. Now, post-Covid, almost everyone realizes they can do the same. Salaries are going to drop in the "rich world", and it's not just because people are now fleeing places like SF/SV to lower cost of living areas. We are also beginning to compete g…

Ok so we’re back to offshoring as a silver bullet. Consider me extremely skeptical having lived through the last offshoring scare. I do think the global best engineers are about to get a big raise though.

Yeah, that's what I am seeing. The talk feels just like it did back then.

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

#70

Post by shp0ngle »

EMM_386 wrote: post #19

Everyone should keep in mind that water seeks its own level. And think of this on a global scale. I've been working remotely for almost a decade as a senior software engineer. Now, post-Covid, almost everyone realizes they can do the same. Salaries are going to drop in the "rich world", and it's not just because people are now fleeing places like SF/SV to lower cost of living areas. We are also beginning to compete g…

It depends.

The rich countries still prefer to hire in rich countries, because of:

* similar timezone/working hours

* similar work culture

* less language barriers

* rich countries still got better skilled workers

* less legislative overhead with employments, payments, firing

* if you get a really good person in third world, he will in the end cost similarly as good person in first world

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