Except:<p>- 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.<p>- no country have the volume of hi-level coding gig job offers the US has.<p>- few countries even have has many interesting projects. If you want to code in Haskell or Lisp in Europe, good luck.<p>- the USA don't care about your diploma, only what you can do. You will be limited in opportunities and earnings depending of your background in many countries.<p>- talent attract talent. It's better to work with companies already full of good devs, the colleagues are coolers, the projects are more interesting and the infra will be better. Inertia is in favor of the USA.<p>So no, it will break no monopoly. If anything, it will make it easier to work FOR the US.
I am sceptical. Reminds me of the predictions 20 years ago that outsourcing/offshoring would eliminate hands-on developer jobs in US/UK and other "expensive" countries.<p>Timezones, language factors, cultural factors, retention and exclusivity challenges plus basic logistics stuff like payroll and taxes all matter a lot. None of that's insurmountable but it takes a level of effort that can be very high.<p>And I say this as someone who quite likes working remotely.<p>I just don't see it disrupting the world in the extreme way it is sometimes portrayed.
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 a lightning pace.<p>The US doesn't really have a monopoly on global talent, we just pay the most for it wherever and whenever we can get a hold of it. We import talent at huge rates and we act as an education and training center for the world.<p>One thing I've seen with remote work is that wages have gone up. All of a sudden, developers that were making $60k in some sleepy town are getting hired by huge software companies for sometimes two to three times as much and they are still making less than their in-office counterparts.
No no no no. Let's go down the list, shall we. Remember, COVID or not, remote work trend accelerating or not, things have not changed as much as they seem:<p>* People STILL want to migrate to the US and it will remain one of the top choices. People move her for economic/job opportunities, sure, but that's not all.<p>* Outsourcing (or hiring remote teams in remote offices), as well as setting up remote and international offices has been going on for .... I can't even remember. 100 years? This was already happening and will keep happening.<p>* Timezones are a physical problem and cannot be fixed. Sorry. Remote work or not, people don't want to work at 1 AM so they can talk to another team half-way around the world at 7 AM. This was true yesterday and it will remain true today.<p>* Culture issues will remain. True yesterday. True today.<p>* Language issues will remain. True yesterday. True today.<p>* US will continue to remain a country people WANT to live in and stay in once they are here. Remote work will certainly allow <i>some</i> people to move abroad and continue working because that's something they really want. But the data definitely doesn't suggest some sea change here. True yesterday. Remains largely true today.
I mean, maybe?<p>We had an offshore subsidiary in India. The problems with it were LEGION.<p>1. The key issue was overall quality. I'm sure it's possible to get good code out of an offshore team, but we couldn't. Their contributions to our code base comprise the lion's share of the technical debt we're carrying.<p>2. Time. Working asynchronously is really, really hard, even without any other issues floating around. I wouldn't want to work async with the best devs I've ever known, let alone a "regular" dev.<p>3. Culture. Local cultural differences can KILL developmental communication. If the local customs discourage saying "no, I don't understand" or "no, we can't do it that way" or whatever, then you end up with bad code and a worse product even if you get anything at all out of it. (I have my biases here, but I'm trying to frame this as a mismatch of expectations and not, as some might, an example one way being Good and the other Bad.)<p>I <i>might</i> be willing to work with proven, reliable, highly communicative resources at a 6 hour offset, but a new hire on the other side of the planet working local hours? No way.
In the short term, I think it's going to be a lot harder than this article lets on, but long term, it is abundantly clear: cushy developer jobs in the US are on borrowed time. Salaries may continue to go up for a little while longer, but they <i>will</i> fall to reflect the rest of the world catching up with the US. And that's a scary prospect for those under 35 now. And I don't think there's a way out of it. We embrace remote, but at the cost of demise.
Canadian Company: Our upper bound is 90k American, you get no equity, you have to work Eastern Time Zone
US Company: Our mid bound is 200k American, you get equity, you have to be available +/- 4 hours from the time zone of your core team for 3 days a week.<p>Its not even close. And if we are talking about raising money - just lol. Canadian VCs treat their investment like they are buying into a 200 year old insurance company for a check in the 50k range.<p>Turning around a company / industry culture away from a 1950s factory model is very hard, and its even hard for companies who allegedly want to compete against SV firms.
Ehhh... Have been hearing some variation of this for 20 years. Canada and Singapore already have some tech presence (Singapore is huge for banking), so I don't think those are a particularly bold prediction.<p>I would love for the Caribbean to become a thing but it seems less likely given the issues with governmental stability and severe weather.<p>Just observing the companies I've worked for, I've also seen it's much easier to get hired for an on-prem job and transition to remote after proving your capabilities than to get hired fully remote from the start (minus the past 18 months). I wouldn't be entirely surprised if the result is many current U.S. residents moving to those destinations, moreso than locals being hired remotely.
I feel like when it comes to remote work the great divider will be 'cost of living' versus attained wages (and not 'talent.') As in: suppose I live in India where the cost of living is low. Due to wage arbitrage I can satisfy my cost of living quite easily by taking on low skilled software contracts. In this position, I am happy to take on the work because it more than covers my basic needs. On the other hand, if I want to take on more skilled work I'll have to specialize.<p>Specialization means spending even more time to learn skills at the expense of earning money. So it costs money to specialise. And in poorer countries where the population is high, the competition for jobs will be high, and the less money there will be left over to invest in specialization. So by virtue of being born in a poorer country one is less well-off when it comes to specialization.<p>The West won't be at risk of 'losing' jobs to remote work because we're not competing for the same jobs. Specialization will set the bar for hiring as it always has done, and the same scarce pool of talent will have to be used to fill these jobs. There will be a greater number of choices for specialized engineers to fill-- and it will mean more local jobs get filled by a more diverse pool of candidates. Looking at just local jobs would seem to imply that we're worse off, but not when you compare the number of new jobs that will be open to qualified engineers as a whole.
I don't believe the US has a monopoly on talent.<p>The US has a monopoly on being able to go to market.<p>US corporations are extremely efficient getting funds, putting that capital to work, and deliver a product people want to buy.<p>Historically they got that advantage because (among other factors) their internal market is HUGE, and successful US products were also appealing in other countries.<p>As I said there are other factors as well (regulations, overseas taxation, and exports to name a few).
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.<p>Also, the comparation should take into consideration PPP.<p>$300 000 pre-taxes in US is not 3x $100 000 after-taxes in EU. Especially if you adjust for other factors.
If anything, remote can <i>strengthen</i> US's monopoly on global talent in the short-term.<p>The friction for US companies to attract global talent is now even lower. Now you don't even need to apply for an H1B visa to be physically in the US to work for a US company.<p>However, since the talent is not physically based in the US, this can be a great thing for countries everywhere in the long-run. GDPs are created remotely for countries around the world, and the knowledge these global talent gain by working with US companies will be dispersed around the world.<p>Hundreds of ecosystems will bloom around the world, leveling the playing field.<p>This is a great thing.
From my personal experience I think that the most challenging factor with outsourcing is in fact the time zone.<p>Being situated in Germany I see many webdev jobs being outsourced about 1 hour to the east and about all the way down to South Africa and Mauritius („Cyber Island”).<p>This are the projects that work like normal. Then of course the vast majority is outsourced to contractors in India or China – but frankly communication in these projects has always been a bummer.<p>But then again, it's just my own bubble and probably depends heavily on the type of work and the frequency of communication involved.
I'm earning 6 figures in central Europe working remotely for the Americans. Local corporations can't match that let alone beat it. I'm cheaper than U.S. resources, yet a lot more experienced and productive. I'm happy and the employer is really, really happy. If anything remote work solidified US strong hold on IT talent, not broke it.
I personally find it strange how gleeful lots of US developers have been about remote work. It means our US salaries are going to be untenable and we'll be paid like the rest of the world. Why pay a Silicon Valley salary when it's remote anyway and 1/4 the price to get someone from elsewhere?
I don't buy it, US tech salaries continue to skyrocket and we're nearly two years into pandemic conditions.<p>Just over the last 6-9 months, salaries have markedly jumped.<p>There's still a huge thirst for talent that isn't being quenched, and global pools don't help either.<p>Facebook, Google and others have satellite offices all over to soak up talent elsewhere, but they're still ultra competitive in the US.<p>They can pay a senior engineer $350k in the US, or an equivalent experience senior engineer $100k in Europe. There is no shift occurring though. They're still hiring like crazy everywhere.<p>There's no place like the US for tech workers. Nowhere even comes close, even on a CoL-adjusted basis. European developers get screwed. South American developers get screwed. Asian developers get screwed. US developers don't get screwed.
As a developer working in Europe, I would love to work for an American company and make 30 to 50% more. But, it's difficult:<p>- I don't really want to adapt myself to their timezone. Perhaps 1 or 2 or hours of shift from my tz, but not more<p>- I don't want to work as a contractor. I want to be an employee<p>- I want at least 28 business days of vacation per year<p>- I do 9 to 5. No more, no less. I'm not in my 20s anymore<p>Because of the reasons above I don't even care looking for remote positions in American companies (which are scarce already).
All you need to do is work with a remote or offsite team once to disabuse you of this idea. It is extremely hard to make remote work...work. Also, cost savings are often negated by having to set up parallel structures in X or Y country. Suddenly your cheaper dev costs are being eaten by legal, finance and HR.
The author focuses on physical presence in a country, but as she points out, immigrants flocked to the US because it's an economic powerhouse. This will not change, and for all intents and purposes the talent will still be in the US, since their work will be in the US. If anything, it will make it even stronger, since most of the interesting things in e.g. tech are done there, and there is now less of a barrier to get the talent. Big fish will eat the small fish, you can see this clearly in e.g. the EU, where "talent" from smaller poorer countries goes to richer countries massively, since there are effectively no borders or barriers.<p>So they might not be there physically, but this is not really a big concern if you're a US company. It might be different for the country as a whole though.
I've seen what it requires for an individual to be in a country other than the USA and the US-based company not wanting to treat them as an employee due to the paperwork. That generally means they need to be an independent contractor so individual needs to set up a company in their own country and deal with all the issues associated with that and the tax implications. Most smaller companies won't deal with foreign employees and leave it all up to the individual, if those companies are will to do it as all.
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.<p>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.
I find this a bit far fetched, with as many problems as the USA has it still has a solid reputation as a place you can come and make a new life with low corruption, a justice system, free speech, affordability, and on the local/state level a government/bureaucracy that still works.<p>Same goes for Germany and countries that provide a high quality of life for their people.<p>I understand the idea, but there is a reason people want to leave places that are "broken".
I don't know if this is possible considering many of the big SV companies demand their talent to be on-site. Even Amazon which has become a cornerstone of cloud hosting is basically stuck with on-site/office attendance policies. So, I really don't see remote work being the silver bullet to kill the on-site/office beast. It'll be a generational change and not simply a change due to one pandemic.
Much ado about nothing. Developer jobs have been able to be outsourced and work remote for a couple of decades. If it was going to go that way it would have long ago. The rest of the world might be catching up to the remote work game but software development has been there, done that. If anything we've already experienced a pullback where outsourced developer jobs have been pulled back when they experienced the problems with it.
I see the opposite happening. Strong currency and remote work further aggravates brain drain. 2 years of COVID has already impacted terribly the tech startup ecosystem in Brazil. Well, at least in terms of talent. At least, VC money is even more abundant now if you're raising in dollars.
It's happening on Brazil I think. It's very hard to hire for brazilian companies since people can earn an extraordinary salary by working remote. Our timezone is also pretty close to the US east coast, and still not that far from SV.
This is a bit off topic, but wrt working for an US company - US programming salaries are weird - it used to be a decade ago, that programming salaries were roughly in line with other domains in engineering, while most places required a STEM degree as well, meaning both engineering and CS employed roughly the same talent pool at similar wages. Imo, this estimation still holds in the rest of the world, but CS salaries in the US have skyrocketed, while companies opened up to the idea of hiring any enterprising leetcoder.
There’s two directions to it. I’ve read crowing articles via HN about how it opens the US up to hiring from the world, it also opens up the world to hiring from the rest of the world and from the US.<p>It’s not just “outsourcing” that’s gone remote, it’s key players and teams. That’s a big difference from earlier waves.<p>The ability to pay and live appropriately will be the chief determinator. US companies might pay better on average, but we may start seeing larger and brighter sparks elsewhere in the world.
"illigal online workers" is going to become a term. Why hire a junior in the U.S. for 80K when you can hire a Junior in India for 15K? There isn't some magic difference. Programming is a universal language, the only difference in who can program and who can't is funding of education. We are doing very, very poorly on education funding in the U.S., with only the top uni's with impossible tuiton costs providing anything of value.
I'd love to believe this is true, but time differences between East/West Coast US alone makes collaboration incredibly tedious.<p>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.<p>Global time differences within teams are really just a massive headache and a non-starter for most organizations.
Remote work come with sinchronization and communication costs, international remote work even more so.<p>it's not a given that an entirely remote workforce is more cost effective than a partial remote workforce - outsourcing has been there for decades after all, and it hasn't been an existential threat to local jobs - remote worker lack the middleman costs but also the organizational support and work structure.
The software development job market doesn't even encompass large parts of the <i>US</i> labor market, such as women, black and brown minorities, and poor communities. It's not suddenly going to open to the entire world.<p>The education system and opportunities in the latter create very little chance that those kids will grow up to work for Google. I've had CS teachers in the magnet schools - these classes should be the top CS high school students in the district - ask me to donate old broken computers to work on. When the pandemic started and home schooling became a need, I read that some poor districts discovered that 50% of their students lacked a computer at home - their only Internet connection was via phone. I've had employers tell me that (a few) kids didn't know how to use a full-sized keyboard. Think how far that is from becoming a developer; think of the vision required and the obstacles they would have to overcome.<p>You need more than an Internet connection to have an opportunity to become a software developer, or for any job.<p>(Writing that makes me think: A development environment designed for beginning developers using phones might give some of these people one piece of the puzzle. Vim isn't so great on a phone.)
I am from Nepal and I have seen that US companies who can see this is the future of work are getting the best deals. They are paying decent money by US standard to Nepali top 1% developers for whom its a very good salary and getting an enormous return in result.
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.<p>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.
Remote work favors efficient performers on their own to-do lists.
In the short term, it will can be super productive<p>Remote work does not work when part of the job is helping others, learning from others. Figuring out things.
I have been hiring from overseas for a while; great talent at awesome rates. As a CS student in the USA, I would assume I am competing against the rest of the world right now.
But other countries don’t want to pay.<p>EU, for instance, might be paying even less than developing countries (but mostly due to social charges, which may not apply to overseas workers?).
It's hard to take this seriously when it doesn't acknowledge that remote work is nothing new, or that people have been making this prediction for decades.
It wont, US tech companies are making money hand over fist - they want more people to make them more money, they don’t need slower communication for less money.
People underestimate the overhead and difficulties that make companies reluctant to hire in different countries.<p>Companies don't even really want to deal with different employment regulations and tax policies across different US states.
Not if we keep attracting it by being a desirable place to live (at least relative to others). The "American Century" was largely built on brain drain from totalitarian regimes like Nazi Germany and the USSR.<p>If China threatens Taiwan it would be idiotic if the USA did not offer open work visas and fast path citizenship for any Taiwanese refugees that want to leave. This would be the best non-military option for dealing with that, and would help us benefit from brain drain.
Other than the classic issues like time zones etc. there are some weird rules and regulations regarding worker insurance. A buddy of mine used to get into flak for being outside the US for too long even though he was in sales and always exceeded his quotas. This was the case all before Covid and apparently the rules have still not changed for them.