Why the disparity? Especially with Canada - no language barrier and no time zone differences. Why doesn’t the free market equalize Canadian dev wages with American ones?
This is not speculation, it is what multiple Canadians I've tried to poach have told me: they don't want to move to a country where one medical emergency can put them in 6 figures of debt
Not that our health care system is going that well these days but true.
Also being called a freaking non-resident "alien" is so demeaning, sorry I am human.
I am convinced that the WFH movement is responsible for the recent offshoring trend.
Before 2020, it was fairly uncommon to work remotely and most employees were expected to physically come to the office. You would relocate if you got a job in another state, and employers had to go through a painful visa process to access foreign workers or set up expensive international satellite offices.
The great WFH experiment kicked off by the pandemic concluded that no productivity was lost, so many employers realized that they did not actually need to hire domestically at all. Everyone can be remote and work from wherever. LCOL in the US is still extravagant compared to many other regions, so a top engineer can now be hired for pennies on the dollar. I think there's a very good chance that tech salaries in the US have begun to and will continue to equalize with the rest of the world as a result.
I definitely agree with this. In addition to WFH, consumer-grade Zoom/Meet/etc. got good enough right around the pandemic (just before really) where it made off shoring really feasible. I've especially seen an explosion of offshoring to Latin American and Eastern Europe. The time zones make things much more workable than, say, India or China.
That will change once legislation gets passed requiring remote workers who are not located in the same country to need to go through the work visa process. The outsourcers are shooting themselves in the foot. Once the law drops and they cannot bring over the cheap remote labor due to visa limits, they will end up with skeleton crew teams that cannot maintain the spaghetti systems that are being built.
The better question is why doesn't the free market lower Silicon Valley pay to be comparable to the rest of the world. SV is the outlier. Even other forms of engineering don't pay compensation anywhere near what SV software devs get.
FactKnower69|1 year ago
Sytten|1 year ago
extragood|1 year ago
Before 2020, it was fairly uncommon to work remotely and most employees were expected to physically come to the office. You would relocate if you got a job in another state, and employers had to go through a painful visa process to access foreign workers or set up expensive international satellite offices.
The great WFH experiment kicked off by the pandemic concluded that no productivity was lost, so many employers realized that they did not actually need to hire domestically at all. Everyone can be remote and work from wherever. LCOL in the US is still extravagant compared to many other regions, so a top engineer can now be hired for pennies on the dollar. I think there's a very good chance that tech salaries in the US have begun to and will continue to equalize with the rest of the world as a result.
hn_throwaway_99|1 year ago
wait_a_minute|1 year ago
keeptrying|1 year ago
Also it took the risk off the CEO plate that remote might fail. Further the market is rewarding them for it now.
jahewson|1 year ago
PeterisP|1 year ago
adastra22|1 year ago
hn_throwaway_99|1 year ago