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Genuine question: How do people on HN reconcile the idea that tech salaries are suppressed with advocating for remote work and opening employment to the global

Genuine question: How do people on HN reconcile the idea that tech salaries are suppressed with advocating for remote work and opening employment to the global market where employees are often paid much much less than in the US?

AnthonyMouse 2y ago
Remote work and offshore work aren't inherently the same thing. If you're a company with offices in New York City and San Francisco and you hire someone in San Diego or Rochester, you're still dealing with the laws of the same states and federal government. Even someone in Massachusetts or Texas is probably not a big deal. But if you want to hire someone in Poland or Korea, do you even know what their laws are? How much do lawyers cost there, and are they any good? Is the government adversarial, or could it become adversarial? Do they discriminate against foreign employers? Employees there are probably going to want to be paid in a different currency; are you interested in dealing with issues if the value of that currency changes? International banking rules? If the cheapest hires are in seven different countries, do you want to go through all this seven different times? The team you're managing now sees daylight in the part of the day when you're asleep, is that going to be any trouble? Are you ready to deal with reports being poorly written because their native language is different than yours? The reasons companies are willing to pay more to avoid dealing with all of this have very little to do with whether you work in an office or in your house which is in the same jurisdiction and hemisphere as the office.
- suslik 2y ago
  All these issues (except, perhaps, the need to switch to asynchronous way of working due to time zones) are these days solved by specialized services for a flat, and not too high, fee; honestly, if there’s a will to hire internationally, there is a way.
  - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
    How is a third party service going to solve language barriers or prevent a random foreign government from having or passing new laws that cause problems for you?
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]

AnthonyMouse 2y ago

Remote work and offshore work aren't inherently the same thing. If you're a company with offices in New York City and San Francisco and you hire someone in San Diego or Rochester, you're still dealing with the laws of the same states and federal government. Even someone in Massachusetts or Texas is probably not a big deal. But if you want to hire someone in Poland or Korea, do you even know what their laws are? How much do lawyers cost there, and are they any good? Is the government adversarial, or could it become adversarial? Do they discriminate against foreign employers? Employees there are probably going to want to be paid in a different currency; are you interested in dealing with issues if the value of that currency changes? International banking rules? If the cheapest hires are in seven different countries, do you want to go through all this seven different times? The team you're managing now sees daylight in the part of the day when you're asleep, is that going to be any trouble? Are you ready to deal with reports being poorly written because their native language is different than yours? The reasons companies are willing to pay more to avoid dealing with all of this have very little to do with whether you work in an office or in your house which is in the same jurisdiction and hemisphere as the office.

suslik 2y ago
All these issues (except, perhaps, the need to switch to asynchronous way of working due to time zones) are these days solved by specialized services for a flat, and not too high, fee; honestly, if there’s a will to hire internationally, there is a way.
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago
  How is a third party service going to solve language barriers or prevent a random foreign government from having or passing new laws that cause problems for you?
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]