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Comment by 0x445442 | Hacker News Reader

Sadly I expect Big Tech is looking at remote work for the wrong reason, mainly labor cost arbitrage. I say sadly because I think Big Tech could do a lot of social good in an ever increasing divided America by making a concerted effort to employ remote workers from diverse geographic regions within America.

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But those two seem equivalent to me. A software engineer in Toledo has a competitive advantage over an equally skilled software engineer the Bay Area because they are able to work at a lower wage without materially sacrificing their quality of life. So by looking to reduce labor costs by hiring more remote engineers in Toledo, Bay Area companies are effectively working to reduce income polarization and spreading the economic benefits of the US tech sector to more Americans.

Don't follow. How does income get less polarized? Toledo Engineers working remotely but at Toledo pay, are not ahead. I guess they have a larger market for their skills? But that could lower rates thru competition.

Yes, the idea is to push some of that wealth away from the coasts.

Since more companies are hiring engineers in Toledo, competition is higher and pay should rise as well. More importantly I think, good engineers in Toledo don't have to leave Toledo to find gainful employment so they stay and the general economy in Toledo should be stronger.

The money those Toledo Engineers make is spent on Toledo things, not Bay Area things. Therefore, Toledo local economy benefits.

Sure money gets spread around. But I was talking about income. Remote hiring still often asks about 'where are you going to live' so they can claim its ok to pay you less there. That's the issue.

Why not hire even cheaper, outside of America?

Issues: language, time zone, currency, network delays, culture and custom, accountability. To name a few.

They can and do, but issues of time zone alignment and language/cultural barriers make it more enticing to hire American engineers. When I was starting my career in the early 2000s it felt like everyone just assumed that outsourcing would eviscerate the US-base job market for software engineers but it seems like it went in the complete opposite direction. I'm sure lots of academic work tries to explain exactly why but my subjective view is just that the outsourcing model doesn't really work that well for modern product development methodologies.

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