Comment by rich_sasha | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rich_sasha | Hacker News Reader

I wonder what this will do to the US developer salary premium. You could, for reasons I never entirely understood, make so much more money doing the same job in the US than anywhere else. And I don't mean comparing to India or China, but comparable CoL countries in e.g. Europe.

Sure, US is more productive, has bigger tech companies, attracts talent, and not least, their hectocorns are truly making the world a better place with their CRUD apps and REST APIs.

But at these levels of imbalance, already a long time ago I would have expected US companies to move a lot of their software engineering efforts to Europe or India or elsewhere, and it just wasn't happening, despite SE being one of the most remote-able jobs ever.

But now, the trickle of expat workers into the US appears to be drying up, apparently Americans are leaving too. There will be more and more pressure for these companies to hire abroad even for non-monetary reasons (as is already happening) and I fear for my fellow American HNians that they will like paying a fraction of the cost for the same job.

> make so much more money doing the same job in the US than anywhere else.

Unless you are comparing with top-paying faang employers, the difference is not as stark I think.

Once you deduct the higher cost of every day things, medical expenses, education fees, and other social safety net stuff that you typically get for free in EU, and compound that with a weak dollar, you'll see that the typical EU salary is probably not all that bad. Otherwise, as you say, companies would have outsourced to EU rather than India for example.

There's also a non-zero number of Canadian engineers in the US. No visa required, just a job acceptance letter for TN status at the border. Minimal language or cultural barrier and educated at competitive colleges. Those workers are going to take their US salaries and experience back to Canada if the US continues to alienate its neighbors. Canada is also building a lot more connections with nations that the US is shunning, like China.

Might be time for a new Blackberry.

> You could, for reasons I never entirely understood, make so much more money doing the same job in the US than anywhere else. [...] e.g. Europe.

It really, really depends. First, not every SE works at top companies, and even there the salary can vary much. Second, in Europe you can often choose your contract type - if you choose a permanent role, you surely earn less, but at the same time enjoy the level of social security your counterparts at FAANG can dream of. If you choose to be a contractor, the median will still be lower than in the US, but not that lower.

I imagine because the other jobs all around SE isn't as outsourcable. Designs and PM in particular. At some point the timezone pain is not worth the cost savings.

What exactly about design and project management isnt outsourceable if your devs are already outsourced?

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