388 karma · joined January 26, 2020
Some founders, and engineers, have those sort of fantasy that they can hire with way lower wages or something like 1/3 of the cost for equally qualified engineers. Wrong, immigration isn't that hard, even easier for Canada, it will take time, but people might be willing to gave up 25% or even 30% of their salary to live in a place that's of lower cost, where their family reside, but they are not going to gave up 2/3 of their salary, when they could have immigrated fairly easily. The cheapest and easiest way is probably to attend a shitty school and graduate, the only cost is time.
The only impact I see is it's now way easier for smaller companies to hire and operate a team globally, even for 3-5 people, previously it was reserved for major corps and giant consultancies.
People sometimes tend to ignore that people create value for the company, not the other way around.
Also just as a side note, many countries in this world have company-paid salary tax (somewhat similar to FICA, but are paid at a much higher percentage in some places). This often gets ignored in salary comparison.
Meanwhile in China, inflation is less than 1.5%, interest for money market fund is 2.4%.
You earn risk-free 0.9% if you hold them in CNY. You lose 7% if you hold them in USD.
Your choice now?
Those accounts are still annoymous to both parties in transaction, not to the central bank. I would say it's much more annoymous than a traditional account, a credit card or debit card, but probably not as annoymous as cash.
Also, it's naturally fee-free, you don't pay ridiculous account maintenance or transaction fee.
China arguable has better protection when it comes to mandatory severence pay and most workers don't work by the hours, or depend on the tips to survive. On the other hand, China don't have hyper-active unions, overtime limits are not strictly enforced. However, I remember reading a piece about a janitor in San Francisco who worked so many hours he's getting paid more than a regular programmer. So when it comes to that, regulations can't do much when someone's determined to get that overtime .
The core thing is, however, a lot more Chinese workers are willing to work that overtime and get that extra pay without complains, and the cost of living is simply way lower.
For an outsider, $15 per hour in the bay may seem high, but even if you work the full hours, you can save very little after housing and food. However, those workers in China are housed, fed, and they get to save all that they get.