
No Gitlab, That’s Not How Remote Works - sinanata
https://workremote.us/no-gitlab-thats-not-how-remote-works/
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notkaiho
> "where people are paid for how good they are – not where they happen to
> live. In cloud/remote work – location is irrelevant – so we need to get out
> of the habit of setting wages locally."

How delightfully techno-optimistic and short-sighted.

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sinanata
Why do you think it's short-sighted? Can you tell me one good reason for not
going global with remote work?

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notkaiho
What's your baseline for setting said wages? San Francisco, with its famously
unreasonable rent to income ratio? Or should we set it to a global average?

"Remote work" is available to a vanishingly thin section of population, even
those working in programming/software development/whatever.

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sinanata
Short answer: Pay-rate should be decided based on actual skills, not zip code.

Long answer: I'm looking at it from a different perspective, why people have
to live in SF? The cloud-wages concept is mostly applicable for knowledge
workers, I agree, and it's a limitation. Pay-rates should be decided based on
objective test results and skills. I strongly object to the "vanishingly thin"
part. For setting the average, I think market dynamics will do its job and
find a range that is lower than insane SF rates but still super attractive for
people who happened to live outside of the US and capable of getting the job
done.

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notkaiho
So what should be the basis for setting that wage? Someone earning $100,000
per annum would be in the top 0.01% of people in, say, Poland. In Vietnam, add
a few zeros. In Finland, top 1%, and that's a developed Northern European
country.

What does an influx of super-rich tech remotes settling in, I don't know,
Thailand do to the local economy?

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sinanata
This is happening as we speak, in the past couple of years, I've visited
Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Egypt, Brazil, and Turkey for meeting with senior
software engineers primarily.

In Ukraine for example, knowledge workers working remotely for US and Western
European companies are actually one of the highest-earning social groups. Same
for Egypt, Brazil, Russia, and Turkey. Local economies are benefiting from the
USD flow and more importantly, the knowledge/experience flow.

I genuinely believe that there's no such thing as "engineers/designers/etc
from X country is better than Y". There are only skilled individuals and the
competition for hiring them will be brutal in the next 5 years.

Five years ago, it was almost impossible to find a great software engineer
from emerging markets for a remote position. They were literally asking "are
you guys some sort of Nigerian scam?" People started to believe that working
remotely is actually possible and paying much better than their shitty local
average.

I must say, I really enjoy your smart questions, thanks for the great convo
buddy.

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notkaiho
Thanks, you too.

My worry comes from the asymmetric nature of the flow of currency on a
population level, leading to (further) inequality. That's the gist of my
problem. Not to say that we should be paying peanuts for workers in poorer
countries, mind. We absolutely should be paying the value of the work done,
but the truth is, purchasing power is different in different countries.

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sinanata
Agreed and when you pay them better, in time, more and more highly skilled
individuals from these markets are going to join your remote organizations. I
think it's a healthy and fair competition.

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mister_hn
Actually I would expect also that companies with HQ in San Francisco pay SF
wages also when they have offices in Europe/Asia/Africa as well.

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sinanata
I agree. Transparent cloud wages based on skills is the solution.

