
Why we built our core engineering team outside of the SF Bay Area - abreckle
https://medium.com/p/7fadb6cfdc7e
======
jdlshore
I was hoping for a thoughtful article about a US company's experiences with
offshore development.

What I got was a very thinly veiled advertisement and business case for Bridge
Academy. Originally I thought it was an offshore staffing firm, but having
looked at their site I can't tell what it's supposed to be.

I _think_ it's an offshore staffing firm that's ashamed of admitting it's an
offshore staffing firm, with the twist that the candidates pay, once hired,
rather than the hiring companies. In exchange, they get some sort of
nebulously defined training and mentoring for an undefined price. Oh, and the
mentors get a commission when candidates are placed.

Top it off with a blockchain-focused curriculum and a list of blockchain-
obsessed hiring companies and it all feels... naïve, I guess would be the
right word. Young. Enthusiastic.

~~~
jjeaff
Of all the different projects to outsource for, something block chain related,
specifically crypto coin related would be the very last.

~~~
azemda
Why?

~~~
jjeaff
Because is someone sneaks in a backdoor or otherwise tries to make off with a
bunch of crypto, good luck extraditing an overseas worker to get the money
back. You have to trust your employees, but at least it's a little more
difficult to skip out on justice when you are in the same country as your
employees.

------
ratling
I wouldn't build greenfield in India (I've had to deal with the quality coming
out of there on numerous occasions) but I also wouldn't build greenfield in
SanFran.

It's less the cost to me and more the turnover. I as a worker have every
incentive to take a position in SanFran to get to SanFran and get established
(outside of the money). I also then have every incentive to leave as soon as
possible for one of the Big 5 since it's gold on my resume (even if I don't
stay there more than a year or two).

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rangersanger
Come to Salt Lake City. We even have absurd branding to lure you "silicon
slopes!"

There are a few SF organizations with satellite offices here. I've worked for
one, have friends working for others. It's a pretty decent arrangement. You
can get a team setup here for the cost of a single employee in the bay
(especially when you factor in real estate.) Hell, maybe more. Shit, some of
us will take pay cuts to avoid working for the Domo's of the Provo Valley.
Don't have to deal with time zone issues, and when shit hits the fan it's an
hour and a half flight. I've flown to SF and back, same day multiple times.

~~~
crushcrashcrush
Many, many people can't stand the influence LDS has on culture, alcohol,
nightlife, sexuality, dating, etc. It's huge there.

~~~
crushcrashcrush
Also, no one talks about it but the smog is absolutely out of control.

~~~
phaedryx
I live a bit south, so not so bad here, but a fair point. Wintertime + smog is
a real bummer.

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rvivek
We have a distributed team in India & Silicon Valley. The market in India has
changed dramatically from what’s being portrayed here. A strong VP, engg
candidate is about $200k, a new grad is at least $30k and it rises rapidly as
you get more senior. There are stock options on top of this.

Why is this happening? (a) Lot of companies are opening up offices in India
and willing to pay higher to set up the team quickly; (b) The VC finding
scenario is as crazy as it exists in Silicon Valley. SoftBank is a global firm
:)

It’s not as straightforward to build a 10x engineering team in India. Sure,
it’s probably cheaper than Bay Area but you need to consider the overall cost
of communication, speed of process, especially for a startup.

------
balls187
If you're an engineer in India with skills that mirror those of American
engineers, why would you settle for a significantly lower pay?

The best Indian engineers I've worked with all made their way over to the US
OR knew how much they were worth and set their rates SLIGHTLY below US
salaries.

~~~
paxy
Top Indian talent did go to the US by default, but that peaked ~10 years ago.
Nowadays there is enough opportunity in India - and the US immigration process
is bad enough - that most people I know just don't bother. The visa backlog is
almost entirely made up of the tech equivalent of minimum wage workers, all
sponsored by Infosys/TCS and other consulting firms.

And the "SLIGHTLY below US salaries" part is an exaggeration. Top talent in
India is still _at most_ a third of the high-end Silicon Valley rate.

~~~
scrumbledober
most of America is significantly below the high-end of Silicon Valley rate.

~~~
paxy
Yes but the article is about the latter.

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g3rv4
ugh, as a developer from a remote country that’s been working for 10+ years
for US companies I run as fast as possible from companies like this one.

If I provide the same value as US engineers, why should I make less than US
engineers?

Fortunately, I’ve been able to make my case. I hope these Indian engineers
realize they’re making 1/15th what they should.

~~~
zavi
Salaries are determined by supply & demand, not by how engineers feel, what
they "realize", or what they create in terms of value.

~~~
g3rv4
at a macro level? sure. At a micro level, had I been convinced that my pay was
fair (it was enough to cover my needs and save) and not asked for more, I’d be
making upwork money.

------
Technologix
Can't agree more. Hiring in Silicon Valley for early-stage startups now is
impossible. Total Compensation numbers for software engineering is
skyrocketing and you'll never be able to compete with FAANG companies. Sad
reality but expected.

~~~
toomuchtodo
It's sad if you're a founder or a VC, but not sad if you're an engineer.
"Total Compensation numbers for software engineering is skyrocketing" is a
very good thing for the folks who grind every day.

~~~
abreckle
Not necessarily true, i know entry level engineers earning well above $100k in
the Bay Area who are barely getting by because they are paying $5-$6/mo in
rent alone which is post-tax.

~~~
futureastronaut
Unless these entry level engineers have families, there's no good reason to be
paying $5-6k a month for rent, you can easily find a decent place of your own
for under $4k, even $3k if you're patient.

~~~
organsnyder
As someone living in the Midwest, those numbers are mind-boggling.

~~~
izzydata
My 1200sqft 2 bedroom townhouse in the suburbs of Kansas City costs me $800 a
month. My families 6 bedroom 5 bathroom 3 story behemoth with a pool cost
$4000 a month. The thought of paying $6000 a month for what they offer you in
the Bay is depressing.

------
fmajid
By all means build a team outside the Bay Area, there's plenty of talent
elsewhere but the assumption you will get the same talent in India for
specialized disciplines like machine learning (as opposed to generic web dev
or other commoditized skills) shows this company was built by hucksters with
no idea about technology, and not a little contempt for engineers.

------
Alexbouaziz1
"For each engineer that we hired in the Bay Area, we could have hired 10–15
outside of it. Everyone has heard of 10x engineers, but what they don't tell
you is that the Bay Area doesn't have a monopoly on them." This really
surprised me, thought it was a big gap, but not this big

~~~
sokoloff
To be clear, this is SFBay Area vs India, not SFBA vs Midwest. We have
excellent engineers in India (and other locations in the world); it's not
nearly as easy or quick to build high-performing teams in India, but it's
absolutely doable.

~~~
leesec
There are excellent engineers in the Midwest too.

~~~
nostrademons
But the salary differential between top engineer in the Bay Area vs. top
engineer in the Midwest is more like 2-3x than 10-15x.

~~~
pageandrew
OK, it's not 2-3x. Especially if we're talking salary.

 __Salary __for a top individual contributor engineer in the Bay Area (full
stack), outside of specific skillsets like ML /AI, will top out around $200k.

Midwest, someone with the same skillset would probably make $125-150k.

~~~
opportune
this is not true for TC at all, case in point see levels.fyi. $200k is
basically one level above a new grad at some of the higher paying, well known
companies

~~~
pageandrew
I was referring to salary.

I'm looking at Levels.fyi and at Google you only start to break $200k salary
at L6 (Staff Engineer).

------
languagehacker
This is a pretty disingenuous comparison, but a great way to advertise your
business. I'm sure everyone involved will gets exactly what they pay for.

------
spac
This article made me think immediately of the mythical month man. From my
rather uninformed perspective - I never tried hiring in India - it would be
very hard to actually screen and select well, while quantity alone is not
necessarily a good thing.

Edit: fixed punctuation

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doctorpangloss
>But who will build this Bridge? With Blah Academy, we have formalized our
blah for blah blah blah

Of course, when you hire an engineer in the Bay Area, it's practical to avoid
the fucking middleman.

------
freeopinion
I'd take a 60% pay cut to not work in SFBA.

Maybe there are 10x-calibre folks in SFBA. But they cost 5-20x.

Some companies have recognized that 5x-calibre employees at 1-2x payscale is
better than 5-10x-calibre employees at 5-20x payscale. They offer better
standard of living outside SFBA.

------
himynameisdom
This is the core theme behind why Drive Capital threw down roots in Columbus,
Ohio. The talent is there, and they're beginning to see the fruits of their
patient investment.

------
thorwasdfasdf
I remember back in the 2000s there was a huge fear of work being outsourced to
India. It makes sense: since you can get engineers for 10 times less cost. But
these fears never really materialized. there was still so much hiring in the
bay area for the last 20 years.

Certainly low-margin businesses that need to compete will be hiring in India.
That's probably why you don't see many web development body shops in the bay
area. But, for monopoly businesses like google or facebook, the cost of labor
doesn't really matter much for them.

------
PopeDotNinja
_After struggling to hire top-notch engineers in the bay area as salaries
started to spiral beyond reason, we decided to conduct a radical experiment in
trying to train overseas developer talent on our tech stack before hiring
them._

TL;DR -- They have rebranded unpaid internships.

~~~
opportune
Even worse, they did for people likely much poorer than the average unpaid
intern in the US and the main value proposition was probably them dangling
visas

