By the same process, you can also hire a 15 year of experience software engineer from europe or south america for 80k a year, and doing it as a contractor would also mean no payroll taxes.
In the remote game, people living in the US have a formidable economic foe.
But there is a reason why companies haven't done this massively before, both for international remote and US remote. Very few companies pre-Covid were fully remote, and it might just stay that way.
How many software engineers with 15 years of experience, perfect English, strong up-to-date skills, and ability to work seamlessly with an American team, do you think exist in South America or Europe (very different timezone)?
If it was so easy to reduce payroll cost (the biggest cost in the budget of all tech companies) then it would have been done years ago, COVID or no COVID.
B2B customers generally have it spelled into the contracts that engineers outside of the US may not access customer data. The value of an engineer who can remediate a customer problem end-to-end for a thousand $500K ARR contracts is far greater than saving $200K/year on salary.
In the remote game, people living in the US have a formidable economic foe.
But there is a reason why companies haven't done this massively before, both for international remote and US remote. Very few companies pre-Covid were fully remote, and it might just stay that way.