Maybe the salaries are down and there is higher competitiveness between candidates because people are able to work remotely from low cost of living countries? I'd be happy to take fully remote staff eng/tech lead for 140k USD, because in my country I can make half of it for the same position
Maybe on a small scale but I dont think this is the case. A lot of roles are US only even if they are remote. Hiring out side the US when your exec team and related are all US based isn't as easy as just doing it. Language is hard to deal with. There are also issues with taxes following employment for where the hiring is being done that I dont think a lot of companies are going to put with. Companies can also be conservative about security, not everyone is going to want to have their data in a third world country. Also it seems like europe is cracking down on things you can get away with in the US
> Hiring out side the US when your exec team and related are all US based isn't as easy as just doing it. Language is hard to deal with
People talk about this, but really, U.S. companies can very easily hire from Canada, either through an employer of record (like Remote or Deel) or a PEO if they have several Canadian employees. They can also hire contractors and due to trade agreements don't have to deal with taxes at all (U.S. clients are even exempt from paying GST/HST that a Canadian contractor would typically have to charge otherwise). There are no more time zone issues than hiring remote U.S. and there's only a slightly higher chance of a language barrier (since Canada has a higher proportion of immigrants)
I wouldn't be surprised if this is affecting the U.S. market (and might be the only saving grace of the Canadian market which nonetheless is in dire straits right now).
Other than companies dealing with national security though, I don't see why US remote only would be a thing
* states have different payroll and VAT taxes, and internationally it could get very different and messy
* NDAs, non-competes, and things like single-party consent for recording will vary by state and country. California, for example, basically banned non-competes, or else has to offer a lot of considerations to make them effective, but that ain't the case if you're in NYC, London, or Samarkand.
* data storage, data-in-transit, data-at-rest and logging rules may be different
* compliance rules like GDPR, CCPA, SOX, and PCI-DSS may have restrictions or not fly for one-off remote workers
* then there are the very real security challenges, like geofencing IPs, getting 2FA to work with international numbers, making sure you're not MITM'd, or that US / Chinese / European / etc. border security won't scan your laptop as you enter or exit. My last job at a F500 had very strict protocols for travel to China, Russia, and the Middle East -- and for credible reasons.
Meanwhile "remote in N. Carolina", even if 100% remote 45 min away, sidesteps a lot of those challenges.
