Capitalism incentivizes the lowest cost implementation to maximize margin. This isn't surprising through that lens.
Folks,if you're smart, keep you AI usage secret and use it to reclaim time for yourself by completing your objectives early. The only reward for a job well done is more work.
this is a problem. Hiring and career paths are completely non-existent for tech people. Most will not get a cost of living increase, and the only way to actually increase their pay is to update their resume and spend months trying to find another position. I dont' know if you've noticed, but our job market blows right now.
They may have bought us off for a decade or so, giving us benefits that rivaled unionized positions. But over the last 20 years, that "bargain" has slowly eroded and now the unionized shops are the only ones getting benefits for the employees.
Capitalism being what it is, each company MUST pursue the lowest costs and highest margin. Without collective bargaining, a single worker has no power against the whims and desires of board members, to whom you are just a rounding error.
"If hard work were good for you, the rich would have it all to themselves."
I'm pro union. I'm just saying I've worked with a lot of people with Director in their title that I know don't do any actual work other than balance a budget or shuffle shit around in spreadsheets once every couple months. I've been at my new job almost a year now, and I can't believe what people are getting away with. Obviously not everywhere is like this, but it's not my first job where the rest of the company is completely clueless as to how little the IT dept actually does day to day.
I see - I absolutely agree with your assessment that the Directors may not be contributing any actual value at this point. I would love to see more servant leadership, and perhaps have management be an elected position instead of one that seems to be reserved for a certain Class of person.
Yeah that would be great. There's a bachelor's degree requirement for all management positions. Even if you've been there 20 years, you can never be "one of them". Pretty crazy imo. They passed up people with multi decade experience in the company for someone completely new because they had a bachelor's. That blows my mind.
I wish i was part of a union that could strike in solidarity. Wishing them the best and hoping my colleagues see how effective this is. Under late stage capitalism, wages are going to keep dropping and rent is going to keep climbing: The only solution is direct collective action. Talk unions, talk mutual aid, talk about working together.
IT workers need to produce unionization and collective bargaining materials the way we produce open source software. For example, Atlassian has some materials regarding "Incident Management" that are easy for an organization to implement and expand upon. It's going to require effort from the employees themselves to get engaged in an environment that is extremely hostile towards labor organization.
Everyone in here talking about "why would they offer US pay to Non-US workers", that is exactly the point. You should be insulted that your employer is looking to depressed markets to further depress YOUR value and YOUR wages. The solution, of course, is solidarity with these new workers: If they're doing the same work as you, they should be making the same pay. This encourages the employer to play fair.
The cost of living around the world is highly variable. Just in the U.S. you can find an order of magnitude difference, and as such the pay scales are very different per location. Why would we expect a universal wage?
My only point is, if your boss asks you to train someone, offshore, to do your job, you can slow that roll by making the offshore savings non-existent. It is a historical fact that economic borders and immigration are used to control the labor market. Offshoring labor is the modern practice and the effect is the same.
In the spirit of conversation, i would ask you to consider Bob and Alice, two allegorical characters living on different sides of the same town, doing the same job. Bob has a $1M mortgage in an affluent suburb, and Alice has a more modest domicile in a "working class" part of town. Shall we pay Bob more because his cost of living is higher? Redrawing the boundaries from city to state to country doesn't change the crux of the argument.
Should all remote employees have their compensation reduced accordingly to the pay scale of the location they submit work from, then?
If a Google engineer with a $300k comp in Mountain View decides to work for a month from Nairobi, should their wage be reduced 3,200% for that duration?
The appropriate wage should be a reflection of the remote location's market rate, since that is a decisive business advantage in using human resources in nations with diverse standards of living.
Let's put it another way, one would expect an increase in salary should a Kenyan technology company seek to hire resources from San Francisco instead of hiring locally.
I believe that this model is ultimately beneficial to both parties - the employer gets to enjoy cheaper labour, with the additional bonus of corporate cultural enrichment, while the employees receive a competitive salary as well as gaining necessary skills to get a better life.
Some may claim thst this is an act of exploitation, but I see it as an effect of globalisation. Without the reduced wages, there's a good chance at those workers may never had the opportunity to upskill and learn, leading to a stagnancy in the remote nation's technical prowess.
The distortion (and reality of exploitation) occurs in the value created by employees. Skill is a resource, and they deserve to set the price on it, collectively if they choose.
When their compensation is only a small fraction of the value they create, is their obligation to themselves, their families, neighbors, and governments not to extract the best possible deal? Or is the unfairness of their wage only set so low to subsidize the salaries of highly compensated employees?
The challenges of globalized workforces are not only written from the wealthiest's perspectives. Otherwise, how would Google defend itself from the accusation that they only come to Kenya to take advantage of its minerals and relative poverty?
Doesn't that boil down to "it's the way it is because it's the way it is"? Seems a bit... circular.
The question is why a Kenyan in Kenya is worth less than an American in Mountain View for the same work if it is not dependent on their location? What's happening to all of that excess value that's not being returned to them?
If all of Google's employees in Kenya emigrated to the US, what would happen? What happens when global mobility is not exploited in returning fair compensation to workers?
Not circular at all. Cost of living varies per location based on a wide variety of factors. Where's the circle?
A Kenyan in Mountain View would be paid the same as an American in Mountain View, much like an American in Kenya is paid the same as a Kenyan in Kenya. Similarly, an American in Mountain View makes more than American in Alabama. If they didn't, then the market isn't pricing in cost of living which would be a complete failure of market dynamics. People demand a certain wage because of the price of food, housing, etc, and that cost of living is so universal for a geography that all prospective employees will need the same minimums which drives the price of labor. When you don't have the same basic needs across a population, then those who are willing to work for less will get the position at a lower pay.
If all of Kenyan Google employees emigrated to the US, I'd expect their pay to go up.
Your notion of exploitation strikes me as unaware of world wide standards, and is actively counter-productive. If I'm in Indonesia I can find great fried chicken for $1-3 in a 'luxury' mall. I cannot do that in SF. If American companies pay locals abroad 10x the average pay, you end up causing bubbles that drive up the prices for everyone because some people are now able to move markets. This is why housing is so expensive in SF - there's enough wealth that the market can just keep upping its price and the demand will bear it.
The entire idea of 'fair' compensation is relative and not universal. The world itself isn't uniform, there is no single currency (which is a good thing), and projecting a uniformity on it suggests a dominant mindset. Who get to set the 'fair' prices? If Huawei pays their employees in China half or less of Google employees in Mountain View, does that mean Huawei should also pay the same Chinese wages to those they employ in Mountain View? Is that 'fair'?
That's just describing the current practice of market pricing, not explaining why Mountain View comp is higher than Alabama or elsewhere (ie- why comp is not actually a function of COL + base pay).
Given two people performing the same work that Google derives the same value from, if that value is not dependent on either person's location, then how does Google justify the differential in pay?
Unless they're just pre-assigning a universal value of worth to geographic areas, then what's the logic for their compensation at all? If they reduced overall salaries or moved locations, wouldn't it counter the very situation you described - a la expensive chicken? Wouldn't it be more efficient move to Alabama where not only their expenses would be lower, but their employees'? Why not split Google into entities across the nation to balance comp and uplift more areas?
If your logic were true, it wouldn't make any sense to hire people who lived in "expensive" areas. Because we know that's not what they're doing, it could be interpreted that Google is still taking advantage of largely manufactured inequality, even domestically.
Google does work through Alphabet-adjacent sub-corps that are only legally 'not-Google' that do work exclusively for Google. Several exist in my area, and they pay no more competitively than any other company for the same roles. Talking with their engineers, they're largely just happy that their H1B was approved and that they're not working for Amazon.
>that Google derives the same value from, if that value is not dependent on either person's location, then how does Google justify the differential in pay?
Because the pay is independent from the value the person is generating. It is just the amount someone is willing to accept to take the job. The amount Google pays is based off what other employers are able to offer people living in the area. They gather market data of offers made by the other employers and themselves and then choose a range that they are willing to pay hoping that paying an upper percentile will attract top talent.
>Why not only higher from LCOL areas
The two main factors are that Google wants to hire top talent and they want to have people come in to their offices which may recide in a HCOL area. For why not to split up the offices I imagine there are due to some underlying network effects with having coworkers be at the same location and partner companies being a short ways away.
> A large problem with metrics is that they have a tendency of becoming a goal of their own.
I read this in Project to Product:
"As companies get larger and more complex, there’s a tendency to manage to proxies. This comes in many shapes and sizes, and it’s dangerous, subtle, and very Day 2.
A common example is process as proxy. Good process serves you so you can serve customers. But if you’re not watchful, the process can become the thing. This can happen very easily in large organizations. The process becomes the proxy for the result you want. You stop looking at outcomes and just make sure you’re doing the process right." --Jeff Bezos
"It is possible, after a while, to develop certain dangerous habits of thought. One is that, while all important enterprises need careful organization, it is the organization that needs organizing, rather than the enterprise."
- Terry Pratchett, from Thief of Time (2001)
Ah yes, the cargo cult of productivity - if i'm in the office, i'm producing value.
I think about this quote from Bezos in 2017 a lot, which is quoted in Mik Kersten's Project to Product:
"As companies get larger and more complex, there’s a tendency to manage to proxies. This comes in many shapes and sizes, and it’s dangerous, subtle, and very Day 2.
A common example is process as proxy. Good process serves you so you can serve customers. But if you’re not watchful, the process can become the thing. This can happen very easily in large organizations. The process becomes the proxy for the result you want. You stop looking at outcomes and just make sure you’re doing the process right."
Recently I've been reading some docs on productivity, inspired by a comment on HN. There are some solid findings - don't work too many hours, put your team in a single office so they can directly chat to each other as and when needed, avoid external interruptions from outside that office, etc.
It seems that a lot of the findings of improving productivity in-person may also imply that remote work drops productivity. For example, being at home with a bunch of other people in your house might dramatically increase the possibility of external interruption to the team.
A discussion between two people in an office might be lower-friction and also instantly bring in other team mates to help if relevant - whilst that might lower individual productivity, the team as a whole is more productive. And this is not just speculation rather looking at existing studies and applying their conclusions to remote.
Speculation from me: there's also the matter of lost communication through coffee and lunch breaks. Building that mutual understanding between individuals and about the system surely increases productivity.
I think there's a big assumption on HN that individual productivity correlates with team and company productivity, and so if you get more "stuff" done wfh then it must be best. But that clearly isn't true from the experiments we've already done.
Folks,if you're smart, keep you AI usage secret and use it to reclaim time for yourself by completing your objectives early. The only reward for a job well done is more work.
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