Honest question. How many people who can get jobs at SV companies are still sitting in crappy towns in the US? I'm sure there are some, but I'm not sure there as many as people think.
The world wide developer pool is certainly a bigger issue, but that's been around a long time. Remote is only part (and I would argue a small part) of the reason that outsourcing isn't used more often.
I think what we'll see is the super low salary areas rise and the super high areas come down a bit. I don't think it's about to 'get bad' for anyone with the skillset to work at a SV company though. In fact, it's more likely about to get much better for everyone else. I've already seen salaries in my locale go up since local companies are now competing with nearby big cities companies who are now comfortable with remote workers.
> How many people who can get jobs at SV companies are still sitting in crappy towns in the US?
The entire ModCloth Pittsburgh team, for example?
If you see some of the talks by the former ModCloth CTO, he points out that the Pittsburgh team was better and cheaper than the Silicon Valley team by a good margin. Part of that was the fact that the Pittsburgh team had more experience that the Silly Valley team because they didn't jump ship every three years. Part of that was the fact that the Silicon Valley FAANGs absorbed the actually good programmers so what you were hiring in Silicon Valley was the mediocre second tier who thought they were first tier and you had to pay them first tier salaries.
And don't underestimate the number of people who don't want to move. At least 1/3 of my college graduating class didn't want to leave Pittsburgh.
Yeah, when I worked for a FAANG, I was often asked to move to the US, which never worked for me because of family/lifestyle commitments. Even if I do say so myself, I was a lot better than the equivalent US team, simply because we hired less in Europe and paid much better, resulting in a higher quality of candidates.
Now, at a relatively less competent company overall, the difference between the quality of the US employees and the European ones in the same position is much larger (and not in a good for the US kind of way).
Like, almost none of my current colleagues based in SF would have passed a FAANG loop, but they get paid 2x to 3x what I do.
I don't mind, as I like where I live and I get a really good salary for my area, but if I could take one of the now remote FAANG jobs and get an SV salary (even SV-20%) I would do so in a heartbeat.
It's gonna be interesting times ahead for sure, and I'm definitely glad that I don't have any investments in California property.
I have an avg salary for my area but extremely flexible schedule, I work when I want.
However, I am seeing more and more remote friendly options that will double my salary and I don't think my employer is capable of matching that but it is business and I would be dumb not to take advantage of it at some point soon.
The world wide developer pool is certainly a bigger issue, but that's been around a long time. Remote is only part (and I would argue a small part) of the reason that outsourcing isn't used more often.
I think what we'll see is the super low salary areas rise and the super high areas come down a bit. I don't think it's about to 'get bad' for anyone with the skillset to work at a SV company though. In fact, it's more likely about to get much better for everyone else. I've already seen salaries in my locale go up since local companies are now competing with nearby big cities companies who are now comfortable with remote workers.