Im based in US, MLE. but it costs a lot of money to employ an SWE in US. furthermore, coding can literally be done anywhere. a buddy of mine working at a startup went and lived in Europe for a few months while working remotely. more than half of my collaboratirs are not in the same State as me. big companies do have a lot of presense outside of US but clearly they still find a lot of value (look at our TCs) to employing engineers here. and before we go down “everyone outside US sucks at coding” rabbit hole... most people suck at things they havent done. looking back at the code i produced 10 years ago, i sucked. coding is a skill that can be picked up. the economics just dont make sense to me. what am i missing?
Talent... no one here gonna move out to india or china to do software engineering and uproot their lives. Americans been innovating for a long time, and with that, talent exists also. Its not just coding, its leadership talent, scientific talent, mathematical talent, and managing talent.
Companies with a lot of money follow where the talent’s at. They settle in the Bay Area/Seattle so they can poach engineers from other nearby companies. It’s the same reason why competitors in other fields set up shop next to other competitors and it’s also what drives up the salary.
The SWE job involves a lot more than coding to be effective. It helps a lot to be physically with the team and the stakeholders and even customers when possible. But for the jobs that truly only need coding, those are outside the US often.
So like SWEs on the product team benefit from being able to have a real life conversation with PM or PMM? Than makes a lot of sense. Should that also be a reason not to geo-disperse within a product in the US or hire remote employees?
You will get the answer to that in a year my friend. If bernie wins and taxes the hell out of corps your jaw will drop on how quickly these giants reduce their us presence.
Russia’s tax rates on business is 12%, US is much higher. Say Bernie adds 10% (and President Trump reduces tax burden by say 5%), net corps are paying 5% more than under President Obama. Is 20 vs 25% difference with Russia really where the camel’s back breaks? (Substitute Russia for a while number of countries with strong foundations in mathematics)
Bernie will repeal the trump tax act and then enact a tax for the corporation. So its more like a 15% hit
I think culture plays an important role. When people have the same or similar cultural background communication and values are similar, resulting in greater efficiency at work.
@sik... completely uncalled for and not productive as hominem attack. @pd... but US is the great melting pot. I think an eng team working in China or Romania will actually be a lot closer to the “same or similar culture” than my team alone in US
To stay close to business, to avoid time zone differences and work wierd hours. Just being able to reach someone in person/chat saves lot of times and moves things faster
I think there are two main reasons. I might be generalizing a bit, but I think historically tech companies have been able to make more money in the US than elsewhere. Per capita consumer spend on tech is likely still higher for most tech products (software/hardware) in the US. Thus a lot of new companies consider the US as their primary market when starting out. This meant that companies would want to colocate staff with their market. Increasing competition brings more people seeking higher compensation and this is probably a self reinforcing cycle now. Think about this: If you were to start a SaaS product for enterprise customers, where is your market and where would you rather hire your employees from? Not to say it wouldn't be possible to do this from any country in the world (now) but its a lesser risk to have presence here in the US.
My question for you - Why shouldn’t they ? Where did software inventions happen ? In US or Europe or Asia ? Where do you think they will happen next ? There’s your answer
I buy the historic argument but I think the innovation will happen next where ever we work on software, no? Concentration is of course important too so point taken.
Your blind spot still persists. Innovation happens with quality and not quantity