[bonoboTP]

It bears repeating that if you're a tech worker in the US, your greatest asset is your physical location.

You might think you like remote jobs, but you will have competition from South America, Western and Eastern Europe, etc. as well as people in the US living in flyover states in the middle of nowhere with cheap rent.

If the focus also shifts more to raw input-output task accomplishmentbas opposed to in person social interaction, your cultural capital will also lose value.

There is a vast gulf between the salaries in the US and even Western Europe in tech. Americans seem unaware, but if you insist on remote work, you'll lose that advantage quick. If you think that everyone overseas is simply less intelligent, you'll have a rough awakening.

[phrotoma]

> you will have competition from South America, Western and Eastern Europe

Based on this Canadian's browsing of the average Who's Hiring thread, it seems that a very small fraction of US based remote friendly jobs are open to being filled by foreigners. They do exist, just not many.

You're bang on about competition from domestic candidates in lower cost of living areas though.

[varispeed]

The argument doesn’t hold water. Companies aren’t pushing RTO because they want to pay higher salaries to office-bound staff in expensive metros. If raw “input–output” and cheap labour were the only metric, they’d go fully remote, tap global markets, and slash payroll overnight.

RTO is about control and optics, not cost optimisation. It’s management preference, real estate sunk costs, and the illusion of productivity through visibility. Actual delivery of work is the only thing that matters in tech - and remote delivery has already proven itself at scale.

The idea that “physical location is your greatest asset” is backwards. If that were true, San Francisco developers wouldn’t already be competing with contractors in Bangalore and Bucharest. They are - yet the jobs remain, because employers value capability, not postcode.

In short: RTO doesn’t protect American tech workers from global competition. It just wastes time in traffic and props up bad management.

[bonoboTP]

> If that were true, San Francisco developers wouldn’t already be competing with contractors in Bangalore and Bucharest. They are - yet the jobs remain, because employers value capability, not postcode.

Well, it's not just capability. I know people who had offers at Big Tech, but had to move. There was no option to work from Bucharest or Eastern Europe. You either move to the US or to some other country like UK or Germany. Even if the job is remote. For legal and accounting reasons apparently. I know someone who officially rented a tiny space in rural Germany then secretly worked remotely from Poland, because they needed the official address for paperwork. So there are many artificial hurdles as of now. But the more normalized remote work becomes, the more people will realize these rules don't make sense.

[AnimalMuppet]

I think there's an element of management incompetence, or at least lack of confidence. They're not confident that they know how to manage a bunch of remote workers.

[Esophagus4]

As a management, I understand that this is the perception… but it’s not remotely true. It astounds me how often this is repeated. It’s almost more of a conspiracy theory at this point. “Those evil incompetent managers are just so stupid they have to justify their existence by having people in office.”

RTO is not about watching people in their seats all day to see who is productive. It’s about getting talented people to sit next to each other, as there is significant benefit to that. It builds culture and internal networks (which helps attrition rates, especially for junior employees) and that helps junior employees learn from senior employees. They need that hands-on feedback from seniors, minute to minute. It helps people across teams work together, as in remote land, most communication is intra team only.

It’s not about input->output. It’s about building a long term company culture and employees who grow with it. It’s about building a system where communication and collaboration have less friction.

Can this be done remotely? Maybe, by a few companies who are very intentional and do it well. But remote is very difficult to do well.

If it were just about input->output, I’d offshore everything and save a ton of money.

[varispeed]

The whole “RTO builds culture and networks” story is upside down. Culture isn’t something you force by sticking bodies in the same postcode; culture is what people build when they trust each other, share information freely, and aren’t ground down by pointless commutes. If your company can only transmit knowledge through overhearing desk chatter, you don’t have culture - you have an ad-hoc crutch for bad processes.

Mentorship isn’t “minute-to-minute hand-holding.” It’s structured review, clear documentation, and intentional teaching. If seniors are expected to babysit juniors in person all day, you haven’t built a system for growth, you’ve built a dependency loop that collapses as soon as those seniors leave.

And claiming remote is “very difficult to do well” is just an admission of managerial laziness. Remote is harder only if your toolkit begins and ends with meetings and hallway gossip. The companies that are intentional about remote show it scales just fine.

So yes, RTO is about (damage) control - not because managers are cartoon villains, but because without control, the hollowness of their systems is exposed.

[Esophagus4]

If you want a job, feel free to work remote.

If you want a career, get back to the office.

[Plasmoid]

Your evidence (none) does not support your assertion.

You're not even wrong.

[varispeed]

A ‘career’ in a company you don’t own is just a managed narrative. It convinces you to trade loyalty and time for the illusion of progress, while the compounding benefits accrue to shareholders.

[us-merul]

It also turns remote work into a negotiated benefit, which may be preferred over actual raises.

[AnimalMuppet]

Well, if we're going to negotiate, let's negotiate both ways. You want me in the office? Then I have to commute, and my time's not free. Are you going to pay me for my commute time?

[us-merul]

Right. If employers set RTO as the default, you may be able to negotiate remote time instead of a pay raise. They’re less willing to pay you more to commute and would rather see the commute as the expectation.

[varispeed]

Salary isn’t a meter ticking from 9 to 5, and it’s not a line item of “WFH credits” vs. “commute debits.” Salary is simply the number that convinces you to show up and do the work. Whether you sit in an office, in your kitchen, or on the beach is irrelevant - the company pays because they need outcomes, not because of your postcode or chair type.

That’s why all this “WFH as benefit / RTO as cost” chatter is sleight of hand. It nudges you into negotiating around scraps instead of the only thing that matters: total compensation for total output. Companies push that framing precisely because it distracts you from asking for a bigger number.

[AnimalMuppet]

My point is that, from the employee's point of view, the commute has to be factored into "total output". So if I've been getting $X for Y hours WFH, and now they want to give me $X for Y hours in the office, that's (Y+C) hours to me, and that's the same pay for more of my work - though part of the work doesn't benefit the company.

[passwordoops]

You're partially correct in RTO being about control. Sunk costs in real estate and local tax benefits pay a significant role.

But if every company decided "you know what? Let's go remote!", it will be a matter of months, if not weeks, before every CFO/CEO/Board decides to boost profits by tapping the global talent pool.

The recent delusions to replace software engineers with LLMs is a pretty good indication of where the thinking is vis-a-vis capable engineering

[BobaFloutist]

>There is a vast gulf between the salaries in the US and even Western Europe in tech.

American companies are welcome to start offering Western European level benefits (and compensate for missing government benefits) at any time. I would happily accept 30-50% less pay for a very solid health insurance plan, pay for my childcare 30 days of paid vacation a year that I'm actually entitled to take, 6 months of paid maternity leave + some paternity leave, a contract that restricts my working hours and makes it meaningfully legally difficult to frivolously fire me and practically impossible to lay me off of the company isn't failing, and an hour paid lunch every day.

Nobody seems to be offering that, for whatever reason. The closest is non-profits, who lack the cash to meet standard salaries but try to make up with benefits (which are, after all, cheaper), but for profit companies seem to prefer to pony up and retain the control at-will employment grants them

[red-iron-pine]

> Nobody seems to be offering that, for whatever reason.

different NDA rules, HR rules, non-compete rules, expectations about unions, hiring & firing rules, etc. etc. etc.

non-starter for a lot of fairly obvious reasons if you've done hiring before.

it's an issue with any offshoring, but 4.14/hr for India offsets that risk compared to 2/3s of NA salary for EU and all sort of hoops.

[SR2Z]

I think that folks overseas aren't as capable of communicating with Americans as other Americans are. I think that American tech companies would prefer a motivated at-will employee at 3x the cost of an unfirable European with a statutory month off every year. I think that none of this will magically make it easier to raise money outside the US.

There are obviously plenty of brilliant people outside the US. Unfortunately, intelligence is not the only factor that revenue per employee emerges from - or else the US would not dominate the tech sector and it would be uncommon to find remote-first companies based entirely in the US.

[thefz]

> I think that folks overseas aren't as capable of communicating with Americans as other Americans are

I speak Italian, English and French. I speak English to you because it's the only language you know. We are not the same.

> I think that American tech companies would prefer a motivated at-will employee at 3x the cost of an unfirable European with a statutory month off every year.

We work to live, not the opposite. Again, we are not the same.

[AnimalMuppet]

Fair enough, on both points. And yet, a tech company in the US may prefer someone who is US-style rather than Europe-style on the second point.

[SR2Z]

> I speak Italian, English and French. I speak English to you because it's the only language you know. We are not the same.

I have worked with overseas coworkers who spoke English. You're right, it's not always the same as having native fluency.

> We work to live, not the opposite. Again, we are not the same.

You're making my point for me - offshoring work fails for cultural reasons, not because overseas workers are dumb. Making work remote is not gonna change the cultural factors.

Also a very funny take because if you have ever visited the Bay Area, you can't throw a rock without hitting someone who struck it rich and retired at 30.

[thefz]

> Also a very funny take because if you have ever visited the Bay Area, you can't throw a rock without hitting someone who struck it rich and retired at 30.

What does it have to do with companies looking for "motivated" americans? Also

> if you have ever visited the Bay Area

Nah, thanks.

[SR2Z]

Congrats! You like where you live.

[benterix]

> an unfirable European

This is not true - most American companies hire contractors, usually through a local intermediary.

> with a statutory month off every year.

This is something work pondering about, really. Take step back, look at your life, and think a bit about this point, no matter if you're blue- or white-collar worker.

[SR2Z]

> This is not true - most American companies hire contractors, usually through a local intermediary.

Do you have a source for this? I would expect EU rules around classifying contractors to be much stricter than what we have in the US.

> This is something work pondering about, really. Take step back, look at your life, and think a bit about this point, no matter if you're blue- or white-collar worker.

Yes, I have taken a look at my life and thought about this point.

I enjoy work. I enjoy building things that are useful to society and I enjoy getting paid a lot of money to do it.

I'm not even gonna pretend that I don't take long vacations. Lots of places I've worked have had unlimited PTO, despite no legal requirement for it.

But the smaller and earlier-stage places I've worked? No, people didn't take vacations there. The company could not afford it, and when employees are shareholders they generally love maximizing shareholder value.

[disgruntledphd2]

> I think that folks overseas aren't as capable of communicating with Americans as other Americans are.

This is sortof absurd on the face of it. For context, I'm a European who's been working for US based companies for well over a decade now, and rarely do I have communications issues (and they're generally with non-native English speakers, mostly Europeans living in the US).

> I think that American tech companies would prefer a motivated at-will employee at 3x the cost of an unfirable European with a statutory month off every year.

It's important to note that not all Europeans are unfireable. In fact, none of them are, it's just that you need to 1) give a verbal warning, 2) give a written warning and 3) fire them if things don't improve. Granted, you can't fire them for not laughing at your jokes but the same sort of process gets followed in California where most US tech companies are headquatered.

> I think that none of this will magically make it easier to raise money outside the US.

This is the actual reason. There's so much capital available in the US that it sucks in a lot of ambitious people.

> There are obviously plenty of brilliant people outside the US. Unfortunately, intelligence is not the only factor that revenue per employee emerges from - or else the US would not dominate the tech sector and it would be uncommon to find remote-first companies based entirely in the US.

In fact, it's normally easier to get a better person outside the US, as they have less options at big-tech level wages. The US dominates the tech sector because of availablity of capital, not availability of talent.

[oblio]

Yeah, the magical American is the reason for US tech dominance. There's a reason why the biggest software companies come from big countries:

1. large internal markets provide more funding and more competition at the start

2. which leads to better product-market fit

3. which leads to more dominance as the natural software monopolies happen

4. which leads to easier taking over of smaller foreign markets

Biggest software companies? American and Chinese. Also Indian ones are starting to rise, too.

In comparison Europe is super fractured. Ignoring big US companies, the average French person buys stuff from a totally different website than the average German, for almost category you can imagine.

[eska]

In order to fire a German employee outside of their multiple month trial period they have to commit a crime or willfully ignore instructions, or the company must be in financial trouble due to outside circumstances. Underperforming is not a legal reason to fire somebody.

[disgruntledphd2]

> In order to fire a German employee outside of their multiple month trial period they have to commit a crime or willfully ignore instructions, or the company must be in financial trouble due to outside circumstances. Underperforming is not a legal reason to fire somebody.

Do you have a source for this claim? I'm not an expert in German employment law but would love to learn more.

[disgruntledphd2]

A quick Google produces this: https://boundlesshq.com/guides/germany/end-of-employment/

The only thing that seems different from Ireland (where I live) is the Works Council hearing part.

[oblio]

My guess is, the employer just needs to do the legwork of documenting the performance issues.

[eska]

No, the employer would have to provide training and show that the employee is willfully not participating. That’s legally challenging for non-trivial stuff.

[SR2Z]

> This is sortof absurd on the face of it. For context, I'm a European who's been working for US based companies for well over a decade now, and rarely do I have communications issues (and they're generally with non-native English speakers, mostly Europeans living in the US).

You might have excellent fluency, but my experience is that it varies a lot depending on the person.

> Granted, you can't fire them for not laughing at your jokes but the same sort of process gets followed in California where most US tech companies are headquatered.

I think this is underselling the degree of employment protection in Europe, but I will freely admit I'm not an expert.

> In fact, it's normally easier to get a better person outside the US, as they have less options at big-tech level wages. The US dominates the tech sector because of availablity of capital, not availability of talent.

But "better person" here doesn't mean smarter - it means a more effective employee. Working in a very different timezone, language barriers, and culture differences make that an uphill battle, which is why offshoring hasn't exploded.

[disgruntledphd2]

I'm a native English speaker, for what it's worth. There are about 80mn or so of us in Europe.

I think the issue around employment protection is that the US laws are crazy bad, so any level of employment protection seems weird. Ireland and the UK (weirdly the places where you have lots of native English speakers) have pretty employer friendly laws for Europe.

Western Europe generally has a bunch more protections for permanent employees so maybe that's what you mean? Note that employment laws are almost entirely national, but the EU sets a floor.

Timezones definitely make a big difference, but again the cultural differences between Ireland and the UK and the typical coastal US tech companies are wildly oversold.

[dboreham]

If the entire organization is offshore then fine, but the time zone difference between they west coast and Europe is too big for close collaboration. South America is ok but there aren't many software developers there.

[disgruntledphd2]

> but the time zone difference between they west coast and Europe is too big for close collaboration

This is definitely part of it, but if you have east coast or central teams, this is totally doable. In fact, often the European employees get more done as they get a whole morning before the US based pings/meetings start.

[zappb]

First of all, companies have already outsourced all that they could a couple decades ago. Then when it comes to hiring in different countries, this gets extremely complicated due to taxes and regulations. While some remote-first companies can navigate this complexity (usually through some sort of HR as a service type company), most companies are not structured in such a way to feasibly hire people outside their incorporated area.

[thedevilslawyer]

>companies have already outsourced all that they could a couple decades ago

Amateur armchair stuff. 9% YoY growth for decades.

https://truelist.co/blog/outsourcing-statistics/ (Graph 20)

[benterix]

As a person working with Americans, if I may express my honest opinion, this is BS. Your advantage is the fact that you are professional, hard-working, are able to question the demands in a positive way, can communicate with American management more easily, live in the same time zone and in general you can get on with the rest of American team more easily. I would never say physical location is an asset (although I might be biased as I work for corporations that have multiple offices in various continents, for small startups it might be different).

[xienze]

> If you think that everyone overseas is simply less intelligent, you'll have a rough awakening.

Counterpoint, developer offshoring has been happening since at least the late nineties with eh, limited success. It's hard to get around major timezone differences and thick accents. This isn't even getting into the fatal mistake that everyone makes -- thinking that there's, for example, a billion more "Brilliant Indian Guy in Our Office" clones out there in India.