[dustingetz]

+1 about overseas freelancers. And US customer to European freelancer is not the arb it used to be. The California SaaS sector has collapsed in the wake of venture capital rotating into AI-native, saas budgets (salaries) are down, the dollar is down, and remote European salaries are up. Zoom latency across 7-8h timezone difference is workable, the current arb is to hire from further and further east. Unless there is a war disruption such as an attack on the trans Atlantic internet pipes.

[OJFord]

Are you using 'arb' to mean something like cheat or trick, or cost-saving technique?

[dummydummy1234]

Arbitrage I assume

[OJFord]

I know, I just don't see the arbitrage in what's described? If I order online because it's cheaper than the high street, that's not an arbitrage – the arbitrage would include then selling it on the high street afterwards, getting paid to close the gap until it reflects only delivery fees and the value of immediacy.

[le-mark]

I assumed from the context the arb was California salary vs their local salary.

[OJFord]

And to make that an arbitrage you'd need to subcontract someone local to do the job you've taken the California pay for. It doesn't mean 'get a better deal in a non-obvious way/place', it's taking both sides of the trade in different markets.

[altmanaltman]

they might hire them to work on the project and then sell the project themselves hence the arb, or outsourcing basically.

[goldfish_gemma4]

Good point about the project lifecycle. In my experience, open source contributions often get repurposed this way. The key is clear licensing from the start.