What people who are anti-remote dont see, is that even if you dont want to be a remote worker, it is still benefiting you because it is certainly equalizing wages across the US. Companies can longer as easily pull the “lets hire cheaper workers in FL or TX or other parts of the US” card out out as often… because good people in FL TX etc are no longer cheap, given that they no longer have to accept a shitty local job with a shitty local pay that local companies in those cheaper areas use to get away with. Suddenly paying someone SD wages doesnt look so bad and moving engineers to cheaper cost FL or TX is no longer really a viable option…. in fact, unless you are in an defense or public sector, tech wages are finally starting to normalize across the US, because of remote opportunities. Silly Valley and Silly Alley are starting to plateau, everywhere else is starting to move up…Long term,.the economy will contract, and remote work abuse will be reigned in. But remote opportunity wont go away. Because the upside is you can get good remote workers and not be stuck hiring less than ideal local workers and paying them SD wages for subpar work
But if local companies dont start moving their wages up, (a) they are going to have a really tough time attracting new talent, and (b) have trouble keeping top talent unless you offer something else that they cant find elsewhere… Take my most senior IOS engineer. He and I know that he could easily find a job that pays $25k more at least, in the $180-190k range probably more. Why hasnt he left? Well because he likes team and Im pretty flexible. A few months ago, he decided he wants to go travel and live out if his RV, so for the past few months hes working out of his RV as he travels around the US and uses a satellite link to dial into meetings and upload code to github, code reviews with others people work over zoom and slack , mentors some of my junior engineers over zoom, interviews people over Hackerrank, And does sprint/scrum planning snd defect triaging over Jira…no different than my other engineers that work out of UK, Australia, San Diego, Mexico City, Utah, Texas, Indiana, Tennessee, Florida, and South Dakota. He just has to share a bunch of pictures of his journey along the way….something that all of us with families with kids that (hopefully) will return back to in person school cant do… serious envy….
When he approached me a few months ago, he was ready resign thinking he had no options. I gave him the option to work remotely via a satellite link.
He stayed on , still a productive engineer. (The main issue is the satellite tech is still a little premature , hopefully something Starlink from SpaceX can solve when they are finally operational…) I get him for less that other companies would pay for him, and he wont be going anywhere else as long as he still reports to me. I get to test out this extreme version of remote work with a trusted colleague and learn what works and doesnt work so that for the next gig, i have a lot more ways to build and manage a team. And when i finally leave my current company, he isnt going to stay at the company if they dont allow him to continue this way, especially if i offer the same work conditions wherever i end up.
Loyalty no longer lies with the company… it now lies with the people who can put a team together and create a work environment better than what normally they can get from a traditional “job”
