Re:Quarantine will normalize WFH and recession will denormal...
by adventured on Monday March 09, 2020 @12:40AM
(#22523045)
> I also expect that the shift toward WFH will not be a positive thing for highly paid Silicon Valley engineers. Once people are working from home most of the time, it’s not much of a stretch to hire cheaper engineers from a few states over at literally half the cost of a SV engineer. From there, it’s only a few more levels of difficulty to unlock international talent at 1/4 of the price.
That's a fantasy only. The tech giants that are supporting the high salaries can already do all of that. They're not because they can afford to not. They can do max WFH anytime they want to. It is not a first tier concern, it's a third or fourth tier concern, far down the list.
They don't need to hire people for $50,000 instead of $200,000. They need the $200,000 people to keep helping them generate $5b, $10b, $50b per year in operating income. So long as they do, the salaries will remain high. The salary difference on what they could potentially save (and potentially wreck the house instead), is not worth it to do such a major switch.
Microsoft will approximately double in size in the next six or seven years, to $250-$300 billion in sales and $70-$80 billion in operating income. Google and Facebook are in the same growth boat. You think they're so worried about shaving a few pennies of salary cost on those growth machines, that they're going to put their entire systems at risk? No, they won't do that under any circumstance. The only thing they'll do is keep lobbying for importing more tech labor to try to dilute some (they're running the modest risk scenario) and continue to grow outside of SV (and other expensive tech areas like NYC or Seattle) physically as they have been for a long time.
That's a fantasy only. The tech giants that are supporting the high salaries can already do all of that. They're not because they can afford to not. They can do max WFH anytime they want to. It is not a first tier concern, it's a third or fourth tier concern, far down the list.
They don't need to hire people for $50,000 instead of $200,000. They need the $200,000 people to keep helping them generate $5b, $10b, $50b per year in operating income. So long as they do, the salaries will remain high. The salary difference on what they could potentially save (and potentially wreck the house instead), is not worth it to do such a major switch.
Microsoft will approximately double in size in the next six or seven years, to $250-$300 billion in sales and $70-$80 billion in operating income. Google and Facebook are in the same growth boat. You think they're so worried about shaving a few pennies of salary cost on those growth machines, that they're going to put their entire systems at risk? No, they won't do that under any circumstance. The only thing they'll do is keep lobbying for importing more tech labor to try to dilute some (they're running the modest risk scenario) and continue to grow outside of SV (and other expensive tech areas like NYC or Seattle) physically as they have been for a long time.