I did not downvote but timezones, culture, language, skills, etc. are all reasons that companies will not automatically gravitate to the lowest cost areas. Many large companies in tech have global presences that have not resulted in them offshoring all their jobs.

That said, I do expect you see a decrease in premiums being paid for high CoL areas to the degree that living there becomes an employee lifestyle choice and a rise for tech workers in low CoL areas who can work remotely. I expect you end up somewhere in the middle.

I'd respond that low-cost areas, when compared to San Francisco, includes something like 90%+ of America. Presuming all talent must come from the coasts is missing a pretty wide swath of very qualified candidates who speak your language natively, who went to top-flight schools, and who live/work in or near your time zone.

Yes and that's one reason why I would expect to see companies that go more heavily remote hiring preferentially from low cost areas of the US rather than China. (Along with IP laws, etc.) As I say, I'd expect more remote jobs to flatten out tech salaries a bit--especially within the US. Mostly not 100% but if I don't need you to live in the Bay Area, I'm probably not going to pay you extra to live there any more than I'd pay you extra because you want to live in Aspen.

Obviously the post-covid world may be completely different, but my personal anecdata is that my income went up when I went fully remote over a decade ago. Instead of the hand full of local large employers competing for my labor, the whole world is competing for it.

It's important to remember that these economic concepts flow both directions. Power dynamics fluctuate over time, but don't let anyone convince you that you're always on the short end of the stick. You're not.

Plenty of offices will just adopt western hours, like west coast offices do for east coast hours, and plenty of managers will be fine with the dirt cheap shippable code coming out of eastern Europe and Africa in the next few decades as worldwide internet access improves.

On the other hand, I have read about a growing interest in returning to the office. A growing number of people are feeling unproductive working from home. A company could position itself towards shareholders as more productive and innovative with more butts in the seat than it's competitors who outsource. It will be interesting to see how this shakes out.

Not wrong, but only half right.

A very significant element of comp is about relationships, not skills or productivity or labor markets or other fictions people believe.

In-person relationships are infinitely stronger, on balance, than remote.

Remote talent will be cheaper than in-person talent, on balance, AND, in-person talent will always be comped better than remote.

The way work is structured as tech continues to change will also reflect relationships, and low-relationship roles will continue to see their comp reduced.

So, yes, the range of roles that can be comped less and are remote will grow, creating a much lower median. But in person relationship leverage will only get stronger.

Hope that helps.

This alludes to an important hidden economic downside of being remote: it's tantamount to stalling career progression in the long run.

To a first approximation, niches and margins aside, yes.

They've already had that option for many years. Mass outsourcing of U.S. high skill IT just never materialized. I suspect there's a much greater managerial gulf between Bangalore and New York than between Dubuque Iowa and New York.

Did you pick Dubuque because of the IBM shop there?

There's an IBM shop there?

Anyway, if any HN folks are planning road trips across America, you wouldn't regret passing through that part of the country. Dubuque is in the Driftless Area, a tiny sliver of North America that wasn't covered by glaciers during the last ice age and therefore wasn't scoured flat when they receded. There are lots of steep hills and deep ravines, exposed rock and springs that pop out of the ground for a while and then go back underground. Dubuque sits on a fairly picturesque part of the Mississippi River and has many hills and valleys in town. It even has a funicular!

No - because it sounds like middle-o-nowhere. Pretty cool that it was an apt choice. ;-)

Trump has a travel ban on India through the end of the year and he just ordered Wechat be sold, and He's also sending foreign students back home. You also have, what is very obviously, a puppet ideology infecting people's minds in western countries and the tolerance for that radicalization in many is heading towards zero. As one example, Idaho still has militia units running around keeping the peace.

I think the "good ol' days" of tech companies hiring the best and brightest from around the world to sell exploitive products is over with. If those people want to move here, become US citizens, bring over their immediate family, and rescind their foreign country citizenship great. On the backend of this pandemic, you're going to see a gargantuan backlash against exploitive companies period.

Put your effort into making sure whatever you are doing is efficient and don't get too invested in your current employer.

You don’t have to “rescind your foreign citizenship” to become a US citizen.

Unless something has changed in the past few years, you kind-of-sort-of-maybe need to do that. The US doesn't actually enforce anything like it, but all of my naturalized coworkers were required to surrender their previous passport when they took the oath of US citizenship. The US gives the passport back to the home country. Canada mails it back to you and says you are still Canadian too, while China does not and says you have to get a visa like any other tourist if you ever want to step foot in China again.

Has this changed?

My wife (dual Canadian/US) got her US citizenship 2 years ago. Nothing like what you describe happened.

I appreciate the feedback. My Canadian coworker was naturalized about 5-7 years ago.

I was naturalized about a decade ago and nothing of the sort happened for me either, or for the other two people I know who were naturalized around that time.

The reason is that you are only required to renounce "allegiance" to other countries during the naturalization ceremony. This has nothing to do with citizenship.