This is what I don’t hear discussed as often as I’d expected. When you make a solid case for 100% remote, bargaining power is lost - or at least the COLA is harder to defend.
This just isn’t true. If it were, there wouldn’t be many office jobs period in first world countries. They would all be run by people in Bangladesh or the Philippines working 24 hours per day.
Think about it: India has a large population of native English speakers. The top 10% of educated people are about 100 million smart college graduates. Why haven’t they replaced everyone in US offices?
First, culture / time zones are an issue. Second, most of the smart people have options to move to more expensive cities in first world countries. The same thing happens in Texas or Alabama. Smart people leave and move to more expensive cities. So if you want to hire them, you have to pay them more money. As a business, you will usually get what you pay for.
It depends. Full remote means that companies could recruit nationwide, but that cuts both ways. There’s a few hiccups in having employees in multiple states that opens a company up to employment rules in many states, so some companies may want to avoid certain states until they are big enough to handle the complexity. It also means every company has to compete for employees with all the other big companies, not just whoever is within about 50 miles of them.
Maybe. Going international is another big step in bureaucracy for a company. Time zones also become a problem, you can’t really have a team made of people farther than about 4 timezones, you need separate teams at that point, which adds complexity. Language barriers also start to become an issue as you expand, even English speaking countries have vast differences, and English as a second language adds more difficulty.
This is what I don’t hear discussed as often as I’d expected. When you make a solid case for 100% remote, bargaining power is lost - or at least the COLA is harder to defend.
This just isn’t true. If it were, there wouldn’t be many office jobs period in first world countries. They would all be run by people in Bangladesh or the Philippines working 24 hours per day.
Think about it: India has a large population of native English speakers. The top 10% of educated people are about 100 million smart college graduates. Why haven’t they replaced everyone in US offices?
First, culture / time zones are an issue. Second, most of the smart people have options to move to more expensive cities in first world countries. The same thing happens in Texas or Alabama. Smart people leave and move to more expensive cities. So if you want to hire them, you have to pay them more money. As a business, you will usually get what you pay for.
It depends. Full remote means that companies could recruit nationwide, but that cuts both ways. There’s a few hiccups in having employees in multiple states that opens a company up to employment rules in many states, so some companies may want to avoid certain states until they are big enough to handle the complexity. It also means every company has to compete for employees with all the other big companies, not just whoever is within about 50 miles of them.
Depending on the industry and ROI, I’d submit it’s worldwide.
Maybe. Going international is another big step in bureaucracy for a company. Time zones also become a problem, you can’t really have a team made of people farther than about 4 timezones, you need separate teams at that point, which adds complexity. Language barriers also start to become an issue as you expand, even English speaking countries have vast differences, and English as a second language adds more difficulty.
The fact that where I live defines my wage is nonsense. It’s about my output, not the cost of a hotdog near me.