Anecdotal but in Montreal,Canada it's a very different situation. Recruiter calls, number of jobs posts are much higher in the last month or so (despite summer vacations). Many companies from San-Francisco reaching out. Is it because in Canada the Covid-19 spread is under control or because it's all remote now so why not Canada?
This is what people are afraid of. If you live in a city where you have IT salaries over 100k (Seattle, San Fransisco, Chicago), companies may be using this as an opportunity to hire 'cheaper' workers in markets where you don't need that type of income to pay rent.
There was a lot of hiring early on. We might see big tech layoffs come August/September.
> companies may be using this as an opportunity to hire 'cheaper' workers in markets where you don't need that type of income to pay rent
That's not a bad tendency in the long run. In case remote work gains serious traction, tech workers would be eventually dispersed around the whole country, and that would drive down rents in previously expensive areas. With workers living in less expensive places, they wouldn't need an SV salary to afford a good lifestyle.
Time zones still matter, very few companies are going to go fully remote, salaries are sticky downwards, many companies are going to keep large campuses in elite cities. That said, to the degree living in NYC or SF starts to be seen as the same sort of luxury choice being made by employees that living in a prime beach location is, the comp premium will go down. Employers don't care that you like living in particular cities or that you like living somewhere you can easily hop to other local jobs and, in fact, the latter is something of a negative.
> they wouldn't need an SV salary to afford a good lifestyle.
While I agree you wouldn't need to worry about affording SV-grade housing costs, I feel like these discussions leave out a couple of things:
* The CoL is going up everywhere. Food, medical care etc... None of it is getting cheaper.
* Good houses in good school systems with reasonable access are still expensive in many areas of the country.
* It's kind of ridiculous to see companies pushing the narrative that they can suddenly pay everyone less based on arbitrary geography when the average revenue/profit generated per engineer is often many, many multiples of their total compensation costs.
This isn't true. The costs of some things are going up while others are going down. Transportation is much cheaper, for example, even without taking into account remote work. The cost of cars, gas, and auto insurance is lower than it was 20 or 30 years ago when adjusted for inflation. Education and Healthcare are getting dramatically more expensive. Clothes are much cheaper, and the cost of consumer goods in general is decreasing a lot. Think about how much a microwave cost in 1980's.
==(Seattle, San Fransisco, Chicago), companies may be using this as an opportunity to hire 'cheaper' workers in markets where you don't need that type of income to pay rent.==
To clarify for those reading, rent in Chicago is about 50-60% cheaper than Seattle or San Francisco.
Seeing the same in Ottawa. Big startups are hiring here now. In fact, rates are quickly climbing up here from my observations - from local tech forums & job postings. Amazon & Apple jobs started popping up. Looks like companies are looking at Canada & South America due to the same timezones yet smaller rents.
Good for us, maybe I won't be moving to the states in 3 years like I originally planned.
Google, Apple and Netflix are definitely not remote, that's half of FAANG (not sure about FB, never applied there). Maybe you get lucky and get some unicorn remote gig there (sales typically). I've turned down all 3 in the recent past because they wouldn't let me work 100% remote and expected me in SV/Los Gatos. Even with COVID they're probably expecting people back in the office eventually, I know Google Cloud is hiring and letting people work where they are remotely until quarantine is over- then they're expected to move to the office.
Side-note for people switching work, move your money from your direct deposit account before starting a new job.
I was talking to a security researcher about a friend who had a full interview with a company, sent papers for hiring, filled everything out, and then discovered the company she was interviewing for was named similar to a real company, with the only difference being a hyphen in the website name. The company was fake and once they had direct deposit information, drained her bank account. She was lucky there was only ~$1k in it. still.
It will not stick and is easily reversible, but I am guessing that if I have the info to direct deposit to your account then in the US I also have enough info to generate fake ACH transactions. It really makes no sense to me though because banks are all over check kiting schemes like this and never let you move the money out of the destination account before someone at the originating bank has reversed the transaction.
Deposit information in the US is account number + routing number, which is all that is required to pull funds from an account. Amusingly, this is also the information printed at the bottom of every check you use.
Wow. I don't intend to be inflammatory, but I am continually shocked by how far behind Europe the US appears to be in terms of personal banking and payments.
You can only PUT money in a bank account knowing the IBAN in Europe. Automatic payments have to be formally authorized first. Europeans give it their ibans without second thoughts, never heard of any such problems as in US.
It is called SEPA Direct Debit. You give people your IBAN, and they can take money from it. You formally have to give your permission of course (the "mandate"), but that is really a pinky promise by businesses that they have it. That there is not wide-spread abuse of this system seems to be because of accountability on who is granted access to this system.
I would imagine the situation in the US to be quite similar.
To be fair, in Australia all I needed to transfer money was your name and account number and it'd appear within 24 hours. Since I've left, I've heard the system is more real time, with funds showing up in seconds.
You can pull money from accounts the same way in Australia, but I suspect it's limited by business and there are audits in place to stop and reverse fraud.
The information you need to deposit money into an account (Name, bank account number, sort code) is almost all you need to withdraw money from an account by setting up direct debits or similar.
A very different story from my friend still living in Russia.
In Russia, a lot of companies are issuing debit cards for their own employees, and those are often their sole bank accounts, especially for people low on social ladder.
Once the employer got a whiff of the person switching jobs, he fired him, and tipped the bank to block his account on "fraud" suspicion. Banks are known to tacitly play along in such scenarios.
Of course, an avenue to sue is still open for the man, but how do you sue if you have no money to pay the court fee, and your usual income will still be drained if you go to court even for such a trivial case.
The man lost 80k roubles, which also close to around $1k
Advice: anybody in such relationship should never hold any money in "hostage" bank accounts. Always cash out your income from salary accounts, and, for businesses, their merchant accounts with acquirers (paypal, we are looking at you.)
Either that's not a full story, or Russia has some _interesting_ banking system.
Here a card is tied to your bank account but is in no way your account and absolutely not the only way to access your money. Companies only know your account mumber to transfer funds to and sure as hell they have no other access to accounts. It is also hard to imagine why would any bank to want to "play along".
> It is also hard to imagine why would any bank to want to "play along".
More business from companies issuing debit cards for employees. Often such banks are like 3rd tier ones, or complete hole-in-the-wall establishments. Such accounts almost always have near zero interest, or/are laden with high fees for every thing imaginable.
> Either that's not a full story, or Russia has some _interesting_ banking system.
Russia has a very interesting banking system indeed. If organised crime effectively makes a double digit of country's GDP, what else did you expect?
>Either that's not a full story, or Russia has some _interesting_ banking system.
No, we have it in the states as well, see: https://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/01/business/as-pay-cards-rep.... Basically what happens is that you don't get a paycheck or deposit to your account. Instead, you get your pay deposited to a debit card, which you can then use to withdraw money or transfer to your own account. Since the account is technically controlled by the company and not you, it's easier for them to seize your money. It probably doesn't help that russia has high corruption and low consumer protection.
Anyone can do this with a canceled check. If she didn’t authorize the withdrawal she calls the bank and they put the money back. And they start their own investigation. Our banking system is trash but it’s not lawless.
The company committed bank and wire fraud. They’ll get dealt with by the secret service and FBI.
That would be a non-standard account with a non-standard way of withdrawing money. EFT and ACH withdrawals are fully protected.
Money wires are different, all the action is sender side. Even for me, Fidelity accountholder, a SWIFT money wire takes days to set up and I have to confirm it multiple times. I get the impression the bank hates doing them and will throw as many roadblocks as possible unless you are absolutely committed to it.
>The company committed bank and wire fraud. They’ll get dealt with by the secret service and FBI.
And:
>Our banking system is trash but it’s not lawless.
My experience is directly counter to that, given that it was a non-investigated wire fraud despite being blatant and the money going to a known local address/account. Saying that ACHs are better doesn't correct those overstatements of yours.
There are a number of banks out there that - once you have an account - you can create additional accounts in minutes. That's useful so you can have one connected to direct deposit for each job, one for Paypal, etc, etc with the bulk of your savings in any account not connected to anything else.
If my mortgage company is compromised, there's only ~3 days/month there's any money in that account.. and then it's the exact amount of the mortgage payment.
The recruiting dept of a lot of companies are only pretending that they’re hiring to justify their own existence as long as possible.
Many actually are not, though not all of them even know that they are pretending until it goes to VP/exec for final sign off and they find budgets/priorities have “shifted”
I agree on the weed out, I have less confidence in the quickly. Bigger companies move at glacial pace and most are going to do everything they can to not let on that there are any problems at a group/division/whole enterprise level.
They don't even have a recruiting dept, they outsource HR, hiring, and payroll, cuz that is below them—they are too busy changing the world!
If these companies were really so desperate for skilled workers, we wouldn't see the same jobs posted repeatedly, or never taken down from career pages, and they would be more responsive to inquiry. The monthly hiring thread here is full of it.
1. Government supports the economy while vaccines and treatments are developed.
2. ???
3. Economic activity returns quickly to pre-pandemic levels.
There's no "guarantee" this plan will work... but we are all acting as if it will, because the alternatives are too unpleasant to contemplate.[a]
So, much of the economy is "faking it until we make it."
The tech sector is no exemption.
--
[a] We all prefer not to think too much on the possibility that large swaths of the economy could remain under stress for a long while -- office buildings, malls, retail stores, restaurants and bars, movie theaters, airlines, conference centers, etc. These businesses employ a gazillion people, use a mountain of assets, and depend on a ton of software and technology for everything. We all want these businesses to survive as intact as possible so they can thrive in a post-pandemic world and continue to buy technology.
I think there's reason to be confident it'll work. In many areas people rushed back to those things even before the pandemic was over. I'm not saying this was an unreasonable concern to have, but it seems to have been disconfirmed.
Is this due to the economic conditions? I feel as though companies might be holding off on hiring because the logistics of hiring & onboarding someone remotely is extremely difficult, doubly more so in tech.
I'm worried this will really damage tech workers in the USA. I'm in meetings with overseas clients most of the day and it's getting to the point that some are back in offices and we're still locked in our kitchens. Mental health seems to be crashing if you judge by Twitter peers. I'm in the same boat. I've been locked in an apartment alone for 6 months outside of grocery grabs and some outdoor hikes and it's starting to really affect me.
Its so embarrassing and I'm nowhere near as productive as I should be. Most of my EU peers are probably having to take up the slack.
From what I see--and admittedly a fair number of the people I know and work with were largely remote before this--many offices at least in the US are never going back to "normal." Most of the people I know are planning to be primarily remote indefinitely. Which means that even those who do go back into an office will have to deal with a largely distributed workplace.
I think we'll see the beginnings of a regulatory moat in the not too distant future.
Tech workers have the benefit of hindsight, having seen U.S. manufacturing jobs get decimated in the last few decades.
A lot of fields already have built in protection from foreign competition. For instance, most if all states require that anyone conducting telemedicine work needs to be both licensed in the state were the service is being performed.
Given the leftward drift of the Democratic party and Republican's newfound disdain for the big tech companies and things like HB1 visas, I would be shocked if we don't see some significant restrictions on how foreign workers are used in the tech sector.
I’m somewhat less sure. In a lot of cases in software, someone today in location L is creating software for the world and only a tiny slice of users are in the geographic/political entity where L is located. I don’t see the same level of natural protections for workers in CA, MA, TX that are present for the telemedicine example.
If you’re writing software for the world, you might have temporarily enjoyed a bubble few decades in time where you could serve the world but only had to compete on an even footing against other labor situated in a high-cost area. This world-scale pre-post test of working remotely may be the discontinuity that aligns a global workforce to a global user base.
(Remote collaboration completely sidesteps the H1B issue, of course.)
A lot of US tech people wouldn't be happy if the government started requiring, say, Professional Engineer licenses (which in turn require 4 year degrees) for a lot of positions.
Fair enough, but the trend in everything does seem to be in favor of increased "credentialization". Heck, you need a license just to paint someone's toenails for a few bucks. And in most cases the primarily benefit of credentials is to limit and control the number of individuals in a given occupation. An added benefit goes to rent seekers like governments and credentialing services make a pretty penny too.
How would this damage tech workers? Almost everyone in IT has done work with a remote co-worker or distributed team. Doesn’t matter if they are in Indiana or India, we have the tools to collaborate and conference if needed.
Because we make $2-3x+ our EU peers salaries in most cases. Why hire Americans if their govt is in chaos every few years to the point that they can't even show up to a conference to work with their EU/etc peers and you now have a global remote market (assuming you don't need those US timezones).
American companies aren’t going to shift to Europe all of the sudden. The taxes are higher and it’s harder to fire people, American execs don’t like that.
What conferences are going on? Most have been cancelled. Is the EU allowing large gatherings like that?
The tech sector is strongest in America, they aren’t going to offshore their workforce because of one unfavorable president and a bunch of media hype.
Not being productive at home is your issue. I don’t have to drive over an hour a day to work for 4 hours anymore.
I'm not productive at home right now because I'm taking care of sick relatives and have young children to keep safe while my government throws everything into chaos and we don't even know exacts on what will happen with schools, etc, and I'm not the only peer of mine having problems.
This isn't me lamenting WFH. It's me lamenting WFH during this pandemic specifically from within the USA.
If you're doing great, that's awesome. A lot of us aren't lately.
The entire economy is not disintegrating. There's a temporary pause in spending as a result of external forces. This is much different from the economy actually disintegrating, like we saw in 2008. Then, the actual financial mechanisms that the economy needs to function were blowing up. There were factories that had paying customers trying to place orders, but they couldn't fill the orders because short-term credit was frozen.
We're in a bad situation right now, but the economy itself is functioning, it's just running a lot cooler than usual.
Just because EU workers make half as much as Americans doesn't make them cheaper. They get paid less (in part) because they work a lot less. Shorter hours, a lot more days off longer lunch breaks. On a per-hour basis your US-EU differential is dramatically lower.
Most of the US tech space is still booming right now, from big tech to the dozens of large cloud companies that have been reporting between good and stellar quarterly results.
We'll see if this article's premise holds any water over the remainder of the year, for now it's weak.
Moreover, many of the giants are seeing increased usage while everyone is home. A large amount of the industry doesn't work that way, but rather, is based on profit and loss, not share price and vanity metrics.
Hmmm...well the facts are what they are, but based on the number of job postings and recruiter calls I'm seeing, it sure doesn't seem much lower. I got a new job starting in early June, and it didn't take any longer than normal (I admit I was probably lucky).
One factor might be that I prefer to work as a contractor, and get my own health insurance; it might be different if you're looking for "permanent" employment. Perhaps employers are more willing to hire someone they've never met in person, if it's as a contractor?
Is this actually so pronounced? If you look at the "Mixed bag for tech positions in tech hubs" table, the change in tech postings trend looks more or less the same as the change in all postings trend (I bet it's not even stat sig). Reading the article, the claims being made are not even strong ones.
I don’t know how much closer to reality this is. I can see tech hiring probably slowed down but my guess is it’s opportunistic. The companies that are doing poorly before the pandemic simply cut jobs. I don’t see a real impact on the market. Of course I do realize I am arguing against data here and saying stuff without evidence but the sample size is small for the data and it’s a gut feeling that it will not hold long term.
I don't know if you're necessarily arguing against data. Data is a funny thing and it can lie very easily. For example, the following statement is data-driven and technically true, but a complete lie at the same time:
"Newborn baby's have _on average_ one testicle"
I think you're right about it being opportunistic, at least that's what I've observed.
I don't want to dismiss this post out of hand, but the last few instances I've spent any time browsing Indeed, it did not strike me as representative of the tech hiring market.
I have the same sentiment, Indeed does not seem to be a representative source for the tech jobs market. I have an impression that most postings there are for staffing firms and the number of their posts do not correspond to the actual vacancies (they might be all posting the same job or post fake jobs to collect resumes).
The drop could be just the result of some of those firms ceasing their activity as I definitely don't see as many CyberCoders and whatever was that bot, which automatically reposted vacancies on Linkedin (JobNetwork or something), in the recent months.
82 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 144 ms ] threadThere was a lot of hiring early on. We might see big tech layoffs come August/September.
That's not a bad tendency in the long run. In case remote work gains serious traction, tech workers would be eventually dispersed around the whole country, and that would drive down rents in previously expensive areas. With workers living in less expensive places, they wouldn't need an SV salary to afford a good lifestyle.
While I agree you wouldn't need to worry about affording SV-grade housing costs, I feel like these discussions leave out a couple of things:
* The CoL is going up everywhere. Food, medical care etc... None of it is getting cheaper.
* Good houses in good school systems with reasonable access are still expensive in many areas of the country.
* It's kind of ridiculous to see companies pushing the narrative that they can suddenly pay everyone less based on arbitrary geography when the average revenue/profit generated per engineer is often many, many multiples of their total compensation costs.
But at the end of the day, what has the most impact on socioeconomic mobility and overall success? It's probably not a cheap microwave.
It's access to good schools, health care, and diet. All of the things that are getting more expensive.
Cheaper gas and clothes also have hidden(less so now) costs in pollution and ethical sourcing concerns.
To clarify for those reading, rent in Chicago is about 50-60% cheaper than Seattle or San Francisco.
[1] https://www.nerdwallet.com/cost-of-living-calculator/compare...
Seattle housing: 67.9% cheaper [2]
San Francisco housing: 83.4% cheaper [3]
[1] https://www.bestplaces.net/cost-of-living/
[2] https://www.bestplaces.net/cost-of-living/seattle-wa/chicago...
[3] https://www.bestplaces.net/cost-of-living/san-francisco-ca/c...
No one is calling about remote.
Good for us, maybe I won't be moving to the states in 3 years like I originally planned.
All the big tech companies are remote. What would Canada and COVID have to do with it?
I was talking to a security researcher about a friend who had a full interview with a company, sent papers for hiring, filled everything out, and then discovered the company she was interviewing for was named similar to a real company, with the only difference being a hyphen in the website name. The company was fake and once they had direct deposit information, drained her bank account. She was lucky there was only ~$1k in it. still.
Do your due diligence. Be careful out there.
https://qry5s.sse.codesandbox.io/
Any name Any email address Test account number: DE89370400440532013000
I would imagine the situation in the US to be quite similar.
It would be harder to get back if they did it to your business account and you didn’t notice.
https://battlepenguin.com/tech/the-american-banking-system-i...
To be fair, in Australia all I needed to transfer money was your name and account number and it'd appear within 24 hours. Since I've left, I've heard the system is more real time, with funds showing up in seconds.
You can pull money from accounts the same way in Australia, but I suspect it's limited by business and there are audits in place to stop and reverse fraud.
See for example, Clarkson: https://www.theguardian.com/money/2008/jan/07/personalfinanc...
In Russia, a lot of companies are issuing debit cards for their own employees, and those are often their sole bank accounts, especially for people low on social ladder.
Once the employer got a whiff of the person switching jobs, he fired him, and tipped the bank to block his account on "fraud" suspicion. Banks are known to tacitly play along in such scenarios.
Of course, an avenue to sue is still open for the man, but how do you sue if you have no money to pay the court fee, and your usual income will still be drained if you go to court even for such a trivial case.
The man lost 80k roubles, which also close to around $1k
Advice: anybody in such relationship should never hold any money in "hostage" bank accounts. Always cash out your income from salary accounts, and, for businesses, their merchant accounts with acquirers (paypal, we are looking at you.)
Here a card is tied to your bank account but is in no way your account and absolutely not the only way to access your money. Companies only know your account mumber to transfer funds to and sure as hell they have no other access to accounts. It is also hard to imagine why would any bank to want to "play along".
More business from companies issuing debit cards for employees. Often such banks are like 3rd tier ones, or complete hole-in-the-wall establishments. Such accounts almost always have near zero interest, or/are laden with high fees for every thing imaginable.
> Either that's not a full story, or Russia has some _interesting_ banking system.
Russia has a very interesting banking system indeed. If organised crime effectively makes a double digit of country's GDP, what else did you expect?
No, we have it in the states as well, see: https://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/01/business/as-pay-cards-rep.... Basically what happens is that you don't get a paycheck or deposit to your account. Instead, you get your pay deposited to a debit card, which you can then use to withdraw money or transfer to your own account. Since the account is technically controlled by the company and not you, it's easier for them to seize your money. It probably doesn't help that russia has high corruption and low consumer protection.
The company committed bank and wire fraud. They’ll get dealt with by the secret service and FBI.
"Wire transfer" could be either Fedwire or SWIFT and it is not reversible.
Also, since this is HN: no, Bitcoin or other crypto "transfers" are not reversible.
See my downvoted follow-up reiterating this obvious point: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24009403
Money wires are different, all the action is sender side. Even for me, Fidelity accountholder, a SWIFT money wire takes days to set up and I have to confirm it multiple times. I get the impression the bank hates doing them and will throw as many roadblocks as possible unless you are absolutely committed to it.
>The company committed bank and wire fraud. They’ll get dealt with by the secret service and FBI.
And:
>Our banking system is trash but it’s not lawless.
My experience is directly counter to that, given that it was a non-investigated wire fraud despite being blatant and the money going to a known local address/account. Saying that ACHs are better doesn't correct those overstatements of yours.
If my mortgage company is compromised, there's only ~3 days/month there's any money in that account.. and then it's the exact amount of the mortgage payment.
Bank account firewalls ftw.
Many actually are not, though not all of them even know that they are pretending until it goes to VP/exec for final sign off and they find budgets/priorities have “shifted”
If these companies were really so desperate for skilled workers, we wouldn't see the same jobs posted repeatedly, or never taken down from career pages, and they would be more responsive to inquiry. The monthly hiring thread here is full of it.
1. Government supports the economy while vaccines and treatments are developed.
2. ???
3. Economic activity returns quickly to pre-pandemic levels.
There's no "guarantee" this plan will work... but we are all acting as if it will, because the alternatives are too unpleasant to contemplate.[a]
So, much of the economy is "faking it until we make it."
The tech sector is no exemption.
--
[a] We all prefer not to think too much on the possibility that large swaths of the economy could remain under stress for a long while -- office buildings, malls, retail stores, restaurants and bars, movie theaters, airlines, conference centers, etc. These businesses employ a gazillion people, use a mountain of assets, and depend on a ton of software and technology for everything. We all want these businesses to survive as intact as possible so they can thrive in a post-pandemic world and continue to buy technology.
Its so embarrassing and I'm nowhere near as productive as I should be. Most of my EU peers are probably having to take up the slack.
Tech workers have the benefit of hindsight, having seen U.S. manufacturing jobs get decimated in the last few decades.
A lot of fields already have built in protection from foreign competition. For instance, most if all states require that anyone conducting telemedicine work needs to be both licensed in the state were the service is being performed.
Given the leftward drift of the Democratic party and Republican's newfound disdain for the big tech companies and things like HB1 visas, I would be shocked if we don't see some significant restrictions on how foreign workers are used in the tech sector.
If you’re writing software for the world, you might have temporarily enjoyed a bubble few decades in time where you could serve the world but only had to compete on an even footing against other labor situated in a high-cost area. This world-scale pre-post test of working remotely may be the discontinuity that aligns a global workforce to a global user base.
(Remote collaboration completely sidesteps the H1B issue, of course.)
What conferences are going on? Most have been cancelled. Is the EU allowing large gatherings like that?
The tech sector is strongest in America, they aren’t going to offshore their workforce because of one unfavorable president and a bunch of media hype.
Not being productive at home is your issue. I don’t have to drive over an hour a day to work for 4 hours anymore.
I'm not productive at home right now because I'm taking care of sick relatives and have young children to keep safe while my government throws everything into chaos and we don't even know exacts on what will happen with schools, etc, and I'm not the only peer of mine having problems.
This isn't me lamenting WFH. It's me lamenting WFH during this pandemic specifically from within the USA.
If you're doing great, that's awesome. A lot of us aren't lately.
With our entire economy disintegrating, the tech sector isn't going to be spared.
We're in a bad situation right now, but the economy itself is functioning, it's just running a lot cooler than usual.
We'll see if this article's premise holds any water over the remainder of the year, for now it's weak.
Moreover, many of the giants are seeing increased usage while everyone is home. A large amount of the industry doesn't work that way, but rather, is based on profit and loss, not share price and vanity metrics.
One factor might be that I prefer to work as a contractor, and get my own health insurance; it might be different if you're looking for "permanent" employment. Perhaps employers are more willing to hire someone they've never met in person, if it's as a contractor?
"Newborn baby's have _on average_ one testicle"
I think you're right about it being opportunistic, at least that's what I've observed.
Where's the LinkedIn data?
The drop could be just the result of some of those firms ceasing their activity as I definitely don't see as many CyberCoders and whatever was that bot, which automatically reposted vacancies on Linkedin (JobNetwork or something), in the recent months.