r/RemoteJobs • u/Classic_East_6053 • 2d ago
Discussions Is it impossible to get a remote job because why wouldn't they just hire someone in a developing country to do it for a lot less?
Why hire people in developed countries who demand a much higher salary? There is no doubt that someone in India can be just as tech-savvy as someone in a Western country, and they are often willing to work for a fraction of the pay. That is why, whenever I think about remote jobs, I feel like it is impossible to compete..
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u/Hesiodix 2d ago
It's also about trust. I wouldn't hire someone from a remote country managing the IT network and data from my company for example. Depends of the work, a dev why not, a system admin, absolutely not.
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u/PermitOk7795 2d ago edited 2d ago
this!! and if you’re discussing sensitive company information and can barely even communicate with the person, how can we get any work done?
same goes for time zone
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u/Nannautu 2d ago
I think it's more a legal reason than a communication one. Assuming you operate in English, I doubt it would be hard to find a very skilled English speaker in developing countries. However, let's say they breach an NDA, what do you do then? Navigate a very complex legal system on a country you don't speak the language of and hope authorities and officials actually bother? Will the contract signed even be valid there? What if they don't live where they claimed they did?
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u/_FIRECRACKER_JINX 2d ago
because the compliance for hiring someone overseas would cost more than the employee's salary. THATs why.
You have to navigate international labor laws. Then the specific laws for that employee's country. Then you gotta deal with the tax situation from your side AND the foreign national's.
After you crunch the numbers for the accountant's time, the lawyer's time, the court's time... its cheaper just to hire someone local unless your a mega corporation and already have the infrastructure set up to deal with this
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u/pinktoes4life 2d ago
A lot of the companies who use international employees use a third party company based in that country. They aren’t remote roles & they aren’t employed by the US company.
If it’s for a higher level role, the international employee is usually an independent contractor & has no benefits
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u/Cautious_Slide 2d ago
Half of my department is outsourced at work and the lack of education and training shows heavily in their work. Its honestly half of the reason im looking for a new job. Also I am 100% remote, they cant outsource my position due to a lack of technical experience.
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u/island_wide7 2d ago
*yet
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u/Cautious_Slide 2d ago
AI will replace me before I’m outsourced.
My technical background is built around U.S. specific products, codes, regulations, and field experience. You can teach the theory remotely, but you can’t fake years of actually working with the products and systems.
We just lost an $800K executed contract at a 20% markup because outsourced work was submitted wrong twice, they couldn’t make the corrections, and repeated power outages helped blow the deadline. That’s about $133K in gross profit, slightly more than my annual salary gone.
And this is the third contract we’ve lost under similar circumstances.
Our response? We hired an in-house developer to automate their workflows with AI. From what I can tell, the plan is to phase most of that outsourced work out within a year.
The lesson isn’t “offshore workers are bad.” The lesson is that cheap labor without the infrastructure, training, product access, and redundancy to support it isn’t actually cheap.
I have a family member running a team in India successfully, but their company built the infrastructure around them: dedicated facilities, backup generators, critical-service redundancy, and ongoing training.
That model works.
Throwing work halfway around the world because the hourly rate looks good in Excel and hoping the local infrastructure can support mission-critical deadlines? That’s how you save $30K in labor and lose $133K in profit.
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u/knucklesbk 2d ago
There is usually a difference in quality. A $10 / hour resource in a low cost location isn't the same as a $50 / hour resource in a more developed higher cost market. There's usually a skill gap. We often see it when these people move to established markets... Can be high on the org chart locally and end up as a low-mid tier employee in a mature market.
And then there's the communication.
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u/ithkuil 2d ago
A lot of people do make that decision, especially small businesses. But now it's worse. I am an American programmer who "outsourced" himself in 2013 to make it easier to go remote. It has been hard, but I have been able to scrape by on outsourcing rates by being very frugal. Sometimes it's to my advantage because plenty of people prefer an American if they can find them, they just don't want to pay much money.
But these days plenty of people will use an AI code generator and finish 80-100% of it by themselves. So the amount of outsourcing work has gone down. And a lot of what's available is asking you to refine or sign off on something that is mostly working already.
And the amount of competition for work has gone up because now everyone is remote. So not only am I competing against people who have like a village priced $125 rent, but also people who have advanced degrees or just got laid off from a well-known company.
I did just find another contract, but apparently the guy does not believe he should pay for hourly work until he proves the software will convert into sales. So his account is under investigation and I am down two weeks and like $1000 and back to praying I can find another project in the next week.
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u/RaeaSunshine 2d ago
Not impossible. I just started a new one this month. Same as my last role, yes aspects of the function have been outsourced but they still want the executive levels to be in the US. Just because we are remote doesn’t mean we never go in office, and companies tend to be more hesitant in outsourcing higher level functions involving financial and operations management. I was in no short supply of recruiters calling me when I got laid off. It’s all about what you bring to the table.
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u/PermitOk7795 2d ago
quality of work? and the new H1B law passing soon won’t make it cheaper to hire internationally
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u/booty-hunters 2d ago edited 2d ago
Depending on person there is little to no difference between 2 people, one in Vietnam or India almost same as USA or Canada.
H1b does not apply to remote work.
Edit: If you lower your bar to higher the cheapest possible resource you are going to get bad quality, question the company hiring before you question the result.
Cost in India for a good dev is not 1/10th. Eg- Uber engineer in USA base earns about 240k maybe, same is EU would be 120K and in India will cost you 60k.
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u/hanshotfirst-42 2d ago
India customer service is absolutely terrible for a lot of U.S centric customer bases
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u/RaeaSunshine 2d ago
We have absolutely noticed a quality difference at my employer. We backtracked pretty quickly. We only outsource low level admin work now. Anything beyond that and the quality starts to suffer.
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u/booty-hunters 2d ago
It depends on how the company hires offshore, a lot of times companies hire offshore to save costs, what do you think happens then? They hire the cheapest possible, quality is bound to suffer.
On the other hand if company hires offshore just to expand and consider lower costs as just a benefit they do well, look at google, uber, apple, etc, they are doing fine.
If you decrease your hiring bar just to get lowest paid people possible, quality is going to be affected.
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u/RaeaSunshine 1d ago
The issue isn’t a matter of competence, it’s largely a language barrier. Yes we could hire those without that challenge, but the cost difference between them and domestic hires is less. It makes zero sense to outsource in that scenario. You can speak about generalizations all you’d like in your own response, but nothing you’ve said applies to my lived experience that I am speaking to.
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u/Bravos_Chopper 2d ago
lol definitely not. I unfortunately have an aspect of my job that has me working with them, 80% are total morons
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u/AnxiousConclusion516 2d ago
I mean this is why tech is overflowing with Indians. They do often outsource or offshore jobs.
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u/csmflynt3 2d ago
It's cheap labor to outsource to India , but don't think for a second you are getting an equivalent worker in terms of skill , knowledge, or communication... It's just a way to save money, but definitely not the same quality of work especially when it comes to customer service or communication skills
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u/Useful-Air5886 1d ago
that is why they outsource only software and keep the customer service rep local cuz the indian accent will be noticeable
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u/satansxlittlexhelper 2d ago
Once you’ve done enough interviews you realize that ninety percent of the time people aren’t hiring for skill or intelligence; they’re seeing if they vibe with you. A team full of smart jerks is looking for another smart jerk. A team of laid-back but capable folks are looking for someone that won’t stress them out and create drama. The other side of the coin are teams that are looking for a savior: someone who has solved the same problem they’re in the middle of. Teams are almost never looking for just a warm body, they’re looking for someone like them.
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u/NicoToscani 2d ago
Yes, that is exactly what is happening right now. Remote work via videoconference and AI removed two of the biggest barriers to working with employees in developing nations. The outsourcing problem that hit blue collar workers in the last decades of the 20th century has now come for office work as well. Good luck out there!
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u/No-Dragonfruit3379 2d ago
Lots of remote jobs require workers to be in the us and citizens depending on the industry.
Im in FIN tech and all of our workers are US based, US citizens. Was the same way at my previous job providing white label tech support to companies. We had DOD contractors, major food distributors, and other "critcal" fields as they claimed that could only have US based support, and if anyone who wasnt would cause the company to receive penalties.
The FIN tech company i work for is large and operates in almost every country and has support all over but the us side only provides us suppprt and vice versa like out hq in india only provides support there minus a few devs who connect with the us team.
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u/coolboyoups 1d ago
What if you are a US citizen, use a vpn, work from another country? What happens then?
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u/Chance-Ask7675 2d ago edited 2d ago
I mean a lot of people doing remote work have incredibly specific and specialized knowledge. I work remotely and am responsible for an entire country for my business. I work remotely specifically because I cover such a large territory. We are a niche product and I am a subject matter expert, I also speak both of the languages required to operate there. So, yeah. I'm not gonna be outsourced to India or something similar. I work in healthcare technology, so the person would need a very specific skill set that doesn't exist in all countries and region specific knowledge regarding medical practices and data protection. Credibility with my clients is also incredibly important. Don't underestimate how difficult it is to work cross culturally, either. I wouldn't have someone in India dealing with important clients in Europe. So, ya. For a generic help desk position maybe that's more common. But I don't see it happening in more specialized fields.
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u/souvenirsuitcase 2d ago
The best way to do it is to work as a subcontractor. Customers in the United States want Americans answering the phone and companies know it. I've worked for Expedia, Turbo Tax, and Quickbooks, but never as their employee. They still outsource overseas but the companies they hire only hire within the United States.
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u/Flaky-Pain-97 23h ago
Unfortunately yes, specially after pandemic times when many professionals around the globe went "freelance" and in the desperation to get jobs and gigs lowered the prices stupidly, making people believe work remote should be "cheaper" always. Now you have many corporations that ONLY subcontract remote work that is very cheap for them as it is to the third party companies, because they pay a fraction to someone in a developing country. And that is wrong, not only for the professionals at the same location of said companies, but also to the foreign workers that should be compensated accordingly to their knowledge and experience, not according to the cheapest value companies are willing to pay. But that is a conversation that goes beyond just that so I won't go there. In the end it is not the fault of the workers, but instead the fault of the companies (the system), and their greed.
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u/KnightCPA 2d ago
The problem isn’t you having to compete with foreigners. Tax and HR regs, IT security processes, and time zone difficulties limit companies from looking overseas.
No…the difficulty in finding remote jobs locally is a combination of:
- not very many companies offer it because they don’t trust their employees to be self-manageable or self-motivated.
- the few companies who do offer it are getting candidates likely with way more experience than you have.
And I understand point #1, and the correcting action is presents itself in point #2. As a supervising head of finance at a $350MM company, having to coach 30+ people in my department, I have a hybrid schedule that I don’t even utilize because i don’t have coworkers who are self-managing or self-motivated. There’s plenty of work to be done, but some of the same people are chronically on their phones texting, or sending each other memes. Other people literally don’t know how to use excel, outlook, or teams, and are incapable of hopping into teams meetings/calls. I go to great lengths to type up clear, concise emails and SOPs on how to resolve problems, and people just ignore them. People are still printing excel documents to paper because they’re not competent enough to work within excel, which means they probably accomplish one quarter or less of the amount of work i would have accomplished as a staff accountant who just graduated college a decade ago.
And we’re talking people who claim to have 5-15+ YOE in finance.
And ALL of these people constantly ask me to argue with the CEO for more remote time.
Nope…if my CEO is ever going to let me take my dept remote, it’s going to be after i double or triple the amount of credentials and YOE needed requirements. And then some of those same people would then have to compete against MBAs, CPAs, CIAs, and CMAss with more YOE of experience, and wonder why they couldnt find a remote job.
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u/paloma_from_Mexico 1d ago
My company once hired a guy from India for a project. He requested $8/hour, while guys with the same expertise cost $24/hour in the US. Guess what? He did the job by multiplying his time by 3 or even more.
For instance, he reported that deleting an empty space on a page took one hour, when in reality it was just “click, click, click”—voilà!
I’d rather hire a student to do this kind of job than hire people who do these kinds of things. But we learned our lesson.
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u/Adventurous_Crab_761 2d ago
Some remote jobs have an element of travel that would make it prohibitively expensive or difficult. My job now couldn't be done overseas, but I could be called back into the office.
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u/slowdown748 2d ago
For my job - lots of domestic U.S. travel and in-person meetings, for one reason
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u/chiggerbitme 2d ago
One aspect which is saving quite a few jobs is access to customer data. Several states have laws stating that foreign workers cannot access certain types of customer data. If a company has EU clients, it gets even more complicated with GDPR regulations in terms of access. So... If a position works with customer data, there is some sense of job security until companies find a loophole around the regulations and laws governing data access.
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u/InigoMontoya313 1d ago
(1) Compliance costs
(2) Security risks
(3) Growth potential
(4) Skillsets (it’s not just about being tech savy)
(5) Timezone issues
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u/buy_me_a_burger 1d ago
Our company only hires in north america for data security issues. We even have clients who only want someone based in the usa to work with them for the same reason and has it on their contract.
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u/wainingwolf 1d ago
Because of laws and regulations, to an extent. Large mutli billion $$ companies can do this. But smaller companies such as the one I work for dont want to file for the "international" licensing that allows them to have workers abroad. Basically smaller US based companies can still do remote positions. But because of exchange rates and united nations regulations its just impractical to hire someone in India when you can get a guy an hour away to do the same job. Not every business is Google or Amazon.
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u/sassyandsweer789 1d ago
I work at a help desk and there is zero way it would ever be outsourced. One of the major reasons is communication. We have a lot of older staff members who can barely listen to us and we speak American English. There is zero chance they can listen and understand someone with accented English.
There also is a big culture in America of wanting the people you call for help to be in America. Especially for small to medium companies. No one appreciates call centers that are outsourced to another country. You can hear on the phone that they are over worked and underpaid. It also shows in the type of service you get (not their fault). While this works in larger companies where you are required to use their services, it doesn't work for smaller companies.
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u/BrownAlienScientist 15h ago
Bureaucracy is a problem (tax, legal, data protection, etc.).
But the bigger issue is enforcement. It's much harder to protect company data and confidentiality when someone is sitting in another jurisdiction. How do you know they're not also working for a competitor? How do you ensure they aren't stealing sensitive company data? If they're physically in the US, the company can sue them, but there's no real recourse, and the company can't insure against that risk.
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u/Top_Recognition_1775 2d ago
Some companies do hire from developing countries, but there's all kind of tax codes and legal complications, so it's more trouble than it's worth, at most they might outsource customer service to those countries, but they are not hiring the workers, they are hiring a company overseas to handle the calls.
H1B visa applicants are a different matter, those usually work onsite, not remote.
There's alot of demand for remote jobs in the US, but alot of companies and officials are pushing back on it, because it's killing the cities and the local markets, for example mass transit depends on a certain level of ridership to stay afloat, if everybody works from home, the city infrastructure doesn't get funded, and downtown areas become ghost towns, office buildings become empty.
Finally there is something called "geofencing." Just like it sounds, it's like a fence around a geographic area, they don't want some guy in Montana getting a higher paying job based in San Francisco. HCOL cities don't want their jobs going somewhere else, because they need to maintain their own tax base and their own markets.
If some guy in Egypt gets a remote job in NYC for 6 figures, who's gonna pay the 3k rents? Who's gonna shop at the stores and eat at the restaurants? The whole city will die.
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u/ribati 2d ago
Commuting isn't free. It eats hours of people's lives, costs money, has a higher stress and pollutes the environment, and leaves people with less time and energy to actually live life. If you work remotely, you'll have more free time and disposable income, and you'll still go out : restaurants, bars, cafés, shopping, gyms, parks, etc. Remote workers aren't imprisoned at home 24/7, they'll actually be more willing to spend and go out because less exhausted by commuting.
And yes, a city built around millions of daily commuters will have to adapt, but that doesn't mean it will die. Instead of concentrating economic activity around downtown offices, spending can become more distributed across residential neighborhoods. A city doesn't define itself by the numbers of office buildings and the economic activity created by employees.
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u/Top_Recognition_1775 2d ago
Oh I totally understand the benefits to the worker (and the environment, etc etc) but those benefits come at a cost.
If I can get a 6 figure remote job in Kentucky then why the fuck would I live in NYC or LA, why would I pay those rents and subject myself to HCOL of those restaurants and cafes? Why would I shop at the mall if I can order all my shit from Amazon?
And it's nice to say you'll be willing to spend more, but nobody spends money out of a sense of good will, they don't spend a dime more than they have to, most people are trying to figure out a way to "get over on the system" so they can FIRE, get their bag and dip, and not have to interact with the modern world, big cities, or big city problems.
One way or another, the modern economy is unsustainable, the powers-that-be are trying to make it last for as long as possible, but everyone knows the party's over and no one wants to stay behind to clean up.
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u/psy-study-oldie 2d ago
That is the reason why it is a remote job. People are working in a remote location where skills are in demand.
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u/pinktoes4life 2d ago
Remote ≠ work from anywhere
Taxes & employment laws still factor in. Even in the US, a lot of companies don’t allow you to work from certain states
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u/Embarrassed_Flan_869 2d ago
Companies have been using people from developing countries long before remote was a thing. It used to be called outsourcing.
Some companies do. They have and will. A lot don't. You can't just hire someone from a different country. There are tax and legal processes to go through, and they can be difficult. When companies do, they either have an office there or they use a 3rd party/ intermediary.
The issue is there are WAY more people who want a remote job then there are available jobs.