> There are also a lot of arrogant American engineers need to justify their inflated salaries compared to Indians, Eastern Europeans and other offshore workers. With the rise of remote work, we should hopefully see those inflated remote salaries settle to the international norm.
As much as I support remote work, what you suggests is not the norm. Mainly because companies hire much more employees than contractors. Companies cannot just hire employees from dozens of different countries (unless they have branches on such countries or they hire an intermediary company to handle the taxes/health insurance stuff). Companies cannot just hire people who are +-6h away from their timezone.
Companies usually hire remote employees within the country they operate. Which is nice because you can live in a modest town around the nature and work for companies who have originally emerged in the capital.
"unless they have branches on such countries or they hire an intermediary company to handle the taxes/health insurance stuff" is a big caveat - for any non-tiny company it's not a big deal to hire an intermediary company, such companies are readily available and the overhead is small compared to the salary differential; it's not a serious obstacle because you can simply buy a solution to that.
But that's not the case for time zones, of course.
As much as I support remote work, what you suggests is not the norm. Mainly because companies hire much more employees than contractors. Companies cannot just hire employees from dozens of different countries (unless they have branches on such countries or they hire an intermediary company to handle the taxes/health insurance stuff). Companies cannot just hire people who are +-6h away from their timezone.
Companies usually hire remote employees within the country they operate. Which is nice because you can live in a modest town around the nature and work for companies who have originally emerged in the capital.