Petersen: Remote US workers will lose jobs to offshore talent arbitrage
Ryan Petersen · Ryan Petersen: Why Velocity not Speed is Most Important in Company Building | E1081 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings · Nov 13, 2023 · at 56:59
Ryan Petersen is Founder and CEO of Flexport. He argues that US knowledge workers demanding remote work fail to realize it exposes them to direct competition with offshore talent.
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“By the way, I think remote work can really work, but it's not going to benefit the people who think like, it's not going to be people making 250,000 dollars a year hanging out in Jackson Hole. It's going to be geniuses in the developing world Making, you know, who all of a sudden there's an arbitrage. You can find incredibly smart people all over the planet and pay them one, 100th or one 10th, whatever GDP is. I mean, look at the GDP in the Philippines or something, and there's tons of geniuses over there. And so you could build a great company of remote work, but it's not going to be the people who are advocating for remote work inside these companies in the United States. Like if I'm remote, why am I going to pay someone in 250 K in San Francisco to be remote? I'll go find someone in a cheap location. So I don't think the people who are advocating the strongest for remote work actually know what they're advocating for because they're going to end up in a world without a job because someone they're now competing globally with geniuses all over the developing world.”
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