I doubt it (even though I run a dev shop w/ Vietnam based engineers). US companies will continue hiring US based engineers. And when Covid is over people will go to the office again.
Also wanted to add in developed countries (and by corollary, big cities) it is very hard to make friends once you are an adult. When I lived in Vietnam it is 10x easier to date/make friends/get involved in the local community (vs NYC,LA or SF)
East/West can work well as well. I have a team in Vietnam with USA clients and we just do 1h overlap per day. Too many meetings may not be a good thing.
I am here in Vietnam (and was in California a few months ago) and the difference is day and night. Lockdown is super strict here. Everyone wears mask (even when it is only a few cases out of millions). It is a 21 day mandatory quarantine (if you get approved to get in). The results speak for itself.
So right now it's 5pm PST, end of the work day for many. It's 8AM in Saigon.
You really think people are going to work from midnight to 8am? And sometimes later in the morning depending on the situation? And this is going to be a massive trend?
Maybe not Saigon, but as a night owl, it's been a dream of mine to be able to slide my 9-5 EST jobs to being 2nd shift jobs, like say in Central or Eastern Europe.
People have different biological clocks, and being able to detach from geography and perfectly tailor your clock to the company's clock, frankly, sounds like good efficiency to me.
Lots of companies operate across two or more time zones. Yes, it has problems, but as long as you group them together in no more than three groups it generally doesn't get too complicated, and even allows you to not have to have people on call at odd hours.
The GP said "Especially in Southeast Asia," not Europe.
6pm-2am is doable if you're a) a very late night person, and b) without kids. I don't think this generalizes to a large percentage of people, and it can easily go well past 2am. It's less unreasonable to think people may still be working or responding to something at 8/9 or even 10pm PST, but if that's now 4/5/6am for someone in Europe, that's pretty rough. You'll also not be able to line up your meals very easily.
Definitely not for a large percentage of people. Just a significant percentage of the IC engineering workforce. Especially the digital nomad types.
People with kids aren't going to relocate their family internationally unless they already had family roots there.
Anecdotally, the people I personally know that love SE Asia and would seriously consider or already did WFH from there were all in the 20-30s age group and had no problem maintaining US working times. The biggest draw of SE Asia other than the super low COL is that its beautiful outside. The outdoors is best enjoyed during daylight, so the timezone offset is a plus for them.
It depends on how you manage the workload I think. I am based in California (and so is my client) and we have a team in Hanoi, Vietnam. We get a lot done as many tasks are done asynchronously. Plus we can deploy when the users in US are sleeping :)
A few years ago I had to commute from Orange county to Manhattan Beach. It takes 1 hour to get to the office (leaving at 5:15am in the morning) and 1.5 hour to get home (leaving at 4pm). By the time I got home I felt dead. It was a 30 mile trip. So to me the long commute is what makes WFH convincing.
