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0 pointsprobinso8y ago0 comments

I'm pretty sure that larger talent pool is a myth. Not everybody has the discipline to work remotely. Perhaps are able to cast a wider net, but there are a lot more rotten fish.

I would expect that a larger talent pool maybe the case for smaller cities

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2 comments · 2 top-level

mooreds8y ago

Actually, I think the larger talent pool is pretty inescapable. Here's some wild guesses:

There are 3.87M software devs in the USA in a population of 325 million: https://www.census.gov/popclock/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_engineering_demograph...

Call it a density of 1% across the USA.

San Francisco has a population of 870k, round up to 1M. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco

If you assume that SF has a software engineer density 20X what the US does, then they have approx 200,000 engineers available for hire.

Assume that only 25% of software engineers are good for a remote job. That means that you'd have 960k engineers available for hire remotely, almost 5x the pool of SF.

Yes a lot of assumptions above (and there's also a skills matching and discovery issue), but I think that illustrates the size of the talent pool for remote hiring. And that doesn't include software engineers who aren't residents of the USA.

calafrax8y ago

not everyone has the discipline to work in an office either. not sure the proportion is any different.

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