In the face of a shortage of skilled workers, tech companies are competing to attract talent. Remote work has become increasingly popular, with employees sometimes located on the other side of the world. Nicola Bessimier, for example, left Silicon Valley and moved to Reno, Nevada, for a full remote job at flight comparison site Hopper. Bessimier had no difficulty finding a new company interested in his software development skills after being laid off from Google, which recently announced the layoffs of 12,000 jobs. Full remote work allows employees to choose where they want to live and work from, affording them the freedom to change their location. Similarly, Jordan Pettier, an IT developer for French-American company Gorgias, operates from Grenoble in the French Alps. Gorgias founder Romain Lapierre leads teams in France, Serbia, and Canada from San Francisco, highlighting the importance of different time zones for remote work.
This trend has led to the creation of Remote, an American company that connects businesses with qualified people worldwide. Margaret Monrose, who is in charge of the company in France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg, explained that Remote employs approximately a thousand people in 70 countries who work remotely. This method of work allows companies to hire workers at a much lower wage, with some data engineers earning $17,400 annually in New Delhi, compared to $187,000 in San Francisco, according to a report by American company Gartner. However, remote work has its drawbacks, such as the difficulty of integrating junior employees and transferring company culture. Also, staggered schedules due to different time zones can be tiring for employees. As a result, companies have begun hiring employees according to time zones to ensure smooth work.