There is a huge pool of exceptional junior engineers

The gap between juniors and seniors today is really not that big. I know a lot of people with senior in their title that are closer to a junior. Have them actually read the docs for a month straight, and a junior would know more than a senior.

Also, if you really want to hire a senior, and you can't compete on pay, maybe compete by going remote? Almost all the job listings I see are for hybrid roles. Do they realize they're just throwing away all the candidates in other cities? Are hiring managers/CEOs masochists?

Yeah see this all the time :(

Senior is often about time in industry not competence. A lot of 'senior' engineers are completely ineffective and seemingly unable to ever become effective. They just joined the industry a while ago and are treading water and tricking the next hiring manager that they were called 'senior' at their last job so of course they are a 'senior' now. If they aren't applying for 'staff' level jobs.

The correlation between being smart, getting things done, speeding everyone up, being trusted etc and 'seniority' is not causal :)

I might have agreed with you on remote work before Covid, but the difference in productivity from my team that stayed remote after Covid, and the hybrid one I joined afterwards was almost impossible to believe.

That's the team, not the location. Take your hybrid team and move them remote and they'll perform the same.

For a few months they will, but the innovation, problem solving and creativity that happens in person just can’t be replicated online and it’ll eventually drop off.

I hope you’re not arguing for remote, in a non-tech hub city, but only in the US. If I thought remote individuals were as productive as in person, there would be no such thing as “remote but not too remote”. Canada is cheaper than the US and has American English speakers, if that’s important to you. LATAM is in the US time zones and is cheaper again. If I didn’t care about time zone offset there’s almost unlimited options for offshoring at a fraction of the cost of US labor.

I don't know what "innovation, problem solving and creativity" you're witnessing. In my experience, at some jobs, people will sit around desks and talk about things, but at others they definitely don't. At some they talk often on Slack public channels, and at others nobody is talking on Slack. The difference isn't where their body is, the difference is cultural.

I'm arguing for remote, period. If you can find the right skills outside the US, please hire them! I have been at many orgs over the years where we struggled for months (sometimes years) to find halfway decent hires. Even with European and LATAM contractors, it wasn't much better; we'd go through 20-30 sub-standard contractors to find 1 or 2 with skill. And often they're better workers!

Yes, I am basically advocating for my salary to go down by hiring cheaper offshore workers. I am okay with that, as I know I'll get hired regardless (I am extremely skilled and will go toe-to-toe with any overseas hire). The amount of money we make, for the actual work we do, is crazy...