NewsLab
Oct 27 16:37 UTC

Why remote roles are becoming extinct in 2026? (news.ycombinator.com)

6 points|by rohansrma||21 comments|Read full story on news.ycombinator.com
I've been looking for new remote roles (marketing) for a while but there's no good role hiring remotely everywhere. I'm from India. I previously worked big UK and USA based startups but I left them because of relocation issues.

Is this just me or is the remote roles already dead?

Comments (21)

22 shown
  1. 1. diwash007||context
    AI
  2. 2. rohansrma||context
    what AI?
  3. 3. anovikov||context
    OBBBA act made hiring non-US people for dev role virtually impossible from tax standpoint. Plus there are too many "overemployment" scammers and employers woke up to that.
  4. 4. shahzad-89||context
    Yes, you're right. Also with the rise of AI, people are using AI tools to solve small problems and build projects on their own rather than hiring someone to do the work for them.
  5. 5. rohansrma||context
    Agreed. But I'm mostly referring to seeded startups or organizations.
  6. 6. rohansrma||context
    that's the main reason for usa. but working at us startups is still not affected much ig. however you need a physical presence.

    btw, usa OBBBA act, impacted UK remote jobs as well.

  7. 7. shahzad-89||context
    It’s not just you. Remote jobs aren’t dead, but work from anywhere roles have become much rarer.
  8. 8. rohansrma||context
    I see only usa and uk remote roles these days.
  9. 9. joywong||context
    Had the same experience. I spent about half a year looking for a remote role before joining my current company and couldn’t land one. My guess is AI is a big factor: the work that can be done remotely is mostly the work AI is making more efficient, they only need to spend bulk of dollars per month to "employ" a group of AI agents, so there are fewer openings and far more applicants per role.
  10. 10. rohansrma||context
    I worked directly for a AI native company and I think engineering roles were only compromised a bit and not the marketing roles. So, far I've applied to 75 jobs in two months and I got rejections just because of location issues.

    But Ik before 2026, there were a lot of roles in the marketing side available remotely. I rejected so many offers. But currently, most companies shifted to on-site inside of remote. Idt AI is the reason.

  11. 11. MichaelWalden||context
    lot of jobs... depends who you are

    the challange is often you need to "Know someone" I got my last job tthough friends

  12. 12. rohansrma||context
    I'm bad at making friends tbh!
  13. 13. sdevonoes||context
    As a software engineer in western Europe: I still see plenty of (100%) remote roles available. When I say plenty I mean that there’s enough for me to pick up one and try my luck.

    But also I usually work for companies that have a branch in the country I live in

  14. 14. rohansrma||context
    I mentioned this in one of my comments. Europe and America have a plenty of remote roles. But not remote everywhere*
  15. 15. keiferski||context
    It's my impression that many of the roles that were previously "remote from anywhere in the world" are being replaced with either 1) a current employee using AI to be more productive or 2) a remote/partially remote job with the requirement to be in the same country/economic zone.
  16. 16. rohansrma||context
    I don't agree much on this. For ex, hiring someone from Nigeria is always cheaper than hiring the same person in US for a US based company.
  17. 17. keiferski||context
    I didn't say it wasn't cheaper, I said it's what I've observed.

    It's my impression that companies would rather hire 2-3 locals/non-remote workers and enhance their productivity with AI tools, vs. hiring 15 people from abroad that are in countries they have no presence in.

    AI is undercutting a lot of these remote abroad jobs, because those types of tasks are more easily done with AI now.

  18. 18. brudgers||context
    [delayed]
  19. 19. ChrisShips||context
    You could check out the Jobs module or remote work platforms.
  20. 20. rohansrma||context
    doesn't works. I tried them.
  21. 21. mindwork||context
    I don't see it.

    I think this is a misconception brought by the COVID19 times when remote work went mainstream because of lockdowns. And now there is a big expectation for work to be remote. Just started look for a remote job, I see the same percentage of remote-first or remote-friendly companies as before. Which is a small percent, but not zero.

    On the opposite - the hybrid work became more normalized this days.

  22. 22. iainctduncan||context
    I work in tech diligence so I speak to software companies all the time, from startups to $5B transactions. In "normal" companies, remote jobs are still very common. Can't speak to teach giants and their decisions, which rarely have anything to do with actually developing software though