4 ms·

I think if working-from-home becomes the new normal, a lot of companies will try off-shoring or outsourcing as a way to cut costs, but I'm not sure the results

I think if working-from-home becomes the new normal, a lot of companies will try off-shoring or outsourcing as a way to cut costs, but I'm not sure the results will match expectations. I've worked at two previous companies that attempted to offshore coding production, and both times it led to unexpected delays, surprising bugs, badly written code, misunderstandings and cycling through multiple remote programmers. I certainly don't think I'm a specially talented programmer or that coders in other countries are inferior to my skills (demonstrably untrue), it was just a natural consequence of geographic distance, timezone differences, personal commitment and cultural misunderstanding. At both companies the experiment ended after just one project. If this is the 'normal' future then the infrastructure needed to really make offshoring work might be put in place, but if past experience is anything to go by, then simple geographic nearness - at least sharing timezone and the realistic ability to turn up in person at least occassionally, together with the personal commitment felt by 'real' employees - means I'm not sure whether distributed workforces are gonna be as productive as some people may hope. On the other hand, I think truly productive individuals may gain from the situation: if you're a fast and effective 'production unit', then you're going to be a valuable asset wherever you are, and your value will be set accordingly. We'll see which of the two competing economic forces wins out.

joelbluminator 6y ago
Well, if the main issue is Time Zone and you're American, American companies can simply hire across America. That's a gigantic talent pool that wasn't available before. But I think at first it will just move from SF / New York to cheaper U.S states. After a few years of gaining experience in managing remote work, we'll probably see more hiring across the world. Note that only rather big scale ups can afford to do that, hiring from a different country is an accounting headache. So young startup workers aren' likely to be hit.
jobigoud 6y ago
I think it's not an issue with off shoring per se but with hiring. For some reason when off-shoring companies use a different hiring process. As if they were doing this to cut costs so they already start with a lower expectation and no longer look for the perfect match. The off shore remote devs that will make it work exist but you have to look for them with a functional remote hiring mechanism.
mech422 6y ago
There was a big push to off-shore everything about 10ish years ago...US Programmers thought it was the end of the world. As mentioned, companies found out it requires an entirely different approach to get quality projects out of these teams. And often times, the time zone difference was the least of the issues. Cultural and language barriers can have a much larger impact then time zones.
wruza 6y ago
What are examples of cultural musunderstandings?

joelbluminator 6y ago

Well, if the main issue is Time Zone and you're American, American companies can simply hire across America. That's a gigantic talent pool that wasn't available before. But I think at first it will just move from SF / New York to cheaper U.S states. After a few years of gaining experience in managing remote work, we'll probably see more hiring across the world. Note that only rather big scale ups can afford to do that, hiring from a different country is an accounting headache. So young startup workers aren' likely to be hit.

jobigoud 6y ago

I think it's not an issue with off shoring per se but with hiring. For some reason when off-shoring companies use a different hiring process. As if they were doing this to cut costs so they already start with a lower expectation and no longer look for the perfect match. The off shore remote devs that will make it work exist but you have to look for them with a functional remote hiring mechanism.

mech422 6y ago

There was a big push to off-shore everything about 10ish years ago...US Programmers thought it was the end of the world. As mentioned, companies found out it requires an entirely different approach to get quality projects out of these teams. And often times, the time zone difference was the least of the issues. Cultural and language barriers can have a much larger impact then time zones.

wruza 6y ago

What are examples of cultural musunderstandings?