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Sorry I was unclear. What I was trying to say is that if you haven't offshored your team already(i.e. moved part of your engineering operations to E. Europe, A

Sorry I was unclear. What I was trying to say is that if you haven't offshored your team already(i.e. moved part of your engineering operations to E. Europe, Asia, etc.), then you have a good reason for doing so. Offshoring engineering has been going on for decades at this point. Anyone threatening that working from home means your job is a target for offshoring(to someone else, not you in that location) is full of beans. It's an empty threat. I have no doubt that I could personally move to another country and do my job. I seriously considered it as a way to escape unfair alimony payments, and still might.

michaelt 6y ago
> What I was trying to say is that if you haven't offshored your team already, then you have a good reason for doing so. What if, pre-covid, the reason was "we believe having everyone in one office, regularly meeting face-to-face, is more productive than anything involving videoconferencing" ?
- robryan 6y ago
  These companies certainly can try and great for them if they can make it work. If it was easy though it would have already happened to a greater extent.
- nitwit005 6y ago
  Many companies have a history of failed outsourcing efforts. Or ones that didn't fail, but which failed to realize any costs savings. And, of course, there are often other similar failures, like failures related to contractors, or failed attempts to switch from internally built software tools to third party vendors. If a company has been around for 30 years and isn't using an option that seems much cheaper, there is going to be a history behind that.
konjin 6y ago
We have never had the case where _everyone_ has to work remotely. One of the reasons why offshoring failed is that you needed to be in the office to have a 30 second chat about something that saved you a few minutes of digging to find it yourself, which added up quickly. This is no longer the case. There are still reasons to not offshore, but we do not know if they are enough to keep it from happening. These conversations tell you more about the mentality of the people having them than about the viability of offshoring.
visarga 6y ago
> I have no doubt that I could personally move to another country and do my job Yes, but your compensation will be reduced. You can't take you SF salary into Eastern Europe.

michaelt 6y ago

> What I was trying to say is that if you haven't offshored your team already, then you have a good reason for doing so. What if, pre-covid, the reason was "we believe having everyone in one office, regularly meeting face-to-face, is more productive than anything involving videoconferencing" ?

robryan 6y ago
These companies certainly can try and great for them if they can make it work. If it was easy though it would have already happened to a greater extent.
nitwit005 6y ago
Many companies have a history of failed outsourcing efforts. Or ones that didn't fail, but which failed to realize any costs savings. And, of course, there are often other similar failures, like failures related to contractors, or failed attempts to switch from internally built software tools to third party vendors. If a company has been around for 30 years and isn't using an option that seems much cheaper, there is going to be a history behind that.

konjin 6y ago

We have never had the case where _everyone_ has to work remotely. One of the reasons why offshoring failed is that you needed to be in the office to have a 30 second chat about something that saved you a few minutes of digging to find it yourself, which added up quickly. This is no longer the case. There are still reasons to not offshore, but we do not know if they are enough to keep it from happening. These conversations tell you more about the mentality of the people having them than about the viability of offshoring.

visarga 6y ago

> I have no doubt that I could personally move to another country and do my job Yes, but your compensation will be reduced. You can't take you SF salary into Eastern Europe.