5 ms·

I’m old enough to remember this being a threat a few decades ago. Most of those roles came back to the US. If it was that easy, they would’ve moved long before

I’m old enough to remember this being a threat a few decades ago. Most of those roles came back to the US. If it was that easy, they would’ve moved long before Covid.

gmadsen 5y ago
the difference is the mass forced remote work has made companies do the necessary work to effectively do this
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  I disagree. It was already possible and cheap to setup satellite offices in foreign countries in order to exploit labor differences, and so far this effort has usually failed. There’s no reason to believe that Covid has knocked down the final barrier to offshoring more work. More frankly, I think that the cost savings in offshoring are a false promise. You can hire very cheap programmers in India and similar, and they are not very good. Those programmers that are very good at their job either immigrate to the US, and start earning an American salary, or they raise their prices high enough so that the benefits of offshoring are less clear cut. As far as working with remote employees off shore, time zone and language regularly remains the biggest barrier; Covid hasn’t fixed that.
  - roguas 5y ago
    Language? I know a lot of people more fluent than a typical US dev. Besides that, how much language do you actually need, some basic vocabulary and grammar to communicate. Time zone? US has 2 continents + you typically need a maximum of 3 hours overlap a day. This is possible even in Europe-EastCoast setup, I typically wake up 11. In US that's 6am sure, but I end my day at 7pm which at US is 2pm. Covid has knocked down a lot. The biggest wall to crush was the psychological ones. So its now, not only genius contractors who could negotiate reasonable flexibility. Also when 60% is WFH now, there is little point in fighting/readjusting. If this was 10% you could try and battle or continue to limit that.
    - ashtonkem 5y ago
      Having led international teams, I can tell you that you’re completely wrong about all of this. You are drastically understating the difficulties of working with engineers abroad. Time zones matter, a lot. Crossing America’s time zones isn’t fun, but it has nothing on Eastern Europe or India. 8pm meetings to interact with your international workers will burn you out quickly. As will suddenly remembering that most of the world doesn’t do DST, so your 8pm meeting just became a 9pm. You also need to know a hell of a lot more than “some vocabulary” in order to communicate effectively with a boss (me, in this scenario) or a stakeholder. Some consultancies will have specialized personnel whose only job is to translate for engineering teams, but these people are extremely expensive for obvious reasons. You can overcome these problems, yes. But often a lot of the supposed cost savings of international workers disappears or shrinks massively by the time you’ve found an arrangement that’s as productive as local engineers. Typically the most sustainable approach here is to use one of the larger contracting companies like EPAM or Globant, but that eats up your savings and the attrition rate from those companies is very high. I’ve personally lost contractors because they were tired of the contracting company, not me or my company. I’ve worked with international teams, and I continue to work with international teams. But the idea that Covid has made replacing domestic teams with international teams does not hold water.
RestlessMind 5y ago
In the last few decades, technology has progressed and made a lot of tools available to facilitate remote work. Then the pandemic came along and forced everyone to adopt those tools. A lot of companies have now noticed that they can just go all-in on these tools, expand their talent pool and lower their hiring costs. As described here[1], my company already has a majority of the new headcount in the non-US countries. The only caution they are taking is to avoid tough timezones like India. But it doesn't matter to a team if the new team member is from Colombia or Canada or Kansas, while it matters a great deal to the execs to hire that person outside US since that saves a lot of money to the company. Who benefits? Shareholders, execs and the middle class in the non-US countries. Who loses? US middle class. We have seen this movie before with manufacturing. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27696235 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27696235

I’m old enough to remember this being a threat a few decades ago. Most of those roles came back to the US. If it was that easy, they would’ve moved long before Covid.

gmadsen 5y ago

the difference is the mass forced remote work has made companies do the necessary work to effectively do this

ashtonkem 5y ago
I disagree. It was already possible and cheap to setup satellite offices in foreign countries in order to exploit labor differences, and so far this effort has usually failed. There’s no reason to believe that Covid has knocked down the final barrier to offshoring more work. More frankly, I think that the cost savings in offshoring are a false promise. You can hire very cheap programmers in India and similar, and they are not very good. Those programmers that are very good at their job either immigrate to the US, and start earning an American salary, or they raise their prices high enough so that the benefits of offshoring are less clear cut. As far as working with remote employees off shore, time zone and language regularly remains the biggest barrier; Covid hasn’t fixed that.
- roguas 5y ago
  Language? I know a lot of people more fluent than a typical US dev. Besides that, how much language do you actually need, some basic vocabulary and grammar to communicate. Time zone? US has 2 continents + you typically need a maximum of 3 hours overlap a day. This is possible even in Europe-EastCoast setup, I typically wake up 11. In US that's 6am sure, but I end my day at 7pm which at US is 2pm. Covid has knocked down a lot. The biggest wall to crush was the psychological ones. So its now, not only genius contractors who could negotiate reasonable flexibility. Also when 60% is WFH now, there is little point in fighting/readjusting. If this was 10% you could try and battle or continue to limit that.
  - ashtonkem 5y ago
    Having led international teams, I can tell you that you’re completely wrong about all of this. You are drastically understating the difficulties of working with engineers abroad. Time zones matter, a lot. Crossing America’s time zones isn’t fun, but it has nothing on Eastern Europe or India. 8pm meetings to interact with your international workers will burn you out quickly. As will suddenly remembering that most of the world doesn’t do DST, so your 8pm meeting just became a 9pm. You also need to know a hell of a lot more than “some vocabulary” in order to communicate effectively with a boss (me, in this scenario) or a stakeholder. Some consultancies will have specialized personnel whose only job is to translate for engineering teams, but these people are extremely expensive for obvious reasons. You can overcome these problems, yes. But often a lot of the supposed cost savings of international workers disappears or shrinks massively by the time you’ve found an arrangement that’s as productive as local engineers. Typically the most sustainable approach here is to use one of the larger contracting companies like EPAM or Globant, but that eats up your savings and the attrition rate from those companies is very high. I’ve personally lost contractors because they were tired of the contracting company, not me or my company. I’ve worked with international teams, and I continue to work with international teams. But the idea that Covid has made replacing domestic teams with international teams does not hold water.

RestlessMind 5y ago

In the last few decades, technology has progressed and made a lot of tools available to facilitate remote work. Then the pandemic came along and forced everyone to adopt those tools. A lot of companies have now noticed that they can just go all-in on these tools, expand their talent pool and lower their hiring costs. As described here[1], my company already has a majority of the new headcount in the non-US countries. The only caution they are taking is to avoid tough timezones like India. But it doesn't matter to a team if the new team member is from Colombia or Canada or Kansas, while it matters a great deal to the execs to hire that person outside US since that saves a lot of money to the company. Who benefits? Shareholders, execs and the middle class in the non-US countries. Who loses? US middle class. We have seen this movie before with manufacturing. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27696235 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27696235