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Now the developed world will compete with the developing world to lower wages in the developed world. The high salaries and perks for many USA tech jobs may not

Now the developed world will compete with the developing world to lower wages in the developed world. The high salaries and perks for many USA tech jobs may not last much longer. No need for companies to pay more for premium locations / perk offices. No need for companies to deal with the hassle of H1B visas. From a company perspective, why pay someone in the USA $165k/year to work from home in Trendyville when an Indian engineer is $35k/year in Bangalore?

tjr225 5y ago
Have you worked with someone in Bangalore? No offense my Bangalore homies, but I’ve only had bad experiences. Same with Bulgaria. Weird communication issues and bad work. This was especially the case in customer facing work. Ive had better experience with people in the NL but still obvious communication issues, bad experiences with Australia and Asia. For better or for worse(I think worse) engineering culture is heavily footed in North American language and culture.
- adamors 5y ago
  > obvious communication issues Have you considered that you are the one who is a poor communicator? You wouldn't be the first: https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20161028-native-english-speakers-are-the-worlds-worst-communicators https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20161028-native-english...
  - tjr225 5y ago
    Communication issues are inherently a two way street. Unfortunately for workers in Bangalore, Bulgaria, etc the vast majority of my customers are in the US, UK, or Canada.
- silisili 5y ago
  In my experience, you get what you pay for there. The problem is, most companies who offshore are being cheapskates, and go bottom barrel. Then we Americans who work with them are thinking 'wow, people from country X are terrible programmers.' But not universally true. Amazing talent exists in India for example, but they command much higher prices.
  - Ekaros 5y ago
    Why don't they compare to work from cheapest almost finished boot camp graduates doing freelancing work in USA... And then extend that performance to describe your average USA based developer...
    - silisili 5y ago
      Fair and interesting point. I've been a programmer for a long time, and I'd say 90% of 'bootcampers' I've encountered are similarly awful. I think we're on like our 7th interviewee now and yet to find one that can write a single function compilable code on the fly. To answer your question, it's because most people aren't. You typically work with one or two brilliant people, a buncha midrangers, then ... those. However, when you get folks from other countries, it's typically only because your company is trying to cut costs and hires some really cheap body shop. So we don't meet the brilliant people from other countries, and are lucky to encounter the midrangers. And they don't stick around long. I was once so excited that a person we got from said body shop offshore was truly brilliant. Like, a person hired as Java but happened to know C and ASM and the inner workings of the linux kernel. He asked if he could help me with a couple (harder) things I was working on, and was amazing. As you may imagine, he stayed for about a month before moving to better things. I begged my company to poach him, but our contract forbid it.
- wpietri 5y ago
  For sure. And it works the other way too. I was consulting on project building a microfinance accounting system. All the initial target users were in India. Having the developers there made sense because they understood the context better and could easily go visit users. I found it frustrating to try to be useful from the US and the time zone differences were a giant pain, so I eventually just went there for a few weeks. Same deal for the product manager; she was US based but would go there for something like 1 week in 4.
- notadoc 5y ago
  Similar arguments were made with why factories, tech support, customer service, etc couldn't possibly leave the USA. And they did anyway.
  - tjr225 5y ago
    Yeah; for sure. But still aren’t all of your examples memes of bad, low quality, off shoring? Almost to the extent of being a meme?
- tayo42 5y ago
  I've had similar experiences, but any forienger/immigrant that is in the US tends to be much better. Always thought that was interesting
- Tade0 5y ago
  Have you considered the thought that perhaps the problem could be on your end? Especially implying that there's less of an engineering culture in a country that brought us ASML - the company behind the machines used by TSMC to produce the Apple M1?
rsj_hn 5y ago
It's not like outsourcing wasn't possible before. You still have to deal with all the HR issues of hiring someone in a foreign country -- zoom does not change that. You will still need to set up at least a small office there, too. What it might change for the outsourcing market is reducing office space if people from India can work from home, too. That would allow them to lower costs, just as US firms can lower costs for domestic workers by shedding office space. I'm not sure why those office reductions would be greater in India than in the U.S. Beyond that, firms have been outsourcing wherever they could for the last twenty years already. Every major tech company has some offices in India already. What's left in the U.S. are those jobs that can't be transferred because productivity is more important than lowering costs. At this point, the differentiator between the 200K job and the 60K job is productivity, not geography.
theonething 5y ago
Anecdotal, but the shittiest code I come across as a freelancer has been from overseas Indian "engineers."

tjr225 5y ago

Have you worked with someone in Bangalore? No offense my Bangalore homies, but I’ve only had bad experiences. Same with Bulgaria. Weird communication issues and bad work. This was especially the case in customer facing work. Ive had better experience with people in the NL but still obvious communication issues, bad experiences with Australia and Asia. For better or for worse(I think worse) engineering culture is heavily footed in North American language and culture.

adamors 5y ago
> obvious communication issues Have you considered that you are the one who is a poor communicator? You wouldn't be the first: https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20161028-native-english-speakers-are-the-worlds-worst-communicators https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20161028-native-english...
- tjr225 5y ago
  Communication issues are inherently a two way street. Unfortunately for workers in Bangalore, Bulgaria, etc the vast majority of my customers are in the US, UK, or Canada.
silisili 5y ago
In my experience, you get what you pay for there. The problem is, most companies who offshore are being cheapskates, and go bottom barrel. Then we Americans who work with them are thinking 'wow, people from country X are terrible programmers.' But not universally true. Amazing talent exists in India for example, but they command much higher prices.
- Ekaros 5y ago
  Why don't they compare to work from cheapest almost finished boot camp graduates doing freelancing work in USA... And then extend that performance to describe your average USA based developer...
  - silisili 5y ago
    Fair and interesting point. I've been a programmer for a long time, and I'd say 90% of 'bootcampers' I've encountered are similarly awful. I think we're on like our 7th interviewee now and yet to find one that can write a single function compilable code on the fly. To answer your question, it's because most people aren't. You typically work with one or two brilliant people, a buncha midrangers, then ... those. However, when you get folks from other countries, it's typically only because your company is trying to cut costs and hires some really cheap body shop. So we don't meet the brilliant people from other countries, and are lucky to encounter the midrangers. And they don't stick around long. I was once so excited that a person we got from said body shop offshore was truly brilliant. Like, a person hired as Java but happened to know C and ASM and the inner workings of the linux kernel. He asked if he could help me with a couple (harder) things I was working on, and was amazing. As you may imagine, he stayed for about a month before moving to better things. I begged my company to poach him, but our contract forbid it.
wpietri 5y ago
For sure. And it works the other way too. I was consulting on project building a microfinance accounting system. All the initial target users were in India. Having the developers there made sense because they understood the context better and could easily go visit users. I found it frustrating to try to be useful from the US and the time zone differences were a giant pain, so I eventually just went there for a few weeks. Same deal for the product manager; she was US based but would go there for something like 1 week in 4.
notadoc 5y ago
Similar arguments were made with why factories, tech support, customer service, etc couldn't possibly leave the USA. And they did anyway.
- tjr225 5y ago
  Yeah; for sure. But still aren’t all of your examples memes of bad, low quality, off shoring? Almost to the extent of being a meme?
tayo42 5y ago
I've had similar experiences, but any forienger/immigrant that is in the US tends to be much better. Always thought that was interesting
Tade0 5y ago
Have you considered the thought that perhaps the problem could be on your end? Especially implying that there's less of an engineering culture in a country that brought us ASML - the company behind the machines used by TSMC to produce the Apple M1?

rsj_hn 5y ago

It's not like outsourcing wasn't possible before. You still have to deal with all the HR issues of hiring someone in a foreign country -- zoom does not change that. You will still need to set up at least a small office there, too. What it might change for the outsourcing market is reducing office space if people from India can work from home, too. That would allow them to lower costs, just as US firms can lower costs for domestic workers by shedding office space. I'm not sure why those office reductions would be greater in India than in the U.S. Beyond that, firms have been outsourcing wherever they could for the last twenty years already. Every major tech company has some offices in India already. What's left in the U.S. are those jobs that can't be transferred because productivity is more important than lowering costs. At this point, the differentiator between the 200K job and the 60K job is productivity, not geography.

theonething 5y ago

Anecdotal, but the shittiest code I come across as a freelancer has been from overseas Indian "engineers."