4 ms·
I really hope American businesses don't bring this headline to its logical conclusion... "37% of jobs in the United States can be performed entirely at home...
by tharne 5y ago
I really hope American businesses don't bring this headline to its logical conclusion...
"37% of jobs in the United States can be performed entirely at home...by people in India or Eastern Europe for much less money"
- achenet 5y agonot if those jobs entail good written or even oral communication skills. Native English speakers have a huge leg up on Indians and Eastern Europeans in this regard. For example, I imagine Coca-Cola is willing to pay more to have the person writing their ad copy be someone who has been immersed in American culture from birth.
- samarthr1 5y agoA good portion of Indian engineers speak good English. Anecdotal evidence only though.
- globular-toast 5y agoBut a good portion don't, which makes hiring take a lot longer.
- mprovost 5y agoIronically, if you google "is speak good english grammatically correct" there are a lot of articles debating whether it's ok, or if "speak English well" is better. This is the kind of subtlety that's hard to understand for non-native speakers.
- glandium 5y agoI don't think there's anything grammatically wrong with "speak good English". The difference to me is language register.
- manuelabeledo 5y agoCompanies have been doing this for decades already. The current situation is not going to shift even more jobs to India. Reasons being, good engineers from India are already moving to the US in sheer numbers, and good talent is unlikely to remain at Indian IT consultancy companies. Anecdotally, I have worked along with very clever engineers who happened to be Indian nationals living in the US, but I have yet to find an above average engineer working at an Indian IT shop and based in India.
- nunez 5y agoI've met a few sharp Indian engineers in India. They exist.
- weatherlite 5y agoIf it becomes really bad there's a good chance governments will step in and heavily tax offshoring or provide tax benefits for reshoring.
- Workaccount2 5y agoJust like they did with all the cheap offshore manufactured goods... Don't hold your breath.
- weatherlite 5y agoHard to tell. This time it isn't factory workers, it's programmers and who knows what more - finance people, marketing, sales and maybe even doctors. A country can lose its competitive edge really fast by offshoring all of that.
- weatherlite 5y agoIt's already been happening and will increase for sure, but so far hasn't really affected salaries as far as I can see, U.S devs haven't felt a thing yet. If anything, salaries in East Europe went way up. What I do fear is interest rate starting to rise and the implications of that on our industry but that's another thread.