3 ms·

This has been a talking point for at least 10 years. Not necessarily the lack of doctors but 3rd world developers out competing domestic ones. I don’t think it

This has been a talking point for at least 10 years. Not necessarily the lack of doctors but 3rd world developers out competing domestic ones. I don’t think it will ever truly happen. Not due to the skill of the workers overseas, but all the other intangible stuff around running a business. Many places I’ve worked at have outsourced work to overseas, but it’s always in a supplementary fashion. I’ve heard of places that went all in but unless you have superb engineering management onshore, it usually ends very badly.

jstummbillig 5y ago
Assuming that something that sounds entirely plausible and has gigantic upsides for one of two engaging parties with increasingly less downsides for the other party will "never truly happen" has historically been really bad policy when predicting the future. "Outsourcing" is obviously happening, but the word itself is already a big red flag for last generation think. When it comes to produce, already, no one is truly talking about "outsourcing" to China anymore. That's just where chunk of global production, from highest to lowest quality, happens now. It would be terribly arrogant to assume that, eventually, this is not going to be the case in the highly sophisticated SWE machinery when quite clearly the gap in innovation and execution is shrinking, and rapidly so.
sokoloff 5y ago
I think off-shoring (different geo, same company) is easier and more likely to succeed than out-sourcing (to a different company) for software or product development. Having employees of your company (or a wholly-owned subsidiary) working alongside other local employees is much easier than outsourcing the work to another company in another location. In the latter case, your interests are less aligned than if you were all working for the same company. It still takes excellent management in both/all geographies and it’s a different style of work, with communications across geos being slower, harder, and more lossy than an in-person whiteboard chat that you might have come to rely on.

jstummbillig 5y ago

Assuming that something that sounds entirely plausible and has gigantic upsides for one of two engaging parties with increasingly less downsides for the other party will "never truly happen" has historically been really bad policy when predicting the future. "Outsourcing" is obviously happening, but the word itself is already a big red flag for last generation think. When it comes to produce, already, no one is truly talking about "outsourcing" to China anymore. That's just where chunk of global production, from highest to lowest quality, happens now. It would be terribly arrogant to assume that, eventually, this is not going to be the case in the highly sophisticated SWE machinery when quite clearly the gap in innovation and execution is shrinking, and rapidly so.

sokoloff 5y ago

I think off-shoring (different geo, same company) is easier and more likely to succeed than out-sourcing (to a different company) for software or product development. Having employees of your company (or a wholly-owned subsidiary) working alongside other local employees is much easier than outsourcing the work to another company in another location. In the latter case, your interests are less aligned than if you were all working for the same company. It still takes excellent management in both/all geographies and it’s a different style of work, with communications across geos being slower, harder, and more lossy than an in-person whiteboard chat that you might have come to rely on.