4 ms·

At Amazon, a director would either bring the Indian immigrants. Hell - he will bring them from his own city in India. But if you’re asking me what I would do -

At Amazon, a director would either bring the Indian immigrants. Hell - he will bring them from his own city in India. But if you’re asking me what I would do - I’d probably look for anyone who is a competent hire, without favoring H1Bs, and try to evaluate them a bit more than a leetcode style interview. As I was saying, Amazon has entire organizations that are H1Bs. These are stable businesses that I don’t believe are really growth focused in 2022z If we want to focus on costs, I think there are better options to deprecate and sunset entire services. There’s also significant opportunity at Amazon to trim the fat. Not necessarily firing people but moving off places that aren’t as valuable and moving them onto initiatives with a meaningful ROI.

moneywoes 4y ago
Could you kindly elaborate on the latter? Are you suggesting Amazon could outsource more of their SDE jobs to India, a huge fear of mine as an engineer in the west
- 0xB31B1B 4y ago
  Talent is global now, but culture and time zones still matter. For the top 15% of companies and talent offshoring is less about “pay people less” and it’s more about “hire a team of 80 people in a year”. It’s extremely difficult to hire a team of 80 US based engineers in 12 months, even with top of market pay, even with fancy stock and remote work. It’s much easier to do this in Latam for example because there is more slack in the labor market.
  - zamfi 4y ago
    > there is more slack in the labor market. Is it the slack? Or is it the fact that US-based companies have much more to offer this pool than they can offer the comparable group in the US. In particular, much higher pay than locally available and the prestige of working for a US firm.
    - xtracto 4y ago
      This is a very accurate hypothesis. I live and work in LatAm and know several CTOs of startups over here. The last 2 years have been ruthless for Engineering leaders around here: lots of turnover of Devs that are being hired by US companies throwing loads of money at them. While the local tech companies cannot afford to get engineers as they are unable to compete on salary. It's great for ICs but terrible for leaders, particularly of small/starting startups .
- frontman1988 4y ago
  It's already happening. Amazon has it's biggest office in Hyderabad. They literally hire tens of thousands of Indian devs for 30-40k dollars per year. The talent pool in India is much bigger than US. A lot of SDE jobs are definitely moving in India. Indians are good at tech due to their STEM focussed education, work harder(due to economic instability), complain less and come cheaper. A perfect opportunity for corporate America to exploit. All American companies from Adobe to Goldman to Intuit have offices in India.

moneywoes 4y ago

Could you kindly elaborate on the latter? Are you suggesting Amazon could outsource more of their SDE jobs to India, a huge fear of mine as an engineer in the west

0xB31B1B 4y ago
Talent is global now, but culture and time zones still matter. For the top 15% of companies and talent offshoring is less about “pay people less” and it’s more about “hire a team of 80 people in a year”. It’s extremely difficult to hire a team of 80 US based engineers in 12 months, even with top of market pay, even with fancy stock and remote work. It’s much easier to do this in Latam for example because there is more slack in the labor market.
- zamfi 4y ago
  > there is more slack in the labor market. Is it the slack? Or is it the fact that US-based companies have much more to offer this pool than they can offer the comparable group in the US. In particular, much higher pay than locally available and the prestige of working for a US firm.
  - xtracto 4y ago
    This is a very accurate hypothesis. I live and work in LatAm and know several CTOs of startups over here. The last 2 years have been ruthless for Engineering leaders around here: lots of turnover of Devs that are being hired by US companies throwing loads of money at them. While the local tech companies cannot afford to get engineers as they are unable to compete on salary. It's great for ICs but terrible for leaders, particularly of small/starting startups .
frontman1988 4y ago
It's already happening. Amazon has it's biggest office in Hyderabad. They literally hire tens of thousands of Indian devs for 30-40k dollars per year. The talent pool in India is much bigger than US. A lot of SDE jobs are definitely moving in India. Indians are good at tech due to their STEM focussed education, work harder(due to economic instability), complain less and come cheaper. A perfect opportunity for corporate America to exploit. All American companies from Adobe to Goldman to Intuit have offices in India.