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The thing I never understood about this argument is that it seems to imply that working from the office makes one immune to the same outsourcing. Maybe it was k

The thing I never understood about this argument is that it seems to imply that working from the office makes one immune to the same outsourcing. Maybe it was kickstarted by the pandemic or maybe videoconference/remote tools finally hit the inflection point, but if outsourcing is easy enough now and is really the quality-for-cheap deal it proports to be, nobody is safe. Commuting daily to some horrific open-office and sitting there with your headphones on isn't going to save you when the beancounters see that they can get an engineer at the same level in [cheap country] for 1/3 of what you cost. Even if having an employee sitting 30ft away is worth something, as you said, is it worth being able to 'hire 2-3 engineers' for the same price?

warning26 4y ago
> The thing I never understood about this argument is that it seems to imply that working from the office makes one immune to the same outsourcing. They key is the lack of friction. If all the employees are in the office, your one remote outsourced person is the outlier and teams will get annoyed having to deal with that person. If everyone is already remote, then there's no pushback at all from having another remote person -- and if they're already remote, why not hire from somewhere cheaper?
- rsanek 4y ago
  I think it comes down to, what is your time horizon? This difference may persist in the short-term, but as companies that hire remotely become more successful and profitable, we'd expect to see those that are in-office-only based in a high CoL market to be outcompeted.
mooreds 4y ago
> The thing I never understood about this argument is that it seems to imply that working from the office makes one immune to the same outsourcing. Communication patterns matter. In the office, much communication is implicit or at least not committed to electronic format: "hey, can we grab an hour to whiteboard some stuff?" In a fully remote environment, everything should be captured in an async friendly format. As other comments have mentioned, it's much easier to scale that communication mechanism to employees from different areas of the globe.
ano88888 4y ago
Basically, the org structure ,communication and culture to run remote teams effectively are very different. This is why most traditional companies fail to outsource successfully. However, once the company has setup a smooth process and culture for running remote teams, outsourcing becomes quite achievable. If they can select and hire 1 in a million talented dev from the global talent pool to replace a slightly above average American dev, while only paying half the salary, I think they will certainly move towards that direction.
usrn 4y ago
Even without outsourcing the existence of the foreign talent opens US companies up to harsh competition anyway.

warning26 4y ago

> The thing I never understood about this argument is that it seems to imply that working from the office makes one immune to the same outsourcing. They key is the lack of friction. If all the employees are in the office, your one remote outsourced person is the outlier and teams will get annoyed having to deal with that person. If everyone is already remote, then there's no pushback at all from having another remote person -- and if they're already remote, why not hire from somewhere cheaper?

rsanek 4y ago
I think it comes down to, what is your time horizon? This difference may persist in the short-term, but as companies that hire remotely become more successful and profitable, we'd expect to see those that are in-office-only based in a high CoL market to be outcompeted.

mooreds 4y ago

> The thing I never understood about this argument is that it seems to imply that working from the office makes one immune to the same outsourcing. Communication patterns matter. In the office, much communication is implicit or at least not committed to electronic format: "hey, can we grab an hour to whiteboard some stuff?" In a fully remote environment, everything should be captured in an async friendly format. As other comments have mentioned, it's much easier to scale that communication mechanism to employees from different areas of the globe.

ano88888 4y ago

Basically, the org structure ,communication and culture to run remote teams effectively are very different. This is why most traditional companies fail to outsource successfully. However, once the company has setup a smooth process and culture for running remote teams, outsourcing becomes quite achievable. If they can select and hire 1 in a million talented dev from the global talent pool to replace a slightly above average American dev, while only paying half the salary, I think they will certainly move towards that direction.

usrn 4y ago

Even without outsourcing the existence of the foreign talent opens US companies up to harsh competition anyway.