Working with a remote third-party introduces a layer of legal contracts plus a few timezones and will slow whatever pace a company has now with local-ish people

Working with a remote third-party introduces a layer of legal contracts plus a few timezones and will slow whatever pace a company has now with local-ish people to much slower with lower quality and communication issues. If you work in a cost-center type of organization and your management doesn't care about quality then offshoring is more likely to happen. If you work in a profit center (aka creating products people pay to use) then offshoring to a third party makes zero sense and if management takes this approach - time to leave. A concerted approach to take is to hire directly in that offshore location, this eliminates the legal contracts, middle-layer profits to a third party and if done right would reduce communication issues (people from both shores should do extended visits to each other). Companies cutting costs won't do this.