4 ms·

That is the opening question leading to "why hire anyone in USA or Western Europe when Asia exists?"

mjr00 4y ago
> That is the opening question leading to "why hire anyone in USA or Western Europe when Asia exists?" Because good software engineering is 20% good programming and 80% good communication. We, as an industry, already tried the offshoring strategy in the mid-2000s and quickly realized the cost savings of salaries were offset by the communication barriers. At least for projects where the quality of the output actually matters. You still see a ton of offshoring for projects where the result doesn't matter so much, like government IT contracts. If Amazon/Google/etc had any data supporting that you could successfully get devs in Bangalore to code stuff up at $2/hour, they'd be doing it.
- selfmodruntime 4y ago
  You can still save salary by hiring Europeans who speak english well enough. The average Swede or German has little communication problems in English and costs about a third as much as the average US Dev
  - bluGill 4y ago
    Your average German developer as good as your great developers in India, and cheaper. If you want low quality engineers in India there are a lot of them for cheap, but if you care about quality, those people have moved to positions that are willing to pay more for quality. Most of the average in Germany being better than India is in Germany there are many opportunities for bad engineers to self select into something not engineering. However the nature of India is bad engineers will persist as engineers because there is nothing else they can move to that is better than being a bad engineer.
  - AdrianB1 4y ago
    Not sure the average German software engineer costs 1/3 of the USA one, but I am sure Germany is still in Western Europe and considered a high cost location. The average German still makes 2-3 times more than the average Bulgarian or Romanian, Indian or Costa Rican.
knorker 4y ago
Yup. The company prefers people in the US in general, and SV in particular. That's why it "bribes" people to move there to work. If you leave, then of course you should no longer be bribed to work there.

> That is the opening question leading to "why hire anyone in USA or Western Europe when Asia exists?" Because good software engineering is 20% good programming and 80% good communication. We, as an industry, already tried the offshoring strategy in the mid-2000s and quickly realized the cost savings of salaries were offset by the communication barriers. At least for projects where the quality of the output actually matters. You still see a ton of offshoring for projects where the result doesn't matter so much, like government IT contracts. If Amazon/Google/etc had any data supporting that you could successfully get devs in Bangalore to code stuff up at $2/hour, they'd be doing it.

selfmodruntime 4y ago
You can still save salary by hiring Europeans who speak english well enough. The average Swede or German has little communication problems in English and costs about a third as much as the average US Dev
- bluGill 4y ago
  Your average German developer as good as your great developers in India, and cheaper. If you want low quality engineers in India there are a lot of them for cheap, but if you care about quality, those people have moved to positions that are willing to pay more for quality. Most of the average in Germany being better than India is in Germany there are many opportunities for bad engineers to self select into something not engineering. However the nature of India is bad engineers will persist as engineers because there is nothing else they can move to that is better than being a bad engineer.
- AdrianB1 4y ago
  Not sure the average German software engineer costs 1/3 of the USA one, but I am sure Germany is still in Western Europe and considered a high cost location. The average German still makes 2-3 times more than the average Bulgarian or Romanian, Indian or Costa Rican.

knorker 4y ago

Yup. The company prefers people in the US in general, and SV in particular. That's why it "bribes" people to move there to work. If you leave, then of course you should no longer be bribed to work there.