6 ms·

layoffs are mostly done. so the media is starting to lay the foundation for offshoring of jobs to remote, cheaper locations.

mc32 3y ago
Maybe Jeff (or Mike) can kickstart offshoring journalists for the Washpost. (or B’berg) See how they like them apples.
yedava 3y ago
Offshoring has been a thing for a few decades now. So has the technology that facilitates remote work. So I don't think this is some new push for offshoring.
- randomdata 3y ago
  In fairness, there does seem to be a lot of concern amongst the management class around keeping their jobs if they don't get back into the office. Historically, offshoring's biggest struggle has been finding a cultural alignment with those still working in the onshore office. But when everyone is remote there is no such barrier. That is, in the grand scheme of things, something new.
  - 13of40 3y ago
    My two cents on that last bit: I have a team of people working in the US, more than half of them from India, and another team actually in India. Culturally there's a fair amount of overlap, but the real ball buster is the timezone difference. There's no way to both get regular face time and have everyone work normal hours.
    - prmoustache 3y ago
      On the other hands this is interesting for sys/cloud admins/ops workers. With colleagues in different timezones you can say goodbye to on-call shifts and being woken up in the middle of the night for issues. An indian or euro colleague can do maintenance stuff on infra used by US developers and customers and the US ones can do the same for indian/euro facing ones. All this without the fatigue and risk of mistakes that comes with working very late into the night or early in the morning. I've worked in a team with indian, euro and us workers and we could find a way to get meetings because indian people do not usually know how to say No. So they tend to stay later than us euro guys and we would have most of our meetings in a short window in early evening (India) / afternoon (Europe) / morning (USA). Actually that was a good thing because it meant most of our calls would be concentrated in that same time window so you could focus on actual work the rest of the day instead of having calls spread out over a full day of work and lots of interruptions / context switches.
      - mlrtime 3y ago
        Counterpoint, we have a team where 1 person is in India. 100% of our oncall issues happen during US hours. This person is not on the oncall rotation because of the timzone issue.
TheCapeGreek 3y ago
Maybe? I'm in one of these offshoring countries (South Africa). All I've seen lately is a ton of remote jobs are now limiting themselves to remote within the country or region, not even timezone-aligned. Hard to find EU/UK remote work that doesn't lock me out. I see the same with US-only remote work. The result is also that local salaries have started going down again, in spite of the high inflation. There's no pressure anymore to pay better, when the foreign companies with real money aren't buying your employees anymore. Not saying it's all completely dead and no companies are hiring abroad to here, but right this second, the remote dream seems to be shrinking. If anything the offshoring will be more traditional with setting up office in the locale and paying local salaries.

mc32 3y ago

Maybe Jeff (or Mike) can kickstart offshoring journalists for the Washpost. (or B’berg) See how they like them apples.

yedava 3y ago

Offshoring has been a thing for a few decades now. So has the technology that facilitates remote work. So I don't think this is some new push for offshoring.

randomdata 3y ago
In fairness, there does seem to be a lot of concern amongst the management class around keeping their jobs if they don't get back into the office. Historically, offshoring's biggest struggle has been finding a cultural alignment with those still working in the onshore office. But when everyone is remote there is no such barrier. That is, in the grand scheme of things, something new.
- 13of40 3y ago
  My two cents on that last bit: I have a team of people working in the US, more than half of them from India, and another team actually in India. Culturally there's a fair amount of overlap, but the real ball buster is the timezone difference. There's no way to both get regular face time and have everyone work normal hours.
  - prmoustache 3y ago
    On the other hands this is interesting for sys/cloud admins/ops workers. With colleagues in different timezones you can say goodbye to on-call shifts and being woken up in the middle of the night for issues. An indian or euro colleague can do maintenance stuff on infra used by US developers and customers and the US ones can do the same for indian/euro facing ones. All this without the fatigue and risk of mistakes that comes with working very late into the night or early in the morning. I've worked in a team with indian, euro and us workers and we could find a way to get meetings because indian people do not usually know how to say No. So they tend to stay later than us euro guys and we would have most of our meetings in a short window in early evening (India) / afternoon (Europe) / morning (USA). Actually that was a good thing because it meant most of our calls would be concentrated in that same time window so you could focus on actual work the rest of the day instead of having calls spread out over a full day of work and lots of interruptions / context switches.
    - mlrtime 3y ago
      Counterpoint, we have a team where 1 person is in India. 100% of our oncall issues happen during US hours. This person is not on the oncall rotation because of the timzone issue.

TheCapeGreek 3y ago

Maybe? I'm in one of these offshoring countries (South Africa). All I've seen lately is a ton of remote jobs are now limiting themselves to remote within the country or region, not even timezone-aligned. Hard to find EU/UK remote work that doesn't lock me out. I see the same with US-only remote work. The result is also that local salaries have started going down again, in spite of the high inflation. There's no pressure anymore to pay better, when the foreign companies with real money aren't buying your employees anymore. Not saying it's all completely dead and no companies are hiring abroad to here, but right this second, the remote dream seems to be shrinking. If anything the offshoring will be more traditional with setting up office in the locale and paying local salaries.