I see your second point as exactly where Google and many other hyper-scale companies are going. They seem to legitimately see all employees as spreadsheet rows

I see your second point as exactly where Google and many other hyper-scale companies are going. They seem to legitimately see all employees as spreadsheet rows to be shuffled around to achieve maximum efficiency. Outsourcing in general comes and goes in waves, and Australia is also certainly on the upswing towards outsourcing at large corporations as well, but it will likely come back the other way once time cost and quality is considered, before a different MBA comes in a few years later and starts the whole process again.