4 ms·

I would be interested to hear from Indian, Philipino or other off- near- shore locations. Is this “give me WFH or give me death” actually just USA/European ent

I would be interested to hear from Indian, Philipino or other off- near- shore locations. Is this “give me WFH or give me death” actually just USA/European entitlement and Chennai Devs will gleefully work in air-conditioned offices (hopefully not open plan cubicle hell but nicely designed “WeWork-like” places) and discover the turbo-charge of a co-located mission locked team? Are we Western Devs about to learn a very hard lesson?

surgical_fire 2y ago
This bullshit again? Outsourcing is nothing new. Companies have been outsourcing jobs to cheaper locations for longer than I have been working. In fact, my first job was as cheap outsourced labor. This comes and goes in waves, because outsourcing to cheaper locations have a lot of downsides too.
- johnnyanmac 2y ago
  it comes in waves, but it might be a longer wave given the pandemic forcing companies to actually get good remote work pipelines.
wing-_-nuts 2y ago
>Are we Western Devs about to learn a very hard lesson? I'm sure off/nearshore folks will happily take any work corp america gives them. My company is still remote and we've expanded significantly in 'near shore' hiring. Industry wide, we may well be setting ourselves up for a 'hard lesson'. Our nearshore devs are actually pretty productive. I'm not finding nearly the same amount of friction that I've seen working with offshore devs that are in significantly different time zones. I don't see how tech TC doesn't eventually 'equalize' more with the rest of the world. For me personally, I've had some recent 'come to jesus' moments losing some elderly family members and my own health issues that make me realize I should be working to live, not living to work. My current company is remote. I do not see me going 'into office' to satisfy the arbitrary whims of management. I'm old enough and well established enough that I can pretty much do what I like without worrying too much about the repercussions for my 'career'
banannaise 2y ago
Offshored work solves a very different problem. Typically they're being given lower-difficulty work where the quality of the developers and their specific qualifications are less important, so it's easy to co-locate a team of sufficient quality. One of the advantages of US/European remote teams is that they can pull the most skilled personnel available from many different regions and have them all working together. When you force a team to be co-located, you weaken your talent pool. Or, in other words: A high-performing team requires a group of: - motivated engineers - with the right skillsets - who can communicate effectively - and work together effectively and losing any of these three things will trash your team's throughput. It is hard to get all three, but especially hard when you hard-limit your team to a single city. Outsourcing trades "with the right skillsets" (and to an extent "who can communicate effectively") for "cheaper" and "in the same location". This works just fine as long as you don't need serious skillsets, but is nowhere close to an effective replacement.
synicalx 2y ago
As someone who's lived through many, many, many cycles of offshoring and onshoring this is funny take. We have at least 2 maybe even 3 full decades of businesses offshoring to cut costs, then the quality of the work they receive doesn't just plummet it burrows a hole through to the center of the Earth and keeps going. Then they onshore again, and everything eventually returns to normal. Offshoring is a meme perpetuated by MBA's, and misery factories full of the "best and brightest" like ValueLabs - it doesn't work and we have decades of lived experience to prove it.
Rinzler89 2y ago
Where I'm sitting in Europe (Austria) it's the opposite. We have to be in the office 2/3 days per week to "not loose contact with the colleagues" or because "we're all a team here", only because senior management said so without any logical arguments related to productivity. And "give me death" is not an option since every company has normalized RTO here so there's nowhere to go as the tech market is weak here so fully FWH option is next to none existent, while the offshore offices I know in Eastern Europe and Asia are fully remote since they were always basically remote anyway being away from the mothership and the tech market there has boomed after the pandemic meaning they have to offer WFH to not loose their workers. IMHO the offshoring countries are the real winners here.

surgical_fire 2y ago

This bullshit again? Outsourcing is nothing new. Companies have been outsourcing jobs to cheaper locations for longer than I have been working. In fact, my first job was as cheap outsourced labor. This comes and goes in waves, because outsourcing to cheaper locations have a lot of downsides too.

johnnyanmac 2y ago
it comes in waves, but it might be a longer wave given the pandemic forcing companies to actually get good remote work pipelines.

wing-_-nuts 2y ago

>Are we Western Devs about to learn a very hard lesson? I'm sure off/nearshore folks will happily take any work corp america gives them. My company is still remote and we've expanded significantly in 'near shore' hiring. Industry wide, we may well be setting ourselves up for a 'hard lesson'. Our nearshore devs are actually pretty productive. I'm not finding nearly the same amount of friction that I've seen working with offshore devs that are in significantly different time zones. I don't see how tech TC doesn't eventually 'equalize' more with the rest of the world. For me personally, I've had some recent 'come to jesus' moments losing some elderly family members and my own health issues that make me realize I should be working to live, not living to work. My current company is remote. I do not see me going 'into office' to satisfy the arbitrary whims of management. I'm old enough and well established enough that I can pretty much do what I like without worrying too much about the repercussions for my 'career'

banannaise 2y ago

Offshored work solves a very different problem. Typically they're being given lower-difficulty work where the quality of the developers and their specific qualifications are less important, so it's easy to co-locate a team of sufficient quality. One of the advantages of US/European remote teams is that they can pull the most skilled personnel available from many different regions and have them all working together. When you force a team to be co-located, you weaken your talent pool. Or, in other words: A high-performing team requires a group of: - motivated engineers - with the right skillsets - who can communicate effectively - and work together effectively and losing any of these three things will trash your team's throughput. It is hard to get all three, but especially hard when you hard-limit your team to a single city. Outsourcing trades "with the right skillsets" (and to an extent "who can communicate effectively") for "cheaper" and "in the same location". This works just fine as long as you don't need serious skillsets, but is nowhere close to an effective replacement.

synicalx 2y ago

As someone who's lived through many, many, many cycles of offshoring and onshoring this is funny take. We have at least 2 maybe even 3 full decades of businesses offshoring to cut costs, then the quality of the work they receive doesn't just plummet it burrows a hole through to the center of the Earth and keeps going. Then they onshore again, and everything eventually returns to normal. Offshoring is a meme perpetuated by MBA's, and misery factories full of the "best and brightest" like ValueLabs - it doesn't work and we have decades of lived experience to prove it.

Rinzler89 2y ago

Where I'm sitting in Europe (Austria) it's the opposite. We have to be in the office 2/3 days per week to "not loose contact with the colleagues" or because "we're all a team here", only because senior management said so without any logical arguments related to productivity. And "give me death" is not an option since every company has normalized RTO here so there's nowhere to go as the tech market is weak here so fully FWH option is next to none existent, while the offshore offices I know in Eastern Europe and Asia are fully remote since they were always basically remote anyway being away from the mothership and the tech market there has boomed after the pandemic meaning they have to offer WFH to not loose their workers. IMHO the offshoring countries are the real winners here.