Offshored work solves a very different problem. Typically they're being given lower-difficulty work where the quality of the developers and their specific quali

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.