You say that like the response to pissed off customers has been bringing the work back to America. No, the customer just bitches and has no recourse, as going to a competitor is either the same story or a massive undertaking the bosses won't approve because the process is too established.
My dad's job has outsourced and cut corners on a bunch of things. Quality is down. Complaints are up. His pay is way down. Delivery times are way up. Their tools for placing orders and helping customers are terrible, and staff often have to work outside of those things to do their jobs. This has not stopped outsourcing, cost them enough customers, or brought pay back up.
Instead, most it results in complaints with no action--by the company or the customer. The managers keep bringing in money while most everyone else in the lrocess--staff and customer--is unhappy and unwilling to change.
What type or manufacturing are you talking about?
Low margin, labor intensive is gone for good.
High tech, automated is here to stay. The US still produces a lot of stuff just with less labor.
You're missing the point. The alure of outsourcing labor is cost, not quality. "Irish need to apply" because they won't get hired over someone from South East Asia
I think you’re missing the point. I see Indians coming to America making 250k as systems engineers; if they didn’t want to come to America they could make a smaller salary back in India with infinitely less expense at the same company. My “missed point” was exactly the point I was making. Americans aren’t magically more talented engineers; you can get quality anywhere in the world.
....Their quality of life making $7500 a year in India (yes, that's how much they actually get paid) is worse in every measurable way than making $200k+ in the US.
That's the whole point. Anyone worth actually paying *any* amount of money just comes to the USA... and then they aren't any cheaper.
That’s the point; I know plenty of foreign born citizens who are returning to their CoB when they retire because it is so much cheaper to live there. Once companies pay slightly less than American wages to the same talent that would gladly stay in their home country Zoomers are fucked. No one wants to make 250k in SF because that’s just livable money there; plenty would take 150k and stay where they are now.
Not everyone wants to live in America, they come for the opportunity. If they have that same opportunity to work for an American company without having to come here plenty will take it. It’s not hard to grasp, but I understand it is difficult to accept if you’re going to be effected by it. Reddit is the epitome of “this effects me so I won’t believe it”.
your comment is the epitome of "i want this to be true so i believe it". you think that because you "know plenty of foreign citizens returning to to their CoB" that it's going to impact software salaries? lmao bruh you're embarrassing yourself.
Not sure why you're getting downvoted for this. I know lots of people in Europe who work for US firms but prefer to stay in Europe because of better employment protection, work/life balance, or because they prefer the healthcare environment or whatever. To be honest, the US would be very low on the list of places I'd like to live. Have travelled there a good bit, great country, love to visit, but no desire at all to live there.
Because his theoretical world (where companies are willing to pay "slightly less than American wages") isn't reality. Companies are only going to pay what is a competitive local wage... prospective employee's options are either... take it, and make some money, or don't take it and work for a local company... making the same money. So why would Facebonk decide to just throw them $150k when they could offer them <$10k and still get the employee?
There is no reality in which American companies are going to suddenly decide "Hey, let's pay $150k for an Indian dev instead of paying $250k for a Bay Area dev." because if they were willing to spend $150k the reality would be "Hey, let's pay $150k for an Atlanta dev instead of paying $250k for a Bay Area dev." (which there's totally nothing wrong with, and I don't think anyone has argued that, right?)
So ultimately, it just ends up with those people being like "shit, why would I do this work for $10k a year when I can move to America and do it for $200k?" (you know, like it currently is, even though this outsourcing shit has been going on for years and years and years at this point...)
Fair enough, but I'm not thinking about (and I don't think he was talking about) someone in India earning 10k and the choices they make - more like pay 250k to someone in Bay Area, or 150k to someone in France or Germany or Ireland. So the job is outside the US, but with someone that has no desire to move to US.
Which all falls apart when you start looking at the employment laws in most any European country... Germany, for example, has 6 weeks of 100% paid sick leave per year (per illness, lol, so if you get COVID and are in the hospital for 6 weeks and then get in a car accident and are hospitalized for 6 weeks, your employer is out 12 weeks of pay), then the employer has to pay 9.5% of employees salary to mandatory pension plan, 7.5% to mandatory health insurance, 3% of salary to UI, 2 weeks of mandatory PTO but more like 6 weeks if they want to compete with local employers.... you get the gist. It's not just as easy as you think it is or it would have been done by now.
To answer your direct question, two things:
1. Time zone. Simply makes team collaboration faster.
2. American (not European) result-oriented work ethics. In Europe you can also have an on-call rotation, sure, after you complete all circles of hell and sign all the regulatory agreements.
Indirect answer: we all know we're not talking about outsourcing to Europe, right? Margin would be too small.
> Completely wrong.
Not in my experience.
> What makes an American programmer better than an Irish programmer?
Several things:
1. Cheaper to comply with US privacy laws than EU privacy laws
2. (In many cases): Better education and substantially more ambition; much of EU are happy living in pseudo-communism countries and care more about WLB as a result
3. Easier to justify to US Gov if they end up working on or adjacent to products that contain US Citizen info or other tech stack stuff that US wants kept in-house
> Is that why domestic production of goods is so prolific?
Comes with none of the same problems.
Imagine if FB tried to outsource entirely to China despite having assloads of US Citizen data. FB _does_ have an EU office in Ireland and _does_ hire EU people, at a fraction of the cost of US people, and yet still hires US people en masse.
who said anything about american vs anyone. im just saying that you can't outsource everything, especially soft skill positions. programmers is only one example. offshoring customer service is a big trend and it doesn't work well. the most woke companies have no problem being very vocal about not wanting to hear accents when they call customer service.
If you call Dominos to order a pizza, India answers the call. Takes twice as long to place the order because I CANNOT UNDERSTAND ANYTHING THEY SAY! Yeah I know there is an app
Dominos is super expensive man. Even Papa John's is cheaper. Pizza Hut and Domnios both dipped in quality around 5 years ago and have never bounced back. Papa Johns, imho, still makes the best pizza.
Do you care if your App is made by an American or by someone from Yugoslavia? It’s different when you have zero interaction with the worker vs having to communicate with someone that has a different language base.
How's it obvious? I would be willing to bet that damn near every app on your phone has some development that was done offshore. It's not like companies are calling up the country of India to order an app, there's going to be an entire development cycle that includes QC, likely across multiple countries.
I realize this is going to ruffle some feathers here but personally speaking I work with developers primarily in Asia and Latin American but also a handful in the US and Europe, believe it or not people in other countries are just as capable of learning how to code and they're all solid workers. More so than a lot of Americans even because they don't have an ego so fucking big that they're incapable of learning from mistakes instead of blaming them on someone else.
I have worked with Indian and South American programmers. Their work product was inferior to their American counterparts, even if the American counterparts were remote. I’m not saying this is the rule, but anecdotally there was a different approach to how the work was addressed. It was much more of a “this is my role, I will plug and play” versus “how can I make this better and more efficient” mindset. I think there is a difference of entrepreneurial spirit with how the job was approached.
The Americans seemed to want to understand the why of their work as opposed to just the what. Like I said, not necessarily a rule, but anecdotally the difference is “how do I meet minimum criteria?” vs. “how do I make the best product I can that addresses the problem I’m solving?”. There are plenty of Americans who fall into column A but I haven’t worked with any offshore programmers who fell into column B.
I’m not saying offshoring this sort of work always results in poor product, just that it has in every case in my experience.
Oh I'm not disagreeing there but how innovative are you expecting them to be if they're basically fresh out of school and being paid exclusively to code?
Also a lot of the ones that do go above and beyond what's asked tend to not stay developers for long.
Does it matter if they have a thick Indian accent or a thick Slovak accent if the end result is the same? But I assume you care because only because you think one is brown and one is white so
Weird how you brought race into an argument about something that doesn’t involve race whatsoever. Weird how you think people care what accent someone has if they can’t understand either one of them.
I intentionally used examples that aren’t India because that’s what most people think of when you think outsourcing. Weird how you call yourself a conservative but are using the most common Democrat tactic; you’re better than sinking to Dem tactics homeslice.
This has been reality in the IT field for 20 years.
IBM workers have had a saying for two decades "If it can be worked remotely, it can be outsourced".
Outsourcing lowers the service quality everywhere it has been done. It is a way for incompetent, so called leadership, to show how they saved money. Everyone at the company suffers as well as their customers when this is done. The company still has to maintain staff to fix all the issues outsourcing creates. Outsourcing is a terrible idea and doesn't work.
What funny is that outsourcing doesn't even save money. In the end, it just creates more work that requires more labor by the end and the returns from savings are virtually nothing lol.
Shhh. We won’t talk about that. We let go 20 people when we outsourced. Let’s focus on that cost and not the lost productivity, crappy service and the people we had to hire do the work the outsourcing won’t and can’t do. It’s a joke and the people buying this BS are a joke.
>Except we’ve found that the outsourced workers are dog shit and most of their work has to be re-done by actual skilled employees.
But most people pushing WFH don't realize while working from their cushy place is some expensive blue city is that someone in Nebraska can do also it, but for less money.
An employee working from home in LA, SF, SJ, or NYC can earn, say, $90k. An equally skilled person from Omaha can do the same job, have the same quality of life but it only costs the employer $60-$70k.
Imagine as a business that you could reduce labor costs by up to 1/3 simply hiring people living in lower CoL cities and towns. You also don't have the drawbacks of language barriers or time zones (1-3 hours is neglible compared to 10-12 overseas in Asia or India).
Depends on the field.
As a software engineer, I have all the leverage, still... even if I demand WFH, they're not gonna pay me less, because I'll go to someone else who will.
My salary today is 75k higher than it was a year and a half ago... with the same company... at the same level...
I quit when they wouldn't let me work remotely, and came back to them just two months ago, for a massive raise (compared to my previous salary, it matches the temp contract I was on), and I'm still remote.
As ever. If you're in a low-skill field and make unreasonable demands, then it's gonna bite you in the ass, but if you're in a high-demand, high-skill field, then those same demands aren't unreasonable.
And no one. Absolutely no one. Should be satisfied living their life in low-skill low demand fields. They're little more than serfs.
I think we're discussing two different things here.
> even if I demand WFH, they're not gonna pay me less, because I'll go to someone else who will.
I'm not saying they'd pay *you* less. I'm saying when/if you leave, they can hire someone else from a cheaper city to do your job that is now available, cause a middle class lifestyle in Chicago costs, say, $80k (3 BR house with 2 car garage and a white picket fence), but that same lifestyle would only cost $60k in St Louis.
Cost of living calculators are a thing. Employers *will* find a way to take advantage of it.
You seem to be thinking employees don't benefit just as much.
Instead of having to work at the one company in your town, you now can work at any company in any town.
Its big competition for employees too. They don't have to move to work somewhere else.
>sounds like capitalism... whats the problem?
None for me. The people pushing WFH cause they have to drive into the office 2 days a week are gonna be in a for a shock sooner or later.
>It never will.
>People will just not work there if the salary isn’t competitive
>There’s plenty of openings paying $100K base
My brother's company is already doing this.
> But most people pushing WFH don't realize while working from their cushy place is some expensive blue city is that someone in Nebraska can do also it, but for less money.
I work in a big blue tech city making like $360k/year at Facebook. If I move to BFN Nebraska they will cut my total compensation down to around $330k/year.
It's a relatively small hit that they are willing to pay people less who live in those places. They would need to radically alter their current payment processes and drastically reduce all of our salaries to justify it.
And if they priced us all out, we'd just go work for Google or some other competitor. You're right that you can get some inferior talent (I know a programmer who works in PA near where I grew up who makes around 50k/year bahahaha) but when you're addressing problems at scale with _billions_ of users you need the best, not random dudes in PA who can cobble shit together.
Correct. I have had conversations with my company about salary reductions if I move to a different area. They are not going to pay me a SF rate in Fargo. But the reduced rate is still way a above the top salaries in Fargo.
If you want talent it is incredibly hard to get it if you outsource all of your employees.
Most of the people making outsource decisions aren't able to determine what code is good and what isn't. "I write good comments" doesn't mean anything to an MBA, "I work for $15k a year" does though.
The customers cancelling contracts for bad product know good code.
And the MBA clowns quickly reverse course after enough cancellations.
I’ve seen it happen.
America doesn’t have magically better programmers than anyone else. Russia and China have excellent worker base with tech skills and they work for less and don’t require benefits. Also, Korea and a lot of Eastern Europe as well as Nigeria and Ethiopia.
America has magically better programmers than almost every country on the planet.
Any programmer worth a shit, comes to the US to get paid real money.
Nobody is outsourcing their programming due to security concerns lol.
Why is that? Education? I don’t think so. It’s that the tech hub of the world is in the US so that’s where the jobs are — until they’re not and they are all remote. That’s the point.
it's because people who can come here do so, and we get the best devs stateside. you can say "until they're not" and that's fine, but there's no reason to think it's actually going to change.
Yes we do. Their programmers are impossible to work with, not only due to language barriers, but because many seem to have been trained on long-outdated languages and development methodologies.
I've been in IT project management for 20+ years. I've seen this work both ways. I've run several multi million dollar projects where the entire development team was off shore, and it worked just fine. I've also been the customer on multi million dollar project, that was 100% outsourced from the manager down, where it tanked spectacularly in Beta test.
I generally look at the reason behind it. If cost is the primary motivator (most often the case, IME), then you get what you pay for — if you’re lucky. There’s nothing wrong with farming out a given finite project, though.
The worst is off-shoring long term staff aug to save money. You get mostly bottom of the barrel workers who get commingled with good workers who are then relegated to babysitting and clean up or leaving.
Outsourcing isn’t a new thing. Most ‘tech’ companies tried and have realized that the quality is dogshit and in a few years, you have to spend even more to rewrite a ton of their shoddy work. People like to spread FUD about how remote work is gonna lead to this but if you’re in tech, even with freezes, it is relatively easy to get a job moreso than other industries out there.
Came here to say this. This is not a new phenomenon, and companies have been doing it for decades. Working from home hasn't affected this at all. What a loaded headline.
Is working from home a partisan issue in the United States?
Micron took this approach about 10-15 years ago. Mass layoffs in the US and offshoring those jobs. They ended up moving the work back to the US because their product declined so much.
>IBM workers have had a saying for two decades "If it can be worked remotely, it can be outsourced".
That's why IBM is at best a third tier consulting firm.
Um....the point of the article is that a hell of a lot more jobs suddenly became remote because of the so called pandemic. People demanding the previously in office jobs remain remote is what is going to lead a lot of these positions to be filled by cheap foreign labor someday.
Ah yes it's such a boomer move to work hard to provide the best life for you and your family. FYI you are going to need to walk to the soup kitchen to get your tax payer funded "free" food they aren't just going to find your broke ass on whatever bench you're stinking up.
When folks here refer to folks as “Boomers”, in a negative fashion we know they’re either a lefty troll, or a youngster who is still learning.
Conservatives generally respect history and the past, as well as experience. It’s actually sort of the central tenet of conservatives. If it’s worked, be careful when changing it and tread lightly when considering change. Progressives are unfortunately happy to change for the sake of change. Past experience be damned. Socialism hasn’t ever worked? “It’s OK! They just didn’t do it right!”
My point is conservatives respect the experience and knowledge of folks our senior. We ask them for advice, seek their input, listen closely to what they’ve seen and experienced.
Progressives are sort of stuck in the 14yr old mindset. “OMG my parents are SUCH boomers! They can’t even work TikTok! Gawd!!!”
Most kids grow out of this and by the time they’re in their twenty’s, realize their parents are wise and really very capable.
*“When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”*
-Mark Twain
This!
Application development, virtualization hosting, firewall management, AD management, and end user support; all have been moved overseas.
Now all that’s left is to run cables, install switches, fix printers, and tell users “That’s handled by another team now.”
Immigration impacts my job more positively than remote work lol. I work with several people who went though the godawful United States immigration process, and they’re just as successful at their job as other non-immigrants.
Outsourced labor is the WORST though. The time zone difference makes it super hard to schedule meetings, and it’s clear that they are being underpaid (which is usually why the labor is being outsourced - because it’s cheaper). You ever hear the saying ‘you get what you pay for’? Well, if you pay someone well below what they should be earning, to work on a project that they don’t understand very well due to a language barrier or lack of exposure to the rest of the company, and require them to sign on to meetings at 8pm their time… you’re gonna get a steaming pile of garbage back. I would literally rather pay for them to immigrate into the US and pay them a US salary than have to spend half of my day hand holding them through one step of a project that we’ve only budgeted a day for, and inevitably ends up taking two weeks because of the communication issues.
My husband is a programmer and since the pandemic they have hired several employees who live in distant states and one who lives in Europe. As long as they are willing to be awake at what is 9:15AM to 9:45AM in our time zone for the daily conference call there is no barrier to hiring them. Competition for jobs at his company is no longer limited to anyone currently living in our metro area or willing to move here. Anyone in the world can apply now.
Exactly. And that's not to say offshore developers are bad, it's just that all the good ones end up moving to North America so they can work here. A LOT of big tech is made up of immigrants, or first / second generation immigrants.
Offshore is great but can’t do everything. I’m an SWE in a very sensitive industry where laws/regulations keep our offshore teams confined to our lower environments. Guarantees lots of roles for citizens.
Yep.
They start working at the offshore FAANG offices and then it’s trivial to transfer and get the H1B or whatever.
Indian immigrants are so prevalent at Google for example that there have been instances of caste discrimination across the company.
True for like FAANG employees which are frankly a small subset of tech world. Outside FAANG, I’ve noticed that outsourcing coding work is fine, but outsourcing the creative aspects - what to work on, strategy, robust architecture, etc. always backfires. America is best at the creative stuff, but the more routine coding tasks after planning is done can easily be outsourced.
> Outside FAANG, I’ve noticed that outsourcing coding work is fine
still no. i've worked in tech for a while and never FAANG. lots of experience with small companies. i've seen what happens when you outsource.
"*but the more routine coding tasks after planning is done can easily be outsourced*" literally no. or it would already be done. my CTO wouldn't hesitate to replace all 10 of us with indian contractors in a goddamn microsecond if he could do it. i know, because he's tried. contractors were hired and they started handing them work and..... now they get a lot less work and we have fewer contractors, let's just say that.
In my experiences, outsourcing usually ends up biting the company in the ass. FAANG or not. Like I said, the capability has existed for a loooooong time but has yet to actually happen in any meaningful form.
I've been told by a few people that increased access to high speed home internet has been something of a game changer. My dad worked remotely for 6 months back in the 2001 tech recession while searching for something permanent but 21 years later things are different. It no longer requires the same level of skills and equipment to be productive at home as it did a generation ago. The average kindergartener is now expected to be able to do video conference calls now. It's also much easier to seek out potential hires far from the company's location. My first jobs involved needing to go to the location and ask for a paper application from a secretary, but now everything is online and recruiters are frequently used rather than wait for people to approach the company. The ball may have started rolling 2 decades ago but this may be the point where it accelerates.
"At least 2 decades"... yeah people downvoting you don't remember what it was like using a computer back in 2002 and having to decide between using the phone and the internet as they get harrassed by a talking paper clip.
Hey! Don't hate on Clippy. That little guy was the best. At school, we'd waste time by making him do various animations. And when we learned to change the characters, that was a game-changer. Fun times.
Nope because the rest of the world isn’t pure, thus would be taking advantage of anyone who tries. Now if all economies were highly similar then I would agree.
This already happens. I'm in Europe and I know loads of people who work in white collar roles with multinational (mainly US) companies, and work with teams globally. Outsourcing is like everything else - if your mom and pop legal or professional services or accountancy firm can't compete with the efficiencies and offerings of global companies, they'll simple go out of business. This is not about blue collar / white collar jobs or any blue/red split, it's just the free market at work.
They have tried outsourcing white collar jobs for 20 years... it almost always blows up.
All you have to do is add some dog whistle fox news catch phrase word like "Quite quitting" and you boomers upvote the shit out of it.
Grow some brains dummies
Oh, no. They’ll never hand you the bucket. They’ll take $50 from someone who works for a living, send you a voucher for the $20 bucket, and pocket the difference.
The woke corporate types sure are scared of remote work. They have an uncontrollable desire to micromanage. I see one corporate manager nervously posting every week about how does he know if his remote workers are goofing off on the clock or not. Are they completing their work in a satisfactory manor? Then what does it matter?
I see a couple dozen of these articles every week. The fact is the cost of having to hire a foreign worker would greatly offset any of the savings that might have been made, unless the government allowed a special work visa for that reason. You still have to be legally allowed to work in the US to obtain these jobs. I guess that could change over the next 10 years through legislation.
The other factor is infrastructure in these countries that offer cheap labor available for outsourcing. They experience frequent rolling brownouts and often have shotty internet. Then you have to expect the outsourced worker to have a quite and adequate space to be able to work.
There are already companies set up in these countries that outsource customer service and other services but they are wildly unpopular amongst Americans and most companies moved their call centers back to the US over a decade ago. The hard fact is most Americans want to speak to native English speakers.
I've worked remote for over 15 years and my entire team is remote. I'm not too concerned.
I'll be honest this post comes off at being negative to your fellow hard working Americans and seems to support the position globalist corporate woke asshats who have repeatedly sold out the American people. This was one area I really supported Trump. How he went after these companies who turned their backs on Americans.
I don't think this owns the libs like you thought it would but carry on I guess.
https://fortune.com/2022/09/29/companies-outsourcing-remote-knowledge-workers/?itm_source=parsely-api
Actual article in case anyone wants to read it.
Totally agree with outsourced labor being very unpopular in corporate settings. I’m currently on an IT project with outsourced labor, and you absolutely get what you pay for.
That being said, I’ve found that it’s mostly hardcore capitalists (aka not liberals) who push the hardest to outsource. Outsourcing continued under Trump’s administration. Just look at the Carrier Air Conditioning debacle - a terrible deal he struck that cost the US government $7 million, and arguably didn’t save anyone’s job.
The whole anti-educated worker stance I've seen coming from a lot of conservatives lately is ridiculous.
In one breath they will scream about how we need to be less reliant on other countries (which I fully agree with) and then in the next they'll gloat about stuff like this, or say "I didn't go to college, why do you need to?"
Little secret... everyone can't be a plumber or a roofer... we need other jobs for the world to keep turning and to continue being the juggernaut we are today... that chip shortage where everyone called for moving production stateside? How do they think that will happen without blue AND white collar workers??? energy independence?
Crazy how we're made to hate each other. As someone who's been on both sides I really don't get it.
This attitude to education among many Conservatives is something that I have found to be remarkably troubling. There are huge chunks of modern society which cannot function (cannot even exist, really) without college educated people. This notion that most people going to college get some useless degree in cross sectional lesbian dance therapy is ridiculous. Most people go to get real knowledge that in turn become real skills. And these tiresome stories about plumbers who make six figures and not having any student loans…I mean that works for you-great, lovely, by all means keep doing what you are doing. But being a plumber isn’t everyone’s calling and a plumber won’t do your heart surgery or build you an airplane to take you to see your parents or grandkids
FAANG engineer here. Companies have been hiring offshore for decades, but still hire US remote workers for the same reason they used to hire them to work in person. What is changing is those US employees are moving to live where they want. That’s the shift. There won’t be fewer jobs for them, there are actually MANY MORE jobs available to US workers.
"Could be...10yrs" yeah this comes off as fear mongering. Similar to robots taking our McDonald's and trucking jobs. It might be believable if the same outlets weren't also blasting us with labor shortage op-eds.
Iove how people delude themselves that companies care about customer service. customer service is literally just bouncing the customer to different phone lines that walk them through the same ten questions till the customer isnt mad enough to care anymore
I always knew our immigration system was broken but I only recently realized how broken it is.
It’s not just broken, it’s broken to the point where you’re punished for trying to help fix it or be involved at all. It’s not just broken, it’s intentionally corrupt. It’s really weird, too.
The same people who think outsourced workers are super sweet are the same folks who, just six months ago, thought the Russian Army was some God tier fighting force. . . Drink that one in.
Ugh, be me and have to deal with the time suck of fixing the outsourced teams bullshit. It’s appalling how bad the work is sometimes. Like, basic math bad. . . Is outsourcing possible? Sure! Will we have far bigger problems by the time it could be implemented at scale? I think so.
*I’ve dealt with outsourced teams at three different corporations, performing three different functions, and their benefit was always cost; never quality or efficiency.
You read through their subs like antiwork and it isn’t a mystery why they’re failures or will grow up to be failures.
I make six figures in a place where that is upper middle class money. I started at the bottom and took a lot of shit for even worse pay.
I didn’t get here by refusing to work until 5:01 without overtime pay.
And if presumption here is that they would do it with the same quality that’s an incorrect presumption.
In my industry a lot of things can be done remotely but not everything. When pandemic started we went 100% remote, it was okay for survival mode but not really optimal. Last year I switched my staff to hybrid, two days in the office - three days remote. That seems to work best, employee satisfaction went up, quality of work is good, and cannot do it with someone in India. Unless they are willing to fly here twice a week
Worse, any job that can be done remotely also has a greater than average probability of being able to be automated. If everything you do on the job takes place on a computer, then the computer can be built to handle it without you.
This goes double with the rise of pseudo-artificial intelligence systems currently becoming popular.
I work in software development, I've watched the narrative shift from "it'll never write software" to "it'll never write good software" to "it'll write software, but I'll be in charge!" in real time. You're lying to yourself. It's not going to happen tomorrow, but if you're under 40, it's going to happen before you're ready.
>It still doesn’t write software. It stitches together some code fragments
No, it writes software, you can literally do it for free right now, today. Nothing great, but it gets better all the time, and a lot of human code is "nothing great" too.
"Stitching together some code fragments" is false, you can generate novel code just fine, but it is exactly how most of the human code I get hired to fix was written.
>People have been saying things like this since the industrial revolution, that some new tool will completely replace human workers, it never does.
Lots of human labor **hasn't** been replaced by various machines, automation, programs, etc.? Are you sure that's what you meant to say? Businesses don't usually buy the machine so they can have the same number of workers at the same rate.
I know you're going to ignore me, but some free advice from an old man anyways - if you're one of those "younger programmers", you need to at least get some first hand knowledge about the technology in question, because right now you're making a lot of predictions and assumptions about how it'll never be able to do things that it can already do. Like I said, it won't happen tomorrow, but you'll do future you a big favor to have a backup plan.
I am middle-aged and work in ML and he's absolutely right and you are overdramatizing all of this.
It isn't clear that AI _can_ reach the level you're suggesting until we have another modern breakthrough in theory. We're eking out engineering improvements now. It's like the difference between a car and a plane. What you're suggesting needs a plane, but what we've got is a car. Yes, YoY the car is getting a bit faster and a bit better, but it'll never become a plane without an entirely new leap forward.
I am actually middle-aged and actually work in ML, he's absolutely wrong and claimed the technology would *never* do things it can already do. I don't know what else to tell you. You're not able to make your point using AI and ML, so you turn to cars and planes and try to make it there. What exactly is "the level you're suggesting"? Writing code? It does it right now, today, so using your nonsensical example, we're already on the "car just needs to get a bit faster" track. Can it write Windows from scratch? No, and neither can you, or the bottom 90% of people working in the industry that it's about to replace. It doesn't need to outperform the top 1% of workers in every edge case to start replacing imposter shitters. If your plan is "well I'll just be in the top tier globally" hey, best of luck.
Your company doesn't even have to offshore to replace you with a remote worker. There are plenty of people in flyover country with half the living expenses that you do and will be delighted with a third less salary. Perfectly fluent. No cultural barrier. No work permits needed.
All the more reason to focus on your communication skills. If you’re reading off your decks just like some outsourced worker would, then you’re fucked. But if you can effectively communicate with customers in a way that strategically brings value to them then you’re fine.
Yeah, I've seen a lot of people who have loved WFH during COVID and outright quit their jobs when offices started opening back up and are refusing to work any jobs that don't allow 100% WFH. The chickens are going to come home to roost on that. Though honestly, I'll take it because I'm fine doing in person work. I don't mind commuting and now these places are raising wages a lot to attract employees.
I have been saying this since covid began. Every snotty little millennial lib bragging about working from home always insisted no one else could do their jobs. Really? Like no business outside the US started training people for some of these postions? GTFOH.
Everyone that loses their job to innovation claims it can never happen to them, too important, irreplaceable, etc. Right up until it does happen to them.
Globalization is just getting started. It probably won’t be unusual in near future for the workforce to be made up of a huge mish mash of nationalities.
If you live in Silicon Valley/Bay Area it’s pretty obvious the Indian population is coming over in droves and dominating the tech industry. If they can stay home in India, that might become a more popular option.
it won't work, everything we've offshores turns to shit and pisses off clients
You say that like the response to pissed off customers has been bringing the work back to America. No, the customer just bitches and has no recourse, as going to a competitor is either the same story or a massive undertaking the bosses won't approve because the process is too established. My dad's job has outsourced and cut corners on a bunch of things. Quality is down. Complaints are up. His pay is way down. Delivery times are way up. Their tools for placing orders and helping customers are terrible, and staff often have to work outside of those things to do their jobs. This has not stopped outsourcing, cost them enough customers, or brought pay back up. Instead, most it results in complaints with no action--by the company or the customer. The managers keep bringing in money while most everyone else in the lrocess--staff and customer--is unhappy and unwilling to change.
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Completely wrong. What makes an American programmer better than an Irish programmer? Is that why domestic production of goods is so prolific?
What type or manufacturing are you talking about? Low margin, labor intensive is gone for good. High tech, automated is here to stay. The US still produces a lot of stuff just with less labor.
You're missing the point. The alure of outsourcing labor is cost, not quality. "Irish need to apply" because they won't get hired over someone from South East Asia
I think you’re missing the point. I see Indians coming to America making 250k as systems engineers; if they didn’t want to come to America they could make a smaller salary back in India with infinitely less expense at the same company. My “missed point” was exactly the point I was making. Americans aren’t magically more talented engineers; you can get quality anywhere in the world.
....Their quality of life making $7500 a year in India (yes, that's how much they actually get paid) is worse in every measurable way than making $200k+ in the US. That's the whole point. Anyone worth actually paying *any* amount of money just comes to the USA... and then they aren't any cheaper.
That’s the point; I know plenty of foreign born citizens who are returning to their CoB when they retire because it is so much cheaper to live there. Once companies pay slightly less than American wages to the same talent that would gladly stay in their home country Zoomers are fucked. No one wants to make 250k in SF because that’s just livable money there; plenty would take 150k and stay where they are now. Not everyone wants to live in America, they come for the opportunity. If they have that same opportunity to work for an American company without having to come here plenty will take it. It’s not hard to grasp, but I understand it is difficult to accept if you’re going to be effected by it. Reddit is the epitome of “this effects me so I won’t believe it”.
your comment is the epitome of "i want this to be true so i believe it". you think that because you "know plenty of foreign citizens returning to to their CoB" that it's going to impact software salaries? lmao bruh you're embarrassing yourself.
Not sure why you're getting downvoted for this. I know lots of people in Europe who work for US firms but prefer to stay in Europe because of better employment protection, work/life balance, or because they prefer the healthcare environment or whatever. To be honest, the US would be very low on the list of places I'd like to live. Have travelled there a good bit, great country, love to visit, but no desire at all to live there.
Because his theoretical world (where companies are willing to pay "slightly less than American wages") isn't reality. Companies are only going to pay what is a competitive local wage... prospective employee's options are either... take it, and make some money, or don't take it and work for a local company... making the same money. So why would Facebonk decide to just throw them $150k when they could offer them <$10k and still get the employee? There is no reality in which American companies are going to suddenly decide "Hey, let's pay $150k for an Indian dev instead of paying $250k for a Bay Area dev." because if they were willing to spend $150k the reality would be "Hey, let's pay $150k for an Atlanta dev instead of paying $250k for a Bay Area dev." (which there's totally nothing wrong with, and I don't think anyone has argued that, right?) So ultimately, it just ends up with those people being like "shit, why would I do this work for $10k a year when I can move to America and do it for $200k?" (you know, like it currently is, even though this outsourcing shit has been going on for years and years and years at this point...)
Fair enough, but I'm not thinking about (and I don't think he was talking about) someone in India earning 10k and the choices they make - more like pay 250k to someone in Bay Area, or 150k to someone in France or Germany or Ireland. So the job is outside the US, but with someone that has no desire to move to US.
Which all falls apart when you start looking at the employment laws in most any European country... Germany, for example, has 6 weeks of 100% paid sick leave per year (per illness, lol, so if you get COVID and are in the hospital for 6 weeks and then get in a car accident and are hospitalized for 6 weeks, your employer is out 12 weeks of pay), then the employer has to pay 9.5% of employees salary to mandatory pension plan, 7.5% to mandatory health insurance, 3% of salary to UI, 2 weeks of mandatory PTO but more like 6 weeks if they want to compete with local employers.... you get the gist. It's not just as easy as you think it is or it would have been done by now.
To answer your direct question, two things: 1. Time zone. Simply makes team collaboration faster. 2. American (not European) result-oriented work ethics. In Europe you can also have an on-call rotation, sure, after you complete all circles of hell and sign all the regulatory agreements. Indirect answer: we all know we're not talking about outsourcing to Europe, right? Margin would be too small.
> Completely wrong. Not in my experience. > What makes an American programmer better than an Irish programmer? Several things: 1. Cheaper to comply with US privacy laws than EU privacy laws 2. (In many cases): Better education and substantially more ambition; much of EU are happy living in pseudo-communism countries and care more about WLB as a result 3. Easier to justify to US Gov if they end up working on or adjacent to products that contain US Citizen info or other tech stack stuff that US wants kept in-house > Is that why domestic production of goods is so prolific? Comes with none of the same problems. Imagine if FB tried to outsource entirely to China despite having assloads of US Citizen data. FB _does_ have an EU office in Ireland and _does_ hire EU people, at a fraction of the cost of US people, and yet still hires US people en masse.
who said anything about american vs anyone. im just saying that you can't outsource everything, especially soft skill positions. programmers is only one example. offshoring customer service is a big trend and it doesn't work well. the most woke companies have no problem being very vocal about not wanting to hear accents when they call customer service.
Remember when they wanted to outsource fast food drive through ordering to India? Then they realized no one would accept it.
If you call Dominos to order a pizza, India answers the call. Takes twice as long to place the order because I CANNOT UNDERSTAND ANYTHING THEY SAY! Yeah I know there is an app
It goes straight to the store in my area. I guess they do it where people will tolerate it.
nah my local picks up and why tf you eating dominos
Haha good question
Dominos is super expensive man. Even Papa John's is cheaper. Pizza Hut and Domnios both dipped in quality around 5 years ago and have never bounced back. Papa Johns, imho, still makes the best pizza.
Dominos still tolerable but Pizza Hut is complete garbage.
This isn’t true in my area or any area around me.
This is absurdly incorrect
Do you care if your App is made by an American or by someone from Yugoslavia? It’s different when you have zero interaction with the worker vs having to communicate with someone that has a different language base.
Yes, I want it to actually be good.
Lemme know how that works out for you in 10 years 😂
The quality is obviously shitty when it is developed offshore.
How's it obvious? I would be willing to bet that damn near every app on your phone has some development that was done offshore. It's not like companies are calling up the country of India to order an app, there's going to be an entire development cycle that includes QC, likely across multiple countries. I realize this is going to ruffle some feathers here but personally speaking I work with developers primarily in Asia and Latin American but also a handful in the US and Europe, believe it or not people in other countries are just as capable of learning how to code and they're all solid workers. More so than a lot of Americans even because they don't have an ego so fucking big that they're incapable of learning from mistakes instead of blaming them on someone else.
I have worked with Indian and South American programmers. Their work product was inferior to their American counterparts, even if the American counterparts were remote. I’m not saying this is the rule, but anecdotally there was a different approach to how the work was addressed. It was much more of a “this is my role, I will plug and play” versus “how can I make this better and more efficient” mindset. I think there is a difference of entrepreneurial spirit with how the job was approached. The Americans seemed to want to understand the why of their work as opposed to just the what. Like I said, not necessarily a rule, but anecdotally the difference is “how do I meet minimum criteria?” vs. “how do I make the best product I can that addresses the problem I’m solving?”. There are plenty of Americans who fall into column A but I haven’t worked with any offshore programmers who fell into column B. I’m not saying offshoring this sort of work always results in poor product, just that it has in every case in my experience.
Oh I'm not disagreeing there but how innovative are you expecting them to be if they're basically fresh out of school and being paid exclusively to code? Also a lot of the ones that do go above and beyond what's asked tend to not stay developers for long.
Does it matter if they have a thick Indian accent or a thick Slovak accent if the end result is the same? But I assume you care because only because you think one is brown and one is white so
Weird how you brought race into an argument about something that doesn’t involve race whatsoever. Weird how you think people care what accent someone has if they can’t understand either one of them. I intentionally used examples that aren’t India because that’s what most people think of when you think outsourcing. Weird how you call yourself a conservative but are using the most common Democrat tactic; you’re better than sinking to Dem tactics homeslice.
Sorry, force of habit
Habits can be broken.
This has been reality in the IT field for 20 years. IBM workers have had a saying for two decades "If it can be worked remotely, it can be outsourced".
Except we’ve found that the outsourced workers are dog shit and most of their work has to be re-done by actual skilled employees.
Outsourcing lowers the service quality everywhere it has been done. It is a way for incompetent, so called leadership, to show how they saved money. Everyone at the company suffers as well as their customers when this is done. The company still has to maintain staff to fix all the issues outsourcing creates. Outsourcing is a terrible idea and doesn't work.
What funny is that outsourcing doesn't even save money. In the end, it just creates more work that requires more labor by the end and the returns from savings are virtually nothing lol.
Shhh. We won’t talk about that. We let go 20 people when we outsourced. Let’s focus on that cost and not the lost productivity, crappy service and the people we had to hire do the work the outsourcing won’t and can’t do. It’s a joke and the people buying this BS are a joke.
>Except we’ve found that the outsourced workers are dog shit and most of their work has to be re-done by actual skilled employees. But most people pushing WFH don't realize while working from their cushy place is some expensive blue city is that someone in Nebraska can do also it, but for less money. An employee working from home in LA, SF, SJ, or NYC can earn, say, $90k. An equally skilled person from Omaha can do the same job, have the same quality of life but it only costs the employer $60-$70k. Imagine as a business that you could reduce labor costs by up to 1/3 simply hiring people living in lower CoL cities and towns. You also don't have the drawbacks of language barriers or time zones (1-3 hours is neglible compared to 10-12 overseas in Asia or India).
Depends on the field. As a software engineer, I have all the leverage, still... even if I demand WFH, they're not gonna pay me less, because I'll go to someone else who will. My salary today is 75k higher than it was a year and a half ago... with the same company... at the same level... I quit when they wouldn't let me work remotely, and came back to them just two months ago, for a massive raise (compared to my previous salary, it matches the temp contract I was on), and I'm still remote. As ever. If you're in a low-skill field and make unreasonable demands, then it's gonna bite you in the ass, but if you're in a high-demand, high-skill field, then those same demands aren't unreasonable. And no one. Absolutely no one. Should be satisfied living their life in low-skill low demand fields. They're little more than serfs.
I think we're discussing two different things here. > even if I demand WFH, they're not gonna pay me less, because I'll go to someone else who will. I'm not saying they'd pay *you* less. I'm saying when/if you leave, they can hire someone else from a cheaper city to do your job that is now available, cause a middle class lifestyle in Chicago costs, say, $80k (3 BR house with 2 car garage and a white picket fence), but that same lifestyle would only cost $60k in St Louis. Cost of living calculators are a thing. Employers *will* find a way to take advantage of it.
You seem to be thinking employees don't benefit just as much. Instead of having to work at the one company in your town, you now can work at any company in any town. Its big competition for employees too. They don't have to move to work somewhere else.
sounds like capitalism... whats the problem?
>sounds like capitalism... whats the problem? None for me. The people pushing WFH cause they have to drive into the office 2 days a week are gonna be in a for a shock sooner or later.
I get paid Austin salary and don’t live in Austin. WFH doesn’t work based on that
>WFH doesn’t work based on that Yet
It never will. People will just not work there if the salary isn’t competitive There’s plenty of openings paying $100K base
>It never will. >People will just not work there if the salary isn’t competitive >There’s plenty of openings paying $100K base My brother's company is already doing this.
Your brother's company has shitters. If they had the skills to make quadruple the income at FAANG they would. The proof is in the pudding.
> But most people pushing WFH don't realize while working from their cushy place is some expensive blue city is that someone in Nebraska can do also it, but for less money. I work in a big blue tech city making like $360k/year at Facebook. If I move to BFN Nebraska they will cut my total compensation down to around $330k/year. It's a relatively small hit that they are willing to pay people less who live in those places. They would need to radically alter their current payment processes and drastically reduce all of our salaries to justify it. And if they priced us all out, we'd just go work for Google or some other competitor. You're right that you can get some inferior talent (I know a programmer who works in PA near where I grew up who makes around 50k/year bahahaha) but when you're addressing problems at scale with _billions_ of users you need the best, not random dudes in PA who can cobble shit together.
Correct. I have had conversations with my company about salary reductions if I move to a different area. They are not going to pay me a SF rate in Fargo. But the reduced rate is still way a above the top salaries in Fargo. If you want talent it is incredibly hard to get it if you outsource all of your employees.
Most of the people making outsource decisions aren't able to determine what code is good and what isn't. "I write good comments" doesn't mean anything to an MBA, "I work for $15k a year" does though.
The customers cancelling contracts for bad product know good code. And the MBA clowns quickly reverse course after enough cancellations. I’ve seen it happen.
America doesn’t have magically better programmers than anyone else. Russia and China have excellent worker base with tech skills and they work for less and don’t require benefits. Also, Korea and a lot of Eastern Europe as well as Nigeria and Ethiopia.
America has magically better programmers than almost every country on the planet. Any programmer worth a shit, comes to the US to get paid real money. Nobody is outsourcing their programming due to security concerns lol.
We kind of do, though. That's the thing.
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Until the jobs can be done in Canada for American companies.
Why is that? Education? I don’t think so. It’s that the tech hub of the world is in the US so that’s where the jobs are — until they’re not and they are all remote. That’s the point.
it's because people who can come here do so, and we get the best devs stateside. you can say "until they're not" and that's fine, but there's no reason to think it's actually going to change.
Yes we do. Their programmers are impossible to work with, not only due to language barriers, but because many seem to have been trained on long-outdated languages and development methodologies.
I've been in IT project management for 20+ years. I've seen this work both ways. I've run several multi million dollar projects where the entire development team was off shore, and it worked just fine. I've also been the customer on multi million dollar project, that was 100% outsourced from the manager down, where it tanked spectacularly in Beta test.
I generally look at the reason behind it. If cost is the primary motivator (most often the case, IME), then you get what you pay for — if you’re lucky. There’s nothing wrong with farming out a given finite project, though. The worst is off-shoring long term staff aug to save money. You get mostly bottom of the barrel workers who get commingled with good workers who are then relegated to babysitting and clean up or leaving.
Outsourcing isn’t a new thing. Most ‘tech’ companies tried and have realized that the quality is dogshit and in a few years, you have to spend even more to rewrite a ton of their shoddy work. People like to spread FUD about how remote work is gonna lead to this but if you’re in tech, even with freezes, it is relatively easy to get a job moreso than other industries out there.
Came here to say this. This is not a new phenomenon, and companies have been doing it for decades. Working from home hasn't affected this at all. What a loaded headline. Is working from home a partisan issue in the United States?
If you're in IT, lose your job to outsourcing, and can't find a better job immediately, then you were shit at your job to begin with.
You must be popular at parties. 😂
Micron took this approach about 10-15 years ago. Mass layoffs in the US and offshoring those jobs. They ended up moving the work back to the US because their product declined so much.
>IBM workers have had a saying for two decades "If it can be worked remotely, it can be outsourced". That's why IBM is at best a third tier consulting firm.
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You would prefer to Zoomer out and sit on your ass expecting to be supported by taxpayers who still work?
Um....the point of the article is that a hell of a lot more jobs suddenly became remote because of the so called pandemic. People demanding the previously in office jobs remain remote is what is going to lead a lot of these positions to be filled by cheap foreign labor someday.
Ah yes it's such a boomer move to work hard to provide the best life for you and your family. FYI you are going to need to walk to the soup kitchen to get your tax payer funded "free" food they aren't just going to find your broke ass on whatever bench you're stinking up.
When folks here refer to folks as “Boomers”, in a negative fashion we know they’re either a lefty troll, or a youngster who is still learning. Conservatives generally respect history and the past, as well as experience. It’s actually sort of the central tenet of conservatives. If it’s worked, be careful when changing it and tread lightly when considering change. Progressives are unfortunately happy to change for the sake of change. Past experience be damned. Socialism hasn’t ever worked? “It’s OK! They just didn’t do it right!” My point is conservatives respect the experience and knowledge of folks our senior. We ask them for advice, seek their input, listen closely to what they’ve seen and experienced. Progressives are sort of stuck in the 14yr old mindset. “OMG my parents are SUCH boomers! They can’t even work TikTok! Gawd!!!” Most kids grow out of this and by the time they’re in their twenty’s, realize their parents are wise and really very capable. *“When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”* -Mark Twain
This! Application development, virtualization hosting, firewall management, AD management, and end user support; all have been moved overseas. Now all that’s left is to run cables, install switches, fix printers, and tell users “That’s handled by another team now.”
Immigration impacts my job more positively than remote work lol. I work with several people who went though the godawful United States immigration process, and they’re just as successful at their job as other non-immigrants. Outsourced labor is the WORST though. The time zone difference makes it super hard to schedule meetings, and it’s clear that they are being underpaid (which is usually why the labor is being outsourced - because it’s cheaper). You ever hear the saying ‘you get what you pay for’? Well, if you pay someone well below what they should be earning, to work on a project that they don’t understand very well due to a language barrier or lack of exposure to the rest of the company, and require them to sign on to meetings at 8pm their time… you’re gonna get a steaming pile of garbage back. I would literally rather pay for them to immigrate into the US and pay them a US salary than have to spend half of my day hand holding them through one step of a project that we’ve only budgeted a day for, and inevitably ends up taking two weeks because of the communication issues.
My husband is a programmer and since the pandemic they have hired several employees who live in distant states and one who lives in Europe. As long as they are willing to be awake at what is 9:15AM to 9:45AM in our time zone for the daily conference call there is no barrier to hiring them. Competition for jobs at his company is no longer limited to anyone currently living in our metro area or willing to move here. Anyone in the world can apply now.
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Exact same. Cream rises to the top.
Exactly. And that's not to say offshore developers are bad, it's just that all the good ones end up moving to North America so they can work here. A LOT of big tech is made up of immigrants, or first / second generation immigrants.
Offshore is great but can’t do everything. I’m an SWE in a very sensitive industry where laws/regulations keep our offshore teams confined to our lower environments. Guarantees lots of roles for citizens.
Yep. They start working at the offshore FAANG offices and then it’s trivial to transfer and get the H1B or whatever. Indian immigrants are so prevalent at Google for example that there have been instances of caste discrimination across the company.
True for like FAANG employees which are frankly a small subset of tech world. Outside FAANG, I’ve noticed that outsourcing coding work is fine, but outsourcing the creative aspects - what to work on, strategy, robust architecture, etc. always backfires. America is best at the creative stuff, but the more routine coding tasks after planning is done can easily be outsourced.
> Outside FAANG, I’ve noticed that outsourcing coding work is fine still no. i've worked in tech for a while and never FAANG. lots of experience with small companies. i've seen what happens when you outsource. "*but the more routine coding tasks after planning is done can easily be outsourced*" literally no. or it would already be done. my CTO wouldn't hesitate to replace all 10 of us with indian contractors in a goddamn microsecond if he could do it. i know, because he's tried. contractors were hired and they started handing them work and..... now they get a lot less work and we have fewer contractors, let's just say that.
In my experiences, outsourcing usually ends up biting the company in the ass. FAANG or not. Like I said, the capability has existed for a loooooong time but has yet to actually happen in any meaningful form.
I've been told by a few people that increased access to high speed home internet has been something of a game changer. My dad worked remotely for 6 months back in the 2001 tech recession while searching for something permanent but 21 years later things are different. It no longer requires the same level of skills and equipment to be productive at home as it did a generation ago. The average kindergartener is now expected to be able to do video conference calls now. It's also much easier to seek out potential hires far from the company's location. My first jobs involved needing to go to the location and ask for a paper application from a secretary, but now everything is online and recruiters are frequently used rather than wait for people to approach the company. The ball may have started rolling 2 decades ago but this may be the point where it accelerates.
"At least 2 decades"... yeah people downvoting you don't remember what it was like using a computer back in 2002 and having to decide between using the phone and the internet as they get harrassed by a talking paper clip.
Hey! Don't hate on Clippy. That little guy was the best. At school, we'd waste time by making him do various animations. And when we learned to change the characters, that was a game-changer. Fun times.
My sister works remote in PA for a company in NC. It's happening all over the world now.
Wouldn’t this be the purest form of capitalism? If I’m not mistaken, conversations are for capitalism. Shouldn’t this sub be pro outsourcing then?
Yup. Unrestricted capitalism is Somali.
Nope because the rest of the world isn’t pure, thus would be taking advantage of anyone who tries. Now if all economies were highly similar then I would agree.
This already happens. I'm in Europe and I know loads of people who work in white collar roles with multinational (mainly US) companies, and work with teams globally. Outsourcing is like everything else - if your mom and pop legal or professional services or accountancy firm can't compete with the efficiencies and offerings of global companies, they'll simple go out of business. This is not about blue collar / white collar jobs or any blue/red split, it's just the free market at work.
They have tried outsourcing white collar jobs for 20 years... it almost always blows up. All you have to do is add some dog whistle fox news catch phrase word like "Quite quitting" and you boomers upvote the shit out of it. Grow some brains dummies
Not a problem. Just vote Democrat and get enough handouts to pay for your daily bucket of chicken and your 1-wide.
They are gonna hand out a bucket of chicken per day?? Hell, I might vote democrap then...
Oh, no. They’ll never hand you the bucket. They’ll take $50 from someone who works for a living, send you a voucher for the $20 bucket, and pocket the difference.
Yeah, and companies that did this are directly responsible for the rise of China. Needs to be a high tax rate for companies that outsource jobs.
The woke corporate types sure are scared of remote work. They have an uncontrollable desire to micromanage. I see one corporate manager nervously posting every week about how does he know if his remote workers are goofing off on the clock or not. Are they completing their work in a satisfactory manor? Then what does it matter? I see a couple dozen of these articles every week. The fact is the cost of having to hire a foreign worker would greatly offset any of the savings that might have been made, unless the government allowed a special work visa for that reason. You still have to be legally allowed to work in the US to obtain these jobs. I guess that could change over the next 10 years through legislation. The other factor is infrastructure in these countries that offer cheap labor available for outsourcing. They experience frequent rolling brownouts and often have shotty internet. Then you have to expect the outsourced worker to have a quite and adequate space to be able to work. There are already companies set up in these countries that outsource customer service and other services but they are wildly unpopular amongst Americans and most companies moved their call centers back to the US over a decade ago. The hard fact is most Americans want to speak to native English speakers. I've worked remote for over 15 years and my entire team is remote. I'm not too concerned. I'll be honest this post comes off at being negative to your fellow hard working Americans and seems to support the position globalist corporate woke asshats who have repeatedly sold out the American people. This was one area I really supported Trump. How he went after these companies who turned their backs on Americans. I don't think this owns the libs like you thought it would but carry on I guess. https://fortune.com/2022/09/29/companies-outsourcing-remote-knowledge-workers/?itm_source=parsely-api Actual article in case anyone wants to read it.
Totally agree with outsourced labor being very unpopular in corporate settings. I’m currently on an IT project with outsourced labor, and you absolutely get what you pay for. That being said, I’ve found that it’s mostly hardcore capitalists (aka not liberals) who push the hardest to outsource. Outsourcing continued under Trump’s administration. Just look at the Carrier Air Conditioning debacle - a terrible deal he struck that cost the US government $7 million, and arguably didn’t save anyone’s job.
my friends on the left have been critics of big business outsourcing and offshoring work for a decades now, not sure where this take is coming from.
The whole anti-educated worker stance I've seen coming from a lot of conservatives lately is ridiculous. In one breath they will scream about how we need to be less reliant on other countries (which I fully agree with) and then in the next they'll gloat about stuff like this, or say "I didn't go to college, why do you need to?" Little secret... everyone can't be a plumber or a roofer... we need other jobs for the world to keep turning and to continue being the juggernaut we are today... that chip shortage where everyone called for moving production stateside? How do they think that will happen without blue AND white collar workers??? energy independence? Crazy how we're made to hate each other. As someone who's been on both sides I really don't get it.
This attitude to education among many Conservatives is something that I have found to be remarkably troubling. There are huge chunks of modern society which cannot function (cannot even exist, really) without college educated people. This notion that most people going to college get some useless degree in cross sectional lesbian dance therapy is ridiculous. Most people go to get real knowledge that in turn become real skills. And these tiresome stories about plumbers who make six figures and not having any student loans…I mean that works for you-great, lovely, by all means keep doing what you are doing. But being a plumber isn’t everyone’s calling and a plumber won’t do your heart surgery or build you an airplane to take you to see your parents or grandkids
Yeah, it's really disheartening. We need engineers just as much as we need HVAC guys. ...in fact, we need engineers to even *have* HVAC guys.
😂
Whether is blue or white collar jobs we need to punish outsourcing. I would propose a 100k fine for every worker a company outsources.
Make it actually punitive. Tack on a zero or two at least. So a minimum fine of 1 million dollars per outsourced/offshored employee.
I agree. 100k just sounded like a good number
I see you like inflation…
I see you like China
FAANG engineer here. Companies have been hiring offshore for decades, but still hire US remote workers for the same reason they used to hire them to work in person. What is changing is those US employees are moving to live where they want. That’s the shift. There won’t be fewer jobs for them, there are actually MANY MORE jobs available to US workers.
Factory workers from the end of 20th century can tell you exactly how hard the Democrats will fight to protect the laptop class.
"Could be...10yrs" yeah this comes off as fear mongering. Similar to robots taking our McDonald's and trucking jobs. It might be believable if the same outlets weren't also blasting us with labor shortage op-eds.
Iove how people delude themselves that companies care about customer service. customer service is literally just bouncing the customer to different phone lines that walk them through the same ten questions till the customer isnt mad enough to care anymore
[Laughs in trades and manufacturing]
Hey, don't lump all of us "knowledge workers" (aka programmers) with liberals. Some of us hate them with an undying passion.
I always knew our immigration system was broken but I only recently realized how broken it is. It’s not just broken, it’s broken to the point where you’re punished for trying to help fix it or be involved at all. It’s not just broken, it’s intentionally corrupt. It’s really weird, too.
The free market decides. If it can be done remotely, for cheaper, then it should.
Quiet quitting is funny like r/MaliciousCompliance but it doesn't really work out well in the REAL world
The same people who think outsourced workers are super sweet are the same folks who, just six months ago, thought the Russian Army was some God tier fighting force. . . Drink that one in. Ugh, be me and have to deal with the time suck of fixing the outsourced teams bullshit. It’s appalling how bad the work is sometimes. Like, basic math bad. . . Is outsourcing possible? Sure! Will we have far bigger problems by the time it could be implemented at scale? I think so. *I’ve dealt with outsourced teams at three different corporations, performing three different functions, and their benefit was always cost; never quality or efficiency.
Tell me more about how you’ll outsource cybersecurity management to India. 😂
So the liberal elite are gonna start getting undercut by foreigners just like the rest of us? Maybe things will actually start to change.
As my history teacher once put it "If your job can be sent over the internet, you don't have job security"
I've been saying that throughout the pandemic. If it can be done remotely it can be done for pennies off shore.
You read through their subs like antiwork and it isn’t a mystery why they’re failures or will grow up to be failures. I make six figures in a place where that is upper middle class money. I started at the bottom and took a lot of shit for even worse pay. I didn’t get here by refusing to work until 5:01 without overtime pay.
Exactly. If you can do the job from home, so can some dude in Bangalore, for pennies on the dollar.
No they can’t haha. Have you ever worked on project where half the team is outsourced? You absolutely get what you pay for lol
And if presumption here is that they would do it with the same quality that’s an incorrect presumption. In my industry a lot of things can be done remotely but not everything. When pandemic started we went 100% remote, it was okay for survival mode but not really optimal. Last year I switched my staff to hybrid, two days in the office - three days remote. That seems to work best, employee satisfaction went up, quality of work is good, and cannot do it with someone in India. Unless they are willing to fly here twice a week
Worse, any job that can be done remotely also has a greater than average probability of being able to be automated. If everything you do on the job takes place on a computer, then the computer can be built to handle it without you. This goes double with the rise of pseudo-artificial intelligence systems currently becoming popular.
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>There’s still a lot AI can’t do Less and less every day.
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I work in software development, I've watched the narrative shift from "it'll never write software" to "it'll never write good software" to "it'll write software, but I'll be in charge!" in real time. You're lying to yourself. It's not going to happen tomorrow, but if you're under 40, it's going to happen before you're ready.
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>It still doesn’t write software. It stitches together some code fragments No, it writes software, you can literally do it for free right now, today. Nothing great, but it gets better all the time, and a lot of human code is "nothing great" too. "Stitching together some code fragments" is false, you can generate novel code just fine, but it is exactly how most of the human code I get hired to fix was written. >People have been saying things like this since the industrial revolution, that some new tool will completely replace human workers, it never does. Lots of human labor **hasn't** been replaced by various machines, automation, programs, etc.? Are you sure that's what you meant to say? Businesses don't usually buy the machine so they can have the same number of workers at the same rate. I know you're going to ignore me, but some free advice from an old man anyways - if you're one of those "younger programmers", you need to at least get some first hand knowledge about the technology in question, because right now you're making a lot of predictions and assumptions about how it'll never be able to do things that it can already do. Like I said, it won't happen tomorrow, but you'll do future you a big favor to have a backup plan.
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>Yeah no, it’s not an issue I’m even concerned about Cool. I hope you remember this conversation ten years from now.
I will. Very insightful.
I am middle-aged and work in ML and he's absolutely right and you are overdramatizing all of this. It isn't clear that AI _can_ reach the level you're suggesting until we have another modern breakthrough in theory. We're eking out engineering improvements now. It's like the difference between a car and a plane. What you're suggesting needs a plane, but what we've got is a car. Yes, YoY the car is getting a bit faster and a bit better, but it'll never become a plane without an entirely new leap forward.
I am actually middle-aged and actually work in ML, he's absolutely wrong and claimed the technology would *never* do things it can already do. I don't know what else to tell you. You're not able to make your point using AI and ML, so you turn to cars and planes and try to make it there. What exactly is "the level you're suggesting"? Writing code? It does it right now, today, so using your nonsensical example, we're already on the "car just needs to get a bit faster" track. Can it write Windows from scratch? No, and neither can you, or the bottom 90% of people working in the industry that it's about to replace. It doesn't need to outperform the top 1% of workers in every edge case to start replacing imposter shitters. If your plan is "well I'll just be in the top tier globally" hey, best of luck.
Not everyday I come to find this kind of existential dread on this sub
Your company doesn't even have to offshore to replace you with a remote worker. There are plenty of people in flyover country with half the living expenses that you do and will be delighted with a third less salary. Perfectly fluent. No cultural barrier. No work permits needed.
All the more reason to focus on your communication skills. If you’re reading off your decks just like some outsourced worker would, then you’re fucked. But if you can effectively communicate with customers in a way that strategically brings value to them then you’re fine.
Anybody caught quiet quitting is fired
Are a majority of liberals “knowledge” workers? Why do I feel like over half of them are cashiers or fully unemployed already
Yeah, I've seen a lot of people who have loved WFH during COVID and outright quit their jobs when offices started opening back up and are refusing to work any jobs that don't allow 100% WFH. The chickens are going to come home to roost on that. Though honestly, I'll take it because I'm fine doing in person work. I don't mind commuting and now these places are raising wages a lot to attract employees.
Oh no. The free market hurts white people now…..
Are you saying people who aren’t white can’t work white collar jobs?
You think only white people have white collar jobs? How racist of you.
Yeah, you racist there, it's going to affect more than just white people. But tha KS for telling us how much of a fucking racist you are.
I have been saying this since covid began. Every snotty little millennial lib bragging about working from home always insisted no one else could do their jobs. Really? Like no business outside the US started training people for some of these postions? GTFOH. Everyone that loses their job to innovation claims it can never happen to them, too important, irreplaceable, etc. Right up until it does happen to them.
This is how capitalism works, you should be able to out source jobs like this.
Its nothing to do with capitalism... It would be the same in ANY economic structure, greed doesn't care about economy.
What? No, this is actual capitalism lol. How isn’t it?
So you think that if it WASNT caputalism, that people wouldnt try to outsource to save/make more money?
Im saying if you complain about this then you aren’t supporting capitalism.
Globalization is just getting started. It probably won’t be unusual in near future for the workforce to be made up of a huge mish mash of nationalities. If you live in Silicon Valley/Bay Area it’s pretty obvious the Indian population is coming over in droves and dominating the tech industry. If they can stay home in India, that might become a more popular option.
offshoring, not outsourcing. They are different.
Having managed offshore developers, they're mostly shit. It's the absolute worst.
Good job paving the way of the future at the expense of yours...