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> Agreed, wake me up when cheap outsourced developers actually works out.

This actually happens quite a lot in my West-European country. Companies that aren't too picky about language knowledge can get cheap(er) Eastern European developers to do a lot of work. It works out well for the company. I'm one of the last expensive local developers, so I work with them quite often.

These developers are well-educated and very capable. They are in the same or an adjacent timezone, so there's no issue there. They have little to no knowledge of my local language, but that's not a big issue for us because we do most of our work in English anyway. There is no daily/weekly face to face interaction of course, but with WFH that doesn't happen with local developers either. There are just no insurmountable problems with nearshoring anymore. And since you can easily save 30-50% on a developer's salary by doing so...

Agreed, before the war I worked with an outsourced team in Ukraine, and I was blown away with the quality of their work and the professionalism of all the devs I talked to in that shop.

That being said, I'm not worried about outsourcing. I believe I bring enough value to the table to withstand those pressures, even if eventually I have to take a wage hit to compete.

"wake me up when cheap outsourced developers actually works out. "

You're missing the point here.

They're not going to be hiring from 'body shops' they're just going to be hiring people 'remote' - just like you.

Why do you think that you in 'Small Town Ohio' are going to get hired over the guy in France at 80 cents on the dollar, or Poland 60 cents on the dollar, when they have decent language skills.

You're going to find out quickly that 'core education' in a lot of countries is as high, if not higher than US.

Brazil has iffy educational standards but their upper 1/3 get a good education, and India the ratio is worse but population higher.

The number of good devs. from China is blowing up.

US is 5% of the world's population, and educational standards vary.

It's a big world and Google etc. have no 'loyalty' to America.

At some point you end up shitting your own bed with this behavior. Development will cease to be lucrative if this plays out, so now you have a deficient technical knowledge base in America and a deficient manufacturing base? What exactly is America's future here? I really don't think you can be deficient in both or there is nothing left but pure balls.

> What exactly is America's future here? I really don't think you can be deficient in both or there is nothing left but pure balls.

Shithole country that can't do shit, with a capitalist upper-class that's rich enough to insulate themselves from the shithole aspects. It's the libertarian utopia we've all dreamed about.

It will last until the foreign societies cease to recognize the American upper-class's paper ownership interests.

That's why you have to get out as soon as you can. The money in being a code monkey in the West is on borrowed time. The tried and true money is in management. Managing people always pays well.

How is the management class supposed to manage technical work they ultimately grow out of touch with? An individual isn't going to be able to project power across an ocean, so why do they need you in particular? Sounds like a race to the bottom as far as the notion of becoming a manager to outsourced labor, I'm doubtful there is enough management work to absorb an influx of former ICs.

You are assuming remote people are OK with being second or third class employees. I'm not sure how long this is going to be true in the post covid world.

https://elsajohansson.wordpress.com/2017/09/13/what-does-a-w...

A compensation gap only matters if it also leads to a gap in living standards. Tech salaries in the US are fairly homogenous with respect to cost of living; a developer in Ohio making an Ohio-adjusted salary would be able to afford similar things as a developer in the Bay Area making a Bay Area salary. (In fact, I'd bet that the Ohioan would be able to afford a much nicer house; CoL does not scale uniformly across goods and services with respect to location.)

However, tech salaries in the US are much higher than tech salaries in Europe even after adjusting for cost-of-living. That is what leads to resentment: a developer in London making a London salary would not be able to afford the same things as a developer in New York making a New York salary.

? Nothing I said about that assumed those employees would accept being 'second or third class employees'.

They're going to be 'employees'.

Now - they will be paid less - yes (maybe that's what you meant?)

But that's a function of supply and demand.

They will absolutely accept 'less' because it's where they sit on the supply/demand curve.

Discrimination is not a function of supply and demand, it is a function of lack of legal protection. One can argue underleveraged groups does not deserve equal treatment unless they can overpower their situation, but personally I disagree with that opinion. I also totally understand if someone feels their salary is under threat and does not want to treat others fairly due to that. To be completely honest, there is a nonzero chance I would do the same if I was on the good end of the deal as well.

I'm not holding my breath over the situation changing in the near future, but 2 years of remote work do make people reconsider things.

Your ideas are mixed up here.

Companies are not 'discriminating' against people in other countries due to 'lack of legal protection'. They are just hiring people in other countries, and paying them what they are worth.

That's it.

It's 100% supply and demand.

There are good and bad developers everywhere, and cost of living and opportunities are different everywhere.

Supply and Demand will work itself out.

Do you think pay gaps exist in general or all compensation is fair and square because of supply and demand fixes everything?

> Sure, for a few years you can coast on what the developers you laid off/fired built but cracks will start to show and you can't just slot in developers like RAM sticks.

This is the key point, software is a creative field - and you ultimately aren't going to get more than maintenance/routine upgrades from an outsourced firm. They simply don't care enough to want to go beyond their contract. You aren't going to be able to get top-tier talent to work in your timezone if that means working a graveyard shift.

The trick here as an ambitious MBA is to carefully estimate whether you can coast long enough that you get rewarded for successfully cutting costs, but are also able to jump ship before shit hits the fan.

Leverage a series of short term wins/long term failures to rocket yourself up to the top.

Consulting does work a lot with outsourcing, it doesn't matter if it is terrible, most companies aren't in the software sector.

It only needs to be good enough to keep the lights on, and the occasional escalation to sort out any big issue is seen as business as usual.

All of the good foreign developers are in America making 10x more than they would be in their home country.