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Sure but I can’t imagine that mindset from an onshore FTE dev, can you? Let me do stuff as slowly as possible so my boss doesn’t give me more work. Can be applied to any job.

Refusal to do obvious time saving tasks when instructed to would probably put you on the “does not meet” list next review cycle.

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I agree but the reason for the difference is because the “offshore” folks have zero incentive to do so. There’s literally no point beyond keeping their job (and because of the incredibly low bar and compensation, it’s not at all difficult to find another one). They are there to fill seats and hours, not be productive or efficient.

Even if the client complains, the company won't fire the person. They can just move them to one of their many other projects.

And let me follow up by saying the problem with many of these offshoring firm arrangements is that the number of layers in between the person assigning tasks and person doing tasks.

Purposeful inefficiency is harder to sniff out because it’s not a manager-ic relationship. There’s often 2-3 hops inserted into the middle with the work going into a pool for the offshore team lead to manage. The offshore team lead is also consulting company so they have no efficiency incentives either.

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