We saw similar between 2005ish-2015ish. Lots of offshoring where you could get whatever you 'wanted' built, but it was exactly what you 'wanted' and not what actually made sense.
By this I am referring to contract houses that weren't quite 'code genies' but still would deliver products that were barely workable upon delivery. More than one shop I worked at over the last decade actually -suffered- from this.
Magically, most orgs who could figure out how to deliver even semi passable/realistic functional requirements could get the same done in house for a LOT less money.
That said, yes a lot of counties can provide very competent software development and houses.. but the communication time gap is often still present.
Another shop I worked at had EU devs that were competent, but that communication gap was still a big hurdle.
It’s just that you’re hiring a million Indian developers for every 1000 UK developers, so is it surprising that the average Indian developer doesn’t seem as good?
For a while. I worked with some excellent remote developers in other countries, but it always felt like a revolving door as the pivoted from one remote job to the next so they could get a $5K increase here and a $5K increase there. Eventually we had applicants demanding salaries equivalent to MCOL United States salaries, so we just went back to hiring local for a lot of the roles. Hiring and managing remote workers comes with a lot of financial and managerial overhead.
Once companies catch on, it's just to easy to go in and snipe entire teams from one company by giving them nominal raises.
Almost no American in the tech industry thinks that, given how many of our co-workers aren't (or at least weren't born as) American.
> But the reality is that most countries have them and they will do the same work for a fraction of the price.
At the high end of the tech labor market, it is actually a world market for talent, meaning the talent goes where they can make the most money, and bargains are hard to find because people are not so immobile (e.g. due to H1Bs).
> Everything is done over the internet these days so it doesn't matter that much where you are located.
This is true, but top talent is still going to demand top dollar, even if you let them live in a LCOL region, since they can just move to a HCOL region otherwise.
And yet nearly every American is vehemently against the H1B visa which is the only way for 99% of non American tech workers to work in the U.S. and not do the same work outside the US.
That is a very broad generalization, considering 27% of Americans are foreign born. Yes, the MAGA crowd is largely against H1Bs (and even here you'll find lots of exceptions), but they didn't win the last election.
> which is the only way for 99% of non American tech workers to work in the U.S. and not do the same work outside the US.
And yet, America has a lot of H1Bs and greencard holders, unlike China or India themselves (I say this having worked on a Z work visa in China for 9 years).
A'int gonna end up being authors or technical writers for sure but it doesn't get in the way of actually communicating.
Especially since American developers are unlikely to speak any other language, while their Asian counterparts can communicate extremely well in their primary language and do a more than decent job in communicating in English as well.