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Comment by ab8 | Hacker News Reader

Proving that all their jobs can now be outsourced to other countries for half the price. Thanks a lot.

This is a joke right? Most remote companies still have timezone restrictions, and the closest places to outsource from America in terms of timezone generally have great worker protections (aka, hard to fire).

For the most part, you'll find American companies that are remote are simply hiring from all over America, not the world.

Most remote companies don’t need time zone restrictions, and many Indian contractors are already working weird schedules to at least partially align with US time zones. I don’t expect that every company can outsource every WFH job, but the idea that they can’t because it might make a conference call hard is, frankly, rank nonsense.

On paper, sure.

I have fired offshore teams and hired US ones because I prefer people who think, care, look at the big picture, share their experience, and write quality working software, once.

Offshore software felt like someone building a car by spotwelding everything together for record times.

Also really good developers overseas are not that much cheaper, especially when you add the cost of hiring and managing that far away.

The operating phrase is really good developers. Because most companies are just churning out basic CRUD micro services. Infact companies emphasis on standardized frameworks is part of this trend. It makes rather easy to replace one dev with another. Companies can and are using vast quantities of developers at far away locations.

Those jobs are most likely to be replaced by AI or by skilled developers using AI as a force multiplier.

I already know developers using AI successfully to automate boilerplate and routine code generation, leaving them more free to spend time on the hard stuff.

AI is cheaper than outsourced labor.

This is just not remotely true. I am not sure what you are referring to but even between the US and Canada it is completely incorrect, let alone Eastern Europe and the US. What are you possibly talking about?

Burning fossil fuels for X*Y travel to Z place to do the same job they could do at home, is better?

If they can do it cheaper elsewhere in the world then they clearly are not focusing on the premium values of more expensive workers.

Naturally, having native speakers with good education should be seen as better than importing. If importing is ever actually better, then one has to question the value of the education being given to the premium workers.

Recruiting is hard. Global recruiting is really hard.

As others mention, there are a range of reasons why Joe Coder keeps his job. Realistically, one of those reasons (like it or not) is that management can see him every day and can go to his cube for face-to-face meetings. They never could do that with Jorge Coder (who is in the same timezone by the way). Well, now it doesn't matter.

Before the pandemic, I was told by private equity people that if a job can be done from home, it can be done from India. And the job I had back then is now more or less done from India.

If they could, private equity people would reduce you and your family to chattel slavery and Fargo you into a woodchipper when your wasted body finally gives out. They're the problem, not remote work.

That sounds like efficient market allocation of resources. There is no inherent reason you deserve to live in luxury as most do in the West unless you've contributed to society.

> There is no inherent reason you deserve to live in luxury as most do in the West unless you've contributed to society.

I'd certainly love to apply this logic to our wannabe-aristocracy, whose sole contribution to society is gormlessly doling out access to the capital that they fell ass-backwards into without any merit on their part.

Private equity is an inevitability of a financialised capitalist economy, so what are you suggesting? Some sort of vigilante justice?

There are innumerable ways to avert the worst iniquities of private equity without going Full Communist Revolution. Of course, the longer that plutocrats try to wring the system dry, the more likely the latter is to happen, but I suppose it would be incoherent of me to expect private equity to understand the concept of thinking in the long-term.

That’s the problem right there. We never try to solve problems until it can’t be ignored. We’re tackling economic inequity the same way as global warming; by mostly ignoring it.

Well you don't know it's a real problem until it cannot be ignored.

I get what you’re saying but that’s not really true, is it? You can ignore social injustice, economic inequality and environmental harm but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a problem. In fact, one might even argue that just because the decision makers can ignore a certain problem, it doesn’t necessarily mean it isn’t impossible to ignore by a large swathe of the population.

That makes no sense. I know it’s a real problem.

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The people who end up at the top will be just as prone to the trappings of power and wealth as the capitalists. It’s human nature.

The job absolutely can be done from India. The location isn't the question; the right person is, and the sort of people who say that are the sort who suck at hiring, and don't care. "Hire cheap labor."

Thanks to an increasing supply of jobs in India, salaries have been rising at the top end of the market. In another 5-10 years, it won't be much cheaper to hire in India as compared to the US.

The Indian workers you want are either poached by quality h1-b visa giving US companies (Intel, apple) or are already working for FAANG offices in India, those Indians also want and get US caliber pay.

You’re welcome to try to use TCS/Infosys or worse places to outsource, but the results will be predictable.

Ah, so I wasn't even replaced by the good Indians. Not so great for the ol self esteem.

That's actually sort of what I'm witnessing happening in my workplace. They day they are onky getting the most qualified candidates, but it has been a while since we've seen a "qualified" new hire from.anywhere but India.

Any job that can be done in an office, can be done in an office in India - does that not hold?

Of course not, unless you move the entire office and all roles. It’s like you’re intentionally missing the point (or at least the stated reason) behind returning folks to the office.

To be clear, this is not a defense of RTO policies.

> "Of course not, unless you move the entire office and all roles."

Yes, do that. If you can close down one role and replace it with an Indian in India doing that role cheaper, then with the same logic you can close down the entire office and replace it with an office of Indians in India doing those roles, cheaper.

Somehow, the first applies and is used a threat for return to office, but the second 'magically' doesn't apply. If you need to keep westerners doing the jobs for any reason, and you can't outsource those tasks to India for any reason, then the people may as well be westerners WFH.

Exec leadership/management doesn't want to move to India, therefore moving the whole office is a ridiculous non-sequitur that has absolutely nothing to do with the ease of moving a few roles or role-sets. This isn’t a complicated thing to understand.

Pretending this isn’t the case because you really want to be angry at me or as a reason to riff on whatever form of Management Bad this is, is weird, but you do you.

Why would they have to move? Are there no Indians who can lead, be executives, manage a team, run an office? Replacing a WFH role with the same role in India doesn't involve the WFH person moving to India.

Is this a serious response? You talked about moving the entire office. Clearly the owner neither wants to live in Bangalore, nor wants to sell the company to someone who does, ergo, the entire business does not move. On the other hand, he has an entire QA team working from home and sees no reason not to offshore them.

I feel like you’re being intentionally obtuse in not understanding why one scenario is fundamentally nonsense, and not the pedantic gotcha you think it is.

I feel like you're being intentionally obtuse and pointing at the obvious case so you don't have to address the point. Yes yes, Billy Bob CEO isn't going to replace himself with someone else, but a company big enough to employ offshore workers and deal with international taxes and employment regulations is big enough to have more than one department and more than one office which could be offshored wholesale. And the financier quoted above, if they can get the same development from an offshore company for less, is going to finance the offshore company instead of Billy Bob.

That is, the implicit threat "if you don't RTO, we will offshore you" comes with the counter "if you do RTO, we won't offshore you" - except if offshore was actually tempting, they could and would offshore your entire office even after you RTO to it, and "the market" would/will offshore the whole company.

To the extent that doesn't happen, "you working from home is indistinguishable to an Indian working from India" isn't true. Timezone, language, culture,

"RTO because we need the extra productivity of everyone in the office - but if you don't, we'll accept the reduced productivity, just with other cheaper people" is also nonsense - then why not offer the WFH American less money to stay WFH? No? Because it's a punishment and not a real business decision.

Or that they just weren’t doing that much work in the office either.

I have been WFH for over a decade now.

Before that I survived the first dot com bubble, 2008 housing crisis. I have been through rounds of layoffs and all sorts of outsourcing projects.

At some point it all boils down to numbers. Why hire a Bay Area resource when a Kansas one is cheaper? Why hire a Kansas one when someone globally is cheaper?

I think that the only reason we haven't seen deeper cuts and more tech layoffs and outsourcing is that everyone is skittish about sending work to Eastern Europe. With that venue cut off the remaining tech markets remain higher priced and look a lot less appealing.

There are reasons to be in an office sometimes. Planing, team building, those exchanges around the coffee pot. The random engineer who prarridogs and spouts an answer to the problem you're discussing with someone else. Pick your poison, a week every month, a month every quarter get that team building and face time in, pick up the value it has and then go back to WFH and zero commute... The answer isn't no office its "hot desk when it matters"!

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