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Comment by alephnerd | Hacker News Reader

I've been a hiring manager, and while wages play a role, they do not significantly move the needle.

The main driver is talent base, ease of operations, and time zone overlaps.

The true value of offshoring comes from being able to essentially run 24/7 operations across a couple countries that have a strong talent base and relatively easy operations for us as a company (easy to fire, easy to hire, tax holidays, etc).

This is why Israel, India, Ireland, and parts of Eastern Europe like Romania, Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine became popular for software outsourcing.

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I've heard one reason the UK is so popular for European HQs is we can talk to India in the morning, Europe during the day, the East Coast in the afternoon and the West Coast as we sign off. Basically we cover the vast majority of the Western world plus the outsourcing giant that is India.

The time zone factor for meetings isn't significant, as Indian, Eastern European, and Israeli employees are fine taking meetings that accommodate American time zones because we pay 2-3x more than local competitors.

The reason UK is a base is because UK business law is extremely thorough and any flavor of contract dispute has been litigated multiple times in the UK.

This means it's easier for me to manage operations all over the EFTA and EU via the EU-UK TCA.

The English factor is a massive plus as well because that is the global language of commerce - not French or German. This is why Netherlands tries to treat English as a first class language similar to Dutch, because that is critical for businesses.

>This is why Israel, India, and parts of Eastern Europe like Romania, Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine became popular for software outsourcing.

Not sure about the rest but it's definitely not easy to fire in Romania at all, and workers there get a lot of mandatory legal benefits like generous sick and parental leave. Unless you hire them B-2-B, which is quite common for high wage outsourcing jobs, then yeah.

"hire B-2-B", a.k.a. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_self-employment ?

No, you contract with another business to employ them on your behalf. Legal, common, and much more flexible.

mandatory legal benefits like generous sick and parental leave still apply

not if they're in a different country, and if they're employed as contractors

>you contract with another business to employ them

That another business is liable to pay them

They are still cheaper despite all that...

No, you set up your own legal entity(company) based on the financial/legal framework in your country, and bill your foreign employer for the work you do, but you're not an employee so you have no right to sick days, firing protection, etc. and have to do your own taxes.

Note that if the employer is found to be engaging in "disguised employment" then, in some jurisdictions such as the UK, they may be found liable for these things anyway plus penalties.

I know, some countries like UK, Germany, Austria, etc have laws to discourage this, but in Eastern Europe(Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, etc) this is totally legal.

> hire them B-2-B, which is quite common for high wage outsourcing jobs

This is what my previous employer did

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