In Cybersecurity and DevTooling we've moved the entire Engineering and Product function to Israel, India, and Eastern Europe (Czechia, Poland, Romania).
We'll still fund founders in the US, but they still end up hiring in those countries instead because you can pay "Austin in 2010" salaries and get top tier talent.
20 years ago, P/L responsibility would remain in the US, but in the current iteration, even P/L stakeholders are now abroad.
VPs have been explicit, in writing, that we are shifting heads to lower cost geos.
Hiring has been largely halted in the US for the bulk of non-business-critical roles to shift PCNs overseas, and there have been multiple waves of US focused layoffs to motivate this further.
While offshoring has been a topic for the last 20+ years of my career, this time, since 2022 or so, feels different even vs. prior recessions, and I expect we'll see continuing erosion in the quality of engineering positions and careers.
Additionally, can obviously only speak for myself but I've tended to see more hiring in countries without the strong european worker protections (eastern Europe, Israel, india, asia)
I feel bad in a way, considering that I probably stole some other engineer's job simply because I am cheaper.
It's a moral problem I hadn't(or rather, didn't want to) consider before reading this comment thread.
I love the people I work with(both overseas and local), but comments like these make me wonder if I've made the wrong choice.
> I love the people I work with(both overseas and local), but comments like these make me wonder if I've made the wrong choice
It's out of your control as an IC. That said, do whatever you can to prepare for the worst.
Your a competent engineer, just like anyone else in any other country.
I don't begrudge a romanian SWE any more than a US one, we're all just trying to get by here, and the fact that global megacorps can do currency/economy arbitrage that they prevent workers from benefiting from while ensuring they have every advantage is by and large not your fault.
It should have been for us as engineers to organize, unionize, or legislate protections if we didn't want this to happen, and despite advocating this to my peers during the boom years, I was constantly rebuffed.
Obviously I put more on the massive companies with the power to dictate global laws and trade practices gleefully jumping at this, but between that and the responsibility I put on my peers/myself to fight against that, I certainly don't put blame on you.
The only difference is that you have zero control over the weather and very nearly zero control over corporate hiring decisions.