msthrway8709

Some of the pessimism comes in that I've seen larger "centers of gravity" being built in these regions with full reporting chains vs. effectively being the offshore wing of another team, as well as commensurately higher levels of product ownership and growth or traction over the last few years.

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)

As an American impacted by this, I can at least personally say that if anything the fact that you got a job is one of the few upsides in all this.

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.

Thirding this, group manager at Microsoft. Throwaway as I post regularly under my professional account.

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.