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Uber CEO Wants to Shift More Engineering Jobs to India, Sparking Internal Debate

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Re: Uber CEO Wants to Shift More Engineering Jobs to India, Sparking Internal Debate

#31

Post by ixvvqktiwl »

xwdv wrote: post #16
ixvvqktiwl wrote: post #4

I used to think this was a bad thing, but these days I'm not so sure. Assuming you can get the same (or similar) talent in India instead of the US, doesn't it make sense to do your development in a place where your money goes farther? The capitalist in me sees this as a win: more value for shareholders, and a big life improvement for Indians. Can someone explain to me why it's a bad thing? I understand it might be ba…

You cannot get the same talent in India that you get in the U.S., at scale.

Maybe that was true at one time, but is it still true? I think China seems like the counter example, since these days China has been innovating much more rapidly than the US on many things.

Re: Uber CEO Wants to Shift More Engineering Jobs to India, Sparking Internal Debate

#32

Post by thiago_fm »

Well, there's definitely challenges in moving them to India. But given how technology is commoditised and honestly there are just amazing developers everywhere in the world, I don't see why they would stick paying $500k total comp for an engineer in silicon valley to change font size in a mobile app.

For example, I moved from a third world country to a first one to work as a developer and people here aren't any better, just a bit more lazy, than my former country and worker laws are more strict(better for workers). They could just offshore the work, but instead they want to employ people here for a bigger cost, and I'm here because I get paid magnitudes more than on my home country.

Re: Uber CEO Wants to Shift More Engineering Jobs to India, Sparking Internal Debate

#33

Post by somurzakov »

jaywalk wrote: post #9
ixvvqktiwl wrote: post #4

I used to think this was a bad thing, but these days I'm not so sure. Assuming you can get the same (or similar) talent in India instead of the US, doesn't it make sense to do your development in a place where your money goes farther? The capitalist in me sees this as a win: more value for shareholders, and a big life improvement for Indians. Can someone explain to me why it's a bad thing? I understand it might be ba…

Why not just move the entire company to India, and pay everyone less?

thats what Zoom does, large part of their engineering is in China

Re: Uber CEO Wants to Shift More Engineering Jobs to India, Sparking Internal Debate

#34

Post by ilaksh »

clavalle wrote: post #21
ixvvqktiwl wrote: post #4

I used to think this was a bad thing, but these days I'm not so sure. Assuming you can get the same (or similar) talent in India instead of the US, doesn't it make sense to do your development in a place where your money goes farther? The capitalist in me sees this as a win: more value for shareholders, and a big life improvement for Indians. Can someone explain to me why it's a bad thing? I understand it might be ba…

Oh, it's not a bad thing. But competition works the other way, too. Which developers are sitting around making less than a third of what other developers with the same skillset are making? The best ones?

Maybe a lot of them work at startups. Or live in Mexico vs. San Francisco or Dallas.

Re: Uber CEO Wants to Shift More Engineering Jobs to India, Sparking Internal Debate

#35

Post by centimeter »

atonse wrote: post #2

It's hard to ignore the siren song as a business person of comparing your 300k a year engineers to a senior engineer that costs $80k in India (regardless of the potential hidden costs of cultural and time zone differences). This gap should probably narrow as more remote work becomes normal, and more people move out of the Valley and can actually live decently on 150k, rather than 300k.

Regardless of how “senior” they are, you get what you pay for.

Re: Uber CEO Wants to Shift More Engineering Jobs to India, Sparking Internal Debate

#36

Post by duhi88 »

ixvvqktiwl wrote: post #4

I used to think this was a bad thing, but these days I'm not so sure. Assuming you can get the same (or similar) talent in India instead of the US, doesn't it make sense to do your development in a place where your money goes farther? The capitalist in me sees this as a win: more value for shareholders, and a big life improvement for Indians. Can someone explain to me why it's a bad thing? I understand it might be ba…

There are plenty of devs outside of Silicon Valley. They don't have to look halfway across the world to reduce their costs.

Re: Uber CEO Wants to Shift More Engineering Jobs to India, Sparking Internal Debate

#38

Post by jaywalk »

gpm wrote: post #19
jaywalk wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not just move the entire company to India, and pay everyone less?

Because people will quit instead of moving, and those people have very valuable institutional knowledge.

You wouldn't move people, you'd hire Indians.

(I was being sarcastic, by the way)

Re: Uber CEO Wants to Shift More Engineering Jobs to India, Sparking Internal Debate

#39

Post by gorpomon »

atonse wrote: post #2

It's hard to ignore the siren song as a business person of comparing your 300k a year engineers to a senior engineer that costs $80k in India (regardless of the potential hidden costs of cultural and time zone differences). This gap should probably narrow as more remote work becomes normal, and more people move out of the Valley and can actually live decently on 150k, rather than 300k.

This is well-trodden ground as far as discussion around here goes. The common points pro and con always come up: is the quality the same (some say yes, some say no), is co-location or time-zone location important (same parenthetical), what $ amount is ethical to pay, whom is it more ethical to pay (are you a nationalist or a global citizen, etc), what's sustainable, many more etc's.

I've decided that's it's a personal decision to a company. Many find benefits in having some teams in India or Asia, some don't so they don't. We should really divorce politics from this discussion. I'm ok with company A saying they like Indian devs and company B saying they enjoy the benefits of keeping it in their geographical area. I've seen outsourcing backfire. I've seen it succeed. I've seen team leads emerge in India and direct an entire product from 10,000 miles away. I've also seen dead weight that I had to go out of my way to get productivity from. You see it all and you'll get it all, so why the fuss?

Re: Uber CEO Wants to Shift More Engineering Jobs to India, Sparking Internal Debate

#40

Post by mdorazio »

ixvvqktiwl wrote: post #4

I used to think this was a bad thing, but these days I'm not so sure. Assuming you can get the same (or similar) talent in India instead of the US, doesn't it make sense to do your development in a place where your money goes farther? The capitalist in me sees this as a win: more value for shareholders, and a big life improvement for Indians. Can someone explain to me why it's a bad thing? I understand it might be ba…

The downside for individuals is that a lot of people who frequent this site end up with significantly lower salaries than before (from your downvotes, they don't like that idea). The downside for companies is that you tend to get an overall lower quality product with a lot more managerial overhead required due to the nature of remote/cross-cultural/cross-language development. The downside for America is that the trend of stagnant median wages continues since you're pulling the rug out from under one of the few domestic industries that's actually still lucrative for a significant portion of the workers in it.
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