Uber CEO Wants to Shift More Engineering Jobs to India, Sparking Internal Debate • Hacker News Board

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

#51

Post by ecmascript » Thu, Jul 02, 2020, 2:36 PM UTC

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…

I am sorry that you have been subject to the typical downvote-squad that's downvoting everything they don't agree with, even if your post was perfectly fine. I upvoted it.

> Can someone explain to me why it's a bad thing?

I am just a layman, but how I see it is simple. If you move everything in a branch of business to another country, you will loose the possibility to do that branch in case of some bad event would strike. That event can be because of politics, but it can also be because of nature.

If you move all production to China for example and they have basically a monopoly on producing a certain good, let's say batteries as an example. Then I think it's pretty much inevitably that they're going to use that against you as long as the nation states exist. The prices will start to go up artificially and by then you may start looking for options, but then they may already own all big mines in the world and have taken claim on the basic materials you need.

What do you do then? The only answer is to suck up to whatever their demands are.

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

#52

Post by LoSboccacc » Thu, Jul 02, 2020, 2:36 PM UTC

gorpomon wrote: post #39

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 persona…

> We should really divorce politics from this discussion.

that's a common technical people pitfall. politics permeates society, and ignoring it is only to your own detriment exposing you form exploitation of those whom play the political game, of which you most assuredly participate in, whether you want an active role in it or not.

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

#53

Post by softwaredoug » Thu, Jul 02, 2020, 2:36 PM UTC

luspr wrote: post #47

My feeling is that best Indian software engineers are in the US (or even Europe) already. I have great Indian and Pakistani colleagues at my company, but we had very mixed results with outsourcing.

I'm not so sure, with restrictions in immigration, and developing Indian tech scene, this might not be as true as it was 10 years ago.

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

#54

Post by clavalle » Thu, Jul 02, 2020, 2:36 PM UTC

ilaksh wrote: post #34

clavalle wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Dallas has dirt cheap cost of living compared to SF. Engineers still make 100-200k there.

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

#55

Post by bfieidhbrjr » Thu, Jul 02, 2020, 2:36 PM UTC

Avalaxy wrote: post #3

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.

I think the cost of an engineer is way less than 80K in India. Here in the Netherlands a senior SE would be $80K. I see no reason to go to India instead of western Europe then.

Yes but Netherlands employees won't do what they're told and are basically unfireable. Not quite as bad as Belgium but not far off.

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

#56

Post by frandroid » Thu, Jul 02, 2020, 2:36 PM UTC

xwdv wrote: post #12

Why would you hire an $80k Indian when you could easily hire an $80k American from somewhere with lower costs of living than Silicon Valley.

In spite of the current remote-work revolution allegedly happening, most companies still want an office with workings coming physically so developers can be tracked and teams can bond and share knowledge. You'll be able to hire an Indian team that will come to an office in Pune or Bangalore, but you probably won't be able to assemble a great team in South Bend or Fort Wayne.

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

#57

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jul 02, 2020, 2:37 PM UTC

gorpomon wrote: post #39

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 persona…

[deleted]

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

#58

Post by chosenbreed37 » Thu, Jul 02, 2020, 2:37 PM UTC

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…

I agree. This can be great for the shareholders (Uber is not profitable as far as I know) and good for India. If they get rid of some jobs in the US to make this happen then it's not great for those affected. If however they decide that new hires will be in India then nobody loses out. I'm sure many will point out the potential perils of this approach but I don't see why it can't work. India has a large, educated workforce, ready to make their mark. They should give it a try. If it doesn't work out for some reason they can always change direction.

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

#59

Post by designium » Thu, Jul 02, 2020, 2:37 PM UTC

I think it's not a dichotomy if it's good or bad, when you think from which stakeholder perspective you are using, the answer is diametrically opposite:

"Outsourcing devs to India" - this may be an oversimplification

- Shareholders: Saving money, more money to Shareholders pocket hopefully

- Management: Decreasing costs, better path to achieve xyz goals; therefore easier to meet bonus targets

- Dev team: Increasing uncertainty about job security, quality of product losing control

- PM, UI/UX, designers, related fields: Increasing uncertainty about job security, more overhead to develop products and features; potentially slower feature release

- Other teams in the company: increasing more work to deal with teams in different parts of the world (but that's already happening with Uber with teams across the world)

- India's devs: more high quality and better paying jobs

- India's devs market: slight increase in competition of quality devs

- Consumers and User: minimal disruption, they don't care

I think the Outsourcing can be done because not all dev work is weighted equally across the board. Are you going to use a $300K dev to correct a spelling mistake in an app or use that dev to further the AI development of autonomous driving system? I cannot answer why this is not a good approach but it sounds reasonable.

Now, there are a lot of other consequences of outsourcing the work if you proceed to second order thinking. Having Uber to vouch and invest in India will increase its prestige in software development market further; however, for the US side, that only adds more pain to the idea that big corporations are self interested only and undermines the US labor market.

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

#60

Post by illuminati1911 » Thu, Jul 02, 2020, 2:37 PM UTC

hawk_ wrote: post #26

Avalaxy wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the cost of an engineer is way less than 80K in India. Here in the Netherlands a senior SE would be $80K. I see no reason to go to India instead of western Europe then.

I don't think the kind of engineers that command 300k in valley are to be had in Amsterdam for 80k. In India that's possible.

Indians who are on that level are not going to be in India, but they are already in SV or Europe.