I once heard, if you can work from home you will be out sourced.
Is the WFH movement going to turn into a “they replaced with with cheaper labor from xyz?” Is this a be careful what you ask for situation?
Ask HN: WFH – will I be outsourced?
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Re: Ask HN: WFH – will I be outsourced?
#2It is, yes.
Re: Ask HN: WFH – will I be outsourced?
#3Don’t believe the propaganda.
If you CAN be outsourced, work-from-home has little or nothing to do with any motivations to start that process.
Re: Ask HN: WFH – will I be outsourced?
#4Depends what you mean by “xyz”.
A cheaper part of your country? Yes.
A cheaper country? It makes it easier emotionally for managers to take that step, but there are still time zone, cultural distance and language issues arguing against it. They may even deem the extra paperwork to be too much hassle for them.
Re: Ask HN: WFH – will I be outsourced?
#5I have worked at startups most of my career and from my perspective I would not want to replace a teammate just because of salary.
Re: Ask HN: WFH – will I be outsourced?
#6In theory, perhaps. But first consider whether the company gains value from workers sharing a time zone, language, cultural context, etc., all of which push against replacing employees with "cheaper" ones from abroad.
In many ways the ideal remote first company manages to address and eliminate these constraints (eg. by adopting async communication channels) to truly enable employees to come from and work from anywhere, but this is definitely not particularly common. For that matter, many of the companies that have embraced remote first principles tend to offer salaries that aren't adjusted to local COL, so an offshore worker isn't necessarily cheaper, unless you're comparing to the very highest COL labor markets.
So, if you're a fully remote SWE employee who lives in Manhattan or the SF Bay Area, working for a company that has embraced Remote First and making it work, and drawing a salary appropriate to those places, then you might be replaced with someone "cheaper" from elsewhere in the US or even globally, but I wouldn't lose sleep over it unless you think you're bad at your job.
Re: Ask HN: WFH – will I be outsourced?
#7I have worked at startups most of my career and from my perspective I would not want to replace a teammate just because of salary.
The question is not what you, as an individual contributor or even front-line manager would want, it is what the people in the executive suite would want
Re: Ask HN: WFH – will I be outsourced?
#8This may be obtuse but in a company that is not fully wfh haven’t you already somewhat been outsourced?
Re: Ask HN: WFH – will I be outsourced?
#9It depends. If you can be replaced at a cheaper cost, why wouldn't a company do it considering they can. The question is: What does it cost to replace someone and is it worth it ? Here is how I look at it:
There are 4 types of employees in a company.
1. "Should be partner" Players: You not only do a great job, add tremendous value but you think about the business and team and go out of your way to help improve things. You genuinely care not just about getting things done but long term success of the team/company etc. You live and breathe this thing. You wake up on a weekend thinking about work and how you can improve things. You should be like a partner ideally. Most large companies do not value you enough. If you ever slip, you hate yourself for that and want to frikin punish yourself for making that mistake. Your team not only loves to rely on you but they NEED you so bad.
If I have anyone in my company who is "Should be partner" player, you bet I will fight hard to give them whatever they want. I would keep them happy even before they want to be happy.
2. A Players: You are very good at your job, take things seriously, get shit done, genuinely participate BUT you have limits and cannot go beyond a certain level. You won't wake up on Saturday thinking about that enhancement you want to make. You are ok to wait till Monday. You hardly slip but if you do, you recognize it immediately and work on it. Your team loves to rely on you. You hardly need a reminder to do better.
If I have A Players in my company, I would do my best not to lose them.
3. B Players: You do the bare minimum to get by. You may sometimes need a kick up your butt to do a bit more but usually you do enough to not get noticed. People don't prefer to rely on you and if they have to, they are usually cautious. You need a bit more management and ensuring things are happening on your end and your team/manager needs to check on you on a regular basis.
4. C Players: You don't really do anything useful and either will get fired at some point or you are smart enough to hide yourself usually in a large organization. You couldn't care less about anything except a paycheck. No one can ever rely on you. Your team doesn't care about you. They wouldn't notice if you were gone.
So ask yourself: which player are you ? Sure, sometimes an A player could become a B Player etc but if you are wondering today, where do you stand ? If you are B or C, you can certainly be replaced with a cheaper option considering all else is same.
Re: Ask HN: WFH – will I be outsourced?
#10If you are "below the API" - a cog in a machine punching through well-defined units of work - you are at risk for outsourcing or automation regardless of where you sit. As a software engineer though, you have the opportunity to position yourself as something other than that. As a designer and troubleshooter and facilitator of the machine, which includes human and machine and HQ and distributed sites components.