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GitHub India's entire Engineering team is fired

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Re: GitHub India's entire Engineering team is fired

#21

Post by Jeff_Brown »

flappyeagle wrote: post #4

If you make your high-cost employees much more productive with AI, you may not need to reduce per-headcount cost so much anymore. The cultural and language benefits start to dominate the calculation. That said, India will only grow in importance, so I wouldn't be surprised if the team was reinstated in a few years

> make your high-cost employees much more productive with AI

Might happen soon, might not. AI has so far proven astounding for problems to which solutions are robust to small perturbations -- natural language, visual art -- but code is different.

Re: GitHub India's entire Engineering team is fired

#22

Post by nirushiv »

fwungy wrote: post #3

Between the timezones, language and dialect differences, and cultural differences, offshoring can be more trouble than it's worth.

Precisely. Especially in India - which is almost as large a time zone offset as you can have. Furthermore, India pays competitively enough that you’re not saving that much money for top talent as compared to e.g Eastern Europe. When I ran engineering teams, the language/dialect barrier between our US mothership and India was much much wider than South American and European devs, even though India is technically the largest English-speaking country in the world.

Re: GitHub India's entire Engineering team is fired

#23

Post by prottog »

nirushiv wrote: post #22
fwungy wrote: post #3

Between the timezones, language and dialect differences, and cultural differences, offshoring can be more trouble than it's worth.

Precisely. Especially in India - which is almost as large a time zone offset as you can have. Furthermore, India pays competitively enough that you’re not saving that much money for top talent as compared to e.g Eastern Europe. When I ran engineering teams, the language/dialect barrier between our US mothership and India was much much wider than South American and European devs, even though India is technically the l…

> India - which is almost as large a time zone offset as you can have

Not just that, it's a half-hour offset from pretty much the rest of the world! I wonder which genius thought of that one.

Re: GitHub India's entire Engineering team is fired

#24

Post by prottog »

_xivi wrote: post #11
noodlesUK wrote: post #5

I'm not privy to anything special here, but I do get the impression that (intuitively) it's easier to target layoffs in areas with weaker employee protection laws. In most EU countries, it's pretty hard to make these kinds of redundancies without going through a slow and expensive process, as well as paying severance.

Wouldn't these protective laws help promote outsourcing tho? Less headache, not to mention wages Similar to that in finance, where big corporations have the luxury to establish entities in tax heavens and avoid paying large sums while still operating just fine

This is generally true. The same laws that make employees harder to be fired also means companies are more reluctant to hire them, since the cost of making a bad hire is that much higher. France is famous for having more than double the number of companies with exactly 49 employees than exactly 50 employees, and you can guess the reason why.

Re: GitHub India's entire Engineering team is fired

#26

Post by not2b »

prottog wrote: post #23
nirushiv wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Precisely. Especially in India - which is almost as large a time zone offset as you can have. Furthermore, India pays competitively enough that you’re not saving that much money for top talent as compared to e.g Eastern Europe. When I ran engineering teams, the language/dialect barrier between our US mothership and India was much much wider than South American and European devs, even though India is technically the l…

> India - which is almost as large a time zone offset as you can have Not just that, it's a half-hour offset from pretty much the rest of the world! I wonder which genius thought of that one.

It makes perfect sense: the "natural" lines would give India two time zones; combining them into one half-hour time zone gives the whole country the same time.

It did cause problems with the early Bell Labs Unix releases, which didn't contemplate that a time zone might not be a whole number of hours away from Greenwich.

Re: GitHub India's entire Engineering team is fired

#27

Post by throwayyy479087 »

nirushiv wrote: post #22
fwungy wrote: post #3

Between the timezones, language and dialect differences, and cultural differences, offshoring can be more trouble than it's worth.

Precisely. Especially in India - which is almost as large a time zone offset as you can have. Furthermore, India pays competitively enough that you’re not saving that much money for top talent as compared to e.g Eastern Europe. When I ran engineering teams, the language/dialect barrier between our US mothership and India was much much wider than South American and European devs, even though India is technically the l…

The hardest time I’ve had communicating at work has been with native English speakers from India. They have such a strong accent and such different idioms. Same to some extent with Singlish.

The problem is they really are speaking perfectly legal English, with grammar better than mine, but it’s a different dialect. Not true of ESL Indians.

Re: GitHub India's entire Engineering team is fired

#28

Post by prottog »

not2b wrote: post #26
prottog wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> India - which is almost as large a time zone offset as you can have Not just that, it's a half-hour offset from pretty much the rest of the world! I wonder which genius thought of that one.

It makes perfect sense: the "natural" lines would give India two time zones; combining them into one half-hour time zone gives the whole country the same time. It did cause problems with the early Bell Labs Unix releases, which didn't contemplate that a time zone might not be a whole number of hours away from Greenwich.

Surely India as a large federal nation would be OK with two time zones! It makes about as much sense as China having one time zone for its sixty degrees of longitude.

Re: GitHub India's entire Engineering team is fired

#29

Post by killjoywashere »

aiappreciator wrote: post #17
flappyeagle wrote: post #4

If you make your high-cost employees much more productive with AI, you may not need to reduce per-headcount cost so much anymore. The cultural and language benefits start to dominate the calculation. That said, India will only grow in importance, so I wouldn't be surprised if the team was reinstated in a few years

This, AI more directly competes with service outsourcing than anything else. AI isn't reliable. But is your outsourced team any better? Outsourcing is cheap, but AI is 100 times cheaper. Communicating with AI, via prompt engineering, is easier than setting up cross-cultural + timezone communications. India really depends on service outsourcing. So I'm curious regarding how it'll be impacted by AI. That being said, no…

That may be the market insight of the week. So the next question: how much cheaper?

Re: GitHub India's entire Engineering team is fired

#30

Post by ebiester »

throwayyy479087 wrote: post #27
nirushiv wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Precisely. Especially in India - which is almost as large a time zone offset as you can have. Furthermore, India pays competitively enough that you’re not saving that much money for top talent as compared to e.g Eastern Europe. When I ran engineering teams, the language/dialect barrier between our US mothership and India was much much wider than South American and European devs, even though India is technically the l…

The hardest time I’ve had communicating at work has been with native English speakers from India. They have such a strong accent and such different idioms. Same to some extent with Singlish. The problem is they really are speaking perfectly legal English, with grammar better than mine, but it’s a different dialect. Not true of ESL Indians.

I’ve spent long enough in the industry that I am relatively comfortable with many of the accents, I would love a class to exist that teaches non-Indians the dialect.
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