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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

#31

Post by moneywoes »

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…

Is eastern Europe the real outsourcing threat?

Re: GitHub India's entire Engineering team is fired

#32

Post by moneywoes »

yieldcrv wrote: post #9

What towns in South America have a concentration of software developers? Might target my real estate purchases there I’m finding that there's a lot more focus on timezone quality of life for US centric organizations, and that includes getting rid of their teams in Asia now and avoiding that Re-Discovering South America over and over again for similar help and cost

Big cities in Columbia I’d imagine

Re: GitHub India's entire Engineering team is fired

#33

Post by pcthrowaway »

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…

> Furthermore, India pays competitively enough that you’re not saving that much money for top talent as compared to e.g Eastern Europe

According to levels they're probably making 15-20% the equivalent salary of github employees with similar YoE in the U.S. But you're right, eastern europeans probably have similar wages.

Re: GitHub India's entire Engineering team is fired

#34

Post by pcthrowaway »

howinteresting wrote: post #13
ethicalsmacker wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or areas with weaker employees. I doubt they axed an entire team for monetary reasons alone. They could have axed 1/10th the employees in the bay area and probably covered the entire India roster (financial cost wise).

Senior-level engineers in India, of the caliber that GitHub would hire, easily clear USD 100k+/year. It's not as expensive as Bay Area talent but not cheap either.

Maybe in general this is true? But then Github's hires were not those, according to https://www.levels.fyi/companies/github/salaries/software-en...

Re: GitHub India's entire Engineering team is fired

#35

Post by jojobas »

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 have to revert for you to kindly adjust to the same.

Re: GitHub India's entire Engineering team is fired

#36

Post by toomuchtodo »

satvikpendem wrote: post #2

> It does go against the notion that lower cost of labor places are safer from cuts, though. Interesting, people were talking about remote work meaning that companies will now pay less due to a global talent pool, but it might just go to show that workers are not all fungible with other workers in different countries. It rings of the same fears as outsourcing a few decades ago.

Quality talent has a cost regardless of geography.

Re: GitHub India's entire Engineering team is fired

#37

Post by Terretta »

jojobas wrote: post #35
throwayyy479087 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 have to revert for you to kindly adjust to the same.

Do one thing. Timely discuss about doing the needful years back.

Re: GitHub India's entire Engineering team is fired

#38

Post by 1-more »

breckenedge wrote: post #14
yieldcrv wrote: post #9

What towns in South America have a concentration of software developers? Might target my real estate purchases there I’m finding that there's a lot more focus on timezone quality of life for US centric organizations, and that includes getting rid of their teams in Asia now and avoiding that Re-Discovering South America over and over again for similar help and cost

Towns? You mean Buenos Aires. Conveniently, real estate transactions are done in USD.

Plus all of my colleagues in Argentina are happy to be paid in USD. So much easier for them to deal with.

Re: GitHub India's entire Engineering team is fired

#39

Post by throwaway2037 »

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.

Are you implying that employee protection laws are weak in India? They are not. I have multiple, first hand experiences where it was very difficult to layoff underperforming staff. It is much easier to layoff in US and UK. (Continental Europe is a mixed bag.)

Re: GitHub India's entire Engineering team is fired

#40

Post by fatneckbeard »

for every US HN commenter talking about their "awful experience" with Indian teams let me talk about my awesome professors from IIT who came to America to work in Math/CS education. Or about the great Indian people I met online working on open source projects on github. Or about the skilled Indian immigrants who work where I work. Or the immigrant Indian doctors who saved my family members life in the hospital.
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