This makes a ton of sense. The interaction is similar: write specs, give orders, wait, review and fix results.
AI is predominantly replacing outsourced, offshore workers
21–30 of 248 posts
Re: AI is predominantly replacing outsourced, offshore workers
#22In hindsight, remote working is an obvious stepping stone to offshoring, which itself is an inevitable milestone toward full automation. It is the work we do in in-person collaboration which will keep the moat high against AI disintermediation.
Doubt. The meaningful work in person is organisational, and it's only marginally better onsite due to whiteboard > Excalidraw. Who does what, how it'll all interact, architecture, etc. If an LLM can code the difficult bits and doesn't fall apart once the project isn't a brand new proof of concept, it'll surely be able to pick the correct pattern and tooling and/or power through the mediocre/bad decision.
> The meaningful work in person is organisational
And also gaining information about the domain from the business and the business requirements for the system or feature.
Re: AI is predominantly replacing outsourced, offshore workers
#23In hindsight, remote working is an obvious stepping stone to offshoring, which itself is an inevitable milestone toward full automation. It is the work we do in in-person collaboration which will keep the moat high against AI disintermediation.
> remote working is an obvious stepping stone to offshoring
This I largely agree with. If your tech job can be done from Bozeman instead of the Bay Area there's a decent chance it can be done from Bangalore.
> which itself is an inevitable milestone toward full automation
But IMHO this doesn't follow at all. Plenty of factory work (e.g. sewing) was offshored decades ago but is still done by humans (in Bangladesh or wherever) rather than robots. I don't see why the fact that a job can move from the Bay Area to Bozeman to Bangalore inherently means it can be replaced with AI.
Re: AI is predominantly replacing outsourced, offshore workers
#24Source: https://nanda.media.mit.edu/ai_report_2025.pdf (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44941374)
Or err, since that's been taken down: https://web.archive.org/web/20250818145714/https://nanda.med...
Re: AI is predominantly replacing outsourced, offshore workers
#25IMHO this is going to be part of a broader trend where advancements in AI and robotics nullify any comparative advantages low wage countries had.
I don’t fully agree. Yes, AI can be seen as a cheaper outsourcing option, but there’s also a plausible future where companies lean more on outsourced engineers who are good at wielding AI effectively, to replace domestic mid-level roles. In other words, instead of nullifying outsourcing, AI might actually amplify it by raising the leverage of offshore talent.
Re: AI is predominantly replacing outsourced, offshore workers
#26That has long been my personal theory as well, though I never had a way of firmly backing it up with evidence, though this article hardly does that either. But it does make sense on a superficial level at least: why pay a six-pack of nobodies half-way 'round the world to.. use AI tools on your behalf? Just hire a mid/senior developer locally and have them do it.
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Re: AI is predominantly replacing outsourced, offshore workers
#27In hindsight, remote working is an obvious stepping stone to offshoring, which itself is an inevitable milestone toward full automation. It is the work we do in in-person collaboration which will keep the moat high against AI disintermediation.
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Re: AI is predominantly replacing outsourced, offshore workers
#28I can see this. We employ a lot of off shore for what we call support engineering. Things like jdk upgrades or cert updates. It’s grunt work that lets higher paid engineers utilize their time on business value work. As AI continues to grow in scope, it will surely commandeer much of this. Employing a human is more expensive when compared to compute for these tasks at a certain scale.
Re: AI is predominantly replacing outsourced, offshore workers
#29IMHO this is going to be part of a broader trend where advancements in AI and robotics nullify any comparative advantages low wage countries had.
Lemme know when robots will make your sneakers and T-Shirts and pick fruits from fields at a competitive price to third world slave labor.
Re: AI is predominantly replacing outsourced, offshore workers
#30IMHO this is going to be part of a broader trend where advancements in AI and robotics nullify any comparative advantages low wage countries had.
I don’t fully agree. Yes, AI can be seen as a cheaper outsourcing option, but there’s also a plausible future where companies lean more on outsourced engineers who are good at wielding AI effectively, to replace domestic mid-level roles. In other words, instead of nullifying outsourcing, AI might actually amplify it by raising the leverage of offshore talent.
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