Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: WFH – will I be outsourced?

news.ycombinator.com

81–90 of 117 posts

Re: Ask HN: WFH – will I be outsourced?

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are overly discounting time zone. Someone working remotely, but within 3 time zones, is much easier to collaborate with than someone 9-12 timezones away.

outsourcing doesnt necessarily mean india/eastern europe. we had great luck with south america and they were able to work the same time. this was a few years ago, the contracting company thought we were a little abnormal at the time, but everyone put on our project went through a regular interview so they were talented, and were treated as a member of the team instead of some remote contractor.

I co-founded a startup as the technical co-founder. Left after a few years. They leaned on a local development shop in the same town. Development shop got bought by one of their clients (not the startup). They found some developers in South America and have been using them ever since.

I don't talk to the founder much, but when I do, it is clear they have no problems with remote talent (other than that they'd like to hire 1-2 more developers and are having a hard time finding them).

Re: Ask HN: WFH – will I be outsourced?

#82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have had multiple occasions where our India team was stuck for weeks on something despite sending daily messages back and forth. Then I called them late a night my time and could resolve the issue in a few minutes. It's funny that the same management that thinks collaboration needs everybody to sit in the same open office has no problem having workers in a timezone 12 hours off where you can never talk directly.

I think that example may be more a matter of being separated by a common language (and/or poor written communication skills) than a time zone difference.

Not at all. You can’t document everything precisely when you do new and complex stuff. Sometimes it’s way more efficient to talk to people directly.

Re: Ask HN: WFH – will I be outsourced?

#83
post #76

I worked for a company that embraced remote, distributed work long before COVID. WFH doesn’t automatically lead to outsourcing, but it does move it a lot closer. Once the company dynamic has shifted to all communications and interactions being online, it’s very easy to add someone from a different country as long as the time zones aren’t too far apart and the logistics of employing and paying them aren’t too onerous…

The thing I never understood about this argument is that it seems to imply that working from the office makes one immune to the same outsourcing. Maybe it was kickstarted by the pandemic or maybe videoconference/remote tools finally hit the inflection point, but if outsourcing is easy enough now and is really the quality-for-cheap deal it proports to be, nobody is safe. Commuting daily to some horrific open-office an…

Basically, the org structure ,communication and culture to run remote teams effectively are very different. This is why most traditional companies fail to outsource successfully. However, once the company has setup a smooth process and culture for running remote teams, outsourcing becomes quite achievable. If they can select and hire 1 in a million talented dev from the global talent pool to replace a slightly above average American dev, while only paying half the salary, I think they will certainly move towards that direction.

Re: Ask HN: WFH – will I be outsourced?

#84
post #29

No better or worse than before, IMO. It's a pendulum that keeps swinging back and forth. Cost cutting leads to outsourcing, which leads to reduced quality and or output, which leads to people coming in to grow and revamp, which comes back to hiring local, rinse and repeat. I'm mostly convinced great and established software engineers around the world already do well for themselves. If you're cheaping out on salaries,…

> I'd much, much, much rather have one proficient, in my timezone developer at 200k than 4 offshored developers at 50k. This idea meshes with the lessons Fred Brooks learned as a PM of the System 360 project in the early 1960s.

The mythical man month !

Re: Ask HN: WFH – will I be outsourced?

#85
Hmmm. I'm sure there will be an impact, but don't think it would be that significiant. A global talent pool of top engineers who can join the competition is already quite limited, and a fair share of them is already in the US, whether born there, on visa, or have immigrated. It shouldn't be ignored that major companies like Google, Microsoft, Airbnb, or even Duolingo has already been operating in multiple global offices for years, that includes all those consulting agencies who's done that for god knows how long.

Some founders, and engineers, have those sort of fantasy that they can hire with way lower wages or something like 1/3 of the cost for equally qualified engineers. Wrong, immigration isn't that hard, even easier for Canada, it will take time, but people might be willing to gave up 25% or even 30% of their salary to live in a place that's of lower cost, where their family reside, but they are not going to gave up 2/3 of their salary, when they could have immigrated fairly easily. The cheapest and easiest way is probably to attend a shitty school and graduate, the only cost is time.

The only impact I see is it's now way easier for smaller companies to hire and operate a team globally, even for 3-5 people, previously it was reserved for major corps and giant consultancies.

People sometimes tend to ignore that people create value for the company, not the other way around.

Also just as a side note, many countries in this world have company-paid salary tax (somewhat similar to FICA, but are paid at a much higher percentage in some places). This often gets ignored in salary comparison.

Re: Ask HN: WFH – will I be outsourced?

#86
post #56

I find it funny that with the WFH movement people some to have forgotten the lessons learned from the early 2000s outsourcing/offshoring craze. Many companies tried to move their development offices offshore to India, Vietnam, Bulgaria, Ukraine, anywhere with significantly cheaper labour. And the first lesson these companies learned was the second you've trained a person from that area to the point that you are happy…

> the second you've trained a person from that area to the point that you are happy, they will quit Isn't this a significant problem with developers in the USA also? I keep hearing the advice to change jobs every year or two in order to keep building skills and compensation.

It is. It’s one reason why the job market for experienced developers may be hot while juior developers are unable to find work. A company has little incentive to train someone who will likely quit.

Re: Ask HN: WFH – will I be outsourced?

#87
post #42

We from croit.io hire worldwide with work from everywhere. Since COVID-19 we see a huge increase in salaries of usually low labor cost countries. It's still cheaper, but there are reasons to get more expensive employees as well. For example we have a hard time to find Linux System Administrators / DevOps that want to support our global customer base. We even need to get more US engineers onboard to fulfil requirement…

I don't see the Linux System admin/DevOps job offer(s)

https://croit.io/career

>But if you are lazy, under average skilled and unflexible, prepare your self to get in trouble some day in the future.

This is true, I see this with my friends and some people are kinda hating me since I keep updating myself.

Re: Ask HN: WFH – will I be outsourced?

#88
post #6

In 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 anywher…

> consider whether the company gains value from workers sharing a time zone, language, cultural context, etc

Hire people from Argentina ;)

Re: Ask HN: WFH – will I be outsourced?

#89
I work for a very large company and it seems like... 'eventually', not particularly soon.

It seems to come down to money math. This much '$local_currency' gets X heads here or Y there.

There's additional benefit/incentive for teams that need around-the-clock coverage. eg: incident response

I think WFH being more accepted/commonplace will make the distance easier to account for - making it more favorable.

I don't think this necessarily means they'll be hurried to replace you, me, or anyone with outsourced help. Mainly back-filling when we eventually move on.

Complete outsourcing seems unlikely, I would expect positions remain available if for nothing else, coverage. Availability but also compliance.

Re: Ask HN: WFH – will I be outsourced?

#90
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing I never understood about this argument is that it seems to imply that working from the office makes one immune to the same outsourcing. Maybe it was kickstarted by the pandemic or maybe videoconference/remote tools finally hit the inflection point, but if outsourcing is easy enough now and is really the quality-for-cheap deal it proports to be, nobody is safe. Commuting daily to some horrific open-office an…

> The thing I never understood about this argument is that it seems to imply that working from the office makes one immune to the same outsourcing. They key is the lack of friction. If all the employees are in the office, your one remote outsourced person is the outlier and teams will get annoyed having to deal with that person. If everyone is already remote, then there's no pushback at all from having another remote…

I think it comes down to, what is your time horizon? This difference may persist in the short-term, but as companies that hire remotely become more successful and profitable, we'd expect to see those that are in-office-only based in a high CoL market to be outcompeted.
Post reply on HN