The Philippines' big offshoring industry is growing despite AI • Hacker News Board

Re: The Philippines' big offshoring industry is growing despite AI

#91

Post by jesse_faden » Tue, Aug 11, 2026, 3:09 AM UTC

notaslave wrote: post #45

jesse_faden wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I visited India recently and when I saw just how many companies have a GCC there I was mindblown. Lots of cool offices, engineering and technical roles, great work life balance and generally a different vibe. Literally every company that I could recognise had a back office there.

Do these GCC's have great work life balance? They may be better that the service companies, and may pay better, but WLB is shitty everywhere in India as far as I can tell. As an example, the death of Ernest & Young employee Anna Sebastian sparked a lot of discussion in Indian media since it was attributed to work pressure.[1] Another example I recently heard was a USA Texas based company called CorroHealth suddenly c…

> but WLB is shitty everywhere in India as far as I can tell

This was what I believed, then I saw how pretty much ALL of my friends at Fortune 100s or 500s and they were amazing. I am sure awful companies exist and the bar for what is good WLB can be lowered by these, but the whole "it is bad everywhere" was simply not true and I felt I had a distorted vision of my Indian friends until I actually visited a lot of them.

My so works at a reinsurance company in one of these GCCs, and her WLB is unmatched. Hours are really flexible. Has a really great manager and team. She even gets to take a day off every month as menstrual leave.

> work lot more hours for lot less pay,

This depends, while the vast majority of roles pay "market rate" there is a strange sweet spot where roles pay a significant amount considering purchasing power and cost of living.

Re: The Philippines' big offshoring industry is growing despite AI

#92

Post by andersmurphy » Tue, Aug 11, 2026, 4:30 AM UTC

gruez wrote: post #88

andersmurphy wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Judging by the amount of insider interviews it's more than just ads. Longtime subscriber. Pretty disappointed in how biased their coverage is. The most critical piece they have put out on AI is oh no it's so powerful it's hacking everything. It's like being in a job interview and saying your biggest weakness is you work too hard.

>Longtime subscriber. Pretty disappointed in how biased their coverage is. >The most critical piece they have put out on AI is oh no it's so powerful it's hacking everything. It's like being in a job interview and saying your biggest weakness is you work too hard. What do you think they've missed? Otherwise, all you've demonstrated so far is "their stance on AI doesn't match mine", not that they're "biased". If I was…

I mean that's a fair take.

But, for me it's not so much that it doesn't match my view. I'm honestly mixed on the whole thing (I am probably most concerned about the finances). It's more that the articles they write seem to align with the eb and flow of anthropics media tempo. This week it's FOMO, next week it's panacea, hack all the things week, followed by mild financial concerns with a but it will be fine tacked at the end. The articles tend to lack concreteness too. Maybe, it's just what reading The Economist is like when it's a domain you actually understand and follow closely?

Honestly, though I could probably say the same for a lot of publications these days.

Re: The Philippines' big offshoring industry is growing despite AI

#93

Post by dyauspitr » Tue, Aug 11, 2026, 7:58 AM UTC

energy123 wrote: post #39

Ekaros wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't understand why this should not have been obvious. If you have technology that allows expensive workers to do things cheaper why wouldn't same technology allow cheaper workers to do stuff even cheaper... And cheap is good...

Can you explain why freelance writing and translation is being destroyed: > https://researchprofiles.ku.dk/en/publications/winners-and-l... Surely, AI helps them do stuff even cheaper, and cheap is good, so their business should be booming?

The stakes are low for freelance writing and the majority of functional translation. You don’t really need a human to be responsible or blame when something goes wrong, unless it’s official translation in which case people still use human translators.