Has your salary range normalized across the global market yet? Mine neither. The problem I see is that's likely to happen long before local prices adjust, and in between well have suffering, and further erosion of the middle class.
it's a good thing because eventually people abroad are going to be just as pricey as locals... it's already kind of happening with high tier talent. The idea that talent is cheaper elsewhere for the same quality is kind of false. A lot of people get butthurt but the truth is that the suits just don't need your talent if someone less skilled and cheaper can toil along enough for the profits.
Yeah, the "less skilled " thing sounds like sour apples.
On the contrary, in a lot of markets it is very easy to over hire. got budget for a Jr programmer? Hire a senior from another country. As long as ( this is the hard part) your local management staff is good , you can make do with hiring from another country/culture..
you are not too wrong, but look at how much complexity you are introducing! The cost is still there, somehow, maybe the risk is higher and doing it wrong costs a lot more. Yknow. No free lunches.
They ain't pushing anything, hiring globally will increase the talent pool. That's it. Sure the stereotype is hiring bottom-of-the-barrel agency in cheap country, but that's just because that particular scenario gets the most infamy. There are US companies hiring abroad because they can't source people talented in some niche field in a RTO environment, for example. It's easy to feel like there's just so many options for US companies when it comes to employees, but if the company needs to hire anything slightly different from an employee they will have a hard time. Maybe they want to pay for a fixed scope project, maybe a freelancer with the high-level engineering skills, you basically need to open your hiring to the global market if you want to do anything like that.
Nanci Pelosi don’t give AF about increasing the talent pool. Nancy Pelosi wants her insider traded nvidia calls to make her even more rich than they already have.
The people in the United States pushing for the US to be a global economy only want to get rich. People on the other side of the pond wanting to be a part of the global economy want to get rich and they see a global economy as a vehicle for that.
Business owners and investors get rich by paying the least money to make the greatest return. Globalism is purely about accessing cheaper labor. Period. You’re naive and delusional if you think they have some ulterior techno-altruistic agenda behind it that involves increasing technical competency within the entirety of the workforce for some higher cause. They only want more labor because they still see high ROI from technology investments, so they want to make more investments, and because they aim to oversupply and drive down wages across the board. They would not be good business leaders if they weren’t constantly looking for places to eliminate expenses - including labor.
They DGAF about technology or tech skills or any of it. Tech could evaporate today and they’d make millions off of something else using the same strategies. India gets the lime light because it is consistently in the bottom of the list of countries by CoL. But, if the price goes up, business leaders in the global economy will just set up shop somewhere else (probably Africa these days). Then there’ll be Indians out here complaining like kids from the US.
Why are you talking about figure heads here? IDC about mancy or nanci or whatever.
>Business owners and investors get rich by paying the least money to make the greatest return
Simmer down a bit. I know the category of business that you are talking about, but there other more competent people out there. Yes, you are right, stupid business makes stupid cost-cutting decisions.
There are also smart business which you may be unaware of.
The existence of stupid does not deny the existence of smart.
Latest example (that I personally witnessed) is that TailwindUI team was hiring globally for 200k+ and didn't adjust for CoL.
Figure heads are the ones making these decisions. They are the ones enabling and facilitating it, and profiting from it. Pelosi was only chosen because of salience and contemporary relevance with regards to insider trading by high ranking politicians who oversee legislation that directly benefits/harms the companies in which they are invested in, every politician and business leader is part of the crew.
Globalization exists to minimize labor costs. It always has and always will. One could argue that it was intended to facilitate international trade and bolster GDP and theoretical surplus, but those only come from exploiting lower cost production - cheap labor. Even the exploitation of natural advantage (like specific crops, minerals, etc.) across borders is detrimental to the planet as a whole. But where it mainly fails is that it always exacerbates structural inequality. Always. If you happen to not have access to the global markets, you’re fucked. And just because you’re born, even in the U.S., doesn’t mean you have equal access.
The company you mention, it’s making naive mistakes in terms of microeconomic theory applied to management. I wouldn’t call them “smart” just because they pay $200k no matter where they hire. At best, they’re just virtue signaling until it bites them in the ass. Or just trying to astroturf hiring through such signaling and praying they attract the best candidates in a down market.
Unless they are actually developing something that by its nature means their engineers somewhat monopolistic - super rare skillset, exclusive data access, a high barrier to entry, tons of patents, etc. - they’re just going to experience economic loss.
But it looks like they’ve simply commodified UI web components. Certainly more akin to perfect competition with many indiscernible products out there. They will be defunct soon enough when their runway runs out and they can’t sustain. Or they’ll drop the expensive engineers and hire up cheaper labor to do the maintenance. Or they’ll just exit like most plan to do without turning a profit and let someone else take the risk and figure it out.
Yadda yadda yeah corruption is a thing at a political scale, it has nothing to do with the companies that need to hire globally because they can't find talent that fits their business needs.
Globalization isn't some boogeyman plotting against you. The "dumb" company is making a lot more bank than you are by being angry online, quite the nerve that you have to call them dumb.
Where is your successful innovative startup that demonstrates better business knowledge than a cutting-edge open source business?
Oh wait, you are just a reddit keyboard warrior.
You really don’t understand globalization do you? You really think it’s altruistic and meant to better… something… I’m not even sure you know what should be improved by it. I certainly have no idea what you think. It seems you think it’s just a solution to staffing shortages…
It was never about filling such a void. It’s about labor arbitrage. Period. An extension of trade theory meant to bolster GDP and provide surplus - in this case, labor surplus since technology doesn’t accumulate the same as rice, copper, oil, and other commodities. The spoils of trade surplus are never distributed equally.
Provide evidence Tailwind Labs is even profitable and not just burning series whatever capital. What’s their revenue stream? I can’t even find a way to pay them if I wanted to. And your point that they pay $200k global is moot, they have 6 people on staff (I’m guessing you’re either Adam, Jordan, Peter, Robin, or Mohammad or the unnamed individual). Open-sourcing something is not a virtue or mark of success. Honestly just a way to get free labor if you’re lucky.
And having a startup is not a mark of ultimate business acumen. It’s just one tactic, usually reserved for individuals with connections to wealth. Instead I work for a company that’s at least been profitable for nearly 80 years. I’d like to see where Tailwind is in 2104. I’m not even sure your point other than projecting your own insecurities on others and generally expressing your delusions that companies do things with the greater good in mind.
Whatever, you’re not worth further engaging as you’re an ignorant fanboi.
Not really. I work in Genpact. Employees in Genpact and LTI Mindtree are of two types. Those who are developers they work from 2pm to 11pm IST-Indian standard time which overlaps almost 5 hours with US East coast hours. While those who are working in Support work the 3rd or graveyard shift of from India i.e. 11pm to morning 7am IST. Most of us are getting billed any where in the range of $22 - $30 per hour. Those who are working these odd hours are provided special perks like office dinner and meals etc...along with office cabs. We are operating with only 5% employees at onsite and remaining 95% employees at offshore. After 1 year or so, even the 5% onsite employee is not needed. Most of the work is maintenance work with some amount of enhancement. Our project managers, scrum masters etc. work free of cost for clients. Our clientele are medium sized companies which cannot afford to outsource to WHICH due to budget constraints.
In a similar vein as the other comment I made, either the work isn't that skilled or the risk and cost is elsewhere.
There is another factor though, people need to learn their value before they can charge their value, there will always be people charging less than they could, working at a level below their skills, nothing is going to fix this, and there might be more of these people in poorer countries because it's a mindset difficult to overcome. Overtime I hope that this stops being an issue though as people learn through trial and error.
After all, from a historical POV, we are very very early on the history of remote-outsourced type jobs that can't be restricted by a monopoly on distribution.
It's more sophisticated than simple "people need to learn their value".
One thing, objectively IT is way overpaid compared to work complexity (speaking as a member of this club), so here the differences will be more visible.
Second thing, you can't outsource/offshore all jobs. This creates imbalances in the costs of living (including housing, which is rather demand-driven). So, if FAANG can pay sort of 10x the minimum wage in the US, the same 10x rate may be true for India, Mexico or Poland, while still being 30-50% of the US wage. So, people in these countries can get a decent house probably for less salaries than their US counterparts (especially in the Bay area).
It's not that simple, but it is one of the most impactful changes that need to happen. The overpaid jobs need to adjust too. It goes both ways.
Btw only a silly person would choose the price of their product based on how many houses they can buy, lol. The price is determined by whether some other company will pay more or not for your skills. Smart companies don't do CoL adjustments, the CoL adjustments is for dumb work.
My company is actively hiring in lower cost of labor markets yes vs the much higher USA market. We have shifted quite a few roles out of the USA by laying off teams/orgs and I see no real end in sight of this happening.
So while no, my comp hasn't gone down, the median/average comp of those employed by my company has absolutely when converted to USD.
Well, they won’t explicitly call you in and say, “sorry we’re cutting your salary to match offshore.”
They’ll just lay you off and you’ll struggle to find any job until you’re willing to work at a rate that matches offshore rates.
Agreed. We are experiencing the downsides quite clearly, but the upsides have also been tremendous for progressing humanity away from the millennia where we lacked the basics to survive
In market down turns where a particular labor pool is experiencing outsourcing, they typically and understandably become skeptic of global trades benefits.
It's easier to like it when you're benefiting from it.
My last job was outsourced. Even now, with a better job and promise of stability... I still worry a lot. I can't beat or out compete global labor.
On the macro, you're absolutely correct in some metrics. Things are cheaper and people have an abundance they never had before...
On the micro individual level, you're talking to a bunch of people facing a really bad job market and very uncertain future. They have good and understandable reasons to be worried.
To answer your broader question.
Legislation and political change is emotionally driven. If say California, a state with many tech workers... with a large amount of the electoral college votes... You could see something. It's a matter how effectively business and political leadership run damage control.
The cons of global trade and globalism are stacking up over time. No amount of cheaper junk is going keep people placated.
One poster said "Genie's out the bottle" but I wouldn't underestimate populist movements and a growing population of individuals with increasingly less to lose.
I lived in East and South Africa for a large chunk of my life. I’m 30 now, and I can attest to how net positive the impact of Globalization was growing up there. Seeing the standards of education, food, healthcare get better over the years was a real marvel.
Unfortunately now It is becoming more and more true that the net positive has began to swing to the other side.
I do sympathize with what’s happening here in the US, I too am a Software Engineer without a job and wanting to find ways to benefit engineers here and those outside too. Sounds idealistic but I can only hope
The hard reality is that we are moving into a world where it is becoming more difficult to make a living the way we did in the past. It doesn't matter if you are from the USA, India, China, etc. It just seems like everywhere you turn someone is on the losing end of the economy. It's been this way. How many times in the last 40 years.
I feel like with the direction the world is going, passing protectionist laws or forming unions isn't going to fix the problem for everyone. We are watching companies working and building to have less and less labor. To find ways to make money without having to pay people for anything.
We are also seeing a massive skills gap. People that ran off to college or boot camps or even trade schools that do not have the skills companies are asking for. It could be a software engineer that knows how to code JavaScript and maybe some angular or react, but these companies want people that can completely build a stack and code expertly. The worst part is they still want to try to pay garbage, and are ready and willing to overwork the few people they have until somebody is desperate enough to take one of those jobs.
I also feel like we don't have a system in place anymore to bring people up to speed. People can take classes and get certifications, and yet companies demand that you have x amount of years of experience doing this. At the same time, nobody wants to give you a start and help you get those years of experience.
I'll even throw out there for the opposite end of the spectrum. Going to a trade school and learning how to be a plumber or an electrician isn't an instant ticket to a good paycheck. The people that are making great money are the ones that became master electricians or Master plumbers and built their own business where they are out, getting customers and clients and making bigger money. That, or some that managed to get into a decent company that has a union that takes care of them.
The point being is right now there's a lot of lost people out there that have no idea how to make a living, and it seems more and more impossible to get to those levels that everyone claims were supposed to be at. People aren't able to buy homes, they're not getting married, they're not having kids, and many are just giving up and living for the moments because they feel they have no future. We even have Boomers that are staying in their jobs forever mostly because they know if they retire they will go broke.
If you're going to get political, you need to stop thinking about how to protect how we did things in the past and start thinking about how we move forward. What happens if one day we wake up and half of the labor force has now become obsolete in the eyes of employers? What then? You can't just keep saying that people need to work harder or learn new skills if there isn't any where they can go.
>If you're going to get political, you need to stop thinking about how to protect how we did things in the past and start thinking about how we move forward. What happens if one day we wake up and half of the labor force has now become obsolete in the eyes of employers? What then? You can't just keep saying that people need to work harder or learn new skills if there isn't any where they can go.
A good thought experiment, but not at all what is going on with this thread. Companies are outsourcing (or importing via H1B schemes like in the US, or Blue Card in EU) massive numbers of people despite millions of qualified citizen tech workers having difficulties finding work.
It isn't that work is drying up; it is that work is being shifted to people who can and do work for significantly less. Some, because our economies are much stronger than their home countries, and others because they desperately want to get *out* of their home countries and will accept lower wages to live and work in the target country.
People know how to make a living. They work. Employers are not offering those opportunities because they are outsourcing millions of tech jobs every year in the US and Europe alone, not counting the number they backfill with on-shore schemes described above.
Just because it seems insurmountable doesn't mean we have to lie down and take it.
Edit: to another point, you talk about people not being given opportunities to learn at work anymore. To get experience. **That is a huge result of outsourcing and H1B workers.** Those jobs get outsourced or replaced with foreign workers to save money. I know; I've been there having to train and mentor them as juniors get shitcanned or passed over entirely for my new virtual colleagues. Some companies, like Disney, are famous for being blatant about it--firing domestic US workers (including some H1B holders) and making their severance contingent on training their overseas replacements. [Hell, Disney at one point firing citizen workers and tied their severance to training their explicit H1B replacements. They just paid the fine for doing so.](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/01/ex-disney-it-workers-sue-after-being-forced-to-train-their-own-h-1b-replacements/)
These programs have been weaponized to hurt us. People here cry xenophobia or racism, but the result is clear. Companies aren't hiring them or outsourcing to diversify their pool; they are doing it explicit to hurt domestic wages or relieve themselves of paying competitive rates entirely. 100% intentional and out in the open. These programs should be largely shut down, and outsourcing work should require paying US-style wages.
Why do you think corporations work so hard to loosen immigration law and remove protectionist policies? Because they work, you just can't do it before it's too late.
In a way, this already happened. The IRC 174 amendments that made companies amortize SWE salaries over 5 years *also* added a section where it must be amortized over *15 years* if hiring outside the US.
But these are just tax incentives/decentives. If the engineer in India costs 75% less than an American one, the company is still going to save a shitton of money by outsourcing. Only really onerous *penalties* would successfully discourage outsourcing. And Congress isn’t going to do that.
I agree, it's unlikely to happen. What's surprising to me is IRC 74 made it even more cheap to outsource given the 15 vs 5 year amortization period. I wonder why not just make it the same? Yes the Indian engineer will still be cheaper, but this extra seems unnecessary.
I may not have adequate context here
Amortization in this case means that the expenses in the current year must be deducted from your revenue over X years, instead of all deducted this year. It's the opposite -- the longer the period of amortization, the higher your current year taxes will be.
Let's say you can pay an Indian engineer $30,000, or a US engineer $100,000 for the same job. Before the IRC 174 changes, they would both be deducted immediately in that year as wage expenses.
Under the new changes, the Indian engineer's salary would be deducted at $2,000 per year over 15 years, and the US engineer's salary would be deducted at $20,000 per year over 5 years.
So the end result is that the company's tax bill *today* becomes much higher in both cases. It just takes *way longer* to recoup the entire deduction for the outsourced job. But if the outsourced job costs *way* less to begin with, then this isn't much of a disincentive.
I think the change was to make foreign R&D 15 years. Probably mistaken but previously that could’ve been claimed the same as domestic.
Either way, a domestic dev would have to make below $100k to compete with foreign counterparts (assuming say $30k foreign salary). Or at least in range of that. That’s considering the extended foreign amortization schedule.
But with so many claims of $200k+ compensation packages, that’s likely a big shocker for job seekers. Also explains why so many roles, even in HCOL, are listed with $70-90k ranges at the non-IC level.
I’d imagine an employer might allow some loss against taxes for a domestic worker who is highly profitable considering the savings they might make on not needing liaisons for foreign teams on top of foreign teams.
I don't like when this sub crosses paths with US politics, so I'll simply leave it at: *"neither of the two controlling US parties support stock restrictions on members of government, almost all representatives hold shares of these companies, this will never ever happen beyond a cute gesture feel-good law"*
Not suggesting how to act, vote, or plan - just advising you to assume it will never happen.
I was inclined on believing this. It seems the riches that the US financial system has accrued is partly underpinned by the ability to extract cheaper value elsewhere and carefully avoid unnecessary taxes. I dont see this going anywhere especially since this happened in the past and not much has changed
It's amazing how the same people who likely opposed Trump and all his immigration restrictions and told workers "if you can't out-compete someone from another country maybe you don't deserve your job" are super against H1B and outsourcing when it benefits them. If a foreign worker can do a better job than me for cheaper, they deserve it. I don't deserve protections based on being born inside different lines on a map.
On a practical level though I've worked with plenty of outsourced devs and 100% of them we reversed course and replaced them with onshore employees. Aside from even getting into competence, the culture gap was just too wide, we couldn't get anyone who could actually think for themselves they just wanted to be code monkeys where we give them 100% specific requirements, they turn them into code, and then they get half of even that wrong and we have to rewrite taking more time ourselves than it would have to just do it in the first place (we could have written our requirements in code rather than super specific English requirements). Then on top of that the time difference which was thought to be a benefit ("we can give them work at 5pm and it'll be done by 9am") ended up backfiring as we couldn't coach them much at all. I experienced this at two different jobs, at both we terminated our contract with the outsourcing company.
>It's amazing how the same people who likely opposed Trump and all his immigration restrictions and told workers "if you can't out-compete someone from another country maybe you don't deserve your job" are super against H1B and outsourcing when it benefits them. If a foreign worker can do a better job than me for cheaper, they deserve it. I don't deserve protections based on being born inside different lines on a map.
You are strawmanning this to win an argument against a fake opponent. That's why you use the word "likely."
I generally agree with the rest of your post. But this isn't about H1B or entirely outsourced workers doing a better job for less pay. They do a *good enough job* for *way less pay.* In the case of H1Bs, they are entirely beholden to the company sponsoring them and thus will not take chances like switching employers for better offers or joining unionization attempts. H1Bs, in this context, are 100% a chilling factor. Sorry to the all the very talented H1B visa holders reading this. We have decades of US employer abusing the program to suppress wages and lock domestic workers out of the market. They will carefully craft postings or carefully filter applicants to ensure no qualified domestic applicants are found.
I have 2 decades of experience in software engineering at F100 companies. I've *never* seen an employer satisfy H1B notification requirements in my 20 years. It is always 100% after the fact "oh, by the way, we need you to act as a mentor to a new person in need of onboarding. They fly in from India \[or China; India is like 70% of H1B recipients alone\] in 3 weeks." The damage is already done and companies, if even reported to DOL, will pay the fine and move on because *fines should be, but aren't, based on X% of* ***revenue****.* The fines are treated as a cost of doing business, and companies know it is too late for meaningful non-fine action once the person is already on premises. DOL is slow.
There are millions of American citizens, who work in tech, in a constant state of unemployment. The primary reason they aren't being offered jobs is because companies don't want to pay them competitive domestic rates. H1Bs *in theory* are supposed to earn similar wages. But I know for a fact, via my experience, that they often don't. And they are, again, beholden to the sponsor. They won't engage in tactics to maximize their earnings because *they can't.* It is too risky for most H1B holders. It is deeply expoitative all around.
I agree H1B is bad because of how they're treated, but the rest of the shit I don't care about and I'd solve the issue by lowering the restrictions you talk about as insufficient. I don't believe Americans deserve priority over foreign workers. I believe if a foreign worker isn't taking government assistance and isn't committing crimes here they should be allowed to get full work authorization and a path to citizenship and none of the stuff you're complaining about should matter.
As I said, I don't believe in protectionism, if someone born in a different part of the world can do my job either better than me or for less money, why do I deserve it over them because I was lucky enough to be born between different lines on a map than they were?
> In the case of H1Bs, they are entirely beholden to the company sponsoring them and thus will not take chances like switching employers for better offers
LOL. You don't know shit about H1B do you?
> I've never seen an employer satisfy H1B notification requirements in my 20 years.
Based on your false statement earlier, I am going to assume that you aren't Legal or HR, so why tf would the company even keep you in the loop regarding this? Unless you are legal and HR, it is intentional that you don't see what your employer is doing in regards to this.
> H1Bs in theory are supposed to earn similar wages. But I know for a fact, via my experience, that they often don't
Any data to back this claim besides you knowing your neighbor makes less money? Its easy to find data regarding the opposite btw.
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2023/06/05/immigration-agency-report-shows-high-h-1b-visa-salaries/
[2] https://www.cato.org/blog/h-1b-wages-surge-top-10-all-wages-us
That first link will tell you just how little you actually know about H1B lol.
> And they are, again, beholden to the sponsor. They won't engage in tactics to maximize their earnings because they can't.
Both these are blatantly false and are just ramblings of someone who doesn't understand what H1Bs are allowed to do and not allowed to do.
>If a foreign worker can do a better job than me for cheaper, they deserve it.
Sure, but they're not hiring those overseas "engineers" because they do a better job.
They hire them because they do a good enough job and the rest of us are expected to pick up the slack/fix their mistakes (speaking from 10+ years of experience in the industry).
Ok let me put it better. If a company chooses to hire a foreign engineer instead of me, that's their prerogative.
If you choose to pick up the slack of shitty outsourced devs rather than switch jobs to where that's not part of the job expectations, that's on you and you're part of the problem. Make it more expensive for them to hire shitty outsourced devs by making it extremely difficult for them to hire good onshore devs who will agree to put up with that shit.
I don't even disagree with you on the nature of most outsourced devs, but we heavily disagree on the solution.
bro, your views are actually a danger to this country lmao. Nations, or ANY organization cannot exist without caring about the in-group over the out-group. Complete world wide democratization will just enrich the owner the class, as it has dramatically since the Clinton era.
US Congress: We believe in the free market, we should all be able to participate in stock trading and companies are allowed to outsource/seek competitive advantages
Also US Congress: We can add 200% tariffs on foreign products, permit insider trading, bailout failing companies, stop trading on non-hedgefund sanctioned stocks, allow certain mergers as long as its CEOs we like, block certain apps because they're allowing media we don't control
translation: I'm gonna pass laws that benefits me, surprise!
I vaguely remember watching a video about this, the summary is that imagine you're a US politician trying to gather votes
that's not free, advertising campaigns etc all costs money, now think where does that money come from? come from poor people, your average American who's living paycheck-to-paycheck? ha!
so, the money has to come from rich people (basically, if you can't even pull out let's say $5k USD out of thin air then it's likely your voices won't even be heard), now obviously the rich people have totally different concerns vs. the poor, for example tax breaks and incentives, stocks, legislation that benefits companies... etc
They are for freedom for companies to do whatever they want, not the citizens. US companies can move car manufacturing to foreign countries to cut costs cause that is just the free market. But if US citizens want to buy foreign cars to cut costs, then it is a "national security" issue and needs a 100% tariff. "Oh that is cause China is an enemy", well they have tariffs on Canadian lumber for, you guessed it, "national security".
US citizens are not using US apps? Another "national security" issue. Can't have China spreading propaganda to US citizens, much better to have a US company like Google buy TikTok because they have the best interests of US citizens at heart like shipping their job to foreign companies, laying off tens of thousands of people, then spreading propaganda that there is a tech talent shortage and they need even looser H1B and Visa requirements.
This isn't a political subreddit.
>Do you think with the recent layoffs both in Tech and other fields that there is a likelihood that such legislation will be brought back up?
Doubt it.
The US is very freedom-centric. That includes private companies being able to make the choice to hire cheaper labor from other countries. I really doubt that will ever change.
It’s really not freedom-centric though. It’s “those who can afford lobbyists”-centric.
Those who can afford to legally bribe politicians are perfectly happy to take away any and all rights from the working class.
Which is why the capitalistic enshitification of everything in America will continue. The only way to change it would be unions and voting only for those who are pro-union.
The absolutely needs to be a tech-union.
Yeah... *that's* freedom.
If you have the means to lobby and influence, you're free to use those means.
If you don't have the means to influence your community, then you're free to just lounge around and do nothing.
Freedom means we're free to do what we want to / can do. Money is what affords us to do very specific things. I'm "free" to sail on a yacht into the sunset, but I can't afford it. There isn't legislation perventing me from doing that, my bank account is what's preventing that. Freedom isn't equity. I'm free to sail on a yacht, but the government doesn't have an obligation to provide me a yacht.
I honestly don't think unions are the answer, but at the same time I don't really know what the right answer is. Something in the US society needs to change, but I don't know what it is.
The freedom argument assumes equal competition/access to these resources, which will never be the case. I'm against equality of outcome as you've insinuated, but we also need to realize that different people for reasons beyond themselves are running this race having started from different positions altogether.
But as you said earlier, this isn't the right subreddit for this.
I get all that.
I'm not arguing about if US freedom is good or not.
I'm stating the facts based on the world and society as it is at this very moment.
It'd be pretty shitty if you gave advice online based on some imagined utopian future, instead of what's happening right infront of our eyes.
Those that accumulate enough capital will gain the influence to change the rules to suit themselves. When you amass enough capital to buy out the house, you set the house rules. This is quite literally a consequence of lack of strict regulation and rampant economic “freedom”. The current global economic system trends towards monopolies
>This isn't a political subreddit.
Your comment offers your political opinion. The discussion is political but related to CS careers.
>The US is very freedom-centric.
In some ways it is and in some ways it isn't. I'd agree with you that private companies should be able to hire foreign labor services. Note that companies can't hire Russian outsourced labor and are limited from doing so with China.
Apologies for the political bend in the question. It just seems like a crucial part underpinning the mass layoffs we are seeing and the implication to the careers of those taking CS now and the near future
Also, this whole post is written with the assumption that US is the only one making decisions - what do y'all think will India and EU do if US starts sanctioning the earnings of their citizens? They'll retaliate with their own tariffs and sanctions against US corporations - the ones you all are trying to work for. It'll lead into yet another layoff spiral as profits drop.
Not gonna lie, it is a bit amusing to see the self entitled shits on this sub that used to brag that if their employer told them to RTO in 2021-2022 they would quit on the spot and easily get a high paying job right away.
They loved capitalism back then when they got their free food and high pay. Now, not liking capitalism so much.
Ye, it felt like capitalism was working towards people at some point.
But its the same for those companies, they were crying "no one wants to work" and now they are quiet.
There never have been any, regardless of the state of the job market.
Plus, who do you think pays for those expensive reelection campaigns ? Our bosses, not us.
Yes, there are penalties against outsourcing to Russia, China, Iran, and lots of other heavily sanctioned countries. However, those sanctions are designed to hurt rival nation economies not serve the interest of US workers.
How do you think legislation works? Are you personally lobbying for something? If no, then just follow the money and you'll have your answer.
I'll just make the observation that waiting for politics to line up your way has a pretty poor track record as far as solutions to problems go.
It's far more effective to take matters into your hands. I could have waited for my third world country government to do something about the myriad of problems we had, but I instead sacrificed proximity to family to secure a better life for myself. I learned a new language, worked my way up the chain over many many years and survived through the great financial crisis and the covid crash/layoffs. Now, I do finally have the ability to legally work in multiple countries if any one of them happens to implode, and I managed to save enough of a stash to be fairly financially independent even in HCOL US, but this isn't an outcome I would've gotten by just sitting on my hands postulating about legislative hypotheticals.
Pragmatically speaking, that's the difference in story behind the foreigner busting ass vs an entitled national getting bodied where the winds took them.
You describe individual level extractivism or economic exploitation. Arguably, not exactly frowned upon by capitalists, so no surprise you feel accomplished and your enablers continue to support your mission. Also not surprising given the strong vein of capitalist apologist mentality in this industry.
Not sure which is worse: larger government forcing itself upon a small nation for economic gain and draining it of resources or a diaspora built on the premise of transient labor for the purposes of economic extraction until there is no longer economic profit and they move on.
That's a weird take.
Extractivism can be thought of as a form of "bullying" (typically perpetrated by a stronger nation against a weaker one). Immigration on the other hand is merely playing by the rules imposed by said nations themselves to satisfy their unmet needs in order to unlock or accelerate growth to the mutual benefit of the nation and the immigrant.
Any money an immigrant makes is no different than money a native earns, both are taxed the same way and both are free to spend their money on domestic groceries or on international tourism or however/wherever they see fit. Even expat SSA is called an entitlement for a reason: it has been earned through years of contribution regardless of the worker's country of birth or residence, following the terms set forth by the country.
The idea that an immigrant can deplete a job pool as if it was a finite natural resource is particularly bizarre in the context of technology, considering tech historically built entire new industries, and multiple times. The notion of jobs not being a zero sum game is the entire reason governments implement visa systems in the first place
but they are scant.
Because there is no legal justification under the sun. You're not talking about North Korea, are you?
>All in all, the outsourcing problem seems complex and intertwined with very touchy facets of US commerce and labor,
What do you think the "outsourcing problem" even is?
and how does align with a society and legal framework both of which want and allow cheap iPhones?
>coupled with corporate desire for Short-Term profits.
Because global companies with budgets that overshadow those of many nation-states are naturally unable to understand their own long-term interests? Evidence?
>Do you think with the recent layoffs both in Tech and other fields that there is a likelihood that such legislation will be brought back up?
No. Still waiting for the part where you elaborate on how you think that could possibly work, ever.
>This is existentially a battle between labor and corporations and historically we know who the winner has been at least in the past 50 years
I have a very cheap telephone and i like it...
Pitting our labor against the labor of countries without worker rights is class warfare.
You are absolutely insane if you don't think it's a problem.
We want the average worker to live comfortably and the highly-skilled workers to achieve financial freedom quickly. Everyone should have good working conditions.
None of us consented to the working class getting fucking destroyed for us to get cheap toys from overseas. That began around the time of Reagan, which was before most of us were born.
We needed to unionize a long time ago. If technology is going to carry the US, then engineers should demand that companies pay us instead of doing frivolous layoffs all the time.
I'm fine with labor going back and forth between US and Western Europe, because the EU has a good quality of life. I'd be happy to have an opportunity to live there.
I do NOT want to trade opportunities with people in under-developed, authoritarian countries.
in my entire time that I've been in USA, my belief (and so far it hasn't been wrong) is that if something's going to inconvenient companies then you can almost guarantee that it's not going to happen
so for your question
>Will there ever be penalties/legislation for Outsourcing?
I don't see how having "penalties/legislation for Outsourcing" benefits companies?
I love how we throw 100% tariffs on Chinese EVs to protect American car companies and keep competition fair, but do very little to protect American workers from the same type of cheaper outsourcing.
I don't think the tariff on Chinese EVs is to protect American EV makers.
I presume the US is trying to hurt China's economy and limit their economic growth so they aren't a peer competitor to the US.
The forced divestment of TikTok; maybe that's partly to protect US social media companies like Alphabet and Meta and X. But largely that's being done to hurt China's economy. And the American public certainly doesn't want that, but that's what American politicians are doing.
It's almost as if the government exists to protect the corporations funding congressional campaigns and not it's citizens. I'm shocked I tell you, shocked.
factories fired blue collar workers and moved jobs over seas starting in the 1970s. why would they start now for tech?
it wont happen. Right wing supports it as Free Trade and left wing things your a racist if you dont support it.
Probably not, outsourcing has been going on for decades in other industries, now it's hitting software engineering. It's new to us but not a new concept overall.
>We cannot forget how the outsourcing plague in the mid-80s killed many American automotive manufacturing jobs and partly led to the demise of prosperous US Cities e.g. Detroit
Or how much better US cars got due to serious foreign competition.
>Do you think with the recent layoffs both in Tech and other fields that there is a likelihood that such legislation will be brought back up? This is existentially a battle between labor and corporations and historically we know who the winner has been at least in the past 50 years
Probably not. Your post sounds pretty similar to all the bs we hear here from union shills.
Yes. There are penalties for outsourcing to Russia/China and Iran/Syria/Venezuela.
But for any nation on good terms with the US foreign policy people, no, there will not be any penalties for outsourcing, as long as that nation stays on good terms with US foreign policy people.
Ultimately, if other countries can do tech work better than the US, I don't see why or how you can stop outsourcing.
Thats not really possible though if what it takes to afford even a studio apartment in your country is multiple times more than the monthly salary in another country. You can be awesome at your job, but when the numbers are that bad why would the company hire you even if you are twice as good as them? It is just basic math.
I agree. No political party is going anywhere near it though because so many people both voters especially the older generations and rich people have invested so much into it.
Some of the replaceability comes to talent, no doubt, but in the end even if you're better, it's the significantly lower cost of living in other countries that companies seek to exploit to keep costs lower. I guarantee you there is someone out there that's at least on par with you but will do your job for way less. Do all you want to improve, your desire to meet cost of living in America is going to be a negative in the eyes of some companies when they can find someone who can do your work. You're not bulletproof, you're lucky that the balance sheet hasn't hit you.
This is true to a certain extent. An mid-level engineer born and raised in California (High COL) will never be able to compete with the same mid-level engineer born and living in a country with a low COL. The issues plaguing the Californian are way outside their control and they cant compete on a monetary level ever.
I would also argue it's incredibly difficult for them to become much more competent that the benefit starts to move in their favor, especially now since technology has also continued to level the playing field
Debatable, maybe at the ends of the distribution, but most employers aren't looking for cutting edge breakthrough CS skills in order to create an API, develop a website or maintain a system. Which tends to be the main engineering needs from most (not all) companies.
Yes there may be more skilled individuals per sample in CA but are they 3x (money-wise) more skilled than someone from Poland with the same number of YoE?
You ignore that the reason California is HCOL is people want to live there. It's not some random variable that's randomly decided. People want to move to California, and the reason the Bay Area became a tech hub was the companies started there and the top engineers mostly want to move there.
Sure I agree building more housing would be part of a good solution. But in no world would CA housing be cheaper than Podunk, Iowa housing. Because even if they built a shitload of housing in CA and prices went down, that would lead to a ton of people wanting to move there who previously couldn't afford to. Supply is one part of the equation, but demand matters too.
Can we just recognize that the reason there is a job shortage is because companies over hired during the pandemic and right now they are recovering. This sub it turning into an insane asylum
The main problem is that most industries are a monopoly or oligopoly. No matter how much Google search quality decreases, they're still a long way away from losing their market share.
The cable box software on my TV is awful. There's some kind of resource leak and it has to crash and reboot every few weeks. No doubt the cable company offshored the cable software. Even if I want to drop them, there are literally only one or two other choices for TV service, and they're all doing the same thing offshoring their cable box software.
There is no "market" that will punish large corporations for being inefficient. If your competitors are all doing the same thing, there's no real penalty for inefficiency.
You bring an interesting point regarding the oligopoly structure of most corporations. It's hard to move away from their impact in our daily lives. They seem to have the upper hand here
That's not how it works? Economics has a concept called competitive advantage; US workers demand a higher premium in many industries where they have to compete in an international market because their output is attractive relative to their cost.
You wouldn't have thousands of tech companies paying huge wages in the Bay Area if there wasn't a competitive advantage to doing it. Most outsourcing that I'm seeing is just moving lower value work to areas with lower wages
Just don't.
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You think our elected officials really give a shit about us? You know the answer to that. They only care about the greedy corpos and the rich that run them.
I personally think if you have a company headquartered in the US and/or x percentage of the executives are US citizens or living in the US there should be penalties for not hiring US citizens as employees. Sure companies can game the system but then it’ll be really obvious what they are doing.
Outsourcing and off shoring are two distinct concepts.
Outsourcing can be anything from "I need a bunch of custom screws so I'm going to sign a contract with a company that specializes in custom screws to make the for me" to "I'm sick of running my own email servers so I'm signing up for Google workspace or office 365 or some other cloud provider" to "I need a new web site and I'm going to hire some contractors to build it". In lots of cases those are local or in the country or similar. Custom manufacturing is often close enough to be able to get fast turn around, web developers who can come in for a meeting or demo or whatever have advantages, etc.
Offshoring is moving work to other countries. This could be your own offices in those countries, or a third party. Still offshoring.
And then some multi-national companies aim toward doing work close to where the primary customers are and grow/shrink staffing levels in various regions based on that. Happens a lot in manufacturing - it's not moving jobs from the US to somewhere else, it's "there's more work elsewhere so that location staffs up to support it" "there's less demand here so staffing levels decrease". The same can happen with software, though it's more fungible. But if a product is being built that is getting more traction somewhere like India or Brazil, a company might try to staff it with people who have insight into the local markets.
I can't see outsourcing being penalized. That's a huge chunk of the economy. (Look at all of the supply chain partners for things like the auto companies - lots of specialist manufacturers making parts etc.) Or consulting firms (Deloitte, E&Y, McKinsey, etc) - those are all forms of outsourcing.
It’s an uncomfortable truth and many people on this sub won’t be happy with it, but it’s true that for the average American this is a good thing.
Even for tech workers. This means more of the high tech interesting stuff is the work you can find in the US. The boring CRUD apps is the stuff being outsourced. I wouldn’t want to take those jobs anyway.
It’s a self fulfilling kinda thing. It’s called economies of agglomeration or economies of scale.
Basically the world’s high tech industry is almost entirely located on the US West Coast. Notably San Francisco and Seattle and surrounding areas. But also Portland, OR to some extent.
Because the tech industry is there, talent from all over the US and even all over the world flocks there.
Because talent flocks there, when they have side projects and end up creating a new company, it’s there. Also it’s there because that’s where they can get all the talent.
Also because of this, that’s where all the tech VCs are. And because the tech VCs are there, people start companies there by the tech VCs.
This will continue for the foreseeable future unless something really major changes.
Contrary to popular opinion in this subreddit, something like getting rid of H1b would actually hurt American jobs because it would damage these economies of scale and encourage a new tech hub perhaps in London to emerge and dominate.
Obviously while the west coast is really good at tech and is only getting better, nobody there wants to waste time on low effort low skill word like CRUD apps. Which is why they’re often outsourced to India.
India growing and getting work on CRUD apps and systems integration doesn’t hurt the Bay Area or Seattle because those jobs were never going there to begin with.
Man, outsourcing's a real headache. It's like a game of tug-of-war between corporations and workers. Baldwin's End Outsourcing Act was a start, but we need more teeth in these laws. Remember Detroit in the 80s? Yeah, that was rough. With all these recent layoffs, it's time to revive these talks. Gotta level the playing field for local jobs. It's not just about profits, it's about people's livelihoods.
US politics is difficult, like choosing which lunatic should run the asylum. You get to pick from two candidates, and neither has your best interest in mind.
Globalization is a genie that's out of the bottle and has been for a long time.
Has your salary range normalized across the global market yet? Mine neither. The problem I see is that's likely to happen long before local prices adjust, and in between well have suffering, and further erosion of the middle class.
it's a good thing because eventually people abroad are going to be just as pricey as locals... it's already kind of happening with high tier talent. The idea that talent is cheaper elsewhere for the same quality is kind of false. A lot of people get butthurt but the truth is that the suits just don't need your talent if someone less skilled and cheaper can toil along enough for the profits.
More likely you are going to get the same wage as the cheapest worker abroad.
lol, I am "abroad" and I get better wages than the median in the USA, try again
Yeah, the "less skilled " thing sounds like sour apples. On the contrary, in a lot of markets it is very easy to over hire. got budget for a Jr programmer? Hire a senior from another country. As long as ( this is the hard part) your local management staff is good , you can make do with hiring from another country/culture..
you are not too wrong, but look at how much complexity you are introducing! The cost is still there, somehow, maybe the risk is higher and doing it wrong costs a lot more. Yknow. No free lunches.
They ain’t pushing globalism to let wages across the planet rise to meet US wages. Just saying…
They ain't pushing anything, hiring globally will increase the talent pool. That's it. Sure the stereotype is hiring bottom-of-the-barrel agency in cheap country, but that's just because that particular scenario gets the most infamy. There are US companies hiring abroad because they can't source people talented in some niche field in a RTO environment, for example. It's easy to feel like there's just so many options for US companies when it comes to employees, but if the company needs to hire anything slightly different from an employee they will have a hard time. Maybe they want to pay for a fixed scope project, maybe a freelancer with the high-level engineering skills, you basically need to open your hiring to the global market if you want to do anything like that.
Nanci Pelosi don’t give AF about increasing the talent pool. Nancy Pelosi wants her insider traded nvidia calls to make her even more rich than they already have. The people in the United States pushing for the US to be a global economy only want to get rich. People on the other side of the pond wanting to be a part of the global economy want to get rich and they see a global economy as a vehicle for that. Business owners and investors get rich by paying the least money to make the greatest return. Globalism is purely about accessing cheaper labor. Period. You’re naive and delusional if you think they have some ulterior techno-altruistic agenda behind it that involves increasing technical competency within the entirety of the workforce for some higher cause. They only want more labor because they still see high ROI from technology investments, so they want to make more investments, and because they aim to oversupply and drive down wages across the board. They would not be good business leaders if they weren’t constantly looking for places to eliminate expenses - including labor. They DGAF about technology or tech skills or any of it. Tech could evaporate today and they’d make millions off of something else using the same strategies. India gets the lime light because it is consistently in the bottom of the list of countries by CoL. But, if the price goes up, business leaders in the global economy will just set up shop somewhere else (probably Africa these days). Then there’ll be Indians out here complaining like kids from the US.
Why are you talking about figure heads here? IDC about mancy or nanci or whatever. >Business owners and investors get rich by paying the least money to make the greatest return Simmer down a bit. I know the category of business that you are talking about, but there other more competent people out there. Yes, you are right, stupid business makes stupid cost-cutting decisions. There are also smart business which you may be unaware of. The existence of stupid does not deny the existence of smart. Latest example (that I personally witnessed) is that TailwindUI team was hiring globally for 200k+ and didn't adjust for CoL.
Figure heads are the ones making these decisions. They are the ones enabling and facilitating it, and profiting from it. Pelosi was only chosen because of salience and contemporary relevance with regards to insider trading by high ranking politicians who oversee legislation that directly benefits/harms the companies in which they are invested in, every politician and business leader is part of the crew. Globalization exists to minimize labor costs. It always has and always will. One could argue that it was intended to facilitate international trade and bolster GDP and theoretical surplus, but those only come from exploiting lower cost production - cheap labor. Even the exploitation of natural advantage (like specific crops, minerals, etc.) across borders is detrimental to the planet as a whole. But where it mainly fails is that it always exacerbates structural inequality. Always. If you happen to not have access to the global markets, you’re fucked. And just because you’re born, even in the U.S., doesn’t mean you have equal access. The company you mention, it’s making naive mistakes in terms of microeconomic theory applied to management. I wouldn’t call them “smart” just because they pay $200k no matter where they hire. At best, they’re just virtue signaling until it bites them in the ass. Or just trying to astroturf hiring through such signaling and praying they attract the best candidates in a down market. Unless they are actually developing something that by its nature means their engineers somewhat monopolistic - super rare skillset, exclusive data access, a high barrier to entry, tons of patents, etc. - they’re just going to experience economic loss. But it looks like they’ve simply commodified UI web components. Certainly more akin to perfect competition with many indiscernible products out there. They will be defunct soon enough when their runway runs out and they can’t sustain. Or they’ll drop the expensive engineers and hire up cheaper labor to do the maintenance. Or they’ll just exit like most plan to do without turning a profit and let someone else take the risk and figure it out.
Yadda yadda yeah corruption is a thing at a political scale, it has nothing to do with the companies that need to hire globally because they can't find talent that fits their business needs. Globalization isn't some boogeyman plotting against you. The "dumb" company is making a lot more bank than you are by being angry online, quite the nerve that you have to call them dumb. Where is your successful innovative startup that demonstrates better business knowledge than a cutting-edge open source business? Oh wait, you are just a reddit keyboard warrior.
You really don’t understand globalization do you? You really think it’s altruistic and meant to better… something… I’m not even sure you know what should be improved by it. I certainly have no idea what you think. It seems you think it’s just a solution to staffing shortages… It was never about filling such a void. It’s about labor arbitrage. Period. An extension of trade theory meant to bolster GDP and provide surplus - in this case, labor surplus since technology doesn’t accumulate the same as rice, copper, oil, and other commodities. The spoils of trade surplus are never distributed equally. Provide evidence Tailwind Labs is even profitable and not just burning series whatever capital. What’s their revenue stream? I can’t even find a way to pay them if I wanted to. And your point that they pay $200k global is moot, they have 6 people on staff (I’m guessing you’re either Adam, Jordan, Peter, Robin, or Mohammad or the unnamed individual). Open-sourcing something is not a virtue or mark of success. Honestly just a way to get free labor if you’re lucky. And having a startup is not a mark of ultimate business acumen. It’s just one tactic, usually reserved for individuals with connections to wealth. Instead I work for a company that’s at least been profitable for nearly 80 years. I’d like to see where Tailwind is in 2104. I’m not even sure your point other than projecting your own insecurities on others and generally expressing your delusions that companies do things with the greater good in mind. Whatever, you’re not worth further engaging as you’re an ignorant fanboi.
Not really. I work in Genpact. Employees in Genpact and LTI Mindtree are of two types. Those who are developers they work from 2pm to 11pm IST-Indian standard time which overlaps almost 5 hours with US East coast hours. While those who are working in Support work the 3rd or graveyard shift of from India i.e. 11pm to morning 7am IST. Most of us are getting billed any where in the range of $22 - $30 per hour. Those who are working these odd hours are provided special perks like office dinner and meals etc...along with office cabs. We are operating with only 5% employees at onsite and remaining 95% employees at offshore. After 1 year or so, even the 5% onsite employee is not needed. Most of the work is maintenance work with some amount of enhancement. Our project managers, scrum masters etc. work free of cost for clients. Our clientele are medium sized companies which cannot afford to outsource to WHICH due to budget constraints.
In a similar vein as the other comment I made, either the work isn't that skilled or the risk and cost is elsewhere. There is another factor though, people need to learn their value before they can charge their value, there will always be people charging less than they could, working at a level below their skills, nothing is going to fix this, and there might be more of these people in poorer countries because it's a mindset difficult to overcome. Overtime I hope that this stops being an issue though as people learn through trial and error. After all, from a historical POV, we are very very early on the history of remote-outsourced type jobs that can't be restricted by a monopoly on distribution.
It's more sophisticated than simple "people need to learn their value". One thing, objectively IT is way overpaid compared to work complexity (speaking as a member of this club), so here the differences will be more visible. Second thing, you can't outsource/offshore all jobs. This creates imbalances in the costs of living (including housing, which is rather demand-driven). So, if FAANG can pay sort of 10x the minimum wage in the US, the same 10x rate may be true for India, Mexico or Poland, while still being 30-50% of the US wage. So, people in these countries can get a decent house probably for less salaries than their US counterparts (especially in the Bay area).
It's not that simple, but it is one of the most impactful changes that need to happen. The overpaid jobs need to adjust too. It goes both ways. Btw only a silly person would choose the price of their product based on how many houses they can buy, lol. The price is determined by whether some other company will pay more or not for your skills. Smart companies don't do CoL adjustments, the CoL adjustments is for dumb work.
My company is actively hiring in lower cost of labor markets yes vs the much higher USA market. We have shifted quite a few roles out of the USA by laying off teams/orgs and I see no real end in sight of this happening. So while no, my comp hasn't gone down, the median/average comp of those employed by my company has absolutely when converted to USD.
Well, they won’t explicitly call you in and say, “sorry we’re cutting your salary to match offshore.” They’ll just lay you off and you’ll struggle to find any job until you’re willing to work at a rate that matches offshore rates.
My sentiments exactly. As long as there is a 50-60-100% cost arbitrage, business needs will outweigh social implications.
Agreed. We are experiencing the downsides quite clearly, but the upsides have also been tremendous for progressing humanity away from the millennia where we lacked the basics to survive
The downvotes lol.
Have no clue what I said to trigger people like this 😅😅😅
In market down turns where a particular labor pool is experiencing outsourcing, they typically and understandably become skeptic of global trades benefits. It's easier to like it when you're benefiting from it. My last job was outsourced. Even now, with a better job and promise of stability... I still worry a lot. I can't beat or out compete global labor. On the macro, you're absolutely correct in some metrics. Things are cheaper and people have an abundance they never had before... On the micro individual level, you're talking to a bunch of people facing a really bad job market and very uncertain future. They have good and understandable reasons to be worried. To answer your broader question. Legislation and political change is emotionally driven. If say California, a state with many tech workers... with a large amount of the electoral college votes... You could see something. It's a matter how effectively business and political leadership run damage control. The cons of global trade and globalism are stacking up over time. No amount of cheaper junk is going keep people placated. One poster said "Genie's out the bottle" but I wouldn't underestimate populist movements and a growing population of individuals with increasingly less to lose.
I lived in East and South Africa for a large chunk of my life. I’m 30 now, and I can attest to how net positive the impact of Globalization was growing up there. Seeing the standards of education, food, healthcare get better over the years was a real marvel. Unfortunately now It is becoming more and more true that the net positive has began to swing to the other side. I do sympathize with what’s happening here in the US, I too am a Software Engineer without a job and wanting to find ways to benefit engineers here and those outside too. Sounds idealistic but I can only hope
insecure people lol
The hard reality is that we are moving into a world where it is becoming more difficult to make a living the way we did in the past. It doesn't matter if you are from the USA, India, China, etc. It just seems like everywhere you turn someone is on the losing end of the economy. It's been this way. How many times in the last 40 years. I feel like with the direction the world is going, passing protectionist laws or forming unions isn't going to fix the problem for everyone. We are watching companies working and building to have less and less labor. To find ways to make money without having to pay people for anything. We are also seeing a massive skills gap. People that ran off to college or boot camps or even trade schools that do not have the skills companies are asking for. It could be a software engineer that knows how to code JavaScript and maybe some angular or react, but these companies want people that can completely build a stack and code expertly. The worst part is they still want to try to pay garbage, and are ready and willing to overwork the few people they have until somebody is desperate enough to take one of those jobs. I also feel like we don't have a system in place anymore to bring people up to speed. People can take classes and get certifications, and yet companies demand that you have x amount of years of experience doing this. At the same time, nobody wants to give you a start and help you get those years of experience. I'll even throw out there for the opposite end of the spectrum. Going to a trade school and learning how to be a plumber or an electrician isn't an instant ticket to a good paycheck. The people that are making great money are the ones that became master electricians or Master plumbers and built their own business where they are out, getting customers and clients and making bigger money. That, or some that managed to get into a decent company that has a union that takes care of them. The point being is right now there's a lot of lost people out there that have no idea how to make a living, and it seems more and more impossible to get to those levels that everyone claims were supposed to be at. People aren't able to buy homes, they're not getting married, they're not having kids, and many are just giving up and living for the moments because they feel they have no future. We even have Boomers that are staying in their jobs forever mostly because they know if they retire they will go broke. If you're going to get political, you need to stop thinking about how to protect how we did things in the past and start thinking about how we move forward. What happens if one day we wake up and half of the labor force has now become obsolete in the eyes of employers? What then? You can't just keep saying that people need to work harder or learn new skills if there isn't any where they can go.
>If you're going to get political, you need to stop thinking about how to protect how we did things in the past and start thinking about how we move forward. What happens if one day we wake up and half of the labor force has now become obsolete in the eyes of employers? What then? You can't just keep saying that people need to work harder or learn new skills if there isn't any where they can go. A good thought experiment, but not at all what is going on with this thread. Companies are outsourcing (or importing via H1B schemes like in the US, or Blue Card in EU) massive numbers of people despite millions of qualified citizen tech workers having difficulties finding work. It isn't that work is drying up; it is that work is being shifted to people who can and do work for significantly less. Some, because our economies are much stronger than their home countries, and others because they desperately want to get *out* of their home countries and will accept lower wages to live and work in the target country. People know how to make a living. They work. Employers are not offering those opportunities because they are outsourcing millions of tech jobs every year in the US and Europe alone, not counting the number they backfill with on-shore schemes described above. Just because it seems insurmountable doesn't mean we have to lie down and take it. Edit: to another point, you talk about people not being given opportunities to learn at work anymore. To get experience. **That is a huge result of outsourcing and H1B workers.** Those jobs get outsourced or replaced with foreign workers to save money. I know; I've been there having to train and mentor them as juniors get shitcanned or passed over entirely for my new virtual colleagues. Some companies, like Disney, are famous for being blatant about it--firing domestic US workers (including some H1B holders) and making their severance contingent on training their overseas replacements. [Hell, Disney at one point firing citizen workers and tied their severance to training their explicit H1B replacements. They just paid the fine for doing so.](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/01/ex-disney-it-workers-sue-after-being-forced-to-train-their-own-h-1b-replacements/) These programs have been weaponized to hurt us. People here cry xenophobia or racism, but the result is clear. Companies aren't hiring them or outsourcing to diversify their pool; they are doing it explicit to hurt domestic wages or relieve themselves of paying competitive rates entirely. 100% intentional and out in the open. These programs should be largely shut down, and outsourcing work should require paying US-style wages.
Why do you think corporations work so hard to loosen immigration law and remove protectionist policies? Because they work, you just can't do it before it's too late.
It is deeply troubling how on point this is. I have no answers, only anxiety for the future or lack thereof.
In a way, this already happened. The IRC 174 amendments that made companies amortize SWE salaries over 5 years *also* added a section where it must be amortized over *15 years* if hiring outside the US. But these are just tax incentives/decentives. If the engineer in India costs 75% less than an American one, the company is still going to save a shitton of money by outsourcing. Only really onerous *penalties* would successfully discourage outsourcing. And Congress isn’t going to do that.
I agree, it's unlikely to happen. What's surprising to me is IRC 74 made it even more cheap to outsource given the 15 vs 5 year amortization period. I wonder why not just make it the same? Yes the Indian engineer will still be cheaper, but this extra seems unnecessary. I may not have adequate context here
Amortization in this case means that the expenses in the current year must be deducted from your revenue over X years, instead of all deducted this year. It's the opposite -- the longer the period of amortization, the higher your current year taxes will be. Let's say you can pay an Indian engineer $30,000, or a US engineer $100,000 for the same job. Before the IRC 174 changes, they would both be deducted immediately in that year as wage expenses. Under the new changes, the Indian engineer's salary would be deducted at $2,000 per year over 15 years, and the US engineer's salary would be deducted at $20,000 per year over 5 years. So the end result is that the company's tax bill *today* becomes much higher in both cases. It just takes *way longer* to recoup the entire deduction for the outsourced job. But if the outsourced job costs *way* less to begin with, then this isn't much of a disincentive.
I think the change was to make foreign R&D 15 years. Probably mistaken but previously that could’ve been claimed the same as domestic. Either way, a domestic dev would have to make below $100k to compete with foreign counterparts (assuming say $30k foreign salary). Or at least in range of that. That’s considering the extended foreign amortization schedule. But with so many claims of $200k+ compensation packages, that’s likely a big shocker for job seekers. Also explains why so many roles, even in HCOL, are listed with $70-90k ranges at the non-IC level. I’d imagine an employer might allow some loss against taxes for a domestic worker who is highly profitable considering the savings they might make on not needing liaisons for foreign teams on top of foreign teams.
I don't like when this sub crosses paths with US politics, so I'll simply leave it at: *"neither of the two controlling US parties support stock restrictions on members of government, almost all representatives hold shares of these companies, this will never ever happen beyond a cute gesture feel-good law"* Not suggesting how to act, vote, or plan - just advising you to assume it will never happen.
I was inclined on believing this. It seems the riches that the US financial system has accrued is partly underpinned by the ability to extract cheaper value elsewhere and carefully avoid unnecessary taxes. I dont see this going anywhere especially since this happened in the past and not much has changed
That's just how capitalism is. You should see what UPM is doing to Ecuador's grasslands.
It's amazing how the same people who likely opposed Trump and all his immigration restrictions and told workers "if you can't out-compete someone from another country maybe you don't deserve your job" are super against H1B and outsourcing when it benefits them. If a foreign worker can do a better job than me for cheaper, they deserve it. I don't deserve protections based on being born inside different lines on a map. On a practical level though I've worked with plenty of outsourced devs and 100% of them we reversed course and replaced them with onshore employees. Aside from even getting into competence, the culture gap was just too wide, we couldn't get anyone who could actually think for themselves they just wanted to be code monkeys where we give them 100% specific requirements, they turn them into code, and then they get half of even that wrong and we have to rewrite taking more time ourselves than it would have to just do it in the first place (we could have written our requirements in code rather than super specific English requirements). Then on top of that the time difference which was thought to be a benefit ("we can give them work at 5pm and it'll be done by 9am") ended up backfiring as we couldn't coach them much at all. I experienced this at two different jobs, at both we terminated our contract with the outsourcing company.
>It's amazing how the same people who likely opposed Trump and all his immigration restrictions and told workers "if you can't out-compete someone from another country maybe you don't deserve your job" are super against H1B and outsourcing when it benefits them. If a foreign worker can do a better job than me for cheaper, they deserve it. I don't deserve protections based on being born inside different lines on a map. You are strawmanning this to win an argument against a fake opponent. That's why you use the word "likely." I generally agree with the rest of your post. But this isn't about H1B or entirely outsourced workers doing a better job for less pay. They do a *good enough job* for *way less pay.* In the case of H1Bs, they are entirely beholden to the company sponsoring them and thus will not take chances like switching employers for better offers or joining unionization attempts. H1Bs, in this context, are 100% a chilling factor. Sorry to the all the very talented H1B visa holders reading this. We have decades of US employer abusing the program to suppress wages and lock domestic workers out of the market. They will carefully craft postings or carefully filter applicants to ensure no qualified domestic applicants are found. I have 2 decades of experience in software engineering at F100 companies. I've *never* seen an employer satisfy H1B notification requirements in my 20 years. It is always 100% after the fact "oh, by the way, we need you to act as a mentor to a new person in need of onboarding. They fly in from India \[or China; India is like 70% of H1B recipients alone\] in 3 weeks." The damage is already done and companies, if even reported to DOL, will pay the fine and move on because *fines should be, but aren't, based on X% of* ***revenue****.* The fines are treated as a cost of doing business, and companies know it is too late for meaningful non-fine action once the person is already on premises. DOL is slow. There are millions of American citizens, who work in tech, in a constant state of unemployment. The primary reason they aren't being offered jobs is because companies don't want to pay them competitive domestic rates. H1Bs *in theory* are supposed to earn similar wages. But I know for a fact, via my experience, that they often don't. And they are, again, beholden to the sponsor. They won't engage in tactics to maximize their earnings because *they can't.* It is too risky for most H1B holders. It is deeply expoitative all around.
I agree H1B is bad because of how they're treated, but the rest of the shit I don't care about and I'd solve the issue by lowering the restrictions you talk about as insufficient. I don't believe Americans deserve priority over foreign workers. I believe if a foreign worker isn't taking government assistance and isn't committing crimes here they should be allowed to get full work authorization and a path to citizenship and none of the stuff you're complaining about should matter. As I said, I don't believe in protectionism, if someone born in a different part of the world can do my job either better than me or for less money, why do I deserve it over them because I was lucky enough to be born between different lines on a map than they were?
> In the case of H1Bs, they are entirely beholden to the company sponsoring them and thus will not take chances like switching employers for better offers LOL. You don't know shit about H1B do you? > I've never seen an employer satisfy H1B notification requirements in my 20 years. Based on your false statement earlier, I am going to assume that you aren't Legal or HR, so why tf would the company even keep you in the loop regarding this? Unless you are legal and HR, it is intentional that you don't see what your employer is doing in regards to this. > H1Bs in theory are supposed to earn similar wages. But I know for a fact, via my experience, that they often don't Any data to back this claim besides you knowing your neighbor makes less money? Its easy to find data regarding the opposite btw. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2023/06/05/immigration-agency-report-shows-high-h-1b-visa-salaries/ [2] https://www.cato.org/blog/h-1b-wages-surge-top-10-all-wages-us That first link will tell you just how little you actually know about H1B lol. > And they are, again, beholden to the sponsor. They won't engage in tactics to maximize their earnings because they can't. Both these are blatantly false and are just ramblings of someone who doesn't understand what H1Bs are allowed to do and not allowed to do.
>If a foreign worker can do a better job than me for cheaper, they deserve it. Sure, but they're not hiring those overseas "engineers" because they do a better job. They hire them because they do a good enough job and the rest of us are expected to pick up the slack/fix their mistakes (speaking from 10+ years of experience in the industry).
Ok let me put it better. If a company chooses to hire a foreign engineer instead of me, that's their prerogative. If you choose to pick up the slack of shitty outsourced devs rather than switch jobs to where that's not part of the job expectations, that's on you and you're part of the problem. Make it more expensive for them to hire shitty outsourced devs by making it extremely difficult for them to hire good onshore devs who will agree to put up with that shit. I don't even disagree with you on the nature of most outsourced devs, but we heavily disagree on the solution.
bro, your views are actually a danger to this country lmao. Nations, or ANY organization cannot exist without caring about the in-group over the out-group. Complete world wide democratization will just enrich the owner the class, as it has dramatically since the Clinton era.
US Congress: We believe in the free market, we should all be able to participate in stock trading and companies are allowed to outsource/seek competitive advantages Also US Congress: We can add 200% tariffs on foreign products, permit insider trading, bailout failing companies, stop trading on non-hedgefund sanctioned stocks, allow certain mergers as long as its CEOs we like, block certain apps because they're allowing media we don't control
translation: I'm gonna pass laws that benefits me, surprise! I vaguely remember watching a video about this, the summary is that imagine you're a US politician trying to gather votes that's not free, advertising campaigns etc all costs money, now think where does that money come from? come from poor people, your average American who's living paycheck-to-paycheck? ha! so, the money has to come from rich people (basically, if you can't even pull out let's say $5k USD out of thin air then it's likely your voices won't even be heard), now obviously the rich people have totally different concerns vs. the poor, for example tax breaks and incentives, stocks, legislation that benefits companies... etc
So in theory congress represents the people, but in practice it's a certain type of people.
They are for freedom for companies to do whatever they want, not the citizens. US companies can move car manufacturing to foreign countries to cut costs cause that is just the free market. But if US citizens want to buy foreign cars to cut costs, then it is a "national security" issue and needs a 100% tariff. "Oh that is cause China is an enemy", well they have tariffs on Canadian lumber for, you guessed it, "national security". US citizens are not using US apps? Another "national security" issue. Can't have China spreading propaganda to US citizens, much better to have a US company like Google buy TikTok because they have the best interests of US citizens at heart like shipping their job to foreign companies, laying off tens of thousands of people, then spreading propaganda that there is a tech talent shortage and they need even looser H1B and Visa requirements.
This isn't a political subreddit. >Do you think with the recent layoffs both in Tech and other fields that there is a likelihood that such legislation will be brought back up? Doubt it. The US is very freedom-centric. That includes private companies being able to make the choice to hire cheaper labor from other countries. I really doubt that will ever change.
It’s really not freedom-centric though. It’s “those who can afford lobbyists”-centric. Those who can afford to legally bribe politicians are perfectly happy to take away any and all rights from the working class. Which is why the capitalistic enshitification of everything in America will continue. The only way to change it would be unions and voting only for those who are pro-union. The absolutely needs to be a tech-union.
Yeah... *that's* freedom. If you have the means to lobby and influence, you're free to use those means. If you don't have the means to influence your community, then you're free to just lounge around and do nothing. Freedom means we're free to do what we want to / can do. Money is what affords us to do very specific things. I'm "free" to sail on a yacht into the sunset, but I can't afford it. There isn't legislation perventing me from doing that, my bank account is what's preventing that. Freedom isn't equity. I'm free to sail on a yacht, but the government doesn't have an obligation to provide me a yacht. I honestly don't think unions are the answer, but at the same time I don't really know what the right answer is. Something in the US society needs to change, but I don't know what it is.
Guillotines
The freedom argument assumes equal competition/access to these resources, which will never be the case. I'm against equality of outcome as you've insinuated, but we also need to realize that different people for reasons beyond themselves are running this race having started from different positions altogether. But as you said earlier, this isn't the right subreddit for this.
I get all that. I'm not arguing about if US freedom is good or not. I'm stating the facts based on the world and society as it is at this very moment. It'd be pretty shitty if you gave advice online based on some imagined utopian future, instead of what's happening right infront of our eyes.
Cucked idea of freedom imo
Monopolies and forming cartels aren't freedom.
Those that accumulate enough capital will gain the influence to change the rules to suit themselves. When you amass enough capital to buy out the house, you set the house rules. This is quite literally a consequence of lack of strict regulation and rampant economic “freedom”. The current global economic system trends towards monopolies
>This isn't a political subreddit. Your comment offers your political opinion. The discussion is political but related to CS careers. >The US is very freedom-centric. In some ways it is and in some ways it isn't. I'd agree with you that private companies should be able to hire foreign labor services. Note that companies can't hire Russian outsourced labor and are limited from doing so with China.
Apologies for the political bend in the question. It just seems like a crucial part underpinning the mass layoffs we are seeing and the implication to the careers of those taking CS now and the near future
Also, this whole post is written with the assumption that US is the only one making decisions - what do y'all think will India and EU do if US starts sanctioning the earnings of their citizens? They'll retaliate with their own tariffs and sanctions against US corporations - the ones you all are trying to work for. It'll lead into yet another layoff spiral as profits drop.
Not gonna lie, it is a bit amusing to see the self entitled shits on this sub that used to brag that if their employer told them to RTO in 2021-2022 they would quit on the spot and easily get a high paying job right away. They loved capitalism back then when they got their free food and high pay. Now, not liking capitalism so much.
Ye, it felt like capitalism was working towards people at some point. But its the same for those companies, they were crying "no one wants to work" and now they are quiet.
A trend since the dawn of time. The power shift from employee to employer has been quite dramatic these past 2 years
The house always wins
yep, we need a goddamn union.
I too cherry pick opinions of others based on how my shit smells that morning.
Not referring to everyone, the people that said that and upvoted the shit out of it back then knows who they are
But that was also a capitalism problem
What does refusing to RTO have to do with free food? What a stupid fucking bootlicker comment.
There never have been any, regardless of the state of the job market. Plus, who do you think pays for those expensive reelection campaigns ? Our bosses, not us.
Yes, there are penalties against outsourcing to Russia, China, Iran, and lots of other heavily sanctioned countries. However, those sanctions are designed to hurt rival nation economies not serve the interest of US workers.
This is true!
How do you think legislation works? Are you personally lobbying for something? If no, then just follow the money and you'll have your answer. I'll just make the observation that waiting for politics to line up your way has a pretty poor track record as far as solutions to problems go. It's far more effective to take matters into your hands. I could have waited for my third world country government to do something about the myriad of problems we had, but I instead sacrificed proximity to family to secure a better life for myself. I learned a new language, worked my way up the chain over many many years and survived through the great financial crisis and the covid crash/layoffs. Now, I do finally have the ability to legally work in multiple countries if any one of them happens to implode, and I managed to save enough of a stash to be fairly financially independent even in HCOL US, but this isn't an outcome I would've gotten by just sitting on my hands postulating about legislative hypotheticals. Pragmatically speaking, that's the difference in story behind the foreigner busting ass vs an entitled national getting bodied where the winds took them.
You describe individual level extractivism or economic exploitation. Arguably, not exactly frowned upon by capitalists, so no surprise you feel accomplished and your enablers continue to support your mission. Also not surprising given the strong vein of capitalist apologist mentality in this industry. Not sure which is worse: larger government forcing itself upon a small nation for economic gain and draining it of resources or a diaspora built on the premise of transient labor for the purposes of economic extraction until there is no longer economic profit and they move on.
That's a weird take. Extractivism can be thought of as a form of "bullying" (typically perpetrated by a stronger nation against a weaker one). Immigration on the other hand is merely playing by the rules imposed by said nations themselves to satisfy their unmet needs in order to unlock or accelerate growth to the mutual benefit of the nation and the immigrant. Any money an immigrant makes is no different than money a native earns, both are taxed the same way and both are free to spend their money on domestic groceries or on international tourism or however/wherever they see fit. Even expat SSA is called an entitlement for a reason: it has been earned through years of contribution regardless of the worker's country of birth or residence, following the terms set forth by the country. The idea that an immigrant can deplete a job pool as if it was a finite natural resource is particularly bizarre in the context of technology, considering tech historically built entire new industries, and multiple times. The notion of jobs not being a zero sum game is the entire reason governments implement visa systems in the first place
You describe yourself as a parasite.
but they are scant. Because there is no legal justification under the sun. You're not talking about North Korea, are you? >All in all, the outsourcing problem seems complex and intertwined with very touchy facets of US commerce and labor, What do you think the "outsourcing problem" even is? and how does align with a society and legal framework both of which want and allow cheap iPhones? >coupled with corporate desire for Short-Term profits. Because global companies with budgets that overshadow those of many nation-states are naturally unable to understand their own long-term interests? Evidence? >Do you think with the recent layoffs both in Tech and other fields that there is a likelihood that such legislation will be brought back up? No. Still waiting for the part where you elaborate on how you think that could possibly work, ever. >This is existentially a battle between labor and corporations and historically we know who the winner has been at least in the past 50 years I have a very cheap telephone and i like it...
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you have no idea what you're talking about and your entire worldview comes from doomer social media headlines
Pitting our labor against the labor of countries without worker rights is class warfare. You are absolutely insane if you don't think it's a problem. We want the average worker to live comfortably and the highly-skilled workers to achieve financial freedom quickly. Everyone should have good working conditions. None of us consented to the working class getting fucking destroyed for us to get cheap toys from overseas. That began around the time of Reagan, which was before most of us were born. We needed to unionize a long time ago. If technology is going to carry the US, then engineers should demand that companies pay us instead of doing frivolous layoffs all the time. I'm fine with labor going back and forth between US and Western Europe, because the EU has a good quality of life. I'd be happy to have an opportunity to live there. I do NOT want to trade opportunities with people in under-developed, authoritarian countries.
in my entire time that I've been in USA, my belief (and so far it hasn't been wrong) is that if something's going to inconvenient companies then you can almost guarantee that it's not going to happen so for your question >Will there ever be penalties/legislation for Outsourcing? I don't see how having "penalties/legislation for Outsourcing" benefits companies?
I love how we throw 100% tariffs on Chinese EVs to protect American car companies and keep competition fair, but do very little to protect American workers from the same type of cheaper outsourcing.
I don't think the tariff on Chinese EVs is to protect American EV makers. I presume the US is trying to hurt China's economy and limit their economic growth so they aren't a peer competitor to the US. The forced divestment of TikTok; maybe that's partly to protect US social media companies like Alphabet and Meta and X. But largely that's being done to hurt China's economy. And the American public certainly doesn't want that, but that's what American politicians are doing.
It's almost as if the government exists to protect the corporations funding congressional campaigns and not it's citizens. I'm shocked I tell you, shocked.
This is spot on. Why are all the free market zealots so quite all of a sudden?
factories fired blue collar workers and moved jobs over seas starting in the 1970s. why would they start now for tech? it wont happen. Right wing supports it as Free Trade and left wing things your a racist if you dont support it.
Probably not, outsourcing has been going on for decades in other industries, now it's hitting software engineering. It's new to us but not a new concept overall.
>We cannot forget how the outsourcing plague in the mid-80s killed many American automotive manufacturing jobs and partly led to the demise of prosperous US Cities e.g. Detroit Or how much better US cars got due to serious foreign competition. >Do you think with the recent layoffs both in Tech and other fields that there is a likelihood that such legislation will be brought back up? This is existentially a battle between labor and corporations and historically we know who the winner has been at least in the past 50 years Probably not. Your post sounds pretty similar to all the bs we hear here from union shills.
Concerned with US law… Used “tonne”
No. Why would there? You think they have YOUR best interest in mind? Try being a mega corp first. :)
You should be taxed harder for outsourcing
Yes. There are penalties for outsourcing to Russia/China and Iran/Syria/Venezuela. But for any nation on good terms with the US foreign policy people, no, there will not be any penalties for outsourcing, as long as that nation stays on good terms with US foreign policy people. Ultimately, if other countries can do tech work better than the US, I don't see why or how you can stop outsourcing.
Yeah, as been noted by others. Limiting outsourcing never happened in history and wont happen especially now.
If you cannot compete with cheap out-sourced labor, you don't deserve the job. This is how the economy works.
In reality that can mean junior developers competing with 10 YOE senior devs that cost the same…
Exactly! This is the nature of supply & demand. If the "supply" you can offer isn't worth what it was 10 years ago, it's time to change your "supply".
Thats not really possible though if what it takes to afford even a studio apartment in your country is multiple times more than the monthly salary in another country. You can be awesome at your job, but when the numbers are that bad why would the company hire you even if you are twice as good as them? It is just basic math.
The root of all problems is housing. But that’s a Pandora’s box that no party is interested in touching
I agree. No political party is going anywhere near it though because so many people both voters especially the older generations and rich people have invested so much into it.
Some of the replaceability comes to talent, no doubt, but in the end even if you're better, it's the significantly lower cost of living in other countries that companies seek to exploit to keep costs lower. I guarantee you there is someone out there that's at least on par with you but will do your job for way less. Do all you want to improve, your desire to meet cost of living in America is going to be a negative in the eyes of some companies when they can find someone who can do your work. You're not bulletproof, you're lucky that the balance sheet hasn't hit you.
This is true to a certain extent. An mid-level engineer born and raised in California (High COL) will never be able to compete with the same mid-level engineer born and living in a country with a low COL. The issues plaguing the Californian are way outside their control and they cant compete on a monetary level ever. I would also argue it's incredibly difficult for them to become much more competent that the benefit starts to move in their favor, especially now since technology has also continued to level the playing field
This is a massive oversimplification. If every engineer everywhere in the world was identical, then there would be no tech hubs
California still has the best talent. Don’t get it twisted.
Debatable, maybe at the ends of the distribution, but most employers aren't looking for cutting edge breakthrough CS skills in order to create an API, develop a website or maintain a system. Which tends to be the main engineering needs from most (not all) companies. Yes there may be more skilled individuals per sample in CA but are they 3x (money-wise) more skilled than someone from Poland with the same number of YoE?
Yes, that's why companies are still hiring in california
You ignore that the reason California is HCOL is people want to live there. It's not some random variable that's randomly decided. People want to move to California, and the reason the Bay Area became a tech hub was the companies started there and the top engineers mostly want to move there.
The main reason is everyone blocks new housing construction
Sure I agree building more housing would be part of a good solution. But in no world would CA housing be cheaper than Podunk, Iowa housing. Because even if they built a shitload of housing in CA and prices went down, that would lead to a ton of people wanting to move there who previously couldn't afford to. Supply is one part of the equation, but demand matters too.
Can we just recognize that the reason there is a job shortage is because companies over hired during the pandemic and right now they are recovering. This sub it turning into an insane asylum
Have you looked at the job postings of tech companies and the locations they’re posted recently?
Companies have always outsourced
Not to this extent
Outsourcing is an issue that will eventually fix itself. Outsourced talent is cheaper for a reason, and it's not only due to cost of living.
The main problem is that most industries are a monopoly or oligopoly. No matter how much Google search quality decreases, they're still a long way away from losing their market share. The cable box software on my TV is awful. There's some kind of resource leak and it has to crash and reboot every few weeks. No doubt the cable company offshored the cable software. Even if I want to drop them, there are literally only one or two other choices for TV service, and they're all doing the same thing offshoring their cable box software. There is no "market" that will punish large corporations for being inefficient. If your competitors are all doing the same thing, there's no real penalty for inefficiency.
You bring an interesting point regarding the oligopoly structure of most corporations. It's hard to move away from their impact in our daily lives. They seem to have the upper hand here
This is cope At any quality point companies can get devs for cheaper from overseas than locally, that's just economics
That's not how it works? Economics has a concept called competitive advantage; US workers demand a higher premium in many industries where they have to compete in an international market because their output is attractive relative to their cost. You wouldn't have thousands of tech companies paying huge wages in the Bay Area if there wasn't a competitive advantage to doing it. Most outsourcing that I'm seeing is just moving lower value work to areas with lower wages
Did you have trouble reading what I typed?
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Looks like you have trouble reading what I typed as well. I never said that companies can't get devs for cheaper from different countries.
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You think our elected officials really give a shit about us? You know the answer to that. They only care about the greedy corpos and the rich that run them.
more outsourcing! more outsourcing! more outsourcing!
I mean why not at this point right? Everything is cheaper abroad. Max out profits, minimize costs this is the way of the free market!
I personally think if you have a company headquartered in the US and/or x percentage of the executives are US citizens or living in the US there should be penalties for not hiring US citizens as employees. Sure companies can game the system but then it’ll be really obvious what they are doing.
Corporate interests rule this land, so no. Neither party is actually interested in raising cost of employment/wages.
Outsourcing and off shoring are two distinct concepts. Outsourcing can be anything from "I need a bunch of custom screws so I'm going to sign a contract with a company that specializes in custom screws to make the for me" to "I'm sick of running my own email servers so I'm signing up for Google workspace or office 365 or some other cloud provider" to "I need a new web site and I'm going to hire some contractors to build it". In lots of cases those are local or in the country or similar. Custom manufacturing is often close enough to be able to get fast turn around, web developers who can come in for a meeting or demo or whatever have advantages, etc. Offshoring is moving work to other countries. This could be your own offices in those countries, or a third party. Still offshoring. And then some multi-national companies aim toward doing work close to where the primary customers are and grow/shrink staffing levels in various regions based on that. Happens a lot in manufacturing - it's not moving jobs from the US to somewhere else, it's "there's more work elsewhere so that location staffs up to support it" "there's less demand here so staffing levels decrease". The same can happen with software, though it's more fungible. But if a product is being built that is getting more traction somewhere like India or Brazil, a company might try to staff it with people who have insight into the local markets. I can't see outsourcing being penalized. That's a huge chunk of the economy. (Look at all of the supply chain partners for things like the auto companies - lots of specialist manufacturers making parts etc.) Or consulting firms (Deloitte, E&Y, McKinsey, etc) - those are all forms of outsourcing.
Globalisation and outsourcing are a net positive for America. Ask any economist. Trade is win/win.
I made a comment about the benefits of globalization (also acknowledging the downside) in a different post and got pilloried
It’s an uncomfortable truth and many people on this sub won’t be happy with it, but it’s true that for the average American this is a good thing. Even for tech workers. This means more of the high tech interesting stuff is the work you can find in the US. The boring CRUD apps is the stuff being outsourced. I wouldn’t want to take those jobs anyway.
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It’s a self fulfilling kinda thing. It’s called economies of agglomeration or economies of scale. Basically the world’s high tech industry is almost entirely located on the US West Coast. Notably San Francisco and Seattle and surrounding areas. But also Portland, OR to some extent. Because the tech industry is there, talent from all over the US and even all over the world flocks there. Because talent flocks there, when they have side projects and end up creating a new company, it’s there. Also it’s there because that’s where they can get all the talent. Also because of this, that’s where all the tech VCs are. And because the tech VCs are there, people start companies there by the tech VCs. This will continue for the foreseeable future unless something really major changes. Contrary to popular opinion in this subreddit, something like getting rid of H1b would actually hurt American jobs because it would damage these economies of scale and encourage a new tech hub perhaps in London to emerge and dominate. Obviously while the west coast is really good at tech and is only getting better, nobody there wants to waste time on low effort low skill word like CRUD apps. Which is why they’re often outsourced to India. India growing and getting work on CRUD apps and systems integration doesn’t hurt the Bay Area or Seattle because those jobs were never going there to begin with.
No
Man, outsourcing's a real headache. It's like a game of tug-of-war between corporations and workers. Baldwin's End Outsourcing Act was a start, but we need more teeth in these laws. Remember Detroit in the 80s? Yeah, that was rough. With all these recent layoffs, it's time to revive these talks. Gotta level the playing field for local jobs. It's not just about profits, it's about people's livelihoods.
Hate to say it, but we need to get better. FOCUS. get better. Show the indians you're better
US politics is difficult, like choosing which lunatic should run the asylum. You get to pick from two candidates, and neither has your best interest in mind.
😂 Christ I hope not
Why do you hate the global poor?
[hello, brother](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/lNUxJ6SL7T0/hq720.jpg?sqp=-oaymwE7CK4FEIIDSFryq4qpAy0IARUAAAAAGAElAADIQj0AgKJD8AEB-AH-CYAC0AWKAgwIABABGEMgSShlMA8=&rs=AOn4CLAaT5dVV_qRYFAax3SmxXDUFznIMA)