[dron57]

It's an inspiring story about jobs in middle America. But can places like Kentucky really compete with outsourcing hubs like India or Eastern Europe?

I think it comes down to access to education. Coastal US businesses would be happy to "outsource" work to these areas if these skillsets were widely available there. Perhaps, trade schools and coding bootcamps like the one in this article will be enough to bring these jobs.

[gnarbarian]

Off the top of my head there are a few huge advantages to outsourcing to the US:

Far less of a communication barrier when you all speak English as your primary language. (communication breakdown has got to be the biggest reason outsourcing fails.)

No huge time zone delta. This means you don't usually have to wait 24 hours before you get a reply to your email.

Easier to fly the developers over for meetings or to show them around your facilities.

[opportune]

Because people from KY can freely move to CA/NY/WA and people from India can't, it's a lot harder to exploit the people in Kentucky to work for wages that are significantly less than what they're worth.

If Kentucky was a good outsourcing hub, then the good developers would eventually just leave to find better jobs, unless the local jobs paid almost as well, in which case it doesn't make much sense to continue outsourcing to Kentucky! Borders prevent Indians and Eastern Europeans from doing this

[Spooky23]

It’s a complicated story.

I work and recruit people in a a market that is in the 50-75 range. It’s definately feasible for a larger company to hire/develop, but it’s difficult for a smaller company due to the smaller number of “fungible” mid career people.

The thing that’s so offensive about the outsourcing hubs is that for bigger companies they just suppress wages with a constant flow of cheap labor with no rights.

By eliminating job competition at the entry level, they are putting a wet blanket on the domestic market.

[emodendroket]

That's one thing I think is missing from the immigration debate. If we're worried about immigrants driving down wages it'd, perhaps somewhat counter-intuitively, make a lot of sense to make it easier for people on work visas to leave their jobs without losing status. Instead we see people going after family visas. The rhetoric doesn't match the policy (well, some of the rhetoric comes from an uglier place and does match the policy, but I mean the stuff about jobs).