[hadlock]

Last couple of companies I worked at, they are already outsourcing "average" work. We had a QA manager in the bay area, and then he had a team of six people in SE asia doing QA/QA automation. On the engineering side we had a team of 20 engineers in eastern Europe working for less than 30k/year usd working on bug fixes and test coverage, UI fixes, modifying legacy code from the original monolith that didn't change a whole lot etc

In the bay area we only had five engineers, mostly focuses on architecture, R&D, new products etc, and even then they only came in two-three days a week mostly for face to face meetings. The VP had a lake house in tahoe and would work remote for 2 months every summer.

I can see a bunch of legacy code maintenance/qa work moving offshore further, but there will always be a core group of five to ten engineers who meet at the central office a couple times a month. Remote will increase but humans still need face to face contact periodically.

[bluekite2000]

Yeah I know a bunch of QA companies in Vietnam. How did your company find them? I am Vietnamese American myself and have spent a lot of time in the region. It is an amazing place w/ a hungry yet educated youth population, great food, beautiful beaches and quite fast internet. Surprised not many American companies heading there to recruit.

[hadlock]

We initially hired the QA manager as our first QA hire, then he built the team in his country. After a couple of years we paid for his visa and he lives in the US now and has been with the company for over five years.

We went through Vietnam including Nha-trang on a tourist trip two years ago, of which I think Nha-trang is sort of their tech capital, I was really impressed with the level of development there and how modern it was, although I didn't talk with anyone directly in the industry while I was there. It definitely had an international modern vibe compared to Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.

[bluekite2000]

I would replace Nhatrang with Danang. Danang is the next big coastal tech hub now.

[wobbly_bush]

How is that "outsourcing"? Everyone is still from the same company but instead of just different cities, it's different countries as well.

[hadlock]

You are correct, this is technically offshoring, not outsourcing since they are on the company payroll.