[ixvvqktiwl]

I used to think this was a bad thing, but these days I'm not so sure. Assuming you can get the same (or similar) talent in India instead of the US, doesn't it make sense to do your development in a place where your money goes farther?

The capitalist in me sees this as a win: more value for shareholders, and a big life improvement for Indians.

Can someone explain to me why it's a bad thing? I understand it might be bad for current and future US-based Uber employees, but aside from that, what's the downside? The way I see it, this helps more people overall (and I don't really care about which national flag you identify with).

[mdorazio]

The downside for individuals is that a lot of people who frequent this site end up with significantly lower salaries than before (from your downvotes, they don't like that idea). The downside for companies is that you tend to get an overall lower quality product with a lot more managerial overhead required due to the nature of remote/cross-cultural/cross-language development. The downside for America is that the trend of stagnant median wages continues since you're pulling the rug out from under one of the few domestic industries that's actually still lucrative for a significant portion of the workers in it.

[sokoloff]

I doubt offshoring dev work will have a significant effect on US median wage which is around $40K/yr. Devs who move from making $200K to $150K or even $100K to $80K won’t move the needle on median wage.

[bberenberg]

"Assuming you can get the same (or similar) talent in India instead of the US"

I am not aware of anyone who has succeeded at this in practice. Do you know anyone?

[clavalle]

I've had mixed results.

Romania has been great.

Pakistan was /terrible/...

India has been a mixed bag. Firms tend to be terrible. Individuals tend to be good to great. The great devs tend to move here as soon as they're able.

[addicted44]

Yeah, that's why the idea that H1Bs need to be restricted will help with US employment is remarkably stupid.

There are a few companies that abuse (abused?) the H1B program but that was always a small but visible percentage, but more importantly, actions taken under the Obama administration had drastically reduced the abuse.

The much greater percentage are employees who studied in the US, or worked with companies in India and then had them transfer to the US. Eliminating the H1B visa simply means that they will now do the same work from India or Canada instead, further reducing the number of jobs in the US.

[erik_seaberg]

This is pretty much what I've seen. If you invest time and money in opening a branch office and interviewing full-time staff, you'll find sharp and dedicated people like you would here. But you cannot shortcut this process by paying a no-name body shop, because you will get "deliverables" that obviously weren't tested at all because they don't compile.

[villgax]

So many companies have R&D offices in India, Intel, Qualcomm, AMD, Samsung etc. If you are asking move the entire company over here, that won't make sense since you need to hire brass for representation. It's the middle layer that is costly & can be moved off.

[samvher]

We just hired an engineer in India who so far seems really promising. As a start-up sized organization I think you can do really well if you look in the right places. If I had to build a team of 100 people in a limited amount of time I would probably be less confident.

[ixvvqktiwl]

I don't know, that's why I'm asking. I have worked at a startup that used a firm in Ukraine which actually did really great work, however. It was perhaps more expensive than India, but still much cheaper than the US.

[ed25519FUUU]

Much cheaper than Silicon Valley you mean.

[addicted44]

Almost every major tech company has massive campuses in India.

So, almost every one of them?

These don't replace their US operations, but add to them and grow them in ways they couldnt in the US itself.

[kburman]

Correct me if I'm wrong that interview process for US and India is same?

[NineStarPoint]

In the general sense, I think you’re right that part of it is US employees getting unhappy that jobs are moving elsewhere because they’re cheaper. From a moral standpoint there’s not much wrong about giving people in other countries a better life. (There are probably some arguments about supporting the country that gave you the necessary infrastructure to succeed in the first place?)

That said, I think the debates mostly come from the amount of times this has gone very poorly in the past. CEOs who come in to cut costs are often CEOs who aim to replace their top of the line US employees with not top of the line Indian employees but bulk middling/bad Indian employees. And for the US employees who remain this makes working with their code awful and slowly drains the company into a mess that people then have to deal with when inevitably things get bad enough to bring everyone back on shore.

When I’ve worked at companies who pay the money for good Indian employees, they’ve been reasonable to great to work with. But that’s rarely been how offshoring has worked out in my experience.

[OGWhales]

> Assuming you can get the same (or similar) talent in India instead of the US In my experience, this assumption is not true and is the main downside.

The other is time zones and remote work in general being difficult, but I’m generally in favor of remote work and think as more people do it it will become more efficient.

[clavalle]

Oh, it's not a bad thing.

But competition works the other way, too.

Which developers are sitting around making less than a third of what other developers with the same skillset are making? The best ones?

[ilaksh]

Maybe a lot of them work at startups. Or live in Mexico vs. San Francisco or Dallas.

[clavalle]

Dallas has dirt cheap cost of living compared to SF. Engineers still make 100-200k there.

[ecmascript]

I am sorry that you have been subject to the typical downvote-squad that's downvoting everything they don't agree with, even if your post was perfectly fine. I upvoted it.

> Can someone explain to me why it's a bad thing?

I am just a layman, but how I see it is simple. If you move everything in a branch of business to another country, you will loose the possibility to do that branch in case of some bad event would strike. That event can be because of politics, but it can also be because of nature.

If you move all production to China for example and they have basically a monopoly on producing a certain good, let's say batteries as an example. Then I think it's pretty much inevitably that they're going to use that against you as long as the nation states exist. The prices will start to go up artificially and by then you may start looking for options, but then they may already own all big mines in the world and have taken claim on the basic materials you need.

What do you do then? The only answer is to suck up to whatever their demands are.

[duhi88]

There are plenty of devs outside of Silicon Valley. They don't have to look halfway across the world to reduce their costs.

[chosenbreed37]

> There are plenty of devs outside of Silicon Valley. They don't have to look halfway across the world to reduce their costs.

Are those devs currently unemployed and waiting for the phone to ring? If they're going to be headhunted out of the current jobs they'll have to make it worth their while. Conversely their current employers may make them counter-offers. The end result being that overall cost of hiring that person can be significantly higher than initially anticipated. If there was an abundant supply of potential workers the wages would face a natural downward pressure. Even in Silicon Valley...

[chosenbreed37]

I agree. This can be great for the shareholders (Uber is not profitable as far as I know) and good for India. If they get rid of some jobs in the US to make this happen then it's not great for those affected. If however they decide that new hires will be in India then nobody loses out. I'm sure many will point out the potential perils of this approach but I don't see why it can't work. India has a large, educated workforce, ready to make their mark. They should give it a try. If it doesn't work out for some reason they can always change direction.

[jaywalk]

Why not just move the entire company to India, and pay everyone less?

[gpm]

Because people will quit instead of moving, and those people have very valuable institutional knowledge.

[jaywalk]

You wouldn't move people, you'd hire Indians.

(I was being sarcastic, by the way)

[ixvvqktiwl]

My guess is that most investors don't want to touch non-US companies.

[somurzakov]

thats what Zoom does, large part of their engineering is in China

[ilaksh]

Yeah.. I also wonder about how some of those other Chinese companies do it.. they must somehow be able to find talent in China.. apparently.. I mean, it's amazing..I wonder if they pay them $300k

I also wonder, I know there are a few big software companies in India.. how do they manage to build large operations without hiring $300k per year US engineers from the Bay Area? I wonder if there are actually some good engineers in India. Weird. I heard they were all bad. But I guess with 1.3 billion people they might have a couple of good programmers. Possibly. OR maybe the large Indian software/internet companies probably actually hire the best US engineers and just get by with them. That's probably actually it.

[bitL]

Race to the bottom. No rewards for excellence, why bother studying/working hard when all you get is 80k? That's basically a life-time mortgage if you want to own a house.

[ilaksh]

In some places houses cost less than $150k..

[bitL]

Would you live/work in Rust Belt or Appalachia? I've also heard many houses in Detroit go for $1. Sounds great, right?

[ilaksh]

I work for a startup and live in Tijuana.

[xwdv]

You cannot get the same talent in India that you get in the U.S., at scale.

[somurzakov]

not true. Eastern Europe has great engineering talent, India, southeast asia all have great engineering schools and talent. If there is a scale, it is outside US, it just requires some footwork to find and hire people - which most managers are too lazy to do. Because they are nog saving their own money, it is shareholders money so who cares?

[xwdv]

I’ll believe it when I start to see powerful startups becoming global brands out of those places.

[somurzakov]

branding != engineering. Want to evaluate technical competencies - compare technical artifacts

[ixvvqktiwl]

Maybe that was true at one time, but is it still true? I think China seems like the counter example, since these days China has been innovating much more rapidly than the US on many things.

[villgax]

Its only for a fraction of Indians & it would most likely be those with an MS from the states or ones who's H1Bs just got knocked out.

[ilaksh]

Its a trend that will reduce US salaries and number of jobs. So US programmers can't be enthused.