[908B64B197]

> I’ve also noticed that FAANGs sometimes outsource work that doesn’t scale as easily. The contracting companies are either in cheaper countries or they’ll accept a smaller profit margin. Or both. The devs and analysts at those companies indirectly contribute to the FAANG’s product, but don’t get the bumper salaries.

It's also lower complexity tasks.

Cleaning-up training data or monitoring a manual test pipeline isn't really work that would make sense to be done by a team of 400K/y US-based team.

[ellen364]

I suspect that’s often true, but the outsourced work isn’t always as routine as cleaning up training data. E.g. I worked at a company that provides “real-time transit data feeds for journey planners”, to quote the marketing literature. The company’s publicly mentioned customers include Google and Microsoft.

I’d guess (and it is a guess) that big companies like to outsource that kind of work so their devs only have to deal with the tidier data? And perhaps also because dev salaries in the UK are so much lower.

[908B64B197]

> I worked at a company that provides “real-time transit data feeds for journey planners”, to quote the marketing literature. The company’s publicly mentioned customers include Google and Microsoft.

So they aren't outsourcing dev work, they are basically buying access to the data feed.

> And perhaps also because dev salaries in the UK are so much lower.

Not for SV caliber talent.

[ellen364]

That’s interesting to hear. If someone who’s just graduated from a top UK compsci course asks me for advice, where should I recommend they apply to get a starting salary >£100k?