[fzeroracer]

Same thing happened where I worked, though that was mostly from what I heard from coworkers since I maintained my WFH status. It's all CEO theater designed to layoff folks while also forcing people who RTO to take an effective pay cut. People need to recognize that and demand more from where they work, whether it's in the form of unionizing or otherwise.

[ponector]

There is always an answer to unionizing and other demands: hiring freeze plus offshoring overseas. Eventually even unionized people will be replaced with offshore buddies.

[toomuchtodo]

Ohio senator introduces 25% tax on companies that outsource jobs overseas - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45146528 - September 2025

https://www.moreno.senate.gov/press-releases/new-moreno-bill...

https://www.moreno.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/The...

[EricDeb]

This would be very helpful for American jobs.

[toomuchtodo]

Call your Congressional reps, ask them to cosponsor.

[fzeroracer]

Offshoring always ends in disaster, companies have tried this time and time again but the end result is an awful product that requires more money to fix than they needed to make it in the first place.

And that also doesn't solve the problem of dealing with institutional knowledge loss if you decide to aggressively cull employees trying to unionize. In either scenario the solution is for union workers to become even more aggressive with their demands and force companies to acquiesce.

[ThrowawayR2]

Offshoring might frequently be a disaster. On the other hand, Microsoft and the rest of FAANG and other large tech companies have had overseas development centers staffed by full fledged FTEs for many years now with, as far as anyone can tell, success. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any reason they couldn't expand those.

[holowoodman]

I'm guessing that there is a difference between "offshoring, while still having the offshore people picked and employed by you" (let's call it "pure offshoring") and "offshoring and outsourcing to a local company" (let's call it "outsourcing to offshore").

With pure offshoring, you do have control over who you pick, what their mode of work is, whom to fire, etc.

With outsourcing to offshore, the local company hires people, usually on the cheap, to only just fullfill your contract and no more. If people underperform, you may complain, and maybe they'll be moved to a less prominent and visible role, or maybe they'll be shuffled to the next customer of theirs. So things will be bad, because it is not in the interest of the local company to do one iota more than necessary. And you'll still have to have your own QA, architects, etc., to make sure you at least get what you paid for.

[typewithrhythm]

I'm not sure if it actually is working out, or if the companies outsourcing are just absorbing the inefficiency.

Every outsourcing effort I have seen at some of these massive companies has been pretty tragic, where the best that can be said is now there is a shit but cheap option to be used where the quality doesn't matter.

This gets repeated across all the entrenched players simultaneously, while the product quality stagnates or declines (but the stock goes up).

[bluGill]

when most of the people offshore are employees it can work. The biggest thing is you need to start with good managers there who hire good people. In india good engineers are paid more than their peers in germany, but that is the price you pay for the quality you need for good people. If you don't hire good people you can get plenty of terrible people for really cheap, but the results will be poor quality. Take your pick.

[wkat4242]

Yeah that's why it's called a multinational. Offices everywhere. And yes it's a success.

[ponector]

>>> Offshoring always ends in disaster,

Is it? If it is a disaster , why there are millions of IT folks employed in offshoring locations?

Only the cheapest offshoring ends in disaster. Cheap contractors from TCS will fail you. Open your own dev center, hire few thousands engineer there - a road to success. And yes, no one will actively complain about RTO policies there.

[hylaride]

Offshoring can be a success, but because most companies do it for cost reasons, they focus on cost over everything. Outsourcing to India can be cheaper than setting up shop in the western world for relatively equivalent results, but most companies will head to the cheapest outsourcers in India AND not set up the relatively expensive process to deal with quality control, timezone issues, etc. In other words, it's usually driven by bean counters and not engineers.