[Dewie]

So what do you think about foreign developers who work for American companies (that are outsourced muscle)? That they are inferior? I feel like I'm being hostile now, but that is what seems to must follow, if you even accept the term outsourcing.

I think outsourcing is either motivated by 1. cost, which does not necessarily have anything to do with quality, might just be that the cost of living is very different, and the cost of living difference in this case seems to be non-negligible. 2. Expertise; we, as a company, don't want to/can't have an X department, so you guys can take care of it.

A possible barrier to productive outsourcing is a mismatch in cultures. In that case, you can't really blame the outsourced party for not being American/German/Austrian... This is a thing that can mask itself as incompetence.

[jakestl]

Outsourcing usually means hiring cheap, low-quality third-party labor and firing/not hiring skilled, trained full-time employees. Whether this is from another country or not is unrelated.

The situation described in the article has nothing to do with outsourcing, but building a remote team, both foreign and domestic.

Using the term "outsourcing" does a disservice to those employees. Since the Midwest was mentioned specifically, I had a similar reaction to the one you had for my comment.