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Comment by zfdrdg | Hacker News Reader

Not sure what the parent comment meant but maybe because software jobs will start to move to lower earning locations. I've been wondering about this. Manufacturing has largely moved off shore over the last 40 years but software seems much easier to move. Could the whole industry disappear from the first world at a much faster rate?

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>Not sure what the parent comment meant but maybe because software jobs will start to move to lower earning locations. I've been wondering about this. Manufacturing has largely moved off shore over the last 40 years but software seems much easier to move. Could the whole industry disappear from the first world at a much faster rate?

Well, this has largely happened. And no, if you think that has happened 15 years ago, it isn't.

Outsourcing shops that do work for first tier dotcoms today are a head above anything you saw back 15 years ago with "will code for food" sweatshops.

What is happening is that these are not the "code for food" shops that are displacing Western workforce, but companies that genuinely do "real stuff" and pull high class projects better than their Western clients can even hope to do.

They get that not because they are cheaper, but because they are better than SV at large.

The reason why Western markets are not in firm grips of Asian IT giants yet, but in Facebook/Amazon/Google is not the influence of market forces. Otherwise, they would've been steamrolled long ago.

> Could the whole industry disappear from the first world at a much faster rate?

No. Because any country dominating the software industry will, almost by defintion, be “first world”.

That is not what first world means.

True. It means “white”. Which is why it’s largely gone out of fashion.

Not really.

In the days of the Cold War there was the “third world” as in “third party”, that is any country who wasn’t in either NATO or the Warsaw Pact. Later on people came to use “first world” to mean the West which would make the former Soviet countries the second world. And the third world is still... every other country.

I dont think an engineer in China is cheaper than in Europe. Thats not my experience.. At least in the big cities, they cost more or less the same as in Europe.

A Friend of mine owns a business and hired a guy in China full time. Works out to be ~40k usd/yr. His work is really good. If you’re going via a business to get outsourced work you’re just getting ripped off imo.

Depends on the work you want done.

Sure, I can get a student to throw together a React frontend here also for very little money. If I want highly specialized knowledge about camera drivers, network protocols or low level programming, the story is different.

We keep hearing this since late 1990s, when all programming was supposed to move to India. Not much change 20 years after.

When the engineers start earning more in tech oriented cities like Shenbu or Bongai where ever, the shops and landlord charging more, houses become more expensive, living costs rise, which makes engineers start demanding higher salaries, which then starts a feedback loop of rising prices. It's almost like people in developing countries are real people with similar behavioral patterns like people in the west..

"Feedback loop?" Where did you learn economics?

I didnt....

The above situation is definitely a shifting equilibrium rather than feedback loop. Like, everyone getting a 3% raise won't make the city unlivable overnight, it probably won't even increase cost of living by 3%

"It's almost like people in developing countries are real people with similar behavioral patterns like people in the west.."

Really? .. I thought they are supposed to do the work for us, yet allways stay below our level, because thats the way things are supposed to be.

You jest but that is the sincerest belief of typical Western managers

Eastern Europe are far cheaper to outsource to and that practice already happens for some UK businesses.

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