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Comment by CyberBank | Hacker News Reader

>>I’ll tell you a story of when we were developing a product here States-side. We worked with one very gifted development team and we put all of our eggs into that basket.

They were doing great work for us but eventually, there was a business event where they left.

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"Business event" aka budget cuts? Benefit cuts? Change in leadership? Bad leadership?

People in the US often do not leave if things stay the status quo, managed well, and are given appropriate accolades for their performance. Absurd way to deflect blame and justify cutting fair wages

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I imagine the "business event" to be:

Company: "We've been checking offshore software development rates and will be cutting your compensation to $25/hour to be competitive".

Developers: "Nope".

The fact they even start with such a vague statement as a "business event" after which everyone left says a lot.

If it's something so significant that most of your staff leave, then don't try to imply the blame is with the staff.

The level of double-speak is off the charts. Also "It is very expensive to spread intellectual property and know-how amongst the number of US-based resources."

It gets even better than that: "unfortunately, the economic benefits [of outsourcing to Argentina] started to fail when the Argentine economy started to improve."

If only those pesky third-worlders would stay poor for longer...

> We are in Ukraine now, where the talent pool is abundant and economic conditions are favorable.

They are probably routing for the Russo-Ukrainian War to continue as long as possible. Makes for more "favorable" conditions too. The worst event for them would be if Ukraine joined the EU, with all that pesky labor protection laws.

It’s a little mind blowing to see an atomic version of how business interests end up favoring outcomes that are negative for an entire country. If many of these small businesses end up dependent on low-wages, political instability, etc., it doesn’t seem far fetched to imagine that in aggregate they start institutionalizing lobbying efforts to maintain these circumstances.

This introduces possible outcomes like failed states, and counter measures like authoritarian strongmen to maintain modicums of stability. This can then lead to greater, unintended geopolitical consequences. And it all stems from a bunch of businesses trying to shave a few dollars off of wages...

Not getting any richer. It's just there is inflation, but the exchange rate for exporting services is fixed by the gov at a low valuation (90) vs the actual dollar on the street (160)

Don't worry, the economy in Argentina is back to being shit since over 10 years ago. Argentina never changes.

This reminds me of someone I was talking with about their growing, modestly successful startup. They were bragging to me about how they didn't even have to worry about paying benefits, healthcare, retirement, etc. to their contractors in Mexico.

I said something like "Yuck, who needs healthcare and basic life standards" and he sincerely replied "Exactly!"

Business is full of people like this. If it's not full blown sociopathy then it's definitely a grievous lack of awareness, turning humans into an inhumane abstraction.

They really do seem like the kind of people who would be opening champagne when civilians in Ukraine are getting killed by totally-not-Russia.

Two points: The war is happening in the Russian speaking part of Ukraine. To that point I'll put everything I have and double down with debt that a westerner would not be able to tell which folks are "Russian" and which are "Ukrainian" in this conflict.

Civilians are getting the brunt of it on both sides. Don't think for a second that Ukrainian forces avoid hitting civilian targets in some display of galantry. It's a brotherly war and nobody wants it.

Not sure what you mean by this. It is very easy for one side to pack their bags and leave, if they "don't want it".

The entire article reads like it was generated by GPT-3 after being fed a bunch of early 2000's MBA material.

I don’t know why people are taking this at all seriously. It’s a poorly-disguised advert and SEO bait. “Look at how awful and scary outsourcing can be. See all the years of effort we have put into overcoming these obstacles to become the experts you need to outsource successfully.” Complete with a call to action that feeds into their sales pipeline at the bottom. It was likely written for pennies by somebody who had a list of keywords to repeat for SEO.

Are you saying it was outsourced to the lowest bidder?

The unstated information behind this bit is probably more important to understanding than all the rest. It might be wages or budgets or leadership or something else, but if it was innocuous they likely would have not been so vague.

I'm sure the "business event" was a renewal/renegotiation of the contract

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