As much as I've enjoyed remote work, I can't help but wonder if it makes offshoring more attractive to companies based in western countries. If hiring locally is more expensive and offers no real benefit over offshoring, why keep doing it?
If the benefits outweighed the cost, companies would have already offshored well before the pandemic. It’s not like WFH changes that calculus. If a BigCo would rather pay a programmer in Bangalore over one in Boise, than they almost certainly would also prefer him to one in Mountain View too.
Time zones I think will be the biggest advantage to hire within the western hemisphere, nobody likes the PST <-> IST timezone meeting gap, there aren't many to hire in latin america and they speak English well and communicate well. If latin america had a large base of engineers to hire in the first place, I think many places would choose there just on a timezone and english communication skills basis.
But you see big compensation gaps even between NYC / SFO / SEA and the rest of the USA, so you could very well see a drop from that.
Inevitably what I see is that some company tries to outsource some function, to save some money, or just because they don't want to deal with it themselves, and then the experience is so bumpy and acrimonious that they bring it back in house after eighteen months or two years.
Perhaps the problem with offshoring is not just the fact that the people are working remote. What about (very) different timezones, different working culture, different culture of communication etc.?