Employee Asked to Go Remote, Job Outsourced to India | Hacker News Reader

Employee Asked to Go Remote, Job Outsourced to India

businessinsider.com

12 pointsmsolujic9 comments

I wondered when this narrative would start. Companies want employees back in the office, and are starting to dial up the fear to do it.

This story seems based on a comment a CEO made and nothing more than that. It does highlight real issues with remote work, such as what is it that your are paying a us worker for vs a worker from a cheap labor market?

> that your are paying a us worker for vs a worker from a cheap labor market?

If this worked, they would have done it in 1995. I know, because they (and by they I mean absolutely every single living corporate executive) tried. Again, and again, and again.

Indian IT sector has grown dramatically since 1995 so it works to some extent.

Also relevantly, Indians are much more willing to move back to India today, where an IT job (especially with an American company), will allow them a much better standard of living than what they have in the US.

Anyone who’s ever outsourced to India knows what a horrible mess it can be.

The biggest problem is the timezone differences.. it basically slows down everything by at least a factor of 2x

Then there are issues with the talent. Most of the time resumes are inflated, knowledge is faked, people are swapped without your knowledge, etc.

If you’re only hiring one person they might know how to do the work, but they are often not skilled and end up making extremely poor architecture decisions that will cost exponentially more to manage long term than hiring someone knowledgeable to do it right.

Even hiring the best Tata consultants, you’re still dealing with a mixed bag.. and it’s gonna cost you as much as someone local anyway.

Short sighted businesses people will try and make decisions like this that look good on paper and they will have moved on to a new company before the current company realizes how badly the shortsighted decision making has hurt them.

Similar to auto workers unions pricing their members out of competition until the jobs get sent out of the country. You can only push employers so far before they realize that everyone is replaceable.

Nation states can exert whatever pressure they want on corporations. Labor regulations, tariffs, whatever it takes to get the outcome you want.

Follow up in 3 months. “Job outsourced to India an abject failure. We wasted so much time and effort it wasn’t funny.” I don’t even feel the need to warn anybody anymore. They’ll figure it out.

I wonder which group is paying to have this story promoted.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com