However, there have been multiple trends throughout the last 25 years of companies outsourcing more, then insourcing, then outsourcing, then insourcing. I will say for the current trend of outsourcing, it doesn't look like companies are moving everything offshore, it looks like they're being strategic about non core products/services.
My guesses for why:
1. Trends/Fads. Sure it didn't work last time, but enough time has passed that people forgot the mistakes and now the new management wants to try it again.
2. Software is more mature (?). Maybe with git, unit testing, better type systems, linters, cleaner architecture, modern frameworks, software without alot of churn, doesn't need the same level of talent to 'keep it running'.
3. Interest rates. Maybe when interest rates were lower, it made sense to spend 5x as much per engineer to get 50% (?) better quality.
4. Problem getting H1-B? I don't know if this is true at all, but I imagine with lots of layoffs at big tech companies, it may be harder to prove they can't find american engineers?
I have found, surprisingly, bipartisan support on this topic with the reps I engage with. I encourage you to make the time to engage as well.
It's a real question - what legal or regulatory environment (that can't be trivially side-stepped) do you see I play here?
And how do you argue against foreign work when unemployment is pretty much as low as it has ever been?
Making it less economically favorable when transferring value for offshored labor. Laws are just words, you can make them do many things. You can even sanction entire nation states with them. Determine the desired outcome, construct policy, observe, iterate. It is statute as a PID feedback loop.
> And how do you argue against foreign work when unemployment is pretty much as low as it has ever been?
Labor isn't fungible (service sector and healthcare jobs are very in demand, tech and similar white collar work is cooling), and I don't support corporations offshoring to put downward pressure on wages for management and shareholder returns. Even with unemployment being low, wages must be pushed higher (based on observing macro US household financial conditions and stress). If you want access to the market, you can employ in the market. People worry about AI paperclip maximizers when that is already what corporations and those who run them are. Under 30 cohort is very pro labor rights (obviously, how could you not considering current state), lots of control is still in the hands of 55+ cohort (Congressional demographics, corporate leadership, ~5 minutes in your favorite search engine will confirm), so progress is a function of the rate at which those folks age out (~5k per day, ~1.8M/year).
This isn't a labor participation rate issue; this is a how labor is valued issue.
While I agree iteration of laws to refine the outcomes is a useful approach, it's also an approach govt is bad at. So having a reasonable starting position might be helpful to discuss. Frankly, I don't have one. At least not one which isn't immediately gameable in the real world.
For 200 years the "young" have been waiting for the "old" to age out the system, then discover when they do that they're the new "old".
It's hard to change the system when the rule-writers are where they are -because- of the system, and where huge swathes of the country are against any change at all.
More software , such as banking software, iot, control systems all needs to be done vertically in the U.S. just as cyber security should be done by people with clearances.
It really is a security concern.
I think the cultural clash was too strong, it was not uncommon to get your team in India lying to you about the state of a project, just because they were so hellbent on telling you only what you wanted to hear.
Eastern Europe is the current favourite in my circle.
There is a company I know who is doing outsourcing to India, but their management team was rotated after failing to deliver revenue multipliers and now they have managers with less than stellar resumes. Everyone in the company knows the company is doomed and stay there only to collect a paycheck.
I should have learned by now that I need to put the /s in there, regardless of how obvious I consider it to be. My bad.
Thinking you can just throwing some half-baked spec over and get working and maintainable software is a management pipe dream that seems to be too attractive to accept reality. That sweet, sweet silver bullet might wait there after all in the promised lands off-shore...
> Eastern Europe is the current favourite in my circle.
Seen that as well, although it was in pre-pandemic times. Delightfully straight talkers, but rather over-complicated code.
Then someone moves on, so the boss hires a remote worker to replace them. Finds out remote workers outside the US are a LOT cheaper. So slowly replaces local posts with foreign workers as employees job hop.
Managers used to be safe, until all the workers are offshore, then it makes sense to use offshore managers as well.
This is an entirely predictable sequence. Yet most people think it ends with step 1.
Outsourcing did not start “recently” either. As far back as the 1990s some companies started outsourcing, with mixed success. I remember the dire predictions of widespread tech unemployment coming because of outsourcing. Didn’t happen, probably won’t this time either.
More programmers create more programming work, and I’d say that doubles when you have remote programmers with language, cultural, and timezone differences.
Profits are becoming hard to come by at many places and a large driver of cost is salary.
The U.S. dollar has also grown in strength over the past ten years. I think it has more than doubled compared to inr?
This is especially true with the lower cost workers, which is one of the main points of outsourcing.