• Cosmic Cleric@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    but WFH I think will only be beneficial in the short term (for employees - I do think it beneficial for the environment) it’s a shorter step from WFH to outsourcing to get the cheapest labor cost.

    I hate to break it to you, but as someone who was self-employed and doing contracting work throughout most of his career, I can’t tell you how many times I was replaced by remote/offshore Indian programmers, over the decades, for cost reasons. Was definitely going on way before Covid and WFH, and should not be a reason why to fear/stop WFH.

    • JustAnotherRando@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      I’ve also seen the opposite happen - Bean counters think out sourcing to India will save lots of money, then they end up paying a more expensive us consulting company or independent consultant to come and clean up a mess, then they have to hire in house devs to maintain the code. Most of the out sourcing groups I’ve interacted with had a mentality of "we’ll do what was explicitly asked for and not a single thing more, and if we hit a roadblock, we’ll call it out and stop work until someone state side figures it out. And I can’t really fault them for the mentality - they know they’re being used because they’re cheaper labor, they don’t have any sense of ownership of the code, and when they develop stronger skills, they leave for a better opportunity.
      I know there are strong devs in India, but I don’t think they usually end up in the out sourcing companies.

      • Cosmic Cleric@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        I’ve also seen the opposite happen

        Yep, that too. Made a lot of my consulting money fixing problems/issues that were created from overseas workers.

        I know there are strong devs in India, but I don’t think they usually end up in the out sourcing companies.

        No, they don’t. At least I’ve never seen them, and I’ve worked on a lot of projects. You get what you paid for.