Tired of hearing about “The offshore team”
Tired of hearing about “The offshore team”
I feel like everywhere I work, we have this term, and it's become increasingly more common over the past decade as the USA becomes more and more hateful and aggressive towards the working class people... The offshore team. I really, really hate hearing about the offshore team. It's from a certain country in Asia that starts with I But I have nothing against those people that come from that country, it's simply out of concern for my well-being and my survival that it bothers me....
You look at a country like Germany, and how they have a workers council, and a country like France that has proper retirement, then you see the USA and how We have millions of computer science grads who struggle to find work, can't get a job, universities churning out new students in the tens of thousands per year... We shouldn't have an offshore team, at a company that makes billions of dollars, led by people that have so much money amassed up that they could survive for a thousand years spending millions.
It's just embarrassing, that as a society, we are so horrible to each other.
You missed the best part: it's return to office to boost communication and collaboration... ...by being in a call with the offshore team.
Not to mention the fact that the qualifications and the ability to communicate complex concepts and information without issue (in the language used by the rest of the company on shore) are almost always extremely subpar.
Too often I’m asked questions and I give thorough examples and ask if it makes sense and get a “yes” back immediately and then the next day rolls around and I’m asked the same questions by the same people and am forced to repeat the process.
I’m told these contractors are seniors with 10+ years of experience but act like junior interns.
But hey, the c-suite sees the real incentives here! Cheap labor!
Yep they're called offshore not because they're foreign but because in general they're terrible at their jobs
Oh I feel this in my soul. Recently my company was going to buy some very important welded structures, and instead of working with the American company that we promised the business to, one executive went over everyone's heads to buy these from the offshore team, despite protests from literally everyone.
They came in today each one is $100k worth of scrap metal. Absolutely unsalvageable pieces of shit. Truly a colossal level of fuckup.
Will the execs learn? Probably not.
I work with plenty of people from India. They're pretty good at their jobs. They should be paid the same as us in the USA.
I don't mind that they work on the other side of the world. I don't mind them at all. I mind that the main reason why they're hired is that my employer can pay them peanuts. They deserve better.
I’ve had really good and really bad experiences with contractor companies from India. It’s truly hit or miss and more often than not you don’t get the same quality of code or commitment (contractor or not)
That said, I agree with pay. They work for cheap and it really hurts the industry here at home while helping the c-suite pocket more of the profits.
It'll only get worse. Part of being in the corporate world is seeing it normalized so much, but then also you won't ever make a decent living unless you're in the corporate world. We're hurtling towards a cyberpunk dystopia, but there's more than likely not much you individually you can do.
Even the major push for computer science you're seeing is thanks to FAANG companies pushing for more students to enter the field, not to give them a better living, but to flood the market so this exact thing happens, too much talent so they can pay them less.
Find something, get paid, and make a living for yourself. Corporate world sucks, but we're forced into it
The problem is that it is still relatively rare for someone to have the patience and attention to detail to be able to tell the computer exactly what they want from it. The fraction of people that have that kind of natural ability hasn't changed that much, and it's not really something you can train.
So while the schools are pumping out more grads, the average quality of those entry level junior engineers is going down, down, down.
This heartens me that there will still be a place those who can produce quality software. But the current situation is not going to do any favours for average software quality any time soon.
Edit: I want to clarify something. I think anyone can be trained to write computer programs. The natural ability I'm talking about is actually the ability to tolerate programming day in and day out, as an occupation.
Agreed, and I've seen way more coming out just because the pay is decent vs just having a passion for it. I've noticed they are usually looking for the quickest way out of programming and into management too.
It's similar in nursing. They keep bringing over nurses from the Philippines, Nigeria, Ghana, and Jamaica (to keep the list short) and they're great coworkers but a lot of their contracts would actually count as human trafficking on the same questionnaires our ERs use to screen patients. They're working in conditions that were misrepresented or straight up lied about with monetary and legal penalties for breaking the contract such as tens of thousands of dollars or loss of their green card.
The employers are doing this to get employees who will be too afraid to report unsafe working conditions for both them and their patients. In psych I see a lot of international nurses who did not realize how utterly violent the average US homeless substance abusing psych patient can get (well except for a few who did high acuity psych back overseas; we had a Nigerian coming from forensics who knew what was up). A lot of them come from other specialties like onc or renal and wind up in psych because it's an easy in and wind up waaay out of their depth with no easy way out.
The fact that this abuse exists to depress my wages at the expense of everyone involved (them, me, AND the patients) is just... Idk. I almost want out but it's what I'm most skilled at and I can't imagine doing any other kind of work but the conditions and pay have just steadily worsened the longer I work.
Since it isn't happening to you personally I guess it would be hard to back up with evidence but is there not somewhere you could anonymously report these abuses and concerns to? Any government department? At the very least the misrepresented conditions seem like they must be a violation of something . If it's anonymous hopefully you'd be shielded and you don't personal face the same risks to your well being. If there's anything that is actionable it could result in better conditions all round.
Your tip might be a piece of information that they can add to any other such information to trigger an investigation maybe. Here in Australia at least, the government does at least sometimes act on abusive labour practices, they've swooped in on farmers employing fruit pickers who are almost entirely foreign and who suffered absolutely blatant wage theft and abuse and other high profile instances such as foreign embassy staff being treated as slaves.
I have a sneaking suspicion that a lot of it is legal, and most of the borderline cases I personally encountered were years ago when I worked for the state. It was less prevalent when I worked for a major university hospital but they had really good HR that were offsite (not buddies with department managers) and well trained in the legal aspects so whatever nonsense they were pulling was always above board. The most egregious ones though, and the ones you'll read about when they make the news, are the nursing homes, which is work I've never had the stomach to do. Now I'm working in a small inner-city hospital, so most of their staff abuse is just against local poor people who aren't going to find anywhere that pays more.
The people responsible for your anxiety are not offshore, they're upstairs.
Germany has nearshoring. Anything that doesn't require native level spoken German or isn't physical or under some weird regulation that it has to be in-country, it will be outsourced to a country with a significant amount of German speakers like Slovakia, Hungary, Romania or Brazil (Blumenau).
I feel like everywhere I work, we have this term, and it’s become increasingly more common over the past decade as the USA becomes more and more hateful and aggressive towards the working class people… The offshore team. I really, really hate hearing about the offshore team
...and...
then you see the USA and how We have millions of computer science grads who struggle to find work, can’t get a job
There's a couple factors in play and depending on how old you are (or how long you've been in this industry) some things may not be apparent.
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IT spending/staffing is cyclical. Boom and bust. This happens every 5-8 years. There is massive spending by organizations in IT for various reasons. This drives up the need for IT staff and as the talent pool is exhausted, salaries rise sharply as companies try to poach from one another. IT workers win in this case. However, when the pendulum swings expensive IT staff are on the chopping block. For the cycle we're in right now, that started about a year ago and the cuts are still ongoing, but to me, it feels like it will start swinging back in the other direction in the next 8-12 months with hiring picking up again.
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In-source vs Outsource/ onshoring vs offshoring cycle - Many businesses have short memories and "the grass is always greener" mentality. If they are heavily In-sourced and onshore they look at their budgets and see this MASSIVE number next to the "payroll" line item. They start asking how they can lower this number and save money. Consultants come in and convince them that the company can save money by cutting out a segment of the company's operations and outsourcing that to another firm that quotes them an attractive rate. The company chooses this option, fires their own staff, contracts out the work. The bottom line is appropriately attractive, and executives get a bonus for making cost cuts. Inertia from the previous staff keeps the org going much as before for awhile. However, the service begins suffers because the contract company is attempting to provide the least amount of resources and money to fulfill the contract. Many times this means using offshore staffing themselves. After a few expensive outages for outright rebellions from the company business departments, the company fires the contracting company hires their own staff again and brings the service back in house. This pendulum swings again for another 8-10 years.
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International pay disparity - IT workers in the USA are crazy expensive compared to nearly anywhere else in the work. I'm not just talking about a little more, but by a factor of 10 or 15 times more expensive than other nations that provide similar skilled staff. A $150k USD IT worker in the USA can be replaced (mostly) with a $15k USD worker in India with the same level of skill. That same IT worker skill level would earn $75k-$100k CAD in Canada. In Germany that same worker would earn €60-$90. During boom times that USA worker might be able to earn $175k-$300k USD.
As a worker, you can see that working in the USA will earn you the most money when you can get a job. So the trick is to save during the boom times knowing the bust is coming. If you earn $300k for one year, and are unemployed for two years afterward you've effectively earned $100k per year for 3 years straight. Being unemployed in IT for over a year is unusual. You can usually find a lower paying job in IT to cover your living expenses and then some until the boom occurs again.
That or become extremely valuable and hard to replace.
hard to replace.
I'm glad you phrased it as "hard to replace" because everyone is replaceable, and that's something that some in IT don't realize until its too late.
become extremely valuable
This is also good. Most in IT think this means "be the best at the technology" but really it means "be able to interface with non-IT about IT, up to and including leadership". Soft skills are most IT folks' Achilles Heel.
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What really annoys me is when this becomes a racist thing. You get managers who love all ethnic Indians because they "are cheap and work hard" and then you get everyone else who now hate all ethnic Indians everywhere.
I figured this would kick off again when work from home got implemented.
If your staff don't need to report to an office, why pay them for a high cost of living when they can live anywhere? In person pay is going to drop to national or international averages since you don't need them physically at a site.
My company is WFH but they tell me if I move more than a few hours drive from my local “hybrid” office it’s akin to quitting. My company is not alone in this.
Yeah, but a lot of companies laid out very poor WFH policies at the start of the pandemic.
I'm also expecting that some companies are willing to accept WFH if it means they don't have to pay as much.
In person pay is going to drop to national or international averages since you don't need them physically at a site.
Why's that?
It should be "A person's pay", but a lot of tech offices are in high cost of living places like the Bay Area. If you don't have to show up in San Jose consistently, you can hire from wherever and most other places will have a lower cost of living.
So someone in Austin may be willing and able to do the same job as someone from San Jose for 20% cheaper because their lower cost of living still makes it work it. Or maybe someone in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon may be willing and able to do the same job for 60% cheaper.
Suddenly, those high salary tech positions go away because major tech companies are no longer limited on where they can source talent.
The company I work at is considering moving some/all of the "not business differentiating" work (aka boring or terrible yet still critical work) to teams in India. I agree with roughly colocating teams (by time zone. Working 12 hours apart from half your team isn't practical). I disagree with the Indian teams taking all the bad/boring work.
I'm about to be one of those grads, career changing in my early thirties. Whoops. Got into Berkeley CS so hopefully that carries my foot into a door somewhere
It's from a certain country in Asia that starts with I But I have nothing against those people that come from that country, it's simply out of concern for my well-being and my survival that it bothers me....
How so?
Probably because the more work that gets sent there, the less work his office gets and therefore the less staff his office needs.
The thought being: this job should be mine, not theirs?