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> Companies learned this the hard way during the outsourcing booms

Sure. Then we learned how to do it and in which contexts. Since WFH trained executives state-side how to communicate asynchronously and over Zoom, I've seen engineering offshoring done quite productively, possibly for the first time in my career.

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fzeroracer 2 days ago | parent [-]

I've seen attempts at engineering offshoring again and it causes problems because the core part of software engineering isn't the actual coding part, it's communication, design and understanding.

If you offshore your coding, how do you know they're not using AI as well? How do you verify code quality? And what do you do when you're left cleaning up a mess? This isn't really a problem of the quality of engineers, but the inherent relationship between a company and contracted firms.

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JumpCrisscross 2 days ago | parent [-]

> If you offshore your coding, how do you know they're not using AI as well? How do you verify code quality?

All of these apply to remote-only teams. We know they work. (Note: I'm commenting more on offshoring than outsourcing. Outsourcing is fraught with issues. Offshoring once was, but is increasingly becoming viable, particularly with WFH and AI.)

	▲	xyzzy123 a day ago \| parent [-]
		IMHO the primary problem with offshoring vs using employees was always principal / agent problem and incentives. There was never a strong incentive for your "partner" to actually finish the job, they got more money from overruns, fixing defects, sunk costs, requirements churn, overstaffing, giving you juniors and billing for seniors, etc etc etc. There were also issues with cultural differences, communication and lack of understanding of the "customer" - but they are minor and resolvable compared to the core problem.