As a US-based developer I do not feel threatened by the "cheap" offshore developers I encounter. I've repeatedly been hired to clean up after offshore developers who:

* lied about their capabilities/experience to get the job,

* failed to grok requirements through the language barrier,

* were unable to fix critical bugs in their own code base,

* committed buggy chatgpt output verbatim,

* and could not be held liable because their firm is effectively beyond the reach of the US legal system.

In a couple of projects I've seen a single US based developer replace an entire offshore team, deliver a superior result, and provide management with a much more responsive communication loop, in 1% of the billable hours. The difference in value is so stark that one client even fired the VP who'd lead the offshoring boondoggle.

Software talent is simply not as fungible as some MBAs would like to believe.

I've worked alongside (but never with) offshore developers, often from the big consultancy companies. One thing they tend to do is place one competent developer and a dozen less-so, so that the work gets done by the one but they get paid for a dozen people.

But I also believe the managers hiring offshore employees are fully aware of this. If they aren't then they're not very good managers and/or have no idea what they're doing.

The offshore people mainly work on SAP and legacy systems though; it turns out it's very hard to find willing or competent people in Europe that actually want to work on / with SAP. However, foreign workers have less qualms about learning stuff like that, since the money is really good.

For a counterpoint, I’ve worked with many great engineers in Latin America who are smart, capable, and in the same time zones as the US

We all had similar experience(s). But if you have been around long enough you will experience also highly competent and sometimes outright brilliant folks who run circles around most of us. A bit less common in India than say eastern Europe, but thats about it.

Anyway highly competent and experienced folks will always thrive regardless of environment. Its the quiet rest that should be worried from multiple angles.

That's not the talent not being fungible but the trust and accountability not being fungible. Which is a structural issue and unlikely to be resolved. I suspect it's more profitable for a lot of VPs for offshore labor to be as inefficient as possible.

More or less my experience too.

But at the same time, I doubt there is anything special about me or my US born coworkers. We aren't superior just because of the continent we live in. But offshore work is almost as a rule terrible quality done by people that are frustrating to work with. It doesn't make sense

> and could not be held liable because their firm is effectively beyond the reach of the US legal system.

this is a big one. last F500 I was at dropped Tata for several internal support teams due to belief that they were messing with proprietary code and/or had screwed things up so badly they warranted a lawsuit -- but had no legal levers to chase them for damages.

ditto for the one-off programmer who sexually harasses people while remote -- how does a remote worker sue, or get sued, and under what law?

or finance / tax -- who pays the payroll tax?

People expect that they can pay 0.05x in the Philippines or India, or 0.1x in Poland or Estonia, when that's just not going to happen. I've heard a few people say the multiplier starts at something like 0.4x or more for equivalent talent.

Since that comes with all the disadvantages and risks you'd expect from splitting your team across two countries and operating in a market you don't understand, at that price point a US company should probably start thinking about spinning up a cheaper team in, I dunno, Dallas rather than offshoring.

Firstly, I want to say that we are "cheap" because things are dirt cheap here.

Now, I am not a software developer but in high school, but I have my brother/cousins working in the software dev industry and here are my thoughts.

>language barrier: I genuinely don't know how incompetent developers you can hire, I mean sure if you hire extremely shitty developers but even that's rare.

Most people here are comfortable enough with english, in the sense that literally anyone can speak english & mostly get the point across. Yes, I have heard of some misarrangements but I don't think that its really much of an issue.

Now some outsourcing companies are mass recruiters who recruit tech from Cs colleges where noone recruited them (Tata consultancy services, infosys?) and the thing with them is that they don't even pay the mediocre expectations of a developer even in INDIA, they are basically exploiting junior developers and are compared with govt. insitutions in my country given how slow they are.

My brother works in a decent Consultancy services but he says that there are a lot of inefficiencies in the system.

He worked on a project and we estimated and he got 1% or less than 1% of the work that he MOSTLY did. and so my brother has way more incentive to freelance and get a "remote job" not consultancy.

I think that you confused yourself with remote job and consultancy part. Remote jobs hiring / freelancing indians is still cheaper than a consultancy imo who are parasites on the developers.

My brother works in a consultancy right now because the job market is shitty and he has gotten offers 4x his current salary from countries like switzerland and america. Yet, my family doesn't want him to do the 4x income work because he is already working a job and they don't want him to burn out

And they don't want him to leave the job because its "safe", you can't trust these startups etc. given the volatile nature and if they fail, then whoops the job market is really messed up right now, even in India and also arrange marriage is a huge thing and the girl's family usually checks the company that the boy works in and they usually get fishy if its remote job (and I mean, for good reason)

Also trust me some indians can definitely work in american timezones too but that is a little tough. But I mean, we are okay if you might call us once or twice late at night when its day in america and you have something really urgent. Atleast I am okay with that.

And you could pay 2x the salary the normal indian dev gets and I feel like even that would be less than an american dev. This can really filter some devs to get those with seniority or good projects.

Its a problem of incentives for consultancies (which is what you seem to hate) and maybe that's a bit fair given how much inefficiencies I see in that system. Just remote hire directly (I suppose)

you're delusional. of course if you take the cheapest possible offshore workers you get terrible results when compared to an experienced engineer in a developed country.

but it's a bit like ikea: if you buy their cheapest stuff it will fall apart after a few months but their "expensive" lines are still far cheaper than the competition but the same quality.

you might think you're a solid mahogany table but at the end of the day you're probably the same table as being sold at ikea, just more expensive