I despair a little at this. If I can do my job at home, then surely somebody can do it in the global south in tandem with AI for peanuts. Client-facing stuff gets centralised to a smaller team of specialists, and the ship gets much tighter.
How long until megacorps and SMEs actually execute this reality? The management class and their unnecessary underlings like me have only been so resilient because companies are still on the last days of this post-covid efficiency wave, coupled with the buffer of capital from the money that was created in the last few years.
I'm usually not a doomer, but it's hard to see a way around the next downturn not creating irreversible culture change through AI offshoring and mass layoffs.
There are latent questions in your response. The fear is justified but equally, viewed from a distance, what is the "worth" of your price point, if the same job can be done and lift somebody out of poverty in the developing world?
I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm asking what an economist or social historian might say, much as if a Lancashire cotton worker asked if his job was disappearing into cotton factories in Bangladesh.
I share your fears btw. I'm just less sure I "deserve" the pay for my disappearing role(s)
In the modern sense, this is very much a “I don’t want to do labor” issue. If all of the WFH jobs get sent overseas, the only thing left to do here is stuff that cannot be done on a computer from home, like construction, fabrication, forestry, food service, etc to name a few. A lot of us coder/designer/techy types are somewhat privileged in the idea that we can get paid a reasonable to high wage for doing something that is physically non-demanding and essentially only commands its price tag because of schooling and brainpower.
I can imagine a lot of us are going to get very angry if we suddenly have to haul Sheetrock for a living.
Completely agree. And it is funny how we put so much emphasis on developing our skills and abilities, when really our actual value is always determined by the market.
I'm personally at peace with that, and would have a pretty hard time arguing against the logic of off-shoring my job. However, it's also rational to want to hold onto a favourable environmental niche for as long as possible!
How has western society completely forgotten the point of a country? It is not the to create the most efficient economical configuration for routing wealth from the masses to the capital holders. Your value is not determined by the market, and those who tell you it is are only looking to exploit you.
There are people out there who haven’t succumbed to the nihilistic poison of modern liberalism, though the people in power have run a very successful propaganda campaign to convince you they’re evil (and I’m absolutely not talking about staple green cards to diplomas trump).
I live and run a (non-tech) business in Vietnam. I've never tried to run a business in India but I've spent quite a while there, and have worked on occasion with Indin freelancers.
I can tell you that it's nothing to do with price point. There are cultural difficulties and language barriers, sure. But Vietnamese are generally highly conscientious, well educated, incredibly hard working people. And besides this, their culture (no strong religion, high value on women in then workplace, non confrontational, accepting of LGBT and different cultures) fits very well with Western values. It's not perfect - taking criticism on board is not a strong point of Vietnamese culture, for example.
I fully understand it's not fair to dismiss huge country like India, and there are certainly many amazing Indian workers out there, and I've had to let go a fair number of Vietnamese slackers while building our team (as I would in any country). But statistically speaking, you'll probably have a far better time outsourcing to Vietnam over India.
I work for a company that has satellites in both India and Vietnam (among others).
Working with Vietnam is much better, if someone knows English then they have a decent enough education; and their local institutions make it possible to verify credentials.
They have less social issues besides.
Indian outsourcing is almost a bit outdated... Effective machine translation and globally widespread english education, they really don't have much to offer.
Their culture essentially makes it impossible to get predictable value out of a hire.
> our entire development team has been replaced. They can barely speak English.
The race to the bottom is real. xD. (ps: I've spent around a year in Vietnam and barely any software developer I met can speak any intelligible English. So I believe the OP).
> If I can do my job at home, then surely somebody can do it in the global south in tandem with AI for peanuts.
This argument can be made for in-office work too. Offices in the "global south" are much cheaper to operate than in the first world. If the work involves interacting with computers connected via the internet, it can be done from any office.
Yeah, the argument made no sense. If "outsourcing" will work this time (and it might), it's because the global south have developed quite a lot in education and infrastructure (pretty much all of the global south has good internet now, sometimes better than the US).
> Going from 10 to 10,000 qualified candidates for a position allows a far more productive match
Yeah going from 10 to 10k qualified candidates means wages go down. As companies get better and better at WFH the pool gets bigger and bigger.
Personally I think some industries will go this way and others will go RTO, depending on how competitive they are (especially around R&D). Wages for relocation/RTO will end up rising.
On the flip side: I've heard people saying software is going to be offshored and has no future at least since the 90s dot-com bust, they were still saying it in the 2000s when I was in school, so I'm skeptical that the growth of WFH will overcome all the barriers to global hiring.
Ultimately I think WFH wages will go down/stagnate (of course w/ higher quality of life for many) and companies that want it will have to pay significantly more for someone willing to RTO.
I also think it only takes one unicorn to say "we did it by having everyone RTO!" to flip everything back around.
It seems much less likely to me that this wouldn't have the effect of raising the global south up to the level of the global north, rather than drag down the global north to the global south, which would be a huge win for human flourishing. So I can't say I oppose it.
Just as importantly: If you think this is likely to happen, why not invest in those countries now? If I'm right, they're likely to generate outsized returns as they catch up. If I'm wrong, the money you have invested in the global north will actually decrease as time goes on, while the money you have in the south stays steady, leaving you in a much better position than you probably would be otherwise.
They tried remote body shops, which was a disaster (we had "tested deliverables" that didn't compile). This time there seems to be more emphasis on opening your own remote office and hiring the strong candidates there.
> How long until megacorps and SMEs actually execute this reality?
This is the best case scenario. As a country, you want your megacorps/SME to execute this somehow while keeping control. The alternative is that new megacorps/SMEs get spawned in the global south and there you have no job and no cash flow.
Offshoring & distribution of remote work may be bad for you but very very good for humanity.
There will still be local opportunities and huge benefits of being in the first world due to better education and networks. Those benefits will be diluted by remote work/offshoring increasing, and others will benefit due to that.
Probably the increased productivity itself will boost everything for everybody (better matches of employees & employers = higher productivity & cheaper products everywhere... eventually) but in times of change it can be rough in the short term if your income depended on a tightly protected market and the protection just disappeared.
I mean, if you can do your job in-office, then surely somebody in the global can do it in their office? Or what if somebody could do your job in a branch office rather than in HQ?
Is your only differentiation really just being able to physically interact with management?
Hope for new job roles. A race to automate all the things needs a lot of human effort!
As for location... yeah shit may change. But hey at least we give poor countries a fishing rod not a fish. They get richer and you could always go live in cambodia. Digital nomad becomes something normal people do. Not travelling is for the rich!
How long until megacorps and SMEs actually execute this reality? The management class and their unnecessary underlings like me have only been so resilient because companies are still on the last days of this post-covid efficiency wave, coupled with the buffer of capital from the money that was created in the last few years.
I'm usually not a doomer, but it's hard to see a way around the next downturn not creating irreversible culture change through AI offshoring and mass layoffs.