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440 points pseudolus | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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fibers ◴[] No.45052852[source]
The accounting note is not true in the traditional sense. The field in the US is just getting offshored to India/PH/Eastern Europe for better or for worse. There is even a big push to lower the educational requirements to attain licensure in the US (Big 4 partners want more bodies and are destroying the pipeline for US students). Audit quality will continue to suffer and public filers will issue bunk financials if they aren't properly attested to.
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raincole ◴[] No.45059205[source]
It's amusing to see programmers in the US promoting remote work.

Do those people really believe they're the most intellectually superior to the rest of the world? If a job can be done purely remotely, what stops the employer from hiring someone who lives in a cheaper place?

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elevation ◴[] No.45060951[source]
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.

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1. tayo42 ◴[] No.45061048[source]
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

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2. FpUser ◴[] No.45061428[source]
This experience most likely because dealing with offshore software farms. Those are the same shit as their western counterparts and even worse because of language and logistics. On an individual scale however one can for example easily find great developers in Eastern Europe, and former USSR countries that do amazing job and for very attractive price. Just not dirt cheap.

And yes. There is nothing special about North America as far as quality of software developers in general. Mostly you get average buzzword indoctrinated not so great people with some amazing expectation salary wise.