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.
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You missed the best part: it’s return to office to boost communication and collaboration… …by being in a call with the offshore team.
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).
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.
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
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 met and worked with Indians who either were born in the US or migrated more than 5 years prior.
As it turns out they are just like the rest of us. There is definitely some racial stereotypes at play.
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.
The intern fucked it up no doubt. The guy who signs a contract would never make such a mistake.
Oh no I assure you, this was an executive decision. The VP of manufacturing, specifically.
We don’t let Interns make purchase orders at all, let alone call shots like that. Especially not for big ticket items like these weldments.
It was sarcasm.
Corporate Culture is always to blame some guy with no authority
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
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.
Indians CEOs of mega corpos was the best PR move owners ever did…
Idiots think that some sort of glass ceiling got shuttered when it was really PR to make Indians work harder since they too can be a CEO if they sell themselves cheap and work harder than the lazy Americans they are replacing.
The people responsible for your anxiety are not offshore, they’re upstairs.
Working with bootlickers is tiring though.
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.
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.
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?
The thought being: I don’t want to be unemployed because Corporate moved my job offshore.
There’s more options no? Work somewhere else, work at the same place but different function, start your own business, etc. Are y’all really so scared?
Not much experience in the real world, huh?
Au contraire.
