Comment by hintymad

Comment by hintymad 4 days ago

4 replies

People may have forgotten what happened back in early 2000s. Outsourcing was all the rage, and people in the US were really concerned. And then it came the explosive growth of internet, of mobile, of cloud, of social network, and etc. And then discussion died or at least dwindled enough that we stopped paying attention.

It looks to me that massive outsource means that companies turn to focus on incremental improvements, which won't require rapid communication in the same location. Besides, the tech has been growing amazingly for decades, other countries have caught up and therefore have growing number of talent. It's a matter of time for them to own more R&D.

mips_avatar 4 days ago

Outsourcing in the 90's/2000's failed because you didn't want to deskill engineers and reduce their scope, you wanted Jeff Dean building pagerank and building Google.

aprilthird2021 4 days ago

Outsourcing happens when the economy forces companies to cut costs. When innovations return substantial growth, most companies don't think much about the costs. We have a rough economy, bad tariff policy, a weakening dollar, and immigration policy that's reducing the overall US population (and with it, spend in the economy). All those factors push companies to need to cut costs

  • dymk 4 days ago

    Convenient how you absolve Amazon of responsibility. They were forced to do it!

    • aprilthird2021 2 days ago

      They aren't the only company in their sector laying off. It stands to reason the economy as an outside factor is heavily involved