We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13180911 and marked it off-topic.

Yes, we've had issues like this when hiring offshore workers located in the US.

Yes, 'offshore' is a race. Every critique is a racism.

Coming from said 'offshore' (at least in regards to the US), I see that 'quality' people work remotely for monies comparable to the onsite workers, launch startups, et cetera. If you outsource to the offshore for the costs, guess what, you get lesser quality for the said cost. Nothing racist in that, but I understand your position - a SJW to every household!

Yes. We pay an independent Indian contractor rates that are fully competitive with any American contractor's rates. If someone has the same skillset as the competition, their rate is going be in the same ballpark, no matter where they live.

If your statement is accurate, why offshore the work?

He came recommended by someone who had used him before. His country of residence was not relevant to our hiring decision.

I wish I could upvote this thread 100x. Everyone should have to deal with global competition and everyone competitive should have commiserate compensation. Unfortunately there are barriers to that (informational and transactional).

I also think everyone uncompetitive should get basic income.

I've been hearing a lot about basic income lately. What I wonder is: how much should a person receive?

e.g. if a competent, competitive person receives X per year, should basic income be 0.1X, 0.25X, 0.90X, etc?

Also, would competent people working remotely from a different country be taxed to contribute to the basic income fund?

I'm sure they meant to say xenophobic.

Yeah, just keep throwing those out there...one is bound to stick, right?

If you're a priori judging the quality of a someone's work based exclusively on the nation of origin, that falls within the dictionary definition of xenophobia.

You can choose to not like the connotations of the word, but that's just your choice. Definitions of words are real.

race is a bogus concept anyway, "racism" is the everyday term for xenophobia. give it a break.

Race is not a bogus concept. It may be cultural but it's still real.

Offshore is not a race. That's just xenophobia.

There is actually no such thing as different human races (in the biological sense of the word). People who believe that are... you guessed it... called racists.

I honestly doubt that many people on this forum hold that opinion. I really hope not, anyway.

I also haven't heard any good conversations about race that deny it. If you accept the existence of racism, you should accept the evident existence of race.

I think the other-ness of offshore labor has parallels to many things in the history of racism—namely, the exploitation of xenophobia and tribalism to justify cheap labor, explicit or implicit. There's also many different aspects: the xenophobia is nationalistic, not phenotypic; offshoring does not imply a poor wage or reduced quality of life for the local economy, just compared to the exploiting economy; we don't see (much) moralistic justification for offshoring.

My point being, this is a complex subject and you're not contributing much by denying race itself. There are easier ways to dispel notions you disagree with than alienating others in the conversation by denying them.

> If you accept the existence of racism, you should accept the evident existence of race.

This seems to be a non sequitur to me. I can accept that people exist who divide humanity into X number of races based on some perceived fundamental differences and treat those groups differently without accepting that their divisions are valid and in practice real.

And in practice, race doesn't exist. That is, humans don't fit nicely into the given "race" boxes. For example, North Africans don't look much like Middle Africans, so are they part of the "black" race? How about native Malays, are they Asian? Or Indians, are they black, or a separate race? What about Pacific Islanders, are they black or Asian or a fourth race? Are Mediterraneans as "white" as Scandinavians? How about Bangladeshis, are they Asian or black or part of the "Indian" race if that exists? Are Arabs white or a different race or black? What about people who have grandparents who are white, black, Asian, and Middle Eastern? What race are they?

In practice, at best you can divide into broad familial groups typically centered in countries, which results in hundreds of ethnic groupings which could hardly be called "race" in the way it is commonly used. And those ethnic groupings are the result of large amounts of intermarriage and continue to intermarry, because humanity is a big mess of DNA originating from the same source, the first of the human race. The only human race that exists is humanity itself.

No, race is just unscientific. When we talk about race we talk about it sociologically.

... "offshore workers" are not a race. You realize offshore workers could be the same race as the person posting right?

This is technically true, which is the best kind of true. Swap in nationalist, chauvinist. It's utterly clear what was meant by racism above, in spite of your semantics.

I want to write and name a macro after you! Anytime I want, I can just append -obe or -ist to any word in any document I'm writing...regardless of context or meaning! As a bonus, it will recognize file-extension-neutral files (all 822 of them!).

Yes we understand, racist is the liberal catch all for anyone you disagree with. The problem is that it dilutes the value of the word, so when someone deserves to be called racist, it people don't know if they really are racist, or are just opposed to outsourcing jobs.

Racist is the laziest argument ever and it's diluting the word. If people were more accurate about describing problems, their criticisms wouldn't be dismissed to easily.

A perfect example is Donald Trump. Every argument about Trump became "he's a racist!!11", which caused people to ignore and focus on the wrong problems with him! There was a lot of negatives to Trump, and yet everyone just said "Racist, boom I don't need to argue any more!"

People started ignoring completely legit arguments because the racist angle was so overplayed. I'm sick of hearing racist as the end-all be-all argument. It doesn't work anymore, the card is overplayed. The only place it still works is in liberal bubbles. (Note I'm socially liberal, fiscal conservative moderate, no dog in this race)

That's true. That's why there's also the umbrella term, "bigoted", when referring to bias stemming from ignorant prejudice. The watering down of "racist" to equal all forms of bigot is indeed a problem, and you have brought up a valid concern.

I don't know whether sqldba was suggesting something racist, but I would say it is not necessary to identify a particular race hint at a racist viewpoint.

When Ronald Regan said "welfare queen", did he mean to imply "black woman on welfare"? If I write, "Middle-eastern people are lazy" do I mean to imply "Arabs are lazy - but not necessarily Jews"?

I also wonder whether you can have a racist view of your own race. For example, a stereotype is that black people are inherently bad at math - are there any blacks that believe this?

Yes. You can be racist against your own race.

Given the context, you know damn well what he means - it's coded speech and I refuse to believe that you're that naive.

You claim to be able to accurately discern intent from plaintext on the internet? If true you're wasted anywhere outside the justice system.

While some offshore workers might not be MIT grads (/s) like you, branding them all as an incompetent group is neither fair nor correct. If offshoring didn't provide tangible value to the US IT industry it would've been shut down a while ago.

The tangible benefit is working for less money.

It is impossible for US corporations to do what they do with out offshoring unless migration policy is reformed , you can't have both ways guys. And offshore quality is bad is BS 99% percent of the time when you really analyze it is purportedly made to be as bad quality.