I guess what's different here is that Uber is a proper tech company and knows how to identify good engineers to hire. The same cannot be said of non-tech companies that have outsourced to consultancies like Infosys and Wipro.
In my experience working with the India team at (one of) the FAANGs, it seemed like they were offloading the work that people didn't want to do in SV to the Hyderabad office (e.g. testing, maintenance of legacy systems).
But it could also be the case that there are innovative things being built in these India offices that people just assume were built in the US.
This isn't a new thing. This is just a common strategy that many companies take once they are large enough to be able to handle the extra overhead of working across a 12 hour time difference.
But it feels - to my uninformed biased mind - like more of Uber flailing around while slowly failing.
> Could a successful outsourcing project by Uber threaten all SV tech jobs?
No.
It could be part of some downward pressure at worst.
Outsourcing to India has gone on for 2-3 decades. It's not some new disruptive thing.