> I’ve been told for 20 years that in 5 years my job is going to be offshored. If they could have they would have long ago.

"This time it's different."

20 years ago China and India had a nascent tech industry. Now they're booming.

Talented folks all over the world - Asia, Latin America, and elsewhere - are working on hard problems.

> We had a crazy bubble of hiring during zero rate interest.

We did. This has had a tremendous impact, no doubt. But by the same coin, ZIRP has had half a decade to unwind at this point. There's other stuff going on. Tariffs, continued inflation, etc.

We're not the only industry offshoring. Hollywood has moved a lionshare of production overseas in the last 4 years. Graphics design and marketing... It's being shipped out at volume.

My personal experience, YMMV:

I was told that once video conferencing got good and internet and infrastructure became better in other places, "this time it will be different."

I was told once universities in other countries started pumping out a pool of great candidates, expats who worked for FAANGs in the US would go home to found their own companies using that pool, and those companies would take over the world. "this time it's different."

I was told during covid once everyone was remote, why would people not just hire the cheapest remote workers going forward? "This time it's different."

Don't get me wrong, I absolutely have seen more and more offshoring over time, but there's a huge inertia behind the US tech industry that's hard to change. The VC / startup ecosystem and all of it's resources have huge Bay Area inertia - it mostly hasn't even spread to the rest of the US, let alone the rest of the world, despite the cost of living and constrained talent pool in the Bay Area. There's something about getting a bunch of people with the same mindset in one spot and having them know each other, socialize with each other, make friends and networks with each other that still matters. Founders tend to build off the people and connections they know and are connected with personally.

I'm hoping it will take long enough to change for me to finish my career. We'll see. This time really may be different :).

EDIT: p.s. Agree totally it's way to complex to tell what's actually happening. The _impact_ of the end of ZRIP, the rise of AI, major tax changes on R&D amortization, and US tariffs pretty much landed at the same time, so who knows?

The difference is, offshoring in the 2000s was largely private sector driven with minimal subsidizes and investment promotion programs lead by countries and their local governments.

On the other hand, in the 2020s, India, Israel, most Eastern European states, Ireland, Costa Rica, and a couple others have launched industrial promotion subsidizes for software offshoring - often providing US$10k-30k per head in federal and local subsidizes along with subsidized office space and real estate and tax windows.

That along with the internal frictions of async work largely being ironed out due to the COVID remote work period along with an exodus of mid-level managers on work visas during the early pandemic layoffs which had an outsized impact on Indian, Chinese, and Eastern European techies in the US made offshoring much more cost competitive and effective than it was 25 years ago.

Putting your head in the sand saying it's no big deal is honestly very stupid if you are hoping to maintain your career for the next 5-10 years in any white collar job.

And it's only going to get even more competitive now that the Indian government is enacting labor reform laws to align Indian labor laws with China's [0], making it even more cost effective for businesses to offshore by reducing regulatory overhead [1].

[0] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-11-21/india-imp...

[1] - https://www.fortuneindia.com/business-news/tech-sector-expec...

> On the other hand, in the 2020s, India, Israel, most Eastern European states, Ireland, Costa Rica, and a couple others have launched industrial promotion subsidizes for software offshoring - often providing US$10k-30k per head in federal and local subsidizes along with subsidized office space and real estate and tax windows.

This isn't true either in India or most of eastern europe.

Maybe you are confusing PLI for manufacturing? Altough even that's not on per head basis.

> This isn't true either in India or most of eastern europe.

It is.

Wage arbitrage doesn't move the needle for offshoring once operating costs come to play, and outsourcing companies like EPAM, WITCH, and others juiced their margins by padding heavily, which further reduced the cost competitiveness of outsourcing without subsidies.

Czechia [0], individual Volvodships along with the federal government in Poland [1], state+center in India [2][3], Ireland [4], Romania [5], and others [6] dated list from KPMG which doesn't include state and local incentives) are all providing subsidies for GCCs now which include a payroll/per-head incentive depending on the amount spent in FDI, along with added additional subsidies per industry (eg. Life sciences GCCs get additional sets of subsidies versus a generic software GCC versus a VFX GCC).

The US has some of the weakest R&D tax incentives globally [6], with no payroll or financing incentives - only Vietnam, Philippines, Peru, and PNG are stingier, which has been a major role for why GCC expansion has been rapidly growing for the past few years.

That said, these incentives are primarily targeted at large employers becuase if you cannot provide at the minimum dozens of jobs, then the cost cannot be recouped over the long term by most subsidies. So mom-and-pop 3 person consultancies are ignored because in most cases they are parasites and large firms interested in opening large dedicated headcount offices are incentivized.

[0] - https://czechinvest.gov.cz/en/For-Investors/Investment-Incen...

[1] - https://assets.kpmg.com/content/dam/kpmg/pl/pdf/services/for...

[2] - https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=93f90e07-581d...

[3] - https://inductusgcc.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/INDIAS-GC...

[4] - https://www.idaireland.fr/getmedia/4f70d494-8ec1-4e3d-b5a5-1...

[5] - https://kpmg.com/kpmg-us/content/dam/kpmg/pdf/2021/global-rd...

I've had my job offshored in the past, in case a personal anecdote is relevant here.

Sorry that happened to you :(

I got my first programming job in ~98 while still in college. I had family members telling me then that programming was a dead end and was all going to be outsourced. I lived through .com, GFC, etc... This does feel more like a reversion to the mean at this moment rather than some crash...yet. I feel for the people who only have known a job market that was easy to step into and paid great salaries because they don't know anything else. It's a lot like the people who think they are great stock pickers because they've only been investing in the greatest bull market we've ever seen.

When I came into the job market the rule of thumb was it would take 1 month/10k of salary to find a new job. Over time that moved to 1 month/20k of salary or so. Even then, someone making a FAANG type salary should be prepared to look for a ~year for a new job matching that salary. Being able to bounce from job to job while getting big raises along the way was the exception, and ZIRP only exacerbated it.

Adding my voice to sibling comments, this is from European experience, I have had several times been dumped from consulting projects, and having to do competence transfer to the offshoring team that would take over our team roles.

Around five times since 2007.

You're zooming out and considering this negative sentiment with similar times in the past. I think that's wise. I think we should keep zooming out to other industries. Imagine you're an engineer for GM in Detroit in the 70s - would you consider the mean to be your contemporary middle-class lifestyle, or what it is in 2025? Similar for steel and semiconductors.

It goes for other places, too. Is the US's financial strength of today its mean, or is it where the UK was pre-Suez Crisis? Where Japan was in the 80s?

Let’s hypothetically say we’re all doomed. Say our jobs are going the way of manufacturing in the 70s-80s. What’s the play then?

If I was a new college grad I’d stay away from programming, but that’s been true for a while regardless of offshoring, the job market is just too soft until managers figure out they are killing their senior engineer pipeline and go back to investing in people.

What about the people already in industry? What’s our play?

Live under your means and save as much as possible? Already doing it.

Learn a new trade? Does not feel realistic while working a demanding full time job already, but if things get bad enough, sure.

Use the political apparatus to protect my employment? The system is built to prevent me from doing that. Fighting the system very well could put my employment at risk, which defeats the whole “get what I can while I still can” plan, if I assume doom and gloom on the horizon. I’m also unlikely to actually change anything by taking that risk, so the ROI is horrible.

Is there some other outcome or plan of action here I’m not seeing?

Good question. I've gone with:

>Live under your means and save as much as possible?

which, while obvious, isn't being done by all of us.

A part of me gets angry that collective action was so unpopular thanks to the view that it dragged down those who could excel individually. Every time I see software people act powerless in front of these steamrolling, enormous tech giants that control every facet of our lives, I think about how much power we had - and are on the verge of giving up.

I also try to confront the future, rather than turn a blind eye to it. Can I be happy and find self-actualisation without this identity and financial status? That's a question everyone should think about regardless of what happens.

I love the idea of FIRE as a life goal and driving financial strategy. The core principal is you save enough money up that the dividends from your investment returns (the FI part of FIRE) is enough to live off forever.

If you hit FIRE, awesome, you’re free from ever caring about offshoring or RTO or AI or whatever again.

If you don’t hit it, you’re sitting on a pile of money when a rainy day comes.