How to minimize the chances of your job getting outsourced?
Over the course of the past few years, a lot of us have noticed an increase in outsourcing to lower cost of living countries. There are a few countries that fit this description, but India clearly stands above the rest. I hold no judgments on our fellow engineers in different countries, and want to focus on how to adapt to the reality we’re in.
From my limited perspective, this phenomenon is not new, with anecdotes going as far back as mid 2000s. However, it seems that the past few years of US layoffs combined with aggressive hiring overseas is becoming obvious if not outright publicly announced. And although Generative AI has created a lot of fear of potential future impact, outsourcing doesn’t seem to get the appropriate attention it deserves relative to the real current impact. The impact is especially felt in the U.S. where there is not a long term social safety net and everything from healthcare to retirement is tied to a job.
So how might we mitigate the chances of being impacted by outsourcing?
I can see at least three strategies, but would need the crowdsourced brainstorming of the Taro community to dig deep:
- Improving yourself as an individual outside of your company, which may involve switching specialty.
- Protecting your current job by delivering even more value.
- Navigating the software industry with the goal of joining a company that doesn’t have plans of outsourcing anytime soon.
I don’t want to limit the boundary of thinking with the aforementioned list, but rather wanted to provide a conversation starter.
This is certainly a national issue for the companies shipping jobs out, but given that location is at the heart of this topic, I would be curious to hear additional thoughts that are specific to major cities like New York and Bay Area here in the U.S.
![Senior Software Engineer [E5] at Meta company logo](/_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Ffirebasestorage.googleapis.com%2Fv0%2Fb%2Ftech-career-growth.appspot.com%2Fo%2Fcompany_logos%252Fmeta.jpeg%3Falt%3Dmedia%26token%3Da7a5bcc0-e178-4b5b-b71e-09bf6c6aefae&w=48&q=75){kind=small}
![Entry-Level Software Engineer [L3] at Google company logo](/_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Ffirebasestorage.googleapis.com%2Fv0%2Fb%2Ftech-career-growth.appspot.com%2Fo%2Fcompany_logos%252Fgoogle.jpeg%3Falt%3Dmedia%26token%3D780356ef-3efc-4728-9eb4-d909b75bb4a6&w=48&q=75){kind=small}
Discussion
(2 comments)- 12 months agoTech Lead/Manager at Meta, Pinterest, Kosei
hmm... I haven't spent much time thinking about my job disappearing due to outsourcing. When I reflect on why:
- The companies I joined historically haven't outsourced (Pinterest, Meta)
- I felt confident in my network + skills to find another opportunity if needed
In general, growth solves all problems. If you join a company focused on growth, e.g. pre-IPO companies like Stripe or OpenAI, the likelihood of you losing your job is minimal. (You might be assigned to different work, but you'll still have a job.)
I like the anon answer here about just ignoring the danger, which is similar to my answer above: Strategies to Mitigate Outsourcing Risk for Software Engineers
- 1
2 months agoTech Lead @ Robinhood, Meta, Course HeroUnfortunately, these decisions are often made at the executive level (VP and above), so you often won't even have a choice, even if you're the team's highest performer and are delivering massively positive ROI to the company. Executives are often grossly out-of-touch and overpaid, so they'll foolishly assume that you can magically transfer all your genius when you train your replacement.
In terms of what you can control though, you pretty much hit the nail on the head. Follow the advice in Taro to:
- Be a high performer and deliver impact
- Become a specialist/domain expert
- Build relationships, particularly with your manager/skip - This one is more important than all the others
If you do this, you'll have the highest chance of survival when it's a partial layoff which happens a lot (i.e. an executive goes to your manager/director and tells them they can keep 30% of their staff in the US and the rest go to India/Brazil/etc).
Overall, the entire issue is similar to layoffs in that you just want to be a good engineer with a strong network so that no matter what happens to you, you'll be best positioned to bounce back: "How to survive potential layoffs?"
fwiw, Meta is one of very few companies that doesn't really outsource its development to much lower-cost countries, particularly India. The tricky part is that you need to get into Meta first, and engineers are cut pretty aggressively in other ways (mainly tough performance review + stack rank).
