This was a pretty forseeable event after US based developers repeatedly told their bosses that development could be done just as productively remotely.
...with the same staff and teams, that's the important qualifier. Nobody thinks they're going to get the same quality team by body shopping their hiring funnel.
The problem with this argument is that it implies "you're special".
And you likely have experience, domain knowledge, product knowledge, customer knowledge and so on, so I'd argue you Are special.
But then you leave, and need to be replaced. Since I'm hiring from a pool where no-one has this special, I may as well hire from overseas. Its cheaper.
Equally, when you work remotely your special is invisible. The way you keep the customer happy is invisible. The way you enable your team (assuming your special is passed on) is invisible.
Of course there are very smart people, with lots of experience, and lots of special of their own. Finding them is hard (of course) but the reward for finding them is significant.
FAANG companies are skipping the labor broker, and building subsidiaries offshore. Those offices pay local rates, have as-strict hiring policies, and are growing.
So your point us well made- existing employees have value. But companies deal with churn. And we don't need 300 people onshore with your special skills. We can offshore 200 posts, and wait for them to come up to speed.
> Those offices pay local rates, have as-strict hiring policies, and are growing.
Everybody goes into these arrangements believing, against all history and experience, that they aren't going to lower their hiring bar. Good luck with that.
Once those 200 posts offshore come up to speed, soon they'll be acquiring incomes at comparable levels since skilled thought-work and crafts are always going to be sought after until labor is meaningless.
We saw this trend happening with manufacturing overseas. Chasing the cheapest labor is not an effective strategy in the mid to long term because it means that eventually your supply chain is at risk and the savings delta shrinks to the savings being irrelevant.
