If software engineering is not special and can be done by anyone, so can any other role in a business. So it follows that all American roles will be offshored eventually, including ownership of the company itself - or American businesses will be universally out competed.
> If software engineering is not special and can be done by anyone, so can any other role in a business.
Indeed, however other business roles have a significant physical presence or face to face component. Sales & marketing, legal, HR, and significant parts of operations and admin have physical presence requirements in most businesses. I would expect finance/accounting to be vulnerable to offshoring, though.
Any company not selling software for $$$ is hopefully not paying bay area salaries for their engineering team.
Mid west engineering teams are low six figure or even less. The cost savings from outsourcing a team of people earning 90k is meh compared to a team earning 300k.
You'd be surprised. I live in a state most SFers consider the middle of nowhere, and my friends and I make more in absolute terms than most SF companies offer (excepting the top tier). 90k is not much more than entry level IT pay here, even new grads make more.
Of course, you can't just work on CRUD apps or mobile apps, you have to build up domain knowledge of the business.
Surprising! Whenever recruiters have gotten confused and sent me non-costal job listings the salaries have always been very low (e.g. 140k for a principal level).
Yeah, we make quite a bit more than that even at IC level.
The best jobs are typically not send out for recruiters - people check their networks first, and only go to a recruiter if nobody in their network is available.
Aren't there certifications and stuff? I'd think that from a regulatory and legal compliance perspective it'd be better to have Americans handling the books. Say someone turns out to be cooking the books, if that person is halfway across the world good luck prosecuting them (unless your company is wealthy enough to the point where you can mobilize law enforcement to do your bidding)
Perhaps someday. But for now the USA has broader, deeper, and more sophisticated capital markets than every other country and economic bloc. This is one of the key reasons why most of the largest and fastest growing tech companies are still largely owned and located here.
