> Still hired a lot of Americans. Thinking that remote work will be the end of American workers has been the driving force behind outsourcing pushes for decades, but it hasn’t worked that way.
The difference is that back then the project lead could explore outsourcing certain roles to India, EE and LatAm, while today the VP can explore outsourcing the project lead roles to those countries. These countries have built up their own native tech talent, many of whom already bring more to the table than the typical American - they work longer hours, for cheaper, and often bring a lot more experience. I've seen companies who only run sales teams with Americans, with the rest of the workforce being shipped out.
Notably, India already has nearly 2000 GCCs (Global Capability Centers, mega complexes of offices for foreign companies) set up, with that number only projected to increase as more mid-market firms expand. While many of them are just back offices, some of them, like Walmart's GCC, is the entire tech division - the CTO remains in the US, while the entire software team is in India. While earlier the Indian team would have had to adjust their timings to USA's, now quite a few US-based employees have had to adjust their timings to India's.
All of that has been true for decades, except maybe the specific numbers.