wineandwhiskey

Senior Account Executive

Remote Work: Race to the bottom/risk of being outsourced?

Recently saw this opinion on Twitter about remote work, curious on everyone's take here.

"Controversial opinion: I think remote work is a race to the bottom that most developed country workers won't win. Don't get me wrong, I love the flexibility, but if a job can be done fully remote, it'll likely go to someone who demands a much lower wage long-term. #RemoteWork "

The benefit of remote work for companies is global talent access. High quality talent, but also low cost talent. We arguably already seen the first steps, with companies paying more/less based on where people live.

US manufacturing thought it wouldn't happen to them, because "Made in America" was such high quality. The massive difference in cost to produce in Asia overcame the quality differences, and we've seen the impact of outsourcing over the past 40 years.

There's nothing inherently "unique" about us working in local time zones, beyond maybe cultural understanding. However, this isn't an insurmountable challenge.

Are we next to be shipped out to India if we keep insisting on working remotely?

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punishedlad

Tycoon

3

Business Development Team Lead

It's an interesting question, and I think the answer is a little bit of "yes" and a little bit of "no."

There are a ton of companies pushing for RTO, which obviously makes location pretty important. There are also tons of areas in the US with a much lower cost of living than the major metros. If you're not already taking advantage of that as a remote worker, you're doing it wrong.

I also think that a lot of companies are learning that to have a cohesive team (i.e., in engineering) proximity is certainly helpful. At the very least it's good to have quarterly check ins where everyone is in person (or each person periodically). It'd be in their best interest to keep remote workers domestic for the travel costs alone.

Space_Ghost20

Valued Contributor

1

Account Executive

Travel cost and visa concerns.

Kosta_Konfucius

Politicker

3

Sales Rep

Are there any successful companies who have their entire sales team outsourced? Are the sales cycle transactional or strategic? Even at the start up level.

If there aren't any strategic sales cycles completely outsourced, why aren't they any yet?

poweredbycaffeine

WR Lieutenant

3

☕️

I don't see a company like Amazon outsourcing its AWS Enterprise Sales Team to Indonesia.

Space_Ghost20

Valued Contributor

2

Account Executive

Everyone always looks at this from the worker's perspective but fail to see the benefits of remote work for the companies.

If you're a newer company or a startup, the ability to immediately cut office space expenditure from your operating costs is huge. Beyond that, you can now recruit talent from across the country without having to physically be in that location. SAP or Microsoft, or whoever might be able to convince a candidate to drop everything and relocate for a job offer, but Joe Schmoe's unknown company X doesn't have the track record or financial stability to reliably convince experienced workers to do so. Plus, it's a way of offering a benefit to your employees without having to pay for it out of pocket, a benefit that might entice them to go with your job offer instead of an established company's.

As to why these companies wouldn't just higher cheaper foreign workers instead of more expensive American workers, maybe they will eventually. But a lot of these places have their own rules about employment and a smaller company might not want to bother with it until navigating that becomes simpler. And perhaps the door will swing both ways by that time, and foreign companies may want to hire Americans to work for them remotely.

Sunbunny31

Politicker

2

Sr Sales Executive 🐰

I honestly don't envision most companies selling 6-figure solutions outsourcing that revenue overseas or to the lowest possible sales resource. Do you?

HVACexpert

Politicker

2

sales engineer

I would say, it depends on a lot. Depends on the product, market your serving, the company you work for. Could it happen? Maybe. Certainly things like call centers for technical and customer support and service have already gone this route. In the end sales is personally and relationship driven, although it is possible outsourcing could work, I think many of our jobs are here to stay.

1nbatopshotfan

Politicker

2

Sales

No.

I work for a company that’s asking employees to come back but is accommodating every request to remain work from home, if reasonable. People who need certain security controls have to go in, everyone else is being allowed to work from wherever. I cannot imagine how much money we are saving across 90 offices that are downsizing. It’ll be a nice note in our annual report. I’d hate to be in commercial real estate.

CuriousFox

WR Officer

3

🦊

It baffles me that so many apparently didn't learn a thing while we were remote the last 3 years.

1nbatopshotfan

Politicker

1

Sales

Totally. Weak leaders are using it as a way to try and grab control of employees while strong leaders are like “work from mars, I don’t care.”

Nice to see you Fox!

FinanceEngineer

Politicker

1

Sr Director, sales and partnerships

They aren’t wrong. The biggest issue has been a skill gap internationally and time zone issues. With the use of automation and AI, that closes the gap. You need fewer skilled people to do the same amount of work. So I can see it hurting everyone except execs

coletrain

Politicker

1

Account Executive

This is already happening for lower skill, more transactional positions and those that aren't customer facing. I left a company in part because this was happening and although no one in leadership would admit it, this was plain as day.

You'll hear of more positions at larger scale startups going to lower cost jurisdictions like South America, Eastern Europe, South Asia, even Africa as this trend continues.

However, for the more intensive sales with a longer cycle and that require relationship development with prospects, that is safe for now because of the ability to more fully connect with a prospect/other company and collaborate outside of just a single transaction.

Could that change? Sure, but I'm not worrying.

Pachacuti

Politicker

1

They call me Daddy, Sales Daddy

Indian has 1B+ people willing to work for a fraction of what a US/Euro person is willing to work for and if the job can be WFH when the person lives 20 miles away, why can't that person be 2000+ miles away? Makes sense for many positions.

Maximas

Tycoon

1

Senior Sales Executive

Agree,US companies see that it's more beneficial and cost effective for em ,places like India,Phil and even Egypt are saving them millions of dollars for the low wage payments and the massive currency difference between the US$ and the other local currencies in those countries and mine is one of em:)

ChumpChange

Politicker

0

Channel Manager

Lots of contacts in the field. Some of them have used outsourced lead gen and sales teams. None of them gave them the ROI they were looking for.

IndianaShep

Politicker

0

Director of Sales and Marketing

I think overall it comes down to “fit.” I mean that I get a lot of shitty outreach everyday and I. An tell when someone me has farmed out their acquisition. Maybe they score more meetings, but those conversion rates have got to be bad (and how do you quantify opportunity cost of that level of bad brand awareness?).

To do damage to Dr Ian Malcolm “the managers were so preoccupied with whether or not they could they didn’t stop to think if the should.”

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