this post was submitted on 02 May 2024
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Google is laying off more employees and hiring for their roles outside of the U.S.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago (1 children)

He's referring to cheap labor and cheap code written by people who don't care and who are managed by a chain of people with a different set of goals, values and national loyalties.

The plan for world domination by M$ has always been about building up countries to save $. Especially one in particular with 3-4x the "human resources" that allow themselves to be mined at a fraction of the price that still gives them a better life.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (2 children)

with a different set of goals, values

Absolutely true. Profit motive, JIT employment, etc

and national loyalties.

I'm sorry, what? Indian programmers are a problem because they're disloyal?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Not necessarily disloyal. But different loyalties.

Microsoft makes software used by governments all over the world. Any government that want to gather intelligence or blackmail another government could do it through inserted exploits in Microsoft's code. The US could go straight to Microsoft to this in an official capacity. Other nations would influence the individuals working on the project to do it covertly. If your country asked you to do this, they are likely able to convince you it's in the national interest and you would be harming your country if you didn't.

It's not that they wouldn't be loyal, it's who they would be loyal to.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

Any government that want to gather intelligence or blackmail another government could do it through inserted exploits in Microsoft’s code.

You know, its funny. There was a recent documentary on Netflix, called "The Octopus Murders" that goes into a theft committed by the Reagan DOJ of a $6M software suite called PROMIS. The suite was edited and repackaged, then distributed to foreign governments under a new Reagan-Admin friendly vendor with a collection of backdoors and security bugs that US officials could use to infiltrate networks of allied nations.

If our efforts to rapidly and comprehensively outsource all our software overseas resulted in the same thing reflected back on us, I would find that very amusing.

But I've yet to see any actual evidence of malfeasance by overseas coders. More often - in my personal experience working with overseas software companies - they're overworked, underpaid, and in a race deliver quantity over quality.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

Not what I meant, more about the idea that they have their own loyalties to family, local businesses, growth of their own businesses if they leave (which they will start in their area), that type of thing. Not a slight on work ethic or generalization of actual people.

Hopefully that makes that more clear.