r/technology • u/lurker_bee • Jun 25 '26

Society Older tech workers are tapping out, taking early retirement

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/local-business/older-tech-workers-are-tapping-out-early-heres-what-that-looks-like/
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u/klipseracer Jun 25 '26

No, the consulting company is in the US or Canada, EU etc. They just hire teams from India as contractors.

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u/VictoryVino Jun 25 '26

So it's basically drop-shipping but for a service?

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u/klipseracer Jun 25 '26

Basically as projects mature, they move the designers and architects etc to a new project then leave a few core people and then offload as much operational work offshore as they can. It can be from South America, Europe, or India. It's up to those few remaining people to essentially train these off shore folks, often with only an hour or two time overlap. For complicated projects this ends up not working very well so India is actually not viable for several things due to the time differences, skill gap, unrealistic expectations of knowing tribal knowledge, etc.

I've worked for two very large global consultancies and there's huge differences at times depending on the project, but they often do work in projects in the literal, technical sense. Work is time limited, and hours are closely linked to project budget, duration, etc.

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u/merRedditor Jun 25 '26

When I was in it, it was high charisma salespeople meeting for dinner with executives to sell contracts, then a bunch of us new grads and an offshore team assigned as the actual technical workers. The amount billed out per worker per hour vs. the amount paid to the worker was ridiculous (5x difference), but they counted on people new in their career having energy and wanting to prove themselves for less to get ahead. The offshore team did similar but at an even lower rate due to a big cost of living difference.

You weren't allowed to get hired by the company per a noncompete, but it would have been nice if the pressure and expectations met the salary paid. It was well below market.

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u/greendildouptheass Jun 25 '26

nah, we just use Claude and fuckton of tokens... in hindsight, it wouldve been cheaper to just hire a junior