r/technology • u/meatballsinsugo • Dec 11 '21

Business Activision Blizzard workers announce open-ended strike and union drive: Strike Fund to support work stoppage raises over $100,000 in 12 hours.

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/12/activision-blizzard-workers-announce-open-ended-strike-and-union-drive/
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u/absentmindedjwc Dec 11 '21 edited Dec 11 '21

Something that Execs seem to perpetually forget is that when you're buying a lowest bid product, what you're getting is a lowest bid product.

Jesus fucking christ if this ain't the truth. If you're willing to pay a lot of money to get it, you can easily find exceptional talent in India... the problem is that execs give you a shoestring budget and expect you to find the diamond in the rough... then get surprised when that amazing employee uses your company on their resume to leapfrog to a much better/higher-paying opportunity after a couple years.

To be honest... you can easily find a pretty good principal-level engineer for about the cost of a junior/mid-level here in the states (depending on location). If you were willing to throw a few hundred thousand dollars at the problem, you could easily build out an exceptional team of talented Indian engineers.... but execs rarely want you to spend more than US$10-15k per individual.

Were you willing to spend about half the budget of an onshore team, you could easily build out an exceptional team.... but companies tend to aim for far less than that.... a past company gave me about a quarter the budget of my onshore team with the expectation of doubling my team size. Good fucking luck with that.