Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Businesses

Opendoor Cuts Jobs in India, Shifts Technical Hiring To Bay Area and Krakow (x.com) 25

Property group startup Opendoor has cut 65 jobs, mostly in India, and is shifting technical hiring to Bay Area and Krakow (Poland).

Opendoor said in a statement: "As part of our ongoing efforts to enhance efficiency, optimize talent, and streamline operations, we have made the decision to consolidate our Engineering, Product, and Design (EPD) team structure. Moving forward, we will focus our technical hiring efforts in two main hubs: the Bay Area, California and Krakow, Poland."

Opendoor Cuts Jobs in India, Shifts Technical Hiring To Bay Area and Krakow

Comments Filter:
  • His illegal immigrants got fired again for incompetence. Yet, he still wants to fire you and replace you with those same incompetent illegals.
  • Glad they are moving to Krakow (aka. EU's Silicon Valley).
  • Two direct hits! [tomwritesaboutstuff.com]

  • by Somervillain ( 4719341 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2025 @02:19PM (#65161945)
    All the AI hype we're dealing with today? We saw it 20 years ago with Indian Outsourcing. Jensen Huang tells investors people will never need to learn how to code now with AI...20 years ago, slashdot was running articles daily about how no one will ever write code in the USA and all tech jobs will move to Asia...and how for every mediocre American programmer, you can get 10 PhDs in computer science from India grateful for the opportunity to write your shitty car loan processing code for the 1/5 the cost.

    Anyone in the industry knew it was bullshit. For starters...some 22yo Indian comp sci grad...does he want to live in an expensive city in India and get your scrap surplus projects?...or move to the USA, UK, Germany, etc and earn 5x the salary and have a global adventure and work on the the stuff that actually matters to your company....yeah...that just accelerated brain drain.

    For those that chose to remain in India?...anyone you wanted to hire?...well...they either moved to you...or someone like Microsoft or Google hired them at a much higher salary and treated them with a lot more respect.

    In the end, no one really saved much money by moving operations to India. Nothing is more expensive than a cheap programmer....anyone you want to hire?...everyone else wants to hire them too...simple supply and demand. Finally, if you find a great offshore programmer...well, due to supply and demand, they would surely get poached by someone who wants to pay them more and treat them with more respect. EVERYONE hires in India, but it's because they want the talent India provides, not to save money.

    Secondly, as most here know, the Indian middle class has a lot of arranged marriage and being a software engineer carries more social status there...so yeah...you want a hot wife?...no need to be charming or likeable...just work really hard and get a good job and mommy will get you a hot wife...hotter than any woman who would actually date you if you got a choice (that describes well over half of my coworkers...SMOKING hot wives...given to chubby smokers with pencil arms, horrible mustaches, and no social skills or redeeming features that anyone knows of). In the USA and EU, most programmers get into programming because they like technology...if they find it's not a fit for them, they do something else. In India?...well...it's quite frowned upon by your family and wife's family to get married as a software engineer and then decide after you have kids "Hey...this job sucks and I hate it...I want to teach...or sell real estate...or open a restaurant." So...there are a lot of excellent programmers in India...just like everywhere else. There are a lot more shitty programmers in India, both in absolute numbers and percentage-wise...because the shitty ones are pressured not to leave the field.

    Why? Well, every dogshit American programmer I've worked with?...they moved to management if they were charming and teaching, real estate, or their fallback career otherwise. The same applies to European ones. Being a software engineer is a rational decision based purely on the merits of the job...not social status or your ability to get married. There's no shame for them to sell real estate if it pays the bills. For people outside India, if being an engineer doesn't suit them...they find a calling that does....for every Indian I've talked to, leaving the field (unless you moved to management or another prestige profession, like doctor), you will get shame from your family and especially your in-laws.

    But regardless, the point is that there's nothing magical about India. They have AMAZING devs...and SHITTY ones, just like anyone else. And honestly?...they're not that much cheaper than American devs, especially after you factor in the productivity loss as well as the lack of loyalty because they have so many options if they live in a tech city, like Bangalore. You get someone amazing and train them and they're a rockstar? How long before Meta, Netflix, or Google poaches the
    • Very well put. And this line made my day, very, very true:

      Nothing is more expensive than a cheap programmer

    • by MobyDisk ( 75490 )

      To add to your list of outsourcing woes:
      1) Time difference
      2) Cheating / Work ethic

      The time difference means that your hire a super-duper developer in California, who gets up at 5am to meet with the India team at 5:30pm their time. Assuming they work for 1 hour together, if the issue is not resolved, you lose 1 entire day. The next day, they collaborate for another hour, but still have confusion/questions/training -- so that's 2 days. So every hour of collaboration time takes 24 times longer. This is les

      • If a company needs a dev center in India, it needs to build one there. The issue of communication is there, especially with US teams, but we communicate asynchronously or both stay up late/wake up early to meet. We never need to do that unless someone like a manager is involved, at which point "put a meeting on the calendar" is their default reaction to everything.
        Many companies invest in H1B visa programs to bring engineers to the US. Most of my colleagues are now citizens through that program. Yes, they d

  • Why should I care that 65 people got laid off at a startup I never heard of. 65 people probably get laid off from startups I never heard of every single day.

Staff meeting in the conference room in 3 minutes.

Working...