The "India Dependency" is a ticking time bomb for global IT infra (and also other major sectors)
Posted by Normal_student_5745@reddit | sysadmin | View on Reddit | 238 comments
I just woke up in the morning and saw this news https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2026/apr/09/delhi-india-gas-energy-crisis-migrant-workers-leave
and some thoughts camn into my mind.
"if India got attacked or being in energy crisis, we may have huge problem"
It’s odd to think but... we might be one major regional conflict/disaster away from a total global IT collapse.
If India gets dragged into a prolonged energy or proxy crisis due to the escalating Iran situation, the "offshoring resource" becomes a global catastrophe. Most people don’t realize how many Fortune 500 companies have completely gutted their domestic teams. We aren’t just talking about "customer support" anymore =>>it’s core DBAs, cybersecurity monitoring (MSSPs), and the actual backbone of the global banking system
(nowdays, marketing, sales are even offshored. basically almost everything)
If the power grid in Bengaluru or Hyderabad goes dark because of an energy crisis (like we’re starting to see in Delhi), there is no "home team" to pass the baton back to (due to so many companies cut off whole entire team in their country and offshored). The documentation and institutional knowledge are gone. We’ve traded resilience for cost-savings, and we’re one "Strait of Hormuz" blockade away from finding out there’s no Disaster Recovery plan for an entire subcontinent going offline.
I know its very odd thoughts but I wanted to share..............
ensemble-learner@reddit
Good! Let those Fortune 500 companies fail.
They have to learn a hard lesson that there is risk to treating people as a purely capitalistic means to an end.
In the absolute worst case scenario that India goes to war? After the outages have lasted maybe a month or longer in length, only then they will seriously consider hiring back in the United States.
Unfortunately for those managers who have to execute that process, that will be very hard to justify to even higher level management because the cost of living here has truly risen. Alternatively, workers here could seriously be so thirsty for jobs as to accept a lower wage. Which is what everyone who still has a direct deposit set up will be campaigning for.
Please don't do that, guys. I'm begging you, let them bleed.
MBILC@reddit
They are more likely to just move to one of the other massive providers, like the ones in Costa Rica, that do call centers and support...
They will just find the next cheapest company to do it off-shore...
FCoDxDart@reddit
You think being on hold for 5 minutes for India call support. There’s no way in hell Costa Rica has the capacity to support that kinda volume.
UpperAd5715@reddit
That and while indian accent english can suck and be really incomprehensible they still have english as one of their native languages. Costa rica does not...
MBILC@reddit
I lived in Costa Rica for 14 years working in online poker, the call centers they have there, people's English is good, a 7+, and the accent is far easier to understand, even if strong vs most Indian accents.
But yes, they likely do not have the sheer volume of staff in said call centers.
UpperAd5715@reddit
Yeah as i was reading your post i was thinking "fair point but do they have india levels of quality english speakers?"
The best english speakers probably get those jobs because they speak good english whereas india has a ton of them because it's one of their native languages, or at least very common in their businesses and thus schools
Martin8412@reddit
Time to polish your Spanish skills
tankerkiller125real@reddit
Honestly, best to polish those skills anyway, if you select Spanish when calling help centers I'd say about 98% of the time you end up talking to someone who actually knows what the fuck they're doing and are capable of actually providing support.
Or, get a phone with built in live audio translation capabilities (like the Pixel 10 lof devices can)
Hoooooooar@reddit
Its not that easy, these tech companies have spent 30 years setting up the "talent" pipeline in india, through schools, programs, and shit loads of other avenues. You can't just bop it on somewhere else.
MBILC@reddit
For the level of skill I get 99% of the time when calling one of said call centers, even via paid support from vendors, a homeless person off the street could better assist most people.
mrphiljayfry@reddit
Yes and I am hardly working to lay every brick I can find in the way of those executives and their job stealing Agenda 😌❤️
blckshdw@reddit
A company I worked at renamed the Human Resources dept “Human Capital”. HC for short. They’re not even trying to hide the fact they don’t give a fuck about you. I used to be a resource for the company, now I’m just property to be sold, traded or discarded like an old fax machine
N7Valor@reddit
Well I already considered the term "Human Resource" to be Orwellian.
Just say it out loud:
"Hi, my name is Bob, and I am a Human Resource."
Makes me sound like a tree that you chop down and burn to ash in a campfire.
NotCis_TM@reddit
fun fact: in Brazil, HC usually stands for either Hospital das Clínicas or Habeas Corpus. So I guess that renaming your HR to HC has a jail connotation as well
Sea-Aardvark-756@reddit
Make sure you abbreviate to HC as much as possible to avoid work when they update again to Human Cattle
blckshdw@reddit
Nailed it
N7Valor@reddit
Wishful thinking IMO. I've learned long ago that life isn't fair.
From what I've observed, C-levels "Fuck Around" then jump ship to another company (like Locusts) in a golden parachute, then other people do the "Finding Out". That's what FAFO means to me.
Didn't the US government pay reparations to slave owners to compensate them for their "loss of property"?:
https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured-documents/dc-emancipation-act
Unless there are direct negative consequences to the people who actually Fucked Around, why should we expect them to learn anything other than how stupid and gullible people are?
SyntheticDuckFlavour@reddit
After witnessing a number of financial crises in history, the lesson here is that people in finance never learn anything from past mistakes. Greed and instant financial gratification blinds those who should know better. The only solution to this kind of problem is regulation and heavy penalties for breaking the rules.
TrueStoriesIpromise@reddit
Those Fortune 500 companies employ tens or hundreds of thousands of people. They may lose their homes, they may not be able to pay for college tuition for their children. It’s really not a nice thing for a giant company to fail.
ChemicalExample218@reddit
Oh, you mean, get bailed out by the government. Capitalism might be ok if it wasn't for all corporate welfare.
OnettNess@reddit
Sounds to me like a fantastic opportunity to bring those jobs back personally.
MBILC@reddit
If only most companies saw how many off-shore support staff systems are breached and infected and them stealing your companies data....but hey! get to save some money...
berryer@reddit
counterpoint: do they care? How much was Sony hurt by the big PSN data breach? Experian?
tankerkiller125real@reddit
Okta is the big one that immediately comes to my mind... Twice offshore support resulted in major issues, the first to internal Okta systems with the ability to access any client tenant, and the second time their support instance, where customers had shared HAR files, some of which contained auth tokens and other sensitive information.
MBILC@reddit
This, if anyone is on LinkedIn, follow Britton White, the posts he does around breached users who are often support for large corps that offshored their support...
BYOD devices.. no security..
https://www.linkedin.com/in/britton-white-739b966/
cluberti@reddit
Is the company still going to return shareholder value for a bit longer? If yes, then then they don’t actually care.
StarkillerWindu@reddit
Tell us you don't understand I.T. outsourcing without telling us you don't understand I.T. outsourcing.
If I.T. could no longer be outsourced to India, it would not mean jobs for the U.S.
It would just mean more I.T. jobs for the Philippines, Vietnam, Poland/ Eastern Europe, Argentina/ Latin America and the other top outsourcing countries after India!
Frankly, Americans don't want those I.T. jobs at the rates they pay in those countries and if American companies that do outsource had to pay American I.T. salaries then many would have to just go out of business! Many of those small-to-medium-sized businesses only exist because they could outsource I.T.!
Far from "bringing jobs back" that never were here in those kinds of numbers to begin with, it would cause Americans who have jobs at the businesses that rely on outsourced I.T. to lose jobs when those American businesses went under because they couldn't have afforded American I.T. to start their businesses to begin with!
Used_Gear8871@reddit
Quite a few countries on your list are having the same oil crisis…
StarkillerWindu@reddit
India isn't having an oil crisis? Again, the article was about cooking oil canisters.
India gets most of its oil from Russia, not through the Strait of Hormuz. It is Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka that have been facing severe fuel shortages and high debt.
But, yes, two countries on the list, Philippines and Vietnam, do rely heavily on shipments passing through the blocked Strait of Hormuz, and are experiencing severe shortages so they are running four-day work weeks, work-from-home mandates, and alternating driving days.
Poland/ Eastern Europe and Argentina/ Latin America are, as India is not, also not having a gas crisis
StarkillerWindu@reddit
The article is about gas cooking canisters?
ZippySLC@reddit
We've had a lot of luck with hiring small teams of IT contractors from South America. Not only do you get the benefits of having them in a closer time zone but in my experience they're also more competent and more likely to follow policies and procedures.
OnettNess@reddit
Oh no, we might have to outsource to local MSP's instead of Cognizant! The horror!
Estrezas@reddit
But.. they did you think about the shareholders?
ThreePointedHat@reddit
Our company started moving everything back in house because the quality of Indian contractors is even lower than when it first outsourced the entry level IT jobs and we are finally feeling the hurt of not having internal talent to easily recruit from. We also had a couple close security calls with the Indian contractors just fragrantly violating regulation guardrails we put in place.
Within 10 years hopefully all the west wakes up to the idea having all your entry jobs done by people overseas with no actual care for your company doesn’t actually produce value.
CaptainWart@reddit
I mean, most of the shareholders have no actual care for your company, they just want short term profits. As long as they can continue to be profitable nothing else matters, and they're all planning to take their money and run before anything bites them in the ass.
goobernawt@reddit
Yes, but we've decided that companies are legally obligated to maximize shareholder value. So if offshoring makes financial sense for the shareholders today (not obligated to tomorrow's shareholders), it's happening.
N7Valor@reddit
Not a lawyer, but I thought Ford VS Dodge was decided in Michigan supreme court and effectively carries no legal weight outside of Michigan?
There might be a good reason I'm not a lawyer though.
goobernawt@reddit
Wasn't actually aware of Dodge v. Ford, that's interesting. I was more thinking that Delaware law, under which a large percentage of American businesses are incorporated, holds that shareholder benefit has the highest priority. That seems to be largely interpreted as profits for shareholders over everything else.
I am also not a lawyer and am partially talking out of my ass.
ReputationNo8889@reddit
Enshittifiers getting enshittified and complaining is peak capitalism
Necessary_Emotion565@reddit
It happens in waves as CEOs get their bonus, leave and a new CEO comes in, and insources to fix the shit quality from the offshore workers
Just terminated some shit quality offshore workers, paying contractor wages but having to train them and micro manage them and they screwed stuff up regardless
ThreePointedHat@reddit
Ironically this is basically exactly what happened
Geminii27@reddit
Damn, dude, let people have their spicy food.
Necessary_Emotion565@reddit
Not in open plan offices, thank you very much.
Geminii27@reddit
Now I'm imagining someone with food so pungent that the other corporate teams can smell it in a different timezone.
seatux@reddit
Its a culture known for fragrant incense and liquid perfumes tho.
daschande@reddit
Sounds like the early 00s after the offshoring of the 90s. And the early 10s after the offshoring in the late 00s. Now it's the 20s and everyone is torn between offshoring and AI.
All of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again.
bonewithahole@reddit
Are thin clients back!!??
Unhappy_Clue701@reddit
You jest, but we still use some, and are about to order a few dozen new ones to replace some EOL ones. They have their place still in some environments.
daschande@reddit
(Insert joke here about gesturing wildly towards VMware!")
mloDK@reddit
So say we all
daschande@reddit
So say we all.
Maro1947@reddit
Execs need to pump those bonuses!
Accenture has entered the chat
zeroibis@reddit
Pump and Dump!
Infinite-Land-232@reddit
https://youtu.be/9DWLv4tQsz4?si=kGKqEV2zgvThecij
Maro1947@reddit
\^ Top tier effor there!
wanderinggoat@reddit
the funny thing is I have seen a pile of management who have had a long and prosperous career of either - cutting costs and off shoring things sucessfully OR - bringing things back in house and fixing all the problems caused by offshoring things.
BrainWaveCC@reddit
Forget "doesn't actually produce value". Wait until they realize that it "significantly increases risk to current revenue"...
Kelsier25@reddit
Meanwhile my F500 company just laid off the entirety of IT and outsourced it all to India..
wawzat@reddit
There should be a maximum scentence for fragrant violations.
the_DOS_god@reddit
You hiring? 😀
Thorogrim23@reddit
I was just thinking the same thing reading that comment.
DoctorOctagonapus@reddit
Their fleet of gold-plated Ferraris won't pay for themselves!
guppybumpy@reddit
Outsource PR instead of IT. Let Sanjay pick up the shareholder call and explain the situation at hand. I’m sure they’ll enjoy that rocket ride.
mcslackens@reddit
New task: you need to write the script he’ll follow to the letter
Dave_A480@reddit
Think of your own paycheck....
Because there will be less to go around at the senior levels if we play stupid games with the lower level stuff that's done overseas....
vbpatel@reddit
No, he’s probably one of those selfish poors trying to eat food every day without a second thought for the suffering shareholders
Normal_student_5745@reddit (OP)
krilltazz@reddit
The evolution of this meme is peak.
CanadianPropagandist@reddit
Tech houses apparently need to learn this lesson repeatedly every five years since 2000.
ClayDenton@reddit
Some do, others do things more smartly tbh, hiring permanent off shore roles slowly.
My company is currently hiring permanent roles in India and have very stringent interviewing and technical interview standards... Often that means filtering through 1000 CVs for one job. It's a highly populated country who is focusing on tech, of course the talent is there.
I'm far more insecure about my job using this way of hiring because their hires are actually very good. At least when hiring Indian contractors en masse you can feel secure knowing there will be a quality problem. I haven't been laid off yet, but the backfills are no longer happening in the US.
Sea-Oven-7560@reddit
it does repeat but each time they repeat the process India gets a little better and the gap gets a little smaller. The problem I see is the "Global Competency Centers", basically companies are going all in on India and leaving US workers behind. They are putting all their effort into making the offshore teams SMEs in every product/solution and letting the on shore team fend for themselves. The end result will be exactly what they want cheap unskilled onshore resources and cheap skilled offshore resources, the only problem is when due to security reasons and regulatory reasons you can't use the off shore team and then you are more than fucked, but they just don't care.
malikto44@reddit
I've heard about that at some larger companies. They open huge centers in India, and put a lot of money in that facility, to the point where internal company policy becomes only hire from India, and anyone else, just say they are not qualified. If there are people who physically need to be in other countries, ship them off on a B-1 visa (using US visas here), let them stay for six months, rotate them back, send another SME, repeat. You don't even need H-1Bs... just a bunch of B1s staffing a call center who get replaced every six months.
Thorgal2005@reddit
I don't think you can find as many unemployed IT people in any country to take up those jobs. You'd have to get rid of the services IT guys provide now.
Nietechz@reddit
LMAO you really believe the jobs will come back? The jobs will come back, Yes, but along with Indians. Don't be racist.
N7Valor@reddit
Nah, they'll either offshore to a different country or replace jobs with LLMs (or try to anyway).
If the mindset is "Profits Over People, By ANY Means Necessary", this would be what they consider "a minor setback". No possible options (in the mind of lizard people) lead back to "pay 'Muricans".
Used_Gear8871@reddit
Oh thank god, I was feeling like a giant asshole for celebrating this. I feel sorry for the people but yeaaa we need those jobs back in the US.
QuietGoliath@reddit
Not just the US my dude (or dudette) every western country!
bedpimp@reddit
Yep. Bring those jobs back and let AI have them!
ultimatebob@reddit
They're probably not coming back. Not without out a few attempts to replace them with AI agents, anyway.
Cheomesh@reddit
To South America I'd imagine.
desmaraisp@reddit
South american workers >> indian workers anyway, be it only for the timezone difference
Fallingdamage@reddit
Yeah. All the real good IT professionals that lost their job to bare-minimum-effort indian tech farms will have more opportunity to get good jobs again.
Useful-Nerve6153@reddit
they'd rather move jobs to sea than back to usa dude
TKInstinct@reddit
Man I hope so, I could use to get out of my contractor role.
QuietGoliath@reddit
So what you're telling me is if India gets bombed, my job remains secure?
Parking-Asparagus625@reddit
And if Pakistan gets bombed they’ll bomb India. Seems like a good deal to me. I was in that camp well before today’s recruiter message on LinkedIn asking for my email to send me the job description instead of just pasting it there.
notmyredditacct@reddit
if you are interested in this position that has nothing to do with anything on your linkedin profile and pays half your current salary please revert your resume asap
regards
Parking-Asparagus625@reddit
It actually matched my current title, which makes me think it’s ai but with an Indian persona. 2026 is just getting started.
notmyredditacct@reddit
my favorite is when you get 10 calls from 5 different people at the same ”company” about a position that you know they’re not even first party on.. especially after you have talked to the first one, like seriously people, coordinate.
Parking-Asparagus625@reddit
No reason to deal with Indian recruiters when they’re not even in my country.
tankerkiller125real@reddit
My favorite is the Indian offshore company trying to recruit Americans so they can fulfill some of their contractual obligations. Ideally all Americans would tell them to fuck off and they'd lose those contracts, but people also need to put food on the table, so I get it that it's not always possible to do that.
Elegant-Sense-1948@reddit
By all technicalities… i mean fuck bro i guess
smirkingcamel@reddit
Not really.
It's the same kind of mindset that led to tariff fiasco the world is currently dealing with. The world's supply chains are so deeply integrated that celebrating loss of opportunities for another nation half way across the globe is not a wise mindset.
The cascading effects will most likely trigger a situation that could risk your job as well.
Besides, people who hear of India and think IT support, need to wake up and relaize that IT support was dominant in 2000-2010 era but now it's just the tip of the iceberg.
The slurs and hate speech are now more outdated than the tech debt of the big banks. All of it needed to be updated yesterday.
Please do the needful, Thanks and Regards.
radicldreamer@reddit
Not only that, but quality of tech support would rise 6 million percent.
vbpatel@reddit
But how will you know when to do the needful?
radicldreamer@reddit
Is 6 enough times?
AcidBuuurn@reddit
Seems like your new gig is moonlighting as a Pakistani trying to bait India into a war.
1337_Spartan@reddit
Only if the suits don't know about Eastern Europe....
dcssornah@reddit
Pakistan, please do the needful. Thx dirty mike and the boys
Quiet_Yellow2000@reddit
Support the US government sending weapons to Pakistan then lol.
Normal_student_5745@reddit (OP)
I guess you are correct……
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VividVigor@reddit
No probs. Exec have got Ai now. Just script it. Sprint ends on Tuesday. Fyi
AstralVenture@reddit
Maybe Fortune 500 companies shouldn’t have gutted their IT department of specialized roles, and outsourced to a country in which they can’t provide support after noon EST because they’re sleeping and aren’t really any better at providing support.
SureElk6@reddit
what if Americans need to be drafted to war? what will happen then?
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/04/09/politics/us-military-draft-registration-2026
Lameduck91@reddit
Fuck India who cares
NiceFirmNeck@reddit
I do (I live there)
martiNordi@reddit
Come on, executives never think about such "unimportant" long-time stuff. It's cheaper now which gives them more money in the short period and that's all that truly matters.
BlazeFireHorse76@reddit
nearshore
Tygronn@reddit
Not that I want anything bad to happen to anyone.
But let it burn.
wickedGamer65@reddit
Laughable level of geopolitical understanding.
whythehellnote@reddit
Capitalism introduces fragility. There's no profit in spending money to deal with once in a generation events, especially when all your competitors do the same.
Modern capitalism struggles to see past the next quarter, modern CxOs only care about the next 3 years and the availability of three envelopes.
BOT_Solutions@reddit
This is less about one country and more about what happens when businesses optimise for cost so hard that they remove their own safety net. The real ticking time bomb is overconcentration. Too many firms have cut local capability so deeply that a serious disruption in any major delivery hub would expose how little resilience they actually have.
chrisgore-spor@reddit
Lets not forget the massive amounts of fertiliser that gets exported from the Arap states. That fertiliser is getting stopped at the straight of Hormuz at the moment and is need for global food requirements. India specifically has a huge dependency on arab fertiliser for their food source. That, to me is the bigger and more iminent issue facing us at the moment.
SpongeFixation@reddit
Please, do the needful.
JohnnyricoMC@reddit
Any organisation that offshored their whole IT and gets impacted by such a hypothetical scenario, can look for sympathy in the dictionary between shit and syphilis for all I care. Only the human element is entitled to sympathy.
These organisations made their choice, they then have to live with the consequences.
tapwater86@reddit
This sounds like a business problem and I don’t own a business.
mrbios@reddit
Gives me a feeling of schadenfreude reading that. It's sad that it means so much difficulty and potentially suffering to so many in india because of what could happen ......... But it would be a wonderful sight to see all those jobs come home and put an abrupt stop to IT outsourcing.
viral-architect@reddit
They will never come back. They'll go somewhere else.
mumpie@reddit
Offshore jobs were moving out of India to Vietnam and Eastern European countries before the invasion of Ukraine.
The motivation was cost as those countries were cheaper than India.
wh0else@reddit
Exactly. India has a growing middle class and a 7% inflation rate. Entry roles are cheap, but the savings drop at every promotion level, and they expect more regular promotion than American or European teams.
malikto44@reddit
IIRC Their worker protection laws are stricter than the US, ironically.
Normal_student_5745@reddit (OP)
It’s a strange realization, but the logic of offshoring completely fell apart for me after reading this. In IT, we obsess over Disaster Recovery and multi-region redundancy for our data, yet we’ve consolidated our most critical resource=human capital=>>>>into a single geographic basket.
We’ve built high-availability systems that are managed by low-availability staffing models. If one region faces a systemic crisis, the 'backup' doesn't exist because the institutional knowledge has been entirely hollowed out at home.
_-pablo-_@reddit
Look, I agree but tell that with a straight face to any of the Indian CTOs in American Banking and see what they say
Normal_student_5745@reddit (OP)
okey calling my boss now
uraniumingot@reddit
Well, data is invaluable, "human resources" are't.
beren12@reddit
And we sent all out mfg to china…
ChuchoGrind@reddit
That would be amazing. I just also don’t wish for Indians to suffer.
AlexisFR@reddit
They'll be fine, India is nowadays a big, modern, resilient and adaptable civilisation!
zhantoo@reddit
If there is a power outage, that is an issue, of course - but the people mentioned in the article are not exactly the type of people you talk about here.
I don't know for sure, but without doing any research, I feel fairly confident that while it is much cheaper to outsource, a person in India working in IT for a US or an EU company, is paid more than a construction worker Fx.
So I doubt they are the people returning to their home towns.
Sobeman@reddit
a lot of off shore support now is going to Singapore and the like.
zeroparity@reddit
Singapore is a high cost location. It’s as costly as New York or London.
cubic_sq@reddit
As with all outsourcing, regardless where it is outsourced to, it is never cheaper and quality hides behind what is in contract for SLAs. But it does reduce headcounts and allows blame shifting to make C level teflon coated (provides those individual Cs weren’t in power when the original contract was signed)
Romano16@reddit
First it was blue collar jobs. Now it was white collar jobs.
At what point do we reign in corporations before most Americans don’t work? And was the article clear points out, is this not a national security risk as well? To outsource entire industries?
Funny how the powers to be only understand that when it came to oil.
N7Valor@reddit
Oh the national security thing already happened:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jA7izUvVWI
GnarlyNarwhalNoms@reddit
In impoverished developing nations, you often see whole industries outsourced to foreign companies (eg oil extraction).
The effect of this is that despite large amounts of productivity, most of the jobs go to foreign workers. This also reduces domestic technical development and narrows job markets. Concentration of wealth in these industries leads to increased authoritarianism and democratic backsliding, as well as cronyism and corruption.
Sure glad that's not happening in the good ol' US of A, tho.
rocklookerater@reddit
Oh no. I might have to talk to the Americans the turned my service on instead of the Indian customer service.
Plastivore@reddit
I had a similar thought recently: manufacturing has been relocated in China, and now they hold us by the balls. Guess what we did with IT? The same thing with India.
And I’m lucky enough to work with some talented Indian colleagues, but that doesn’t change the fact that if Modhi decides to do something crazy (or crazier, I guess) tomorrow, he can just go ‘what are you going to do about it? Without India, your company comes to a standstill’.
I guess IT is a bit easier to relocate back home than the whole logistics chains we’ve lost to China, but still not done by snapping our fingers, indeed.
glitch841@reddit
The c suite will probably wait until its too late and we will all pay the price.
Only silver lining is onshore staff should see a boom in job opportunities at least for a few years before management outsource it all again.
wrootlt@reddit
My previous job had a few thousands of contractors from India and other places. Dev, dba, infra, network, etc. Then company went and gutted whole internal end user team globally (100+) and contracted another Indian company. My role terminated. It is already a reduced performance and quality. Yeah, if India's tech hubs go dark, it will be devastating.
TonyBlairsDildo@reddit
Good. I hope those companies go under, and "The India Incident" goes down in history as an infamous lesson on supply chain and business continuity resilience.
I'm not anti-India in the slightest (lived there myself for many years), but I am very anti "outsourcing" - domestically or internationally. Companies should nurture their own nation. It should be as unpalatable to outsource work abroad as it would be to, say, outsource competency of courts to one in Thailand, or just let another country's legislature write laws for you because it saves on payroll domestically.
The gutting of "low level" staff to abroad has severed the progression pipeline. No more help desk to sysadmin progression. No more QA to developer. No more customer support to account management/sales.
Kids over "here" not offered a start, so kids over "there" can. I hate it.
XanII@reddit
Good. I want to see those calls. And the 'No' they get. Or in some cases the rare salty consulting counters. They really dont deserve anything else.
Some day in the west some sense comes back and these risks dont mean anything to them. The dude who torched the toilet paper facility is the future. No loyalty no connection no nothing to tie him down to the place. Always a good reminder that for some there exists a attitude where the boss is beaten to death when there is problems with pay checks. Some C-tier people are hell bent on bringing that here as always loyalty is just assumed even if in the west companies actively try to cultivate disloyalte they really have no idea how deep it can go the other way. The TP-guy demonstrated how deep it is.
Regen89@reddit
Extremely true, but personally I would worry more about the level of access given to some of these MSPs/large indian script reading firms in critical infrastructure across those same f500. You can be sure as shit these guys will be providing housing and food to their people who maintain these contracts (these companies have 8-9 figures a YEAR contracts with F500s and pay the actual workers peanuts -- but they absolutely would make sure their families could survive if they aren't already providing housing etc as part of their compenstation).
It would be A LOT easier to blackmail, threaten, kidnap family, or otherwise compromise someone in India (compared to anywhere in the West) who have credentials to cause hundreds of millions in damages to individual F500 companies and a hell of a lot more damage to entire countries if you planned it well enough and compromised enough people.
Most are REALLY trying to reduce risk right now since the Stryker incident, but I would say for orgs that swung too far towards outsourcing that this is one of the biggest attack vectors out there at the moment.
Bill-T-O-Double-P@reddit
I for one would LOVE to see those jobs come back.
plinkoplonka@reddit
If "offshore outsourcing" collapses overnight due to an energy crisis, everyone else will "do the needful" and productivity will increase at least 300%
l0st1nP4r4d1ce@reddit
I would not shed a tear if there was a reversal in off-shoring. But I suspect they will just export the volume to places like Mexico, Costa Rica, Philippines, etc.
I suspect the overwhelming adoption of AI is to offset some of the impact from stuff like this.
ReptilianLaserbeam@reddit
This could be true if it was 10 years ago. Many companies have moved away from India to other emerging markets.
SexBobomb@reddit
outsourcing is always cyclical
Ferretau@reddit
It just comes down to decisions coming home to roost, they decided to offshore to save money and get big bonus's now they have to deal with the consequences.
bi_polar2bear@reddit
Yeah, if Capitol One fail, I won't shed a tear. They outsourced 90% of ITyears ago. They sent most jobs to India. I hope the shareholders go broke. F them, Gregory Bailor, Richard Fairbank, and all those assholes.
DesertFungus@reddit
Bank of America did the same. Ironic for the name. Or maybe it makes it truer?
HippyGeek@reddit
Trying not bring politics into this, but there's a reason no political candidate has even mentioned brining those jobs back. Big Business won't allow it
A big chunk of the "growth" that keeps shareholders happy is the reduction of operational costs, and when a company can't maintain show actual growth, cutting labor costs looks good on the books.
Not to mention that employees are potential liabilities, whereas responsibility is shuffled off shore in the contracts.
guppybumpy@reddit
It’s stupid because those companies expect people to be able to afford their products by doing this but who can if all the jobs are in bumfuck across the globe.
ARLibertarian@reddit
Depends on what the product is, and who the customer is.
ftrmyo@reddit
Dependency? lol. Call it what it is, cheap immoral labor
StarkillerWindu@reddit
They are talking about canisters for cooking in this article, not power?
Anyway, to address your concern unrelated to the article ...
India's Unreliable Power Grid
India's power grid is notoriously unreliable and has frequent cyclical brownouts to prevent stressing the power plants to cause unplanned blackouts. Indians are used to having no power in the home for hours at a time to keep the businesses running. (Most homes run inverters and battery backups to keep refrigerators, ceiling fans, and lighting working during outages.)
Redundancy
Because of this, IT centers have heavy-duty diesel generators for backups and UPS systems that instantly take over when grid power fails, ensuring seamless operations.
Grid Infrastructure
IT hubs in dedicated technology parks (such as in Bengaluru, Pune, and Hyderabad) often have dedicated feeders directly from state-run, or major corporate private suppliers like Tata and Adani, to minimize downtime.
Renewables
As Chinese solar panels began to be more affordable, most office parks also have rooftop solar, and on-site installation, and while this was due to it being an economic boon, it is also a reliable redundancy that further diversified power.
Effects on American Business
While the large office parks that house corporate off-shoring Call Centers and general I.T. are well set to weather power issues, the smaller Indian I.T. providers that many American small businesses rely on aren't necessarily so redundant. American small businesses would have to turn to the Philippines, Vietnam, and Poland. But many American small businesses could not afford to stay in business with higher I.T. costs and would simply give way to large American corporations. Your local drug store has been getting by but if it goes out of business, you will still have CVS and Walmart!
Other Countries
This is not a single point of failure. The Philippines, Poland /Eastern Europe, Argentina/ Colombia/ Latin America, and Vietnam all offer various I.T. outsourcing that could be used in the unlikely event that India's I.T. were to fail.
Future
Indian data centers with greater power needs like for A.I. have increasingly been turning to Small Modular Reactors (SMRs)—advanced nuclear fission reactors that are physically smaller than traditional reactors—for power that would be more reliable.
Between SMRs and solar, a lot of the future dependency on gas and diesel is being drastically reduced so even if this were a concern, it will not be one for long.
johor@reddit
I hear what you're saying, and they are very valid concerns. That said, my experience with executives is they'll just look for the next cheapest solution and find another country where they can offshore their labour. If an org is married to the idea of offshoring then a global energy crisis won't be enough to convince them to revert to domestic operation.
guppybumpy@reddit
A big part of the problem is knowledge hoarding in this industry. Too many people treat what they know like job security instead of using it to build stronger teams. Honestly, I think other cultures often do a better job of collaborating and bringing people along, while here in America there’s too much of an “I got mine” mindset.
What’s probably coming next is executives replacing Level 1 roles with AI instead of outsourcing, because it looks cheaper on paper. But that will fail too if there’s no investment in training, mentorship, and real team development.
At the end of the day, executives usually chase the lowest cost option. Until more people in this industry stop gatekeeping and start actively training the next wave of talent here in America, we’re going to keep weakening our own workforce and settling for less than we should.
Rude_Strawberry@reddit
Your American working culture is bullshit though. You have no employee protections at all. You could be escorted out the building or fired without notice. It's happened in my company dozens of times. Because of that, it creates a knowledge gatekeeper culture. People use their knowledge to hold companies to ransom, for example, making it difficult to get rid of them
I am based in the UK, and we far more employee protections than you do over there.
guppybumpy@reddit
That’s true. I’ve experienced being escorted out but I also hit back the company with complaints to the dtcc, BIS, DLSE - even than that’s a long process because govs go through a long process of investigating issues brought up
james4765@reddit
The mainframe world is trying to do that as much as we can - too many of our skilled people are beyond retirement age. It takes years to get good at these wildly complicated systems, especially as a systems programmer.
guppybumpy@reddit
I’m looking for work, where can I apply?
Normal_student_5745@reddit (OP)
this is very good take👍🏻
Infinite-Land-232@reddit
I used to be on that home team doing 24 by 7 support 52 weeks a year and then my job was outsourced to noobs from India. I am looking for some pity or empathy but don't quite know what that looks like.
hotel2oscar@reddit
I figure if anything it's the discount double down IT guys in India that can be replaced by AI. And not just India for that matter.mondlessly reading off a script is barely a step above an automated script.
Normal_student_5745@reddit (OP)
Yea it’s same around me as well. I’m luckily very demanded due to my niche skill combo.
But, it’s kinda scary to see that the majority of my teams or any other teams (human resource, management, sales, marketing) are from one location in India in my remote work. And our India engineers are pretty good…..(and its pretty big cybersecurity company). we cant lose them...
But, We could lose 80-90% of the team in just one night...and all work flows would stop...instantly
tanzWestyy@reddit
This is why you should offshore to Manila! /s :)
guppybumpy@reddit
Hell no. It’s even worse out there. Stick to the medical field lmao, ya’ll found your way in through there.
twatcrusher9000@reddit
should have done the needful
as0909@reddit
this comment section was a fun read, basically you can’t have your cake and eat it too, half of you will celebrate a bombing in distant country so that there could be more jobs in your country, after all who cares about war as long as its on american soil. Maybe y’all deserve this, your useless companies are in profit due to offshoring and your fat asses aren’t good enough for any real jobs, your companies, bosses, CEOs don’t give a crap about your existence but must be due to Indians stealing your jobs, I mean should Americans be really saying that, do you also use same terms when you put gas in your car which your government stole from by destroying centuries old countries. jesus christ, be accountable for your own life, if you are unemployed or your life sucks its only because of you or your useless parents not because of Indians. Most of you would have been disappointed last night that T4ump didn’t nuke 1ran last night, that should tell you what kind of human being you are.
Quiet_Yellow2000@reddit
India has a habit of attacking Pakistan, so yeah conflict is very likely. I could see Modi starting a war with Pakistan if he is in danger of losing a future election.
parasitesr72@reddit
India has a habit of defending its people from terror sponsored by Pakistan.
Quiet_Yellow2000@reddit
Just on time from the BJP IT cell.
caribbeanjon@reddit
You are still outsourcing to India? Much cheaper labor in Malaysia (generally English speaking) and Vietnam (not so much). This is my current management's hiring philosphy.
Normal_student_5745@reddit (OP)
Bruh, I’m not in management loll I’m engineer (I wish I own business) 🤣 Idk what my management is thinking but they keep hiring quiet a lot from India (not only engineers but also a lot of white collar positions) tell my management to hire from Malaysia as well 🤣🤣
jadedarchitect@reddit
Society collapsing due to no IT workers?
Ohhh nooooooo
*Stares at ADHD-level go-bag*
We can't let that happen!
Nagroth@reddit
Not throwing shade but a LOT of stuff outsourced to India is really easily replaced with AI. Most of the real talent doesn't stay there, they work in other countries.
billyalt@reddit
Personally, I've come to terms with the reality that we're fucked six ways to Sunday. It's just a matter of when.
cccanterbury@reddit
fuck yeah. bring back the jobs
ParanoiA609@reddit
Shoulda never left in the first place
ParanoiA609@reddit
DO NOT REDEEEEM SAAAR
tuvar_hiede@reddit
Never found myself hoping for a energy crisis. Im tired of seeing it offshore. I mean if they did a decent job ok, but most overseas support sucks ass.
wildcarde815@reddit
The dude i work with to help with my dell storage system was commenting about not being able to get propane to cook with. It's already happening.
MrExCEO@reddit
Do the needful
kozak_@reddit
One person's ticking time bomb is another's job opportunity.
Odds of this happening are very low but Truthfully I would hope this "worse case scenario" comes to pass. I'm not going to cry when leadership in companies loses their bonuses and has to scramble to cover this.
PerfSynthetic@reddit
I need some help checking facts.
Would you say the Global Tech Support buildings in India are running up to date hardware and software (Operating system) or probably running behind?
If these places are running old hardware and old OS, wouldn't it be easy for (Russia, China, Iran, North Korea...) to hack/virus these tech support hubs to then gain access to US infrastructure?
The fortune 500 all source their tech and call centers. These centers all have access to critical systems and/or information. A simple keylogger or screen scrap malware could give anyone access to sensitive data.
I know most of these locations use Citrix, VPN, etc.. but they still need a computer to establish that connection.
vbpatel@reddit
Interesting thought. I’d wholly agree in the short term. Though they seem to have just figured out thorium reactors…and also have the largest thorium reserves globally
thebotnist@reddit
This feels AI, but point stands lol. "Oh well..@
Normal_student_5745@reddit (OP)
Oh you are kinda correct. I asked Gemini to correct my grammar and make my broken English better lolll English is 2nd language and I don’t wanna spend so much time to articulate my thoughts on my own for reddit post at 5am in the morning 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Anonymo123@reddit
Do the needful!
hwsales@reddit
I wish American companies hired more Americans.
oracleofnonsense@reddit
So much for diversity…….
hwsales@reddit
I have no issues with Indian folks. I wish them the best.
Maro1947@reddit
Exactly, it's the execs that deserve the hatred!
Imagine the average American attempting to provide support offshore in another language!
MBILC@reddit
They do, people working in South America, Central America....Costa Rica is full of some very large call centers.. :)
noisyboy@reddit
People in the thread saying: Good, that will bring jobs back.
Management says: This problem has exposed a serious concentration risk. We need to hedge by setting up additional teams in Philippines, Costa Rica, Botswana and such cost efficient locations.
SRF1987@reddit
My experience with support from India is subpar at best
RitterWolf@reddit
At one job the local Indian developer who everyone loved was complaining about how atrocious the Cognizant team were.
The only good outsourced talent I have worked with have been from Indonesia.
ZippySLC@reddit
"Sucks to suck", as I like to remind corporate America.
rangerinthesky@reddit
Too much talent in india; hard to envision your premise
Wouldn’t worry about it at all tbh
Madera7@reddit
Oh no this all sounds terrible 😊
Palantir_Scraper@reddit
Ah but have you tried diversifying your offshored workers? A few in India, a couple more in Vietnam, a sprinkling in the Philippines? They learned about multi-site redundancy lol.
do_not_free_gaza@reddit
I don't think there will be a difference as the Indian techs are totally fucking useless ?
Suspicious_Mango_485@reddit
Power grid. Please do the needful.
Kelvin62@reddit
There are literally thousands of it workers in the US who would be rehired in weeks if employers saw a need.
TwilightCyclone@reddit
Don’t threaten me with a good time.
AthenianVulcan@reddit
So much flawed/wishful thinking in the post.
Iran had allowed & will allow Indian (and also Chinese) cargo ships to pass. India has good relations with Iran & GCC and Russia, so its energy needs are not suffering compared to even Europe. India signed a deal with Canada on energy supplies.
India is also shifting towards nuclear energy.
Plus, the dollar & euro got even stronger during the war (against poor countries), that means offshoring not just India became even more lucrative.
Even if the jobs do comeback, AI is going to make it more efficient, so that corporates will hire even less.
Wonder_Weenis@reddit
good
dabbydaberson@reddit
Yeah not been impressed by the vast majority of offshore folks that make it to our org. I’d say maybe 2% know their asshole from a hole in the ground. Combine that with the lovely time zone difference and the 90 day resigning standard notice period it’s a shitshow.
Companies aren’t calculating the TOTAL cost of chasing the phantom of cheap, knowledgeable labor. Google just dropped a very lightweight open source model. It’s all going to AI and it will take a fraction of the energy it does today.
Rude_Strawberry@reddit
Open source model of what ? Offshored labor?
dabbydaberson@reddit
The new generation of it…
https://deepmind.google/models/gemma/
AnonKingfisher@reddit
This is probably irrelevant to this topic, but the company I'm working for has been hiring a lot of Indians for their office in Dubai. Most of them were hired as AI engineers (interns, of course), security and NSOC analysts. This practice continued despite the fact there's a war raging on in West Asia at the moment.
So, I'm wondering if a lot of these companies that offshored their IT infrastructure to India would relocate their operations in the UAE, and hire cheap Indian workers from there. I don't want to be too hopeful that the looming oil crisis in India would finally bring the jobs back locally. Even if it did, it probably wouldn't last long, because bringing the jobs back is probably the last thing these companies wanted to do, because it cost them money, money they would otherwise spend on paying bonuses to their undeserving executives.
Or maybe I'm just overthinking it. I don't know at this point.
merRedditor@reddit
That sounds like a problem for the C-suite that made its own bed and can now lie in it.
forsurebros@reddit
Is this the reason the scam calls have lessened to my phone lately.
21stCenturyGW@reddit
It's almost like no-one did any proper CBA... Just "cheaper in India move all jobs there!".
Repulsive_Bank_9046@reddit
Good thing we have a global team but still be a big impact
Normal_student_5745@reddit (OP)
yea same here!! but, the majority of the global teams are from india in my workplace... and its a bit scary to think its only based in one location....
Geminii27@reddit
Reminds me of the time that I worked in IT for a federal government department and they ran all the major things they had to do on a pair of failover mainframes about 300km apart and across state lines. If one went down, the other would take over.
And then they consolidated. They still had the two mainframes, but they were now in the same data center. Yeah... that's not asking for a power outage or a fire to take both out.
StarkillerWindu@reddit
???
You understand they are talking about canisters for cooking in this article?
Anyway, regarding your fears ....
The Reality of Power Infrastructure in India
Unreliable Power Grid
India's power grid is notoriously unreliable and has frequent cyclical brownouts to prevent stressing the power plants to cause unplanned blackouts. Indians are used to having no power in the home for hours at a time to keep the businesses running. (Most homes run inverters and battery backups to keep refrigerators, ceiling fans, and lighting working during outages.)
Redundancy
Because of this, IT centers have heavy-duty diesel generators for backups and UPS systems that instantly take over when grid power fails, ensuring seamless operations.
Grid Infrastructure
IT hubs in dedicated technology parks (such as in Bengaluru, Pune, and Hyderabad) often have dedicated feeders directly from state-run, or major corporate private suppliers like Tata and Adani, to minimize downtime.
Renewables
As Chinese solar panels began to be more affordable, most office parks also have rooftop solar, and on-site installation, and while this was due to it being an economic boon, it is also a reliable redundancy that further diversified power.
Effects on American Business
While the large office parks that house corporate off-shoring Call Centers and general I.T. are well set to weather power issues, the smaller Indian I.T. providers that many American small businesses rely on aren't necessarily so redundant. American small businesses would have to turn to the Philippines, Vietnam, and Poland. But many American small businesses could not afford to stay in business with higher I.T. costs and would simply give way to large American corporations. Your local drug store has been getting by but if it goes out of business, you will still have CVS and Walmart!
Future
Indian data centers with greater power needs like for A.I. have increasingly been turning to Small Modular Reactors (SMRs)—advanced nuclear fission reactors that are physically smaller than traditional reactors—for power that would be more reliable.
Between SMRs and solar, a lot of the future dependency on gas and diesel is being drastically reduced
Hi_Im_Ken_Adams@reddit
You have to understand:
Corporations don’t care.
Even if they experience a complete outage due to something happening in India, they don’t care.
Why? Because the are still saving more $$$ even with that loss of business factored in.
Corporations won’t care until the math starts dictating they do. And it would take a helluva cost before the math starts mathing.
PalmettoZ71@reddit
Im failing to see the downside as a American tech worker
evantom34@reddit
Fuck em, it’s their decision to live with.
Titanium125@reddit
I worked with Bose a while back taking over an offshoot company’s IT for my MSP. The entire IT team was Indian and terrible.
gabacus_39@reddit
Well, I prefer jobs stayed close to home so this is something I don't really worry about.
AngrySociety@reddit
Cybersecurity teams approved
Zealousideal_Ad642@reddit
At least there'd be less calls from "Internet tech support" calling to ask for your credit card details so they can remove a virus from your windows computer
oracleofnonsense@reddit
So much for diversity…..
Using their own HR logic — many US companies are committing massive racial discrimination.
WittyWampus@reddit
Might go from taking weeks to get anything useful from Microsoft support to just never getting it!
throwaway0000012132@reddit
Sorry, but not sorry for corporations that make bad decisions and instead of firing those bad decisors instead fire entire teams on a region and hire for cheap into another places.
The problem, as obvious as it is, it's not Indian people: they want to make a living just like you do. The big problem is companies that have no socially responsibilities and offset their entire workforce from one place into another, because it's cheap; that new place can be even EU/US in place or out place, but it's the same issue.
And then, eventually when the project goes haywire and they have to return home, because people need to pay bills and put food into the table, they apply for this companies, but if they didn't maybe, just maybe this companies would understand that you don't get to screw people because of investors.
Companies going public is one of the biggest issues I see so far because once they do they don't work for the CEO, nor the public, not even the founder. No, they work for the profit of their investors, even making imoral changes that affect the society that cherish that company once.
asintado08@reddit
This is a concern for us. Our company doesn't even use them for cost saving, they are basically use for follow the sun model. SEA countries supports 6PM-3AM EST and India/EU supports 1AM to 10AM EST.
This war both affects India and SEA countries. Our DR/BCP scenarios are tested until one support timezone is completely gone. We dont have anything that can affect two support timezone.
Normal_student_5745@reddit (OP)
thats exactly same here as well. and on call ard heavily covered by the india team as well. we need to diversify geographically
Secret_Account07@reddit
I know this would never happen but I we could legislate a way to stop companies from moving all tech support to India. Anytime I get help from there it’s useless.
It’s not always their fault, just the power given
mattiasso@reddit
Finally good news!
redwing88@reddit
What a garbage opinion/article. An another way to blame the opposite side of the world for problems caused by western leaders, from uncontrolled offshoring, H1B abuse, To warmongering and causing an energy crisis.
KiloDelta9@reddit
That sounds wonderful. It's time for those outsourcing critical positions to learn a hard lesson.
CFH75@reddit
Sounds fantastic!.
unseenspecter@reddit
Well if there were ever a silver lining to the current Iran conflict...
kenlaan@reddit
I think a lot of the developed world is looking at recent American instability and thinking along the same lines.