When I started my career in the late 80's we did just about everything here in RTP. The hardware design, the firmware, the system software and the manufacturing. Then they moved the manufacturing to eastern Europe and from there to Mexico. We also were all regular, US based employees based here.
At times there would be some headcount crunches which they would soften by using US based contract employees. Once the crunch was over, the contractors would be reassigned or not renewed when their contract was up. This worked out ok but then the White Shoe Boys came up with the idea that they could layoff the regular US based employees and replace them with the contractors. This was problematic in that once a contractor was trained and up to speed they would simply leave for a better gig. Some of the contract employees were really good but there was no viable mechanism to hire them as regulars. Also some of them were pretty wild. We had one guy that they hired pretty much because he used to play cornerback for the Redskins. He had a nice resume but it was relevant to the work we were doing - but NFL guy? Hire 'em. After he had been there awhile we had issues where memory, hard drives and other parts would go missing from the systems in the lab. Got to be a big issue so they setup a sting operation and it turns out the ex-NFL guy was swiping anything that wasn't nailed down to fuel his drug problem. We had another wild-eyed, rough individual that didn't show up to work one Friday without explaination. Monday morning rolls around and he comes in with "Ain't ya'll gonna congratulate me?" We are like - "No - why". "I met a chick at the Your Place or Mine [a local dive] and we went down to South of the Border and got married." South of the Border is place in South Carolina just south of the stateline:
https://www.sobpedro.com/ Not exactly a prime nuptial spot. Then we had the dude that brought whores into the office. He was working 2nd shift support and went to the Wendy's for his lunch break. Picked up two ladies of the evening [Not sure what prostitute selection is like in the Durham Wendy's at 10PM on weeknight - pretty grim I'd image] and brought them back to the office for a tryst. Came time to pay up and the dude refused, so the ladies being professionals pulled the fire alarm. Security earned their money that night.
Then the offshoring started. Instead of hiring US based contractors they started firing here and hiring in Poland. This worked pretty darn well. Smarty people those Poles. However they were deemed too expensive so it was time for the Boys from Brazil. More US guys fired and replaced by Brazilians. Then they purged all of them and moved most of the work to China. Couple of years back, our firm closed down everything in China and the work was split between Africa and India. As much as they wanted it too - the African thing didn't even really get off the ground and India won out big time. India, India, India. There are only three US based people in my department left. Some of the Indians are really good and some are horrible. By the time you figure which is which, the good ones have boogied.
Now there is the AI stuff taking root. At first it was just supposed to help us with testing and infrastructure type tasks. Now it is putting in fixes. I just watched a guy push a fix yesterday right in front of me from the AI. Didn't even review what the thing changed.
When I first started there was real pride in our and if we shipped something, It By God worked. Now it is just push the stuff and hope it doesn't explode. We are all so worn out and discouraged.
