A contractor is an MS employee without benefits, managed by MS. Outsourcing is hiring a contracting firm, like Tata, to manage the employees at a much higher cost. Everyone uses contractors. None of the serious players use outsourcing firms for core work.

MS is using H1Bs to keep development at their main sites, like Seattle. The commenter stated that they could just contract it through an outsourcing firm, like Tata.

Ironically the H1Bs are helping the locals more than hurting as it makes you valuable to be in the area. When you force a company to go distributed, you reduce the incentive for them to not hire from wherever they want, especially outside the USA. I've seen it happen many times.

As someone already stated, Europe is huge. Not everything is London or Zurich. They have backwater villages and cousin-fucker countries, like most regions. Many companies open offices in Eastern Europe to tap into the talent pool. Also a highly skilled Polish engineer is cheaper than a shitty one from anywhere else in the word, no matter their wage. The cost of an engineer is a factor of productivity and salary, not just salary. Everyone who outsourced to India discovered this. Anyone in India with any talent was getting Western wages to work for MS and others...all that remained for the outsourcing companies, like Tata, were the ones they were turned down or never should have been engineers and it took them 10x as long to get anything done.

If you're using their product, it's done in-house. The only software firms that outsource core development probably shouldn't be called software firms. You know I meant good in the sense of engineering, not virtues. Cool quip, though.

OK, you don't work in software. Good tech companies don't outsource core development. They hire in house. They also have a huge presence in every country they'd hire from. Microsoft can just as easily open an office in India, Poland, or anywhere else. All the major players are the same. They outsource things like cleaning the office, sometimes some shitty work they don't want to do, like content moderation, they might outsource printer maintenance or helpdesk operations. However, the H1Bs are usually for valuable work and they keep that in house.

If Microsoft wants cheap, shitty labor, they can open an office anywhere it's cheap. They already have offices all throughout Asia and Europe to tap into cheap labor. If they're hiring H1Bs to work in Seattle, they typically want them for good work and are willing to pay a premium for them. MS won't outsource core Azure, XBox, Office, or Windows development. Non-tech companies may outsource core functions, but software companies never do (at least any I've seen...certainly not all major players).

Look, if your concern is American tech workers, the answer is simple, make H1Bs more expensive. The intent is to snag the best and brightest from around the world, so ensure the company has to pay them above the 75th percentile of wages for that job plus an additional sliding scale fee. If you're MS, pay $40,000 per VISA, for example. If you're a hospital needing to hire a pediatric surgeon in an underserved rural community? Make the fee $0.

H1Bs do more good for American tech workers than harm. Your employer can pay for H1Bs to bring all the labor to headquarters...and thus you have value by being local and a huge advantage. If they can't find the talent they need...and there's a HUGE shortage of talented engineers, even today, but especially 4 years ago....then they have no choice but to adopt a distributed model and then you're screwed. They need the talent and will hire someone overseas to do it if they can't bring them locally. If an MS employee in India is willing to do the job for half the wages on an American schedule, what hope does a Seattle-based employee have? Ironically H1Bs are quite often keeping your job from going away completely if you live in the developed world. If MS is used to distributed development, then you're competing with THE BEST IN THE WORLD that are willing to work for MS in their hometown....not just the best in Seattle. Trust me. I've worked in distributed teams for decades. It is a lot more competitive in terms what they expect from you and what they can get by with paying you.

They're just different. That's the way it should be. If my kids were begging me to play Nine Inch Nails in the car, I'd be disappointed in them :) Frankly, I like the music the kids are into lately...for some reason, there's a whole batch of young people who listened to all the good stuff from the past and did their best to learn from it and improve...certainly on the techno scene. I like new stuff from young artists more than my favorite tunes from my youth. But....regardless....Roblox isn't Alice Cooper...Alice Cooper was not Beatles...who were no Elvis...and the cycle goes on and on

What you mean to say is "I'm old and I don't like Roblox because it's not what I am used to." Roblox has 80 million active daily users and 5 billion in revenue annually. Not only that, if you talk to anyone under 18, the IS THE BIGGEST GAME by a long shot. It's bigger than minecraft and fortnite combined. It's bigger than any mobile game. Trust me, the kids feel the same way about the games I love to play, INCLUDING Fortnite. It is a cultural phenomena bigger than any boy band, Pokemon, even most consoles. My kids' friends? They don't want a PS5 filled with AAA hits. They just want to play Roblox with their friends.

You understand you're the villain in this story right? You're the preacher in footloose. You're Tipper Gore banning 2 Live Crew. You're those frigid church ladies saying Heavy Metal and Dungeons and Dragons will turn your children into satanists, while their husbands sneak off from their suburban homes, pretending to work late, but actually fucking their sidepieces. You're that old man complaining about whatever you listened to in High School saying "that's not REAL music." You're that dick who was telling teenage me Rage Against the Machine was garbage because it wasn't Led Zepplin and how my music isn't "cool" like your classic rock.

I don't get Roblox either. A few of the games are actually fun, like 99 Nights in the Forest. My kids and I have parties where we all play that. Most are weird and pointless to me, but I'm fucking old with grey chest hairs. I'm not supposed to get what the kids are into. It would be weird if my dad was begging to go to a Nine Inch Nails concert with me when I was in high school. This is their Sex Pistols, Alice Cooper, rap-music, hair-metal, New Kids on the Block, N'Sync, Marilyn Manson, Rammstein, or whatever confused, scared, or annoyed your parents.

My kids and all their friends have distinct taste in Roblox games. It's a MASSIVE phenomena among all their classmates. There are endless youtubers making content about it. Again...boring to me...but I have no hair, am on blood pressure medicine and have a solid retirement plan. I'm OLD. And clearly you are too if you're confident about making a statement that out of touch.

...whoever wins, we lose! (from the movie poster)

You sound like a badass...are you proud of yourself? That was really macho, bro, yet dumber than shit. It's always been a stupid comment made by people who live in comfort and security. Without life, there is no freedom. If someone is trying to murder you, then your liberty is not a concern. You can talk about "deserving" until you're blue in the face. When I had a gun pointed at me, I wasn't too concerned about civil liberties. You're living in the burbs or a small town if you can utter such stupid things with a straight face. It's like the situation in Gaza or Ukraine, I can comfortably opine all I want from the safety of the USA. To the people facing constant threat of death, they don't really care about your opinions of what they deserve.

Chicago and Oakland have approx the same murder rate, but Chicago is a HUGE city geographically, including northern parts which are affluent suburbs. I lived on the South Side of Chicago, which has twice the population of Oakland and over 4x the murder rate. I heard gunfire nightly during the summer. Everyone in a high crime neighborhood wants BETTER police. And any sharp tool can be abused in the wrong hands, but I will wager if you polled Oakland residents, a majority would want ALPR technology if you could demonstrate it made their streets tangibly safer. White middle class liberals wring their hands about overstepping civil liberties. Those of us who worry about our safety are less concerned. You're sound like someone saying the homeless shelter is a terrible idea because they're not serving organically sourced food.

There's no simple answer. Stepping on Civil Liberties is bad....getting murdered is worse. You're clearly comfortable enough to view the police as the enemy. The people who lived in my old neighborhood were more scared of the local gangs than the police.

Concerns about a free society is a luxury cared for by those who are in danger. I guarantee you those fearing for their life walking home at night aren't concerned about a free society and being a pawn in your battle for your ideals. Your simplistic mottos are cold comforts for the moms burying their sons because they were at the wrong place at the wrong time. Life is messy and complicated. You're not even wrong....your ideals are noble, but the callous disregard for those protected by law enforcement is not.

Spotted the 2 privileged /. posters who have never been to a bad neighborhood before!, hence your simplistic and childish view of police officers. You sound like children demanding no one should ever get shots because needles are ouchies! The intellect of the average police officer is due to it being a blue collar profession with low pay. The smarter ones go into different branches, like the FBI, DHS, etc. A police officer's primary function in the legal system is to get a suspect in front of a judge, who is the expert on innocence of guilt. The majority of police never draw their weapon nor face any danger from anything more threatening than traffic. If you're making such STUPID arguments, I'll wager your cops haven't had their life endangered recently.

Look, your life is really fucking good if a news story about police behavior that will never actually happen to you gets your little princess panties in a bunch. Mine is really good now. I still live in the city, but once I could afford to, I moved into a nice, gentrified neighborhood. 20 years ago, my neighborhood had a much higher crime rate. I also went to college on the South Side of Chicago and had to rely on my wits to not be a frequent victim of violent crime. Before then, I grew up 20 minutes outside of the sometimes murder capital of the USA.

Crime is not a theory for me. It is a realistic threat. I still need to rely on my wits not to invite violent crime on the subway or in many neighborhoods not far from my house. I have been a victim of break-ins, muggings, a random racial assault, being followed in bad neighborhoods, etc. For the people that live in areas with a heavy police presence, we don't want to defund the police. We don't hate the police. We hate it when they are the real criminals, but as bad as you see things on the TV?....there's 100-1000 people in our neighborhood who will do much worse to us. EVERYONE who needs the police wants better police, not fewer police.

Who is making mindless rants about Flock? People who have never felt threatened by crime and maybe some fucked up weirdos who are either casual criminals or secretly aspire to be ones. The Institute for Justice Database documents over 100 instances of automated license plate reader (ALPR and Flock) abuse in the United States. How much crime do we have? According to Google

Approximately 17,400 to 20,200 homicides per year nationally, depending on the baseline reporting year.

Roughly 920,000 to 1,110,000 reported motor vehicle thefts per year nationwide.

Kidnapping?...estimated broadly between 200,000 and 750,000 occurrences annually in connection with custody disputes and missing-person registry entries.

Flock's CEO stated that the technology "solved" 1 million crimes or supported approximately 1 million investigations and incidents in a year. Other company fact sheets alternatively claimed between 1,000+ crimes solved per day or 2,800+ crimes solved weekly.

Let's assume the CEO is full of shit and the number isn't 1 million. Also, just because flock was used, doesn't mean the crime wouldn't have been solved had it not been available. There are 50 murders per day. Let's say it isn't 1000, but 100 crimes per day actually solved by flock...I think the families of the murder victim would prefer to see their son's killer locked up rather than get self-righteous about a news story of a theoretical concern that will never happen to them or you.

However, what ratio would you tolerate? Are you a stupid, simplistic child who thinks that one criminal police officer stalking his ex girlfriend means those of us in bad neighborhoods should get murdered or have our killers never get arrested? Do criminals deserve to get away with stealing our cars and breaking into our homes? Do people in our community deserve to have their children kidnapped when a custody battle goes awry? How many Amber alerts will you tolerate for your sense of self-righteousness?

An adult would say Flock is dangerous and needs to be controlled, but actually look into facts to see if the risk is worth the reward. You 2 children went off on a "fuck the police" self righteous rant because...well frankly, I envy how nice your life must have been to be old enough to be on /. in 2026 and be more angry at the police than actual violent criminals.

I'm sure it is...but by how much. 10x? Sure, I'd believe that. 100x?...no, not really. I don't believe 6,900 police officers are stalking their exes. Most just want to do their job and go home, like anyone else. Most are happily married, boring civil servants. Most cops don't even have very stressful or dangerous lives. Most are working in the burbs or small towns and dealing with minor crimes or mundane cop duties...not the exciting stuff you see on TV.

The reported number is a nearly 100,000x ratio. Are you stupid enough to say 1 cop harassing his ex girlfriend is a bridge too far to prevent LOTS of abductions, murders, and thefts? If I had data indicating how much flock has reduced crime, I would tolerate a 1000x ratio, especially if the abuses are non-violent. Additionally, I have concerns about cost. How much are we paying? How much benefit are we getting? The Flock company is at the very least taking this seriously and putting more serious audit controls. If we need to have such a system, that's obviously a needed improvement.

In the end, rogue cops are a theoretical concern for me. Living in a major city, mundane crime is a realistic concern for me. I've been a victim of violent crime more than once and had my home broken into twice. So...yeah...those of us who have had our safety threatened by real criminals are not too sympathetic to the theoretical concerns about potential civil liberties abuse of comfy suburbanites living in full safety.

Googling there were 659,880 vehicles stolen in the last year alone and a total of 69 recorded instances of Flock abuse. Now, that obviously doesn't tell us how many were thwarted nor how many police abused Flock and weren't caught...but this is why I want number and enough of this stupid Flock emotional melodrama. Sounds to me like the Flock downsides are a bit overblown...but...I also don't know how to quantify the upsides.

So #1, I don't know...you could be right, but I am neither confident you're wrong or right. #2, even if it's not a deterrent, arrests are. If they drive a stolen car by a flock camera and it helps police find them and take them off the street for a few years, in a way, it has stopped them from stealing...at least until they get out, at bare minimum.

The problem with flock for me is that I have no data to weigh the pros vs the cons. There's some problematic cops breaking the law with them. However, I don't really know how to quantify the benefit. I think anyone who is not a moron would weigh the pros vs the cons. The flock problems are theoretical for most of us non-criminals....so I am not as outraged as others, but I also don't know what I am getting in return.

I have a rational perspective. I am not a freedom/liberty absolutist. I am not phobic of crime. I need data to know if the benefits outweigh the potential for abuse and just the general cost of this program. If it prevents my car from getting broken into and reduces crime in my neighborhood tangibly, I'd be open-minded about it.

Baking powder is in the pH neutral range because it has acid and base in it...that's the point of it as a leavening agent. I think you meant baking soda, which is alkaline. However, regardless, if that was the case, none of us chewing through tums would get cancer. Look, you want to give this old crank argument about big pharma, but you're just poorly informed.

No alkaline will "cure" cancer. It might prevent some forms due to stomach acid wounds?....but it's not related to infection. Baking soda can only treat symptoms. It won't cure an infection.

Also, if administering alkalines could cure disease, big pharma WOULD be all over it because there are a lot of more effective solutions than baking powder or calcium carbonate that could target the acidity more precisely. Tums just dissolves in your stomach and stops working. More complex packaging, which they could patent, could ensure it works outside the stomach to prevent colon irritation, for example.

A reliable cure for heartburn would be quite profitable for big pharma, especially if OTC. A HUGE portion of adults over 40 have it regularly. We have lots of money and lots of need. It's not that they're not motivated. it's that baking soda doesn't work. If it did, no one would have heartburn!!! Every doctor would tell you just to take it. Doctors want to cure you. They want to keep you healthy. They have no financial motivation to keep you sick. They'd rather see 1000 mostly healthy patients less frequently than 100 depressing, sick ones every week. Remember, the sicker you are, the less money you have to spend. You're either not working to full capacity or you've already spent a huge chunk of change to stay alive.

I'm even skeptical that pharma doesn't want to cure you. I don't think they're that insidious or calculating. I think they want money for useful treatments. There's no evidence of pharma suppressing cures to ensure you're addicted to their drug for a lifetime. They'd rather charge you 10,000 for a single shot cure than 100/month for the rest of your life. It's easier money that way. So if you're going to make stupid stoner conspiracy claims, provide some evidence next time.