As the economy tightens here in the U.S, companies like Twitter, Stripe, Lyft are laying off a good chunk of their employees (including tech). The result is an understaffed workforce and a lower product velocity.
There are rumors of super-human, 84-hours work weeks at Twitter, which are of course neither productive nor sustainable in the long run.
However, there is an alternative model. Software engineers outside the U.S.A cost much less. In fact you can get an English-speaking, self-managed tech pod in various places around the world (with 3-5 members) for the price of a FAANG senior/lead software engineer.
Not only that the pod costs less, experience shows it is consistently more productive, pumping out more features than a typical FAANG engineer.
Moreover, there is less overhead as the pod is self-managed. The code quality overall is also greater as the team members review each other's code, which is not the case w/ an I.C.
So unless you are building a mission-critical, highly specialized product that requires face-to-face meetings and domain expertise (which is not the case 90% of the time in our experience), it is time to give such model a try.
Tough times require innovative measures. The ones who aren't stuck to preconceived notions and adapt well to a new and changing world are those who thrive best.
