Over the past year, my team has steadily replaced onshore staff with contractors and offshore hires. Our previous manager was replaced by someone based in India. While the overall headcount has nearly doubled, output has dropped. Technical debt is piling up, and my workload keeps growing because I spend every morning untangling the mess left behind overnight by new team members.
Some of the most capable people on the team, especially the women, are being routinely talked over and dismissed during meetings. We’ve raised the issue with the new manager, but nothing has changed. I’ve worked with people from all kinds of backgrounds and know how to navigate cultural differences. But when those differences show up as outright s-xism that hurts the team, it crosses a line. What makes it worse is how this behavior is slowly becoming accepted as normal.
Work used to be something I enjoyed. Now it’s constant supervision and damage control. I spend more time fixing the output of so-called “senior” offshore developers from Cognizant than doing my own job. I explain the same requirements two or three times, only to receive something completely wrong. Then I’m left responsible for cleaning it up and covering the unfinished work of several people, all during standard onshore hours, in addition to my actual responsibilities. It’s draining.
I seriously have no idea what senior leadership is thinking. Are higher-ups just getting fed illusions about how bad it's getting at the individual team level? This business, especially the tech side, has only been chugging along due to the massive inertia of UHG's size. Sooner rather than later, the consequences of subtracting by adding offshore and contractor resources are not going to be able to be tucked away or covered up by the efforts of the remaining viable onshore workers.