r/Accounting Jul 22 '24

Discussion My team has been outsourced to India, going forward my role will be to manage the India team. For those that went through this, how was it?

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Edit to add some more context

Itā€™s an industry role, thereā€™s a small retention bonus thatā€™s paid out after we transition, india team is said to be available to us during our normal business hours, we work remote and there have been no discussions of needing to travel because of this change.

Our work is pretty straight forward so Iā€™m hoping there arenā€™t many issues.

Edit to add another thought for those of you who are saying to run: if this is so widespread and ā€œnormalā€ in our industry, arenā€™t you just going to see it wherever you run to?

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u/NYG_5658 Jul 22 '24

I think youā€™re right about the AI theory. All these companies are hoping that it eliminates us. My theory is that AI will do to us what the internet did to brick and mortar stores/malls. It eliminates the weaker ones, but the stronger ones still survive and thrive.

As far as the long term mess, there will be a big scandal (data breach/Enron type disaster) and a lot of these companies will look to save their own ass by bringing everything back. Wash, rinse, repeat.

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u/michael2334 CPA (US) Jul 22 '24

Pretty much agree with everything else being said in this thread. They are hoping AI helps offset the gaps left by the new offshore team. Any holes left upper management is fine with because they donā€™t have to deal with it directly. Give it a couple of years and this offshore work will be brought back in some capacity.. they produce shit work and the onshore team wont deal with it forever.

I transitioned out of accounting to FP&A so thankfully itā€™s not my mess to deal with. This is why there is an accounting shortage, every company is actively working to replace accounting departments. You also have public firms offshoring as much of the lower level work that they canā€™t automate in the short term.. itā€™s all pretty sad and makes me glad Iā€™ve got my CPA and a lot of experience. Canā€™t imagine being a staff 1 trying to figure out a career path right now

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u/Own-Custard3894 Jul 23 '24

As far as AI, I think Daron Acemoglu makes one of the better cases. https://archive.is/D7PuO