Comment by servo_sausage

At a very large company at the momen: One of the things I've noticed is as translation has improved, C level preferences and political considerations have made a much bigger impact.

So we will reduce headcount in some countries because of things like (perceived) working culture, and increase based on the need to gain goodwill or fulfil contracts from customers.

This can also mean that the type of work outsources can change pretty quickly. We are getting rid of most of the "developers" in India, because places like Vietnam and eastern Europe are now less limited by language, and are much better to work with. At the same time we are inventing and outsourcing other activities to India because of a desire to sell in their market.