u/QuietByte73

So a lot of software companies here have relied on staff augmentation for years. Basically, the main selling point was that you could get developers from Pakistan for much cheaper than hiring in the US or Europe.

The bigger issue is that we're mostly a services-based industry. We provide development services to foreign companies instead of building and owning many of our own products. So if our main advantage is being cheaper, AI was always going to put pressure on that. Now a company can hire locally and use AI to get a lot more out of a smaller team. That makes the whole “offshore developers are cheaper” argument a lot less convincing than it used to be.

Another thing is that a lot of companies seem to depend heavily on Upwork for getting clients. We haven't really invested enough in building our own brands or finding other ways to bring in clients, because those things take time and don't give you instant results.

So I don't think it's simply a case of “AI is taking developer jobs.” It's putting pressure on a business model that was already heavily dependent on providing cheaper services.

I honestly feel like we need to move more towards building our own products instead of mainly selling development services.

Otherwise we're actually doomed.

There are so many providers now that it feels like most of them offer basically the same features on paper. For people who have actually managed VoIP for a business, what ended up mattering most in the long run?

Was it call quality, support, uptime, pricing, number porting, integrations, or something else?

Curious what people learned from experience rather than what providers put on their feature lists.