The discussion around offshoring tech teams is often framed as a simple equation: lower salaries in a global talent pool equals improved margins. On paper, headcount looks like a cost to be minimised.
In reality, the equation is far more complex. Having managed engineering teams at organisations such as Prettylittlething, Ankorstore and Awaze, I have seen firsthand that the spreadsheet view ignores what actually drives a modern technology team: quality, speed, collaboration and resilience.
In fact, my first major mandate in a new role next January will be to re-onshore an entire technology team. This is the direct result of an offshoring strategy that failed in practice, and it serves as a clear warning to any leader tempted by short-term wins.
When you look at long-term growth and operational risk, offshoring is often a false economy.
1. The Hidden Costs Erase the Savings
The initial salary arbitrage is quickly consumed by operational overheads and delivery friction. The idea that you can simply replace an internal engineer with a cheaper offshore resource does not hold up in real conditions.
- Management and QA load increases. You do not remove management effort. You create new layers of coordination, governance and verification. Offshore teams often require more extensive QA because they lack internal context. These hidden costs erode the margin rapidly.
- Vendor lock-in becomes a real risk. When a business relies heavily on offshore vendors, you hand them leverage over continuity, staffing and cost. A contract dispute, invoice delay or staff churn on their side can stall your ability to ship.
- Compliance and security exposure grows. Moving data across borders introduces additional security, privacy and legal risk. Many breaches in recent years have stemmed from poorly monitored offshore operations. If you cannot guarantee standards that match your own, you are increasing your attack surface.
2. Quality Suffers When Context Is Missing
Good engineering is not a mechanical execution task. It requires shared understanding, rapid iteration and deep product context. Offshoring breaks that chain.
- Communication becomes slower and noisier. Time zone gaps and language barriers create delays and misunderstandings. Real innovation happens in fast, iterative collaboration. That is difficult when half the team is asleep.
- Technical debt increases quietly. Offshore delivery models often incentivise fast completion rather than long-term maintainability. Architectural shortcuts accumulate. You save cost upfront but pay significantly more later when the local team must unpick the decisions.
- Innovation becomes harder. Innovation depends on shared context and ongoing conversation. When teams are kept at a distance from customers and strategy, creativity becomes shallow and incremental.
3. We Weaken Our Own Future Talent Pipeline
If businesses consistently send execution work offshore because it is cheaper, we hollow out our own capability.
- Internal skills decay. When internal teams lose opportunities to build, experiment and own solutions, they stagnate. The best engineers quickly leave for more stimulating environments.
- Junior talent disappears. You cannot grow senior talent without junior roles. If all entry-level and mid-level work is outsourced, you remove the development pipeline entirely. This harms not just individual companies but the wider UK technology ecosystem.
4. The Real Story Is Risk
The idea that offshoring is worth the risk ignores how severe the risk can be. I have seen offshore capability disappear overnight because of political instability, currency shocks and regional conflict. This is not theoretical. It is a lived reality for many companies.
Sustainable technology organisations are built on reliability, culture and shared ownership. Offshoring often undermines all three.
If your goal is genuine long-term growth, resilience and the ability to innovate, offshoring rarely delivers the value leaders expect.
Looking Beyond the Spreadsheet
Offshoring promises simplicity and savings. In practice, it often introduces fragility, slows delivery and erodes the capability you need to scale. Spreadsheets do not show the cost of lost context, fractured ownership or a team that cannot move at the pace your business requires.
If you want a model built on clarity, quality and close collaboration, you need a team that works within your rhythms and standards, not thousands of miles away.
This is why many companies choose Counter as the alternative.
You get high performing UK based engineering teams embedded inside your organisation, delivering work with the quality of a top tier consultancy but without the consultancy level cost. You keep the context, the continuity and, if you choose, the people, because you can hire them at the end of the engagement with no fee.
It is a model designed for speed, collaboration and sustainable capability, not short term arbitrage.
If you want to build a resilient technology team without the risks of offshoring or the high cost of traditional consultancies, Counter is the most effective path. Find out more about what we do today.
