ROOKE: Real Estate Company Dumps Entire Indian Workforce In Favor Of Homegrown Talent

dailycaller.com

Opendoor, a U.S. real estate technology company, is shutting down its entire operations in India, the CEO announced Wednesday.

CEO Kaz Nejatian announced the move as part of Opendoor 2.0, the company’s push to simplify operations, use more AI, and better serve American customers. The company is bringing the work back to the U.S., which will affect about 250 employees in Chennai and Bengaluru, India.

It’s important to note that this is not about creating a flood of new American jobs. Opendoor is simply getting smaller in total headcount. The company recently had around 1,400 employees and is deliberately reducing its offshore staff in India to utilize its emerging AI tools. Still, some roles from India have shifted to existing or adjusted U.S. teams, prioritizing American workers for the jobs that remain. (Sign up for Mary Rooke’s weekly newsletter here!)

And while this won’t be a windfall for American jobs, the move deserves praise. American companies exist to serve American customers and support American workers first. For too long, executives chased cheap labor overseas and ignored the damage this was doing at home. Offshoring hollowed out opportunities in the U.S. Wages stagnated. Families in places that once had solid middle-class jobs felt the squeeze. Young Americans lost access to the American Dream.

Opendoor is reversing some of that. It is not rehiring 250 new people, but the remaining jobs are going to Americans. That is the right priority. Companies should default to homegrown talent, especially for work tied directly to U.S. markets.

Not everyone is happy about the move. Notably, some India-based X accounts complained about the negative effects this would have on India’s GDP or the “devastating” impact on Indian workers.

“Opendoor shutting its India office is terrible news for India, and almost nobody is pricing it in,” Aakash Gupta, who is based in the U.S., said. “India’s tech and outsourcing industry generates $315 billion a year, employs nearly 6 million people, and accounts for roughly 7% of GDP. Entire cities were built on one trade: Western companies paying Indian wages for process work instead of American wages.”

“The wage arbitrage was $60K American vs $8K Indian,” he added.

This is rich coming from the same circles that spent decades pushing offshoring as harmless or even beneficial to the U.S. American workers were mocked and told to retrain, move up the value chain, or accept lower wages.

Now that a single company is bringing work back home, we suddenly hear concerns about foreign economies. Offshoring to India and other low-wage countries transferred income away from U.S. labor for years. India has a massive population, a growing domestic economy, and other outsourcing clients. One U.S. firm’s decision will not cause it to collapse. Nor should it be on the American mind if it does. American workers have borne far greater cumulative losses from decades of offshoring, and no one in India was crying about the devastation.

The reality is that every country looks out for its own workers (or should). The U.S. has every right to do the same. American companies operate in a market built by American innovation, American capital, and American demand. It’s only fitting that, as American corporations increasingly move away from human workers towards AI systems, the jobs that become available be given to Americans. (ROOKE: Trump’s Housing Revolution Takes Direct Aim At Biggest Crisis Young Americans Face)

Opendoor buys and sells homes in America. Its systems, pricing, transactions, and customer experience should center on America First. The move is not enough to make up for the decades of damage done to U.S. labor, but bringing work home slows the bleeding caused by offshoring.