# Seeing a ¥200,000-per-Month Offshore Ad Made Me Think About Where Bridge SEs Go Next > I saw an offshore ad offering AI plus a Vietnam development team from ¥200,000 per person-month. That feels like about half of what I used to see. Client work is also struggling to hold rates, and firms that lived on smaller jobs are shrinking. Of the people let go, where do communication-strong bridge SEs go? I think only those who understand why they were released will thrive in small AI-using teams. - Published: 2026-11-06 - URL: https://abalol.xyz/en/posts/offshore-bridge-engineers/ - Language: en - Tags: tech, ai, engineering, offshore - Author: Tomohiro Owada - Site: Tomo's Diary (https://abalol.xyz/llms.txt) --- I saw an offshore development ad that combined AI with a Vietnam team, starting at ¥200,000 per person-month. To my eye, that is about half of what it used to be. A business model that runs on that rate looks seriously strained. Around the same time, I keep hearing that custom software work is under heavy pressure too. Still, I do not think everyone who gets released from those places will have nowhere to go. ## ¥200,000 a month, and a small team that runs entirely in Japanese The ad said something like this. Combine AI with a Vietnam development team for low cost, short delivery, and stable quality. From ¥200,000 per person-month. Move fast with a small team, and finish the conversation in Japanese. I will not name the company. The number and how it is framed matter more. ¥200,000 per person-month feels like roughly half the offshore rates I have seen. The pitch puts AI and a small team up front as the reason it is cheap. My impression is that this is no longer a model sold only on the gap in local labor costs. It is cutting the price by making the work itself cheaper. For a long time, offshore development sold on that labor-cost gap. When the gap shrinks toward half, some companies cannot keep the same shape. The ad looks bold, but to me it looks like the entrance to a price war across the whole trade. ## On the client side, they already know about AI Custom software work is rough too. Clients know they can build with AI. So the old rates are harder to hold. Places that made money by spinning a large number of smaller jobs are the ones gasping hardest. Engineers see the situation as well. People who feel there is no future leave first. The company loses both hands and rates, and shrinking the business is no longer optional—that is the kind of talk I hear. It is only what I have seen and heard, but it is not one or two stories. In Japan, a system has long held that you are hard to fire as long as the company itself survives. But now, I think more places will disappear as whole companies. People will not so much be laid off one by one as the custom-shop or offshore firm itself shrinks or vanishes. When that happens, I expect more people to be "released" in that form. ## The ones who get freed may be the bridge SEs What interests me here is the bridge SE (the engineer who stood between Japanese and the local side and kept things aligned). Strong communicators, high stress tolerance. That is the profile that has held up offshore and custom-shop floors. When a company shrinks, do those people simply wash ashore with nowhere to go? I think they may instead be on the side that gets freed. The cheaper the unit price of the work, the more what remains leans toward "what to build" and "how to move with whom." On a small team that uses AI, someone who can untangle requirements and answer in the other person's words becomes scarcer than someone who mass-produces code. The coordination skill forged in bridging transfers straight into that direction. Being able to take stress is a weapon, not a burden, on a floor that has to move fast with few people. I think being released can, in some cases, become the ticket to the next place. ## Only people who understand why they were released can create demand There is a condition, though. Only if they truly understand why they were released. If you look only at the surface—work dried up, rates fell—you just get pulled into the same race to the bottom next time. People who understand why their seat disappeared can create their own demand on a small AI-using team. Coordination, translation, bridging decisions. Work that gets the conversation through before writing code. Otherwise, they cannot create demand for themselves, and the market fills up with people. People released the same way simply return to the same battlefield under the same title and the same rates. That is how I see it. The offshore ad can look like a declaration of cheapness. At the same time, it can look like an ad that forces a rethink of where communication-strong people still earn their keep. More than the ¥200,000 figure, that is what caught me.