Thanks for that very complete view of things.

Things are quite different since I last was doing hiring, which was pre-COVID.

Yeah, my experience leading a remoted team in India also showed the importance of cultural awareness and good requirements: I ultimately got into the habit of, after the big meeting with the boss were all the work was given to the various teams, get my guys individually on the phone (so that they feared not "losing face") and carefully coach out of them any questions or doubts since otherwise they wouldn't voice them and just end up implementing something they misunderstood or which wasn't explained correctly and indeed they also needed very detailed requirements which was a problem because the senior guys on the other side who ended up having to write said requirements could pretty much have done the job themselves in that time.

This was a big Investment Bank and some top level manager in NY decided to create a division in India to outsource work to, but it definitely didn't get the cream of the crop over there and the career structuring there was so shit that the few good techies we got would quickly end up as (bad) managers - their pay scales followed the stupid idea that "nobody can be paid more than management" so good mid level techies had to become junior managers to earn more, and they invariably were crap as managers.