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I know it is much more satisfying to go with the under producing team in India stereotype but generally there is much more to it than just the team that was lai

I know it is much more satisfying to go with the under producing team in India stereotype but generally there is much more to it than just the team that was laid off. Who knows if higher ups at twitter had a proper vision/plan for the team and how much authority they were given for instance - both very crucial to getting things done. Example: Had a chance to work with a team from Poland couple years ago. Great people with lots of experience and skills. By purpose or not, they were just not well integrated into the existing team. They were never given clear targets, nobody ever thought what they had to offer and how they could fit into the overall structure. A project later everything got blamed on them and many from that team disappeared - many left because of the whole negative experience, some were let go. I would not say it was their fault for under producing really. It's not that simple when you don't get to define producing what is valued and what is not and you don't have much authority over changing things.

GrinningFool 10y ago
Conversely, my experience working with teams out of India has been bad without exception even when we had proper planning and authority. Which only goes to say that you can have bad teams anywhere. I'm disappointed to see the same ingredients that led to failure with offshoring a decade ago now taking more firm root here than even during the dotcom boom: perception that 'coding' is a path to easy money and certain success, dime-a-dozen "coding boot camps" that teach how to make an Angular site but don't get into any fundamentals[1]. The perception existed in the waning years of the boom, but at least the most common path then was through a full degree. While my perception is that the situation is improving in India (at least if you avoid the well known warm body suppliers), it's getting worse locally. 1. This isn't to say that there is no value to boot-camp style programs - but there are presently a whole lot more that exist solely to capitalize on a financial opportunity than focus on providing a foundation for skills growth. edit: I should add that this was just an opportunity to express my general sentiment, and given the phrasing of the news from Twitter, I doubt performance was a factor.
- blinkingled 10y ago
  > Which only goes to say that you can have bad teams anywhere. Oh totally - much harder to find a good team in India if you are just another corporation looking to outsource. But if you are Microsoft, Google, Twitter or any other well known product company they have no trouble hiring the best and it usually speaks for itself. I wanted to point out that you can do acceptably well with offshore teams by doing your research, hiring right people, doing proper planning, getting used to more communication than usual and encouraging the team take up authority. Most of these apply to any team but the communication part becomes of more importance when the team is offshore.
  - StreamBright 10y ago
    Not necessarily, one of my previous workplace did the same with the team in India due to some language barrier issue that has cost the company 10x of the savings on not hiring a native English speaking team somewhere else (for more money obviously). These events usually boil down to financial details. I bet Twitter made a calculation and it was not financially viable to maintain that team over there.
    - blinkingled 10y ago
      Indians have been speaking English for a real long time now! That's another stereotype/generalization that keeps getting thrown around! It's not the English - it's the culture that is different and there is relative ease of finding bad Apples over good ones. None of that is closely unique to teams in India. You can find perfectly well English speaking candidates here that don't fit as easily as anywhere else. Point is if you want to have a remote team for whatever reason you can't expect it to magically save you money and do everything you need. It's a process, you have to have upfront investment in terms of efforts and trying things out. In my experience it works if you give it time and efforts and it can save you money if that's what you're after. And of course remote teams are not fit for every type of project either - so there's a trade off to be made depending on various factors.
      - 10y ago
BurningFrog 10y ago
Working with remote teams is always hard, worse the bigger the time difference is. In you example, the Polish team underproduced, not by being incompetent, but by being remote. That doesn't make closing it down a bad decision.
- blinkingled 10y ago
  > That doesn't make closing it down a bad decision Of course not - but if management doesn't know the challenges involved in managing remote teams the incompetence is theirs. Blaming the team is not right in that case especially when they don't have authority that their managers do.
- AndyNemmity 10y ago
  It just is. I work for a German company as a remote team in the US, and we certainly underproduce in comparison. Not by being incompetent, simply by being remote. Time zone differences really hurt things. As much as we try to find ways to make the value the same, it isn't the people, it's the time.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
animex 10y ago
I've implemented off-shore teams for North American companies three times successfully, and what we learned is that engaging an off-shore team is really an investment that takes time, money & manpower to pay off. Many companies don't fully account for the true cost of outsourcing as it impacts your business processes for your on-shore team. Case in point, we engaged a team in India, started with 2 engineers, and within 3 months (of a complex platform) they were producing in alignment with the current code base. A year later, that team had grown to 6 including 2 QA, and they were basically running the show with guidance from the senior developers / managers / customer service / product owners. Part of the on-boarding process was sending reps over to their India office to embed and work with them for a couple weeks and understand their working environment, challenges and hear their ideas for improvements to the whole process. My cousin has a 50-person team in India (dislcaimer: I'm of Indian heritage) producing mostly mobile apps these days and in the early days his apps were of poor quality -- looking at his latest efforts, his team has really progressed and are producing decent apps with nice UI/UX and functionality. This process has occurred over the course of 6+ years. In my observations re: raw creativity and talent, Indian developers do lag behind their Eastern European/Russian and now South American rivals... part of that is the cultural. i.e. unwilling to take risks. My exposure has been small (less than 100 devs from all over the country) However, you can guide them to be productive and follow the right processes to success & scale.
wahsd 10y ago
What is it with people these days and making all kinds of contrived, fantastical excuses to rationalize an idealized outcome. There is absolutely no way you can even have a chance at accurately guessing second order derivative reasons. Reality is that they were cut and the would not have been cut if they had been valuable. There is no sense in playing ifs, ands, or buts in a contrived manner.

GrinningFool 10y ago

Conversely, my experience working with teams out of India has been bad without exception even when we had proper planning and authority. Which only goes to say that you can have bad teams anywhere. I'm disappointed to see the same ingredients that led to failure with offshoring a decade ago now taking more firm root here than even during the dotcom boom: perception that 'coding' is a path to easy money and certain success, dime-a-dozen "coding boot camps" that teach how to make an Angular site but don't get into any fundamentals[1]. The perception existed in the waning years of the boom, but at least the most common path then was through a full degree. While my perception is that the situation is improving in India (at least if you avoid the well known warm body suppliers), it's getting worse locally. 1. This isn't to say that there is no value to boot-camp style programs - but there are presently a whole lot more that exist solely to capitalize on a financial opportunity than focus on providing a foundation for skills growth. edit: I should add that this was just an opportunity to express my general sentiment, and given the phrasing of the news from Twitter, I doubt performance was a factor.

blinkingled 10y ago
> Which only goes to say that you can have bad teams anywhere. Oh totally - much harder to find a good team in India if you are just another corporation looking to outsource. But if you are Microsoft, Google, Twitter or any other well known product company they have no trouble hiring the best and it usually speaks for itself. I wanted to point out that you can do acceptably well with offshore teams by doing your research, hiring right people, doing proper planning, getting used to more communication than usual and encouraging the team take up authority. Most of these apply to any team but the communication part becomes of more importance when the team is offshore.
- StreamBright 10y ago
  Not necessarily, one of my previous workplace did the same with the team in India due to some language barrier issue that has cost the company 10x of the savings on not hiring a native English speaking team somewhere else (for more money obviously). These events usually boil down to financial details. I bet Twitter made a calculation and it was not financially viable to maintain that team over there.
  - blinkingled 10y ago
    Indians have been speaking English for a real long time now! That's another stereotype/generalization that keeps getting thrown around! It's not the English - it's the culture that is different and there is relative ease of finding bad Apples over good ones. None of that is closely unique to teams in India. You can find perfectly well English speaking candidates here that don't fit as easily as anywhere else. Point is if you want to have a remote team for whatever reason you can't expect it to magically save you money and do everything you need. It's a process, you have to have upfront investment in terms of efforts and trying things out. In my experience it works if you give it time and efforts and it can save you money if that's what you're after. And of course remote teams are not fit for every type of project either - so there's a trade off to be made depending on various factors.
    - 10y ago

BurningFrog 10y ago

Working with remote teams is always hard, worse the bigger the time difference is. In you example, the Polish team underproduced, not by being incompetent, but by being remote. That doesn't make closing it down a bad decision.

blinkingled 10y ago
> That doesn't make closing it down a bad decision Of course not - but if management doesn't know the challenges involved in managing remote teams the incompetence is theirs. Blaming the team is not right in that case especially when they don't have authority that their managers do.
AndyNemmity 10y ago
It just is. I work for a German company as a remote team in the US, and we certainly underproduce in comparison. Not by being incompetent, simply by being remote. Time zone differences really hurt things. As much as we try to find ways to make the value the same, it isn't the people, it's the time.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

animex 10y ago

I've implemented off-shore teams for North American companies three times successfully, and what we learned is that engaging an off-shore team is really an investment that takes time, money & manpower to pay off. Many companies don't fully account for the true cost of outsourcing as it impacts your business processes for your on-shore team. Case in point, we engaged a team in India, started with 2 engineers, and within 3 months (of a complex platform) they were producing in alignment with the current code base. A year later, that team had grown to 6 including 2 QA, and they were basically running the show with guidance from the senior developers / managers / customer service / product owners. Part of the on-boarding process was sending reps over to their India office to embed and work with them for a couple weeks and understand their working environment, challenges and hear their ideas for improvements to the whole process. My cousin has a 50-person team in India (dislcaimer: I'm of Indian heritage) producing mostly mobile apps these days and in the early days his apps were of poor quality -- looking at his latest efforts, his team has really progressed and are producing decent apps with nice UI/UX and functionality. This process has occurred over the course of 6+ years. In my observations re: raw creativity and talent, Indian developers do lag behind their Eastern European/Russian and now South American rivals... part of that is the cultural. i.e. unwilling to take risks. My exposure has been small (less than 100 devs from all over the country) However, you can guide them to be productive and follow the right processes to success & scale.

wahsd 10y ago

What is it with people these days and making all kinds of contrived, fantastical excuses to rationalize an idealized outcome. There is absolutely no way you can even have a chance at accurately guessing second order derivative reasons. Reality is that they were cut and the would not have been cut if they had been valuable. There is no sense in playing ifs, ands, or buts in a contrived manner.