4 ms·

Software is NOT easy to outsource. I have been part of many outsourcing projects over the last 15 years, and I can count on one hand the number of those that h

Software is NOT easy to outsource. I have been part of many outsourcing projects over the last 15 years, and I can count on one hand the number of those that have been acceptable. Outsourcing requires a completely different style of management than of a local team of developers. I have had better luck outsourcing art and animation tasks. But even there cultural barriers pop up all the time.

rubber_duck 10y ago
Sure it is, most of the problems I've seen described fall squarely in to "we went cost cutting all the way and got shit results - who could have guessed". If you hire cheap devs even by local standards then you get cheap devs, add to that the lack of proper management like you said because it would cost to do it properly and you get crap. Tech giants all have teams all over the world and it works OK, but they pay top rates for local standards and have proper management chain top down. You can save money by outsourcing, but if you try to minimize expenses at all costs it shows in quality.
- sheepmullet 10y ago
  > Tech giants all have teams all over the world and it works OK, but they pay top rates for local standards and have proper management chain top down. Having teams all over the world is a very different cost and business model from outsourcing. With overseas teams they tend to either be salary matched to market and the quality not so great or good wage even by US (but maybe not SV) standards but getting the very best people. Outsourcing is much more of a mess because markup is ~3x.
  - rubber_duck 10y ago
    >good wage even by US (but maybe not SV) standards but getting the very best people. 60k$/year easily gets you top talent in places like eastern Europe and Asia - that's like entry level for the US, when you equate for skills I would guess it's almost always a 2x difference even in low cost US places. The biggest thing about US was that it offers highest wages and it's a center for tech globally so it's really easy to attract skilled immigrants and so top people often emigrate - if you crack down on that well you suddenly made outsourcing better both because cost and the top talent availability.
janoc 10y ago
I am not saying it is easy, only that it is the easiest when compared to e.g. manufacturing or services. You can't exactly outsource a dentist or barber to India and outsourcing manufacturing is a hugely expensive and complicated task, with a ton of logistics involved. Compared to that moving software development to another country is much simpler. It is difficult to get it right, but it is simpler to move things like specifications and code than containers of raw materials and goods.
- sheepmullet 10y ago
  > I am not saying it is easy, only that it is the easiest when compared to e.g. manufacturing or services It is actually the other way around regarding manufacturing and software development. Software development is high-growth, quickly changing, highly skilled, high levels of communication, transferable, low capital, and doesn't scale well. Manufacturing for the most part is steady demand, slow rates of change, low-moderate skill, low communication, not very transferable, high capital and scales really well. This leads to software dev being very difficult to outsource without being out-competed.

rubber_duck 10y ago

Sure it is, most of the problems I've seen described fall squarely in to "we went cost cutting all the way and got shit results - who could have guessed". If you hire cheap devs even by local standards then you get cheap devs, add to that the lack of proper management like you said because it would cost to do it properly and you get crap. Tech giants all have teams all over the world and it works OK, but they pay top rates for local standards and have proper management chain top down. You can save money by outsourcing, but if you try to minimize expenses at all costs it shows in quality.

sheepmullet 10y ago
> Tech giants all have teams all over the world and it works OK, but they pay top rates for local standards and have proper management chain top down. Having teams all over the world is a very different cost and business model from outsourcing. With overseas teams they tend to either be salary matched to market and the quality not so great or good wage even by US (but maybe not SV) standards but getting the very best people. Outsourcing is much more of a mess because markup is ~3x.
- rubber_duck 10y ago
  >good wage even by US (but maybe not SV) standards but getting the very best people. 60k$/year easily gets you top talent in places like eastern Europe and Asia - that's like entry level for the US, when you equate for skills I would guess it's almost always a 2x difference even in low cost US places. The biggest thing about US was that it offers highest wages and it's a center for tech globally so it's really easy to attract skilled immigrants and so top people often emigrate - if you crack down on that well you suddenly made outsourcing better both because cost and the top talent availability.

janoc 10y ago

I am not saying it is easy, only that it is the easiest when compared to e.g. manufacturing or services. You can't exactly outsource a dentist or barber to India and outsourcing manufacturing is a hugely expensive and complicated task, with a ton of logistics involved. Compared to that moving software development to another country is much simpler. It is difficult to get it right, but it is simpler to move things like specifications and code than containers of raw materials and goods.

sheepmullet 10y ago
> I am not saying it is easy, only that it is the easiest when compared to e.g. manufacturing or services It is actually the other way around regarding manufacturing and software development. Software development is high-growth, quickly changing, highly skilled, high levels of communication, transferable, low capital, and doesn't scale well. Manufacturing for the most part is steady demand, slow rates of change, low-moderate skill, low communication, not very transferable, high capital and scales really well. This leads to software dev being very difficult to outsource without being out-competed.