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> I think they just use India now instead. Depending who you get this could be an upgrade. I've met some damn good Indian programmers who work for contracting

> I think they just use India now instead. Depending who you get this could be an upgrade. I've met some damn good Indian programmers who work for contracting shops (and, sadly make way less than they would in the states). But, I've also met some who literally don't know how to code.

rsj_hn 9y ago
The ones you encounter in the U.S. are the cream of the crop. It gets very spotty when you look at western-based outsourcing shops like Accenture or Deloitte and then when you go to Persistent, Capgemini or Infosys it's a shitshow. Fundamentally, the problem is that these firms are used for work that is not valued by either the customer or the implementor. The primary concern is cost. If you are a developer for a tech company working on core products, you drive revenue and are important. If a feature you implement is marginally better than the competition, your firm can win the market and, due to economies of scale, the revenue gain will be huge. Because revenue is sensitive to small differences in quality, you want the best possible developers that you can afford. As a result, developers viewed as part of the firm's comparative advantage are paid well and treated well. But if you are a DBA working at walgreens, then you are not a part of the comparative advantage of the firm. If you are marginally better at your job, revenues will not go up. You are a cost that will be outsourced in a heartbeat if the firm could save a dollar. Or like doing landscaping at Google. Regardless of how awesome Google is, they are going to look at their landscaping expenditures purely as a cost. Revenues will not go up if you do a better job. Thus they don't care about getting the best possible landscaping, they want adequate landscaping, like water running out of a tap. That's the type of work that is passed on to these outsourcers. It may be technical in nature, but there is little to no perceived marginal gain in the work being of a higher quality than the minimum amount necessary to be fit for use: maintenance of products that companies no longer want to invest in, but they have service contracts in place that require maintenance. The goal is to minimize cost while not breaching the contract. Or bespoke work in the B2B space where you don't get the type of economies of scale that result in a meaningful revenue bump when one particular piece of code exceeds expectations. In all these things, the driver is the cheapest talent such that the output is adequate. That means that these jobs are not rewarding to the developers who do them, and so these firms have huge problems with turnover and keeping good developers motivated. Those developers who remain are the ones who don't mind working on code that no one cares about, being paid poorly to do it, and being treated as expendable. In other words, the least motivated, passionate developers are the ones who remain. It is no wonder that they will tend to be the least talented.
- barsonme 9y ago
  > the problem is that these firms are used for work that is not valued by either the customer or the implementor. Truth. I've noticed many contractors take specs _very_ literally. While that might be good in that the result won't be _wrong_, the product usually becomes quite brittle and can't "scale" well.

rsj_hn 9y ago

The ones you encounter in the U.S. are the cream of the crop. It gets very spotty when you look at western-based outsourcing shops like Accenture or Deloitte and then when you go to Persistent, Capgemini or Infosys it's a shitshow. Fundamentally, the problem is that these firms are used for work that is not valued by either the customer or the implementor. The primary concern is cost. If you are a developer for a tech company working on core products, you drive revenue and are important. If a feature you implement is marginally better than the competition, your firm can win the market and, due to economies of scale, the revenue gain will be huge. Because revenue is sensitive to small differences in quality, you want the best possible developers that you can afford. As a result, developers viewed as part of the firm's comparative advantage are paid well and treated well. But if you are a DBA working at walgreens, then you are not a part of the comparative advantage of the firm. If you are marginally better at your job, revenues will not go up. You are a cost that will be outsourced in a heartbeat if the firm could save a dollar. Or like doing landscaping at Google. Regardless of how awesome Google is, they are going to look at their landscaping expenditures purely as a cost. Revenues will not go up if you do a better job. Thus they don't care about getting the best possible landscaping, they want adequate landscaping, like water running out of a tap. That's the type of work that is passed on to these outsourcers. It may be technical in nature, but there is little to no perceived marginal gain in the work being of a higher quality than the minimum amount necessary to be fit for use: maintenance of products that companies no longer want to invest in, but they have service contracts in place that require maintenance. The goal is to minimize cost while not breaching the contract. Or bespoke work in the B2B space where you don't get the type of economies of scale that result in a meaningful revenue bump when one particular piece of code exceeds expectations. In all these things, the driver is the cheapest talent such that the output is adequate. That means that these jobs are not rewarding to the developers who do them, and so these firms have huge problems with turnover and keeping good developers motivated. Those developers who remain are the ones who don't mind working on code that no one cares about, being paid poorly to do it, and being treated as expendable. In other words, the least motivated, passionate developers are the ones who remain. It is no wonder that they will tend to be the least talented.

barsonme 9y ago
> the problem is that these firms are used for work that is not valued by either the customer or the implementor. Truth. I've noticed many contractors take specs _very_ literally. While that might be good in that the result won't be _wrong_, the product usually becomes quite brittle and can't "scale" well.