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I've found that the best thing to do with these people is send them offshore. Let them see what cheap, "fast" work looks like. Let them have all their preconc

I've found that the best thing to do with these people is send them offshore. Let them see what cheap, "fast" work looks like. Let them have all their preconceptions shattered, and their sense of what it takes to build software modified towards reality. Let them get all the frustration out of their system until they're ready for you to show them what good, genuinely fast work looks like. The quickest way to accomplish this is to tell them your rate upfront. They'll go "ouch", at which point you can gently point them towards rentacoder, safe in the knowledge that they'll be back in 6 months time with a bit of perspective and a willingness to pay your extortionate rate so long as you promise never to put them through anything like what they just suffered ever again.

slantyyz 16y ago
Yeah I still don't know if people have realized that offshoring can easily cost more and take longer than having locals do the work. The projects that I've been on that had offshore resourcing struck me as slower and more difficult to work on. There are only so many times that I can ask someone to repeat themselves on a conference call because his/her accent is too thick for me to understand.
- nadam 16y ago
  I've seen some offshoring went well and some which went not so well. Common mistakes are: Some western companies want to do it ridiculously cheap. To hire really good programmers in Eastern Europe you need to offer bigger than market salaries (which are still lower than western salaries). The other problem is, even if they hire good people they outsource the most boring jobs, because western programmers keep the interesting stuff for themselvs. The result in this case: Phd-s doing the user interface programming in Eastern Europe. The server is developed in the U.S. Political stuff: western guys don't want their eastern colleagues succeed. I can understand why: they are afraid that their jobs will be taken. And sometimes communication is hard to do right. In fact depends on the project. I think it is better to outsource highly self-contained tasks which do not need an exteremely high amount of interactive communication.
  - Calamitous 16y ago
    I was with you right up until you said "they are afraid that their jobs will be taken." I realize the plural of anecdote is not data, but from my experience, far and away the most common frustrations Western developers have with offshore outfits is the language gap, and quality of work. I've never seen anyone afraid that another outfit would take their job-- after all, who would fix the code they got back from offshore? :)
- TwoSheds 16y ago
  In my experience (last 5 years in MegaCorporations) the problem is that the people who are actually hands-on managing the offshoring projects are different from those who make the decisions. The guys who decide to offshore are usually at least 2-3 layers of management above. The urge to offshore software development at that level is strong, and the management sees it as a megatrend which "we'll have to follow because everyone else is doing it". The feedback loop is broken, the decision maker who offshores a certain project is no longer there when a couple of years later it's clear that the whole thing was a disaster. He's busy offshoring some other project.
  - slantyyz 16y ago
    Those guys at the top also tend to be the ones who think Agile methodologies will solve their problems without checking to see if their existing culture is conducive to that work approach.
    - kahawe 16y ago
      Hey now, you just gotta slam that Agile sticker on your devs, mix it with lots of Scrum and voilà you got yourself the perfect coders!
  - gaius 16y ago
    If you're a big shot exec, you might go to silicon valley and see these highly talented and ambitious Indians and say "I gotta get me some of those". But the sort of Indian you find in Silicon Valley (or more generally, the sort of person from country X you find working in another country) is generally not representative of the average worker where they come from. As far as Indians go, there are the cream of the crop who can work anywhere, and you never see them on the open job market. There are the regular Joes like you and me who generally work for Indian companies in India, you only see them in the West when they're on holiday. Then there are "the rest" and those are the ones who do outsourcing gigs.
nadam 16y ago
I think smart offshoring can be a good idea. If they want the stuff for 1/10th price than they will not get quality. But if they want the stuff for half price they in fact can have at least as good qualty if not better. You can find the top talent here in Eastern Europe for half of the salary usual in the U.S. I know this, because I've already worked in the 'West' doing absolutely the same work for much more money than I can earn here. Honestly the real bottleneck of (smart) offshoring is communication. If communication is solved then it can work well.
- jsankey 16y ago
  If communication is solved then it can work well. That's a big if. For most projects, the work is not that difficult in a technical sense. The hard parts are accurate communication and managing change over time. IMO these factors are much more likely to cause project failure than some pure technical hurdle.
- eru 16y ago
  Yes. That's the same bottleneck you have for working from home, or from the beach. It's what keeps us in the offices.
- stevenbedrick 16y ago
  I agree wholeheartedly, but also agree with jsankey's comment that "If communication is solved then it can work well" is a really, really, really big "if". It is absolutely possible to get good results from offshoring... ...however, getting those good results takes a serious commitment of time and effort on the part of the client, some of which has to happen before the project even gets started, and some of which has to continue throughout the project's lifespan. Ensuring that they (the client) actually know what they want before trying to tell somebody else what to build; establishing good communication, documentation, and development practices within their own organization before trying to collaborate with extramural contractors; spending the time and the energy to really dig into it with the providers, and keep them on the phone until you're 100% sure that both you and they are reading from the same page about what needs to be done, no matter how confusing their accents are to you (or yours are to them). These sorts of things are absolute prerequisites for a successful offshoring experience, especially if it's the first time that the client's tried it. In my personal experience, the sorts of people who are turning to offshoring as a way to "triangle the circle" and get good+fast+cheap are not the sorts of people who are going to be willing or able to put the necessary time and thought into the project, its planning, or its management. These jokers are a big part of why offshoring gets such a bad rap, in my opinion. Of course, none of this is to say that the burden rests entirely on the clients- the providers, and the relative quality of their communication/management/etc. practices obviously have a ton of influence on how a given project turns out (or doesn't turn out, as the case may be). However, I say that decent planning and project management practices on the part of the client are absolutely necessary (but not sufficient conditions) for a successful offshoring experience. When I hear offshoring horror stories, the majority of the time the problems had their roots in client-side troubles rather than provider-side troubles.

slantyyz 16y ago

Yeah I still don't know if people have realized that offshoring can easily cost more and take longer than having locals do the work. The projects that I've been on that had offshore resourcing struck me as slower and more difficult to work on. There are only so many times that I can ask someone to repeat themselves on a conference call because his/her accent is too thick for me to understand.

nadam 16y ago
I've seen some offshoring went well and some which went not so well. Common mistakes are: Some western companies want to do it ridiculously cheap. To hire really good programmers in Eastern Europe you need to offer bigger than market salaries (which are still lower than western salaries). The other problem is, even if they hire good people they outsource the most boring jobs, because western programmers keep the interesting stuff for themselvs. The result in this case: Phd-s doing the user interface programming in Eastern Europe. The server is developed in the U.S. Political stuff: western guys don't want their eastern colleagues succeed. I can understand why: they are afraid that their jobs will be taken. And sometimes communication is hard to do right. In fact depends on the project. I think it is better to outsource highly self-contained tasks which do not need an exteremely high amount of interactive communication.
- Calamitous 16y ago
  I was with you right up until you said "they are afraid that their jobs will be taken." I realize the plural of anecdote is not data, but from my experience, far and away the most common frustrations Western developers have with offshore outfits is the language gap, and quality of work. I've never seen anyone afraid that another outfit would take their job-- after all, who would fix the code they got back from offshore? :)
TwoSheds 16y ago
In my experience (last 5 years in MegaCorporations) the problem is that the people who are actually hands-on managing the offshoring projects are different from those who make the decisions. The guys who decide to offshore are usually at least 2-3 layers of management above. The urge to offshore software development at that level is strong, and the management sees it as a megatrend which "we'll have to follow because everyone else is doing it". The feedback loop is broken, the decision maker who offshores a certain project is no longer there when a couple of years later it's clear that the whole thing was a disaster. He's busy offshoring some other project.
- slantyyz 16y ago
  Those guys at the top also tend to be the ones who think Agile methodologies will solve their problems without checking to see if their existing culture is conducive to that work approach.
  - kahawe 16y ago
    Hey now, you just gotta slam that Agile sticker on your devs, mix it with lots of Scrum and voilà you got yourself the perfect coders!
- gaius 16y ago
  If you're a big shot exec, you might go to silicon valley and see these highly talented and ambitious Indians and say "I gotta get me some of those". But the sort of Indian you find in Silicon Valley (or more generally, the sort of person from country X you find working in another country) is generally not representative of the average worker where they come from. As far as Indians go, there are the cream of the crop who can work anywhere, and you never see them on the open job market. There are the regular Joes like you and me who generally work for Indian companies in India, you only see them in the West when they're on holiday. Then there are "the rest" and those are the ones who do outsourcing gigs.

nadam 16y ago

I think smart offshoring can be a good idea. If they want the stuff for 1/10th price than they will not get quality. But if they want the stuff for half price they in fact can have at least as good qualty if not better. You can find the top talent here in Eastern Europe for half of the salary usual in the U.S. I know this, because I've already worked in the 'West' doing absolutely the same work for much more money than I can earn here. Honestly the real bottleneck of (smart) offshoring is communication. If communication is solved then it can work well.

jsankey 16y ago
If communication is solved then it can work well. That's a big if. For most projects, the work is not that difficult in a technical sense. The hard parts are accurate communication and managing change over time. IMO these factors are much more likely to cause project failure than some pure technical hurdle.
eru 16y ago
Yes. That's the same bottleneck you have for working from home, or from the beach. It's what keeps us in the offices.
stevenbedrick 16y ago
I agree wholeheartedly, but also agree with jsankey's comment that "If communication is solved then it can work well" is a really, really, really big "if". It is absolutely possible to get good results from offshoring... ...however, getting those good results takes a serious commitment of time and effort on the part of the client, some of which has to happen before the project even gets started, and some of which has to continue throughout the project's lifespan. Ensuring that they (the client) actually know what they want before trying to tell somebody else what to build; establishing good communication, documentation, and development practices within their own organization before trying to collaborate with extramural contractors; spending the time and the energy to really dig into it with the providers, and keep them on the phone until you're 100% sure that both you and they are reading from the same page about what needs to be done, no matter how confusing their accents are to you (or yours are to them). These sorts of things are absolute prerequisites for a successful offshoring experience, especially if it's the first time that the client's tried it. In my personal experience, the sorts of people who are turning to offshoring as a way to "triangle the circle" and get good+fast+cheap are not the sorts of people who are going to be willing or able to put the necessary time and thought into the project, its planning, or its management. These jokers are a big part of why offshoring gets such a bad rap, in my opinion. Of course, none of this is to say that the burden rests entirely on the clients- the providers, and the relative quality of their communication/management/etc. practices obviously have a ton of influence on how a given project turns out (or doesn't turn out, as the case may be). However, I say that decent planning and project management practices on the part of the client are absolutely necessary (but not sufficient conditions) for a successful offshoring experience. When I hear offshoring horror stories, the majority of the time the problems had their roots in client-side troubles rather than provider-side troubles.