5 ms·

There is one thing I'm completely sure about. Code quality is an order of magnitude worse. I'm not really sure why, but that's how it is. With a few exceptions

There is one thing I'm completely sure about. Code quality is an order of magnitude worse. I'm not really sure why, but that's how it is. With a few exceptions, the norm is to get a shit show every time something is outsourced to a team in India or China.

abhinai 8y ago
The reason is simple. They don't 'care'. They don't get rewarded for writing great code. They are not responsible for maintaining it. They don't get to see it work in the wild. Most probably, they don't even understand the problems that the project is trying to solve. It is simply very hard to 'care' under the circumstances outlined above. And it is very hard to write quality code when they don't care.
- woolvalley 8y ago
  It happens even when they are part of an internal company office and not a contract shop.
  - NullPrefix 8y ago
    Are they paid better than burger flippers in California? Absolute numbers, not relative. Discount team doesn't really need to care about your problems.
    - woolvalley 8y ago
      They were paid better than the typical tech company in beijing, so definitely not a discount team. It was a combination of a culture that valued quantity over quality & long hours, management and time zones. When some staff moved over to the US office they got better. Mostly because they realized that the work style in the USA is much nicer as an employee than the one in China. I had a much better experience later with contractor eastern european teams, who came from the start caring about quality. I didn't have to fight a cultural mismatch. I know other people have had issues with EE teams, but nothing is perfect. I was a jr engineer back then, so I didn't have much power to change it. I eventually left for other reasons.
  - kamaal 8y ago
    Again the same thing. Rewards don't flow in the direction of merit, so there is no incentive to deliver quality stuff.
- vxNsr 8y ago
  I've seen the same thing with eastern eu/west asia outsourcing, where arguably they have fairly strong programmers overall, and can put out great projects, but the outsourced ones just suck. I believe it comes down to the same thing as in asia, if you don't really understand the problem and don't think you're gonna be maintaining the code you have no incentive to make it nice. btw, I've seen the same thing with code in the US that is done by an outside team, it's just not as good as the stuff that you're gonna see internally.
- gaius 8y ago
  The reason is simple. They don't 'care'. They don't get rewarded for writing great code. No, it's that an outsourcing company makes money on billable hours. If you can bill the client for fixing bugs, then why would you care about introducing them in the first place?
kccqzy 8y ago
I think this is a symptom of outsourcing rather than the skills of people. When outsourcing they don't own the product or have any pride. My company has previously experimented with outsourcing to a European nation, and we get back the same shit show.
cauldron 8y ago
When you hire lowest wage coders, bad ones won't care, good ones will jump ship midway or once it's done.

abhinai 8y ago

The reason is simple. They don't 'care'. They don't get rewarded for writing great code. They are not responsible for maintaining it. They don't get to see it work in the wild. Most probably, they don't even understand the problems that the project is trying to solve. It is simply very hard to 'care' under the circumstances outlined above. And it is very hard to write quality code when they don't care.

woolvalley 8y ago
It happens even when they are part of an internal company office and not a contract shop.
- NullPrefix 8y ago
  Are they paid better than burger flippers in California? Absolute numbers, not relative. Discount team doesn't really need to care about your problems.
  - woolvalley 8y ago
    They were paid better than the typical tech company in beijing, so definitely not a discount team. It was a combination of a culture that valued quantity over quality & long hours, management and time zones. When some staff moved over to the US office they got better. Mostly because they realized that the work style in the USA is much nicer as an employee than the one in China. I had a much better experience later with contractor eastern european teams, who came from the start caring about quality. I didn't have to fight a cultural mismatch. I know other people have had issues with EE teams, but nothing is perfect. I was a jr engineer back then, so I didn't have much power to change it. I eventually left for other reasons.
- kamaal 8y ago
  Again the same thing. Rewards don't flow in the direction of merit, so there is no incentive to deliver quality stuff.
vxNsr 8y ago
I've seen the same thing with eastern eu/west asia outsourcing, where arguably they have fairly strong programmers overall, and can put out great projects, but the outsourced ones just suck. I believe it comes down to the same thing as in asia, if you don't really understand the problem and don't think you're gonna be maintaining the code you have no incentive to make it nice. btw, I've seen the same thing with code in the US that is done by an outside team, it's just not as good as the stuff that you're gonna see internally.
gaius 8y ago
The reason is simple. They don't 'care'. They don't get rewarded for writing great code. No, it's that an outsourcing company makes money on billable hours. If you can bill the client for fixing bugs, then why would you care about introducing them in the first place?

kccqzy 8y ago

I think this is a symptom of outsourcing rather than the skills of people. When outsourcing they don't own the product or have any pride. My company has previously experimented with outsourcing to a European nation, and we get back the same shit show.

cauldron 8y ago

When you hire lowest wage coders, bad ones won't care, good ones will jump ship midway or once it's done.