I just came out of being forced into running an offshore team from the Phillipines for roughly six-ish months, my experience was that they were very affable wit

I just came out of being forced into running an offshore team from the Phillipines for roughly six-ish months, my experience was that they were very affable with good english skills and worked hard, there was a noticeable problem with technical skill which caused a number of bugs to occur to the point where I would just spend the time fixing them myself than throw them back at the team where they would cause more problems. The biggest problem however, was that no matter how many times I asked or provided documentation/feedback, they would ignore established coding standards and established processes and just do things their way, and when I would ask about this, I would just get shrugs. Finally, we got saddled with a "Project Manager", which I put in quotes as their contribution to the process was giving daily excuses as to not turn up to our daily progress calls, and the ones he did turn up to, he would visibly fall asleep. When I eventually pulled him up on this his response was that "he wasn't directly paid for but an included part of the cost so you can't complain about what you get." Admittedly all of the above is rather negative, but I think this highlights the "get what you pay for" aspect of offshore outsourcing.