>> It’s not even clear it costs less when you factor in the decline in quality, delays, and extra work needed by everyone else to monitor the outsourced work. T

>> It’s not even clear it costs less when you factor in the decline in quality, delays, and extra work needed by everyone else to monitor the outsourced work. The juice isn’t worth the squeeze. >> So it's six of one, half a dozen of the other then? That's not a very persuasive argument against outsourcing. > How do you read that as six one way, half a dozen the other? If the costs aren't significantly higher than in-sourced work in ways quantifiable in dollars, then I don't think it's going to matter much to business leaders. In other words, they just don't plain care about the things we care about. If the thing gets done crappily and painfully, it's still done, and that's fine with them. Also, I don't think businesses are logical or rigorous places. IMHO, it's par for the course to "save" money by shifting costs into more difficult to quantify areas. For instance: cut desktop support, and the costs move into the groups being supported, so long as the complaints aren't loud enough to reach up through many layers of management, you have yourself a "win".