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I'm not reading any deliberate sabotaging in this write-up. You do? They spent way more time and resources getting that offshore team up to speed, but the team

I'm not reading any deliberate sabotaging in this write-up. You do? They spent way more time and resources getting that offshore team up to speed, but the team still failed to do anything useful. It wasn't their job to make this work no matter what, it was their job to use this team as a resource. If this team then goes and mucks about for two months instead of asking for the resources it needs (e.g., “We're stuck getting this codebase to work; can you assign someone to walk us through it?”), then the failure lies there. If your CEO was looking to make this the new way of working, I would be very careful not to commit any hidden resources either.

vkazanov 2y ago
It's not a deliberate sabotage. It's more like the author subtly set things up for a failure. In this case, the guy knew his people really well, and understood that any external team would have certain weaknesses relative to the internal one: understanding business context, requiring clear goal setting, etc. And he worked from there. I've seen similar things happen within a relatively large org. And that one time it was not about in-house vs offshore, it was more about "this branch of the org" vs "the other branch of the org". In particular, a C++ team was suggested working with a new Erlang team on a project they though of as something they should be delivering. To be honest, the C++ team was really good, just as the in-house team in the story was described as very efficient. And they won this one round.
throwaway11460 2y ago
He was leader of a team and didn't even make sure that somebody helped the new guys run and build the project? He even brags about it being nonstandard and complicated? He is the problem.
- paranoidrobot 2y ago
  I think you perhaps missed the parts where that was called out they did do this. > In fact, I spent much more time holding their hands to explain what was needed than I did with any of my existing team.

vkazanov 2y ago

It's not a deliberate sabotage. It's more like the author subtly set things up for a failure. In this case, the guy knew his people really well, and understood that any external team would have certain weaknesses relative to the internal one: understanding business context, requiring clear goal setting, etc. And he worked from there. I've seen similar things happen within a relatively large org. And that one time it was not about in-house vs offshore, it was more about "this branch of the org" vs "the other branch of the org". In particular, a C++ team was suggested working with a new Erlang team on a project they though of as something they should be delivering. To be honest, the C++ team was really good, just as the in-house team in the story was described as very efficient. And they won this one round.

throwaway11460 2y ago

He was leader of a team and didn't even make sure that somebody helped the new guys run and build the project? He even brags about it being nonstandard and complicated? He is the problem.

paranoidrobot 2y ago
I think you perhaps missed the parts where that was called out they did do this. > In fact, I spent much more time holding their hands to explain what was needed than I did with any of my existing team.