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sure but people on the other side of the world are harder to communicate with for practical reasons like time zones and also for cultural reasons that matter bi

by dingnuts 11mo ago

sure but people on the other side of the world are harder to communicate with for practical reasons like time zones and also for cultural reasons that matter big time in many markets

skywhopper 11mo ago
Yeah this is the reason most offshoring projects ultimately fail to deliver the promised savings. The overseas staff can never be as effective as folks in the same time zone.
- lanstin 11mo ago
  Offshoring is valuable not to save money but to increase the development and operational bandwidth of the organization. This truth may not be known to the decision makers, but it is clear to the workers over time. It does increase the cost of coordination and the difficulty of establishing a common technical vision, but these are mitigatable by for example sending entire software project to one region, with the colocated workers having a higher degree of autonomy to make decisions. One way of partitioning work that fits with the power dynamics is to have all the new shiny things done in North America and mature profitable software is owned by a remote region. Half smiley but this effect is real.
paulcole 11mo ago
Sure but if the cost savings is significant enough then there is plenty of incentive to overcome (or live with) those obstacles.
nradov 11mo ago
For certain types of projects it's possible to accelerate delivery by using a "follow the sun" model where at the end of the workday each team hands off tasks to another team farther west. This will obviously decrease productivity per team member due to additional communication overhead and increase the risk of errors, but the trade-offs can be acceptable if the project has to hit a fixed external deadline. Doing this successfully requires a high level of project management discipline that most organizations lack.
hexbin010 11mo ago
> sure but people on the other side of the world are harder to communicate with for practical reasons like time zones and also for cultural reasons that matter big time in many markets That's a pain management are willing to inflict upon /you/ CTOs are aware of all the tradeoffs
izacus 11mo ago
People in Brazil and Mexico can work within US timezones just fine and aren't dumb.

sure but people on the other side of the world are harder to communicate with for practical reasons like time zones and also for cultural reasons that matter big time in many markets

skywhopper 11mo ago

Yeah this is the reason most offshoring projects ultimately fail to deliver the promised savings. The overseas staff can never be as effective as folks in the same time zone.

lanstin 11mo ago
Offshoring is valuable not to save money but to increase the development and operational bandwidth of the organization. This truth may not be known to the decision makers, but it is clear to the workers over time. It does increase the cost of coordination and the difficulty of establishing a common technical vision, but these are mitigatable by for example sending entire software project to one region, with the colocated workers having a higher degree of autonomy to make decisions. One way of partitioning work that fits with the power dynamics is to have all the new shiny things done in North America and mature profitable software is owned by a remote region. Half smiley but this effect is real.

paulcole 11mo ago

Sure but if the cost savings is significant enough then there is plenty of incentive to overcome (or live with) those obstacles.

nradov 11mo ago

For certain types of projects it's possible to accelerate delivery by using a "follow the sun" model where at the end of the workday each team hands off tasks to another team farther west. This will obviously decrease productivity per team member due to additional communication overhead and increase the risk of errors, but the trade-offs can be acceptable if the project has to hit a fixed external deadline. Doing this successfully requires a high level of project management discipline that most organizations lack.

hexbin010 11mo ago

> sure but people on the other side of the world are harder to communicate with for practical reasons like time zones and also for cultural reasons that matter big time in many markets That's a pain management are willing to inflict upon /you/ CTOs are aware of all the tradeoffs

izacus 11mo ago

People in Brazil and Mexico can work within US timezones just fine and aren't dumb.