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patio11 has a long history of making snarky comments about how outsourcing to India should not be a concern to Western IT workers because the quality of Indian

patio11 has a long history of making snarky comments about how outsourcing to India should not be a concern to Western IT workers because the quality of Indian IT workers is much lower than that of Western IT workers and clients will ultimately recognize this and hire a Westerner instead. This is presumably something that is quite near and dear to him, as he is an American expat who lives in Gifu, a tiny, rural Japanese town. Since his primary income source (outside of Bingo Card Creator and Appointment Reminder) is doing consulting work for Western customers, it's very important to him that they pick him over Indian consultants based on how good he is, since hiring him presents all the same issues with respect to time zone, distance, etc. that hiring an Indian would. He probably experienced a lot of difficulty initially in acquiring customers (who opted to go with the much cheaper, Indian consultants), which is why he has such an oversized Internet presence, including on Hacker News - it has helped build a brand for himself that isn't location-specific.

jpatokal 13y ago
There's one problem with your argument: patio11 doesn't actually do consulting anymore. http://www.kalzumeus.com/2013/07/17/kalzumeus-podcast-5-quitting-consulting-via-productization/ http://www.kalzumeus.com/2013/07/17/kalzumeus-podcast-5-quit...
patio11 13y ago
My long history of comments on the issue generally references my time at the old Japanese day job, where I was pressganged into dealing with our Indian subsidiary and asked to shepherd the five folks who came to work at our Nagoya location from it. This is what I was doing during three years of 100 hour weeks. A more charitable read of my old comments would be "The project(s) were beset by communication issues, terribly managed by the Japanese company (which, in the fine tradition of Japanese companies, I'll take blame for since I was unable to resolve it despite trying), and additionally undermined by pervasive competence issues." I'm not talking my book here. In the first place, I don't have a book, as I no longer consult. In the second case, Indian BPO firms are less competitive with me than Chinese take out restaurants: our target customers are different, our projects are different, our marketing methods are different, etc etc.
tptacek 13y ago
Once again, an attempt to attribute someone's words to simple financial interests or other superficial biases makes a whole thread dumber. Has this kind of argument ever worked on HN, even once? This attempt at psychoanalyzing Patrick is so comically ineffective that it might have been improved with a few intimations that he was also in the best pockets of the NSA.
wglb 13y ago
You are way out of line here.

jpatokal 13y ago

There's one problem with your argument: patio11 doesn't actually do consulting anymore. http://www.kalzumeus.com/2013/07/17/kalzumeus-podcast-5-quitting-consulting-via-productization/ http://www.kalzumeus.com/2013/07/17/kalzumeus-podcast-5-quit...

patio11 13y ago

My long history of comments on the issue generally references my time at the old Japanese day job, where I was pressganged into dealing with our Indian subsidiary and asked to shepherd the five folks who came to work at our Nagoya location from it. This is what I was doing during three years of 100 hour weeks. A more charitable read of my old comments would be "The project(s) were beset by communication issues, terribly managed by the Japanese company (which, in the fine tradition of Japanese companies, I'll take blame for since I was unable to resolve it despite trying), and additionally undermined by pervasive competence issues." I'm not talking my book here. In the first place, I don't have a book, as I no longer consult. In the second case, Indian BPO firms are less competitive with me than Chinese take out restaurants: our target customers are different, our projects are different, our marketing methods are different, etc etc.

tptacek 13y ago

Once again, an attempt to attribute someone's words to simple financial interests or other superficial biases makes a whole thread dumber. Has this kind of argument ever worked on HN, even once? This attempt at psychoanalyzing Patrick is so comically ineffective that it might have been improved with a few intimations that he was also in the best pockets of the NSA.

wglb 13y ago

You are way out of line here.