There are several factors but the biggest one was India, I never understood why software quality from India was so poor. Honestly, it made no logical sense, her

There are several factors but the biggest one was India, I never understood why software quality from India was so poor. Honestly, it made no logical sense, here is a population that has a group of individuals that are for whatever reasons fairly strong in STEM. It seemed inconsistent, until one day I met a developer named Karthick, Karthick could code and was a passionate developer, he was everything that India software quality was not. So I asked Karthick about my observations and why software coming back from India was so poor. What I found out amazed me What I thought was a complex problem, was actually a problem of incentives. See Karthick told me that in India, a man is measured by how many people he manages. It is a throw back to the cast systems and it is a source of pride. The fastest way to management, in India, is STEM and specifically computer programming. So what you get is a bunch of would be MBA's, getting engineering degrees, that they do not want, to take a job that they do not want, to get a job they are not educated for and are not qualified for. So it creates a fail up environment. This was the first wave of problems and honestly after the failures of BoA and several other US companies who lost billions trying to save a buck in that market, US companies are hesitant to enter that market again whole hog. They will pick up a developer or two to augment a team, but not many people are sending whole projects over anymore. Everyone has a horror story and it's enough to make most would be bargain shoppers think twice about trying to save a dollar, by trading it for risk. The second issue is one of tribal knowledge as I call it. People conduct their lives in very different ways from Central Asia to the US. What we take for granted as common knowledge over here may be a uncommon or not even done in your culture and vice versa. When we document systems, we take for granted "common" knowledge and it does not get documented. For example I worked on a system one time for a large hotel reservation engine that had work done in India. 2/3 of the development staff had never personally booked a hotel room online. It ended up costing more to have BA's and Architects document the system, than it would have to have thrown the BA's and Architects in a room with a bunch of developers. In the end what did we do, well we sent our CTO, our BA's and our Architects to India to sit in a room for 2 months at a time until the project was a success. Basically enough from the VP's to declare victory and get the hell out. So what does it all boil down to, cultural mismatch. As US business homogeny (I don't mean that in an arrogant sense, I mean it in a corporate culture way) and the Internets global village takes it's hold on the globe, that mismatch becomes less of an issue, but someones is going to have to take the risk to prove it out, and unfortunately the generation that smashed on the rocks in India is now in the decision making seats and not many of them have an appetite to try a do over. Especially startups where project failures or delays can kill a promising idea.