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One of the biggest changes I had seen at Microsoft (in my last few years at Microsoft) was the excessive reliance on outsourcing. Groups that relied excessively
by credo 17y ago
One of the biggest changes I had seen at Microsoft (in my last few years at Microsoft) was the excessive reliance on outsourcing. Groups that relied excessively on vendors had a different culture from other groups.
The blatant copying (in the Plurk case) is a particularly egregious example of what can happen with too much outsourcing, but the impact of policies (that treat product development as an outsourcable commodity) over the past several years extends beyound this example and hurts overall quality.
- aaronbrethorst 17y agoThat's not necessarily fair. When I was there, it was a hell of a lot easier to get some cash to hire an external vendor than to get more headcount. Perhaps a penny-wise but pound-foolish situation, but it is what it is. Also, there are times when a group without development resources (e.g. a content group or an evangelism group) wants to build a tool or a website. They don't really have an option but to outsource its creation.
- credo 17y agoWhen you're talking about groups without dev-resources, you're not talking about product-development groups. By "product development", I specifically meant product development and core teams at Microsoft. On your other point, I think we can agree that penny-wise pound foolish isn't a good policy for companies like Microsoft <g> Btw to be clear, I wasn't suggesting that all outsourcing is bad. I managed one small outsourced project in the 90s and was very happy with the results. However, imo, today's Microsoft does too much outsourcing.
- aero142 17y agoIn this case I am willing to extend a little slack. The site design of plurk seems very strange to me, but may be normal in China. Perhaps a Chinese company is better suited to develop a site to be used the Chinese market.