OutSourcing is great for the American Developer- Fact or Fiction
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One could write a dissertation subject. Global vs. local economy, analysis of actual cost benefits to the business, short term vs. long term investment/gains, the further economic stratification of society, emerging markets, company loyalty, cost of business in America (taxes, health care, labor laws, etc), shareholder pressure, global market competition, intellectual property, security, transfer of knowledge, the educational system, etc. However, the short answer, from my perspective as a software developer: Screw the dissertation. Outsourcing sucks. Marc
Ah, brutal honesty, love it
I'm largely language agnostic
After a while they all bug me :doh:
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Given the economical climate in America today, what are the general feelings about most companies shipping their entire operations overseas and essentially placing the American expertise in the field of software development/engineering in jeopardy?
My primary line of business is cleaning up the mess left behind from incompetent teams.
Need a C# Consultant? I'm available.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know. -- Ernest Hemingway -
Given the economical climate in America today, what are the general feelings about most companies shipping their entire operations overseas and essentially placing the American expertise in the field of software development/engineering in jeopardy?
Judging by the quality of the posts in the C# forum, the American developer has little to fear.
Deja View - the feeling that you've seen this post before.
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SilimSayo wrote:
Question: Are American companies obligated to employ Americans?
No not in today's global economy. They should not hire just Americans to do the job. At the same time, should they ship 75-80% of those jobs in question overseas being an American company? It's great idea if you are a shareholder, just as you mentioned. But, that revenue that was generated and spent in America, thus helping the economy, has now disappeared slowly thus giving way to a failing economy. No genertaion of revenue equals a poorer society. Imagine if 70% of organization outsourced their jobs overseas. If that happen, internal revenue decreases, debts to other countries grow larger, internal spending decreases, prices increases; does any of this sound familiar to any Americans? Can you say 2nd world country?
"Building a better future one class at a time"
I'll just rebalance at some new equilibrium. Foreign car makers are now putting up new plants in the US because it's getting more affordable to do so. The ball just rolls to the lowest point, and there'll always be a lowest point somewhere.
Wout
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Judging by the quality of the posts in the C# forum, the American developer has little to fear.
Deja View - the feeling that you've seen this post before.
unless of course you realize that most americans are more concerned about cost over quality.
----------------------------------------------------------- Completion Deadline: two days before the day after tomorrow
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Judging by the quality of the posts in the C# forum, the American developer has little to fear.
Deja View - the feeling that you've seen this post before.
Pete O'Hanlon wrote:
Judging by the quality of the posts in the C# forum, the American developer has little to fear.
Unfortunately, quality and cost/hr are totally decoupled in the minds of the decision makers. And ironically, the "quality" of management vs. their cost/hr is not something WE, as the lowly employee, have any say over. Funny how that works, isn't it? Marc
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Pete O'Hanlon wrote:
Judging by the quality of the posts in the C# forum, the American developer has little to fear.
Unfortunately, quality and cost/hr are totally decoupled in the minds of the decision makers. And ironically, the "quality" of management vs. their cost/hr is not something WE, as the lowly employee, have any say over. Funny how that works, isn't it? Marc
always trying to out-do me in the forums aren't you.
----------------------------------------------------------- Completion Deadline: two days before the day after tomorrow
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Given the economical climate in America today, what are the general feelings about most companies shipping their entire operations overseas and essentially placing the American expertise in the field of software development/engineering in jeopardy?
After personally seeing the quality of some of the outsourced software development work done here in Southeast Asia, you have nothing to worry about. The average level of experience required to be considered "senior" developer level is only three years, and the recruiters here can't seem to find or hire[^] developers who have more than five years of experience. To give you an idea of just how incompetent some of the devs here are, I've run into so-called senior "developers" working in the BPO/Outsourcing industry who claimed to practice "agile techniques" and yet when I went their actual source code (which, btw, claimed to use TDD), I only found ONE test case. As much as I'd like to say that was just an exception, I'm starting to be convinced more and more that it's just the standard practice here in SE Asia. In other words, you get what you pay for. With that in mind, the developers in the U.S. might be more costly, but the cost/quality tradeoff applies there as well. You might pay more to get your development work done in the U.S., but you can throw a rock in any direction and find at least more than a handful of good developers with more than five years of experience in almost any state. If the U.S. can compete when it comes to quality software development, then the only developers whose job will be at stake will be the ones that really, really suck. When the U.S. job market rids itself of the developers that can't do quality work, then everyone benefits because the senior devs that do their job well get to keep their jobs, and the lower-quality developers (i.e., the ones that submit one-rated article templates for the article submission queue) will be forced to find work in other more suitable fields, such as "knitting". So if you're a dev in the U.S. job market right now, your only recourse is to constantly improve the quality of your own work. Otherwise, if there's someone out there in some other country who can do the same quality of work as you can for half the price, then there's nothing stopping your employer from pulling the rug from under you. It's only "bad" for the American developer if they keep themselves isolated and they get complacent with their skills. It can be great if and only if you can ke
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After personally seeing the quality of some of the outsourced software development work done here in Southeast Asia, you have nothing to worry about. The average level of experience required to be considered "senior" developer level is only three years, and the recruiters here can't seem to find or hire[^] developers who have more than five years of experience. To give you an idea of just how incompetent some of the devs here are, I've run into so-called senior "developers" working in the BPO/Outsourcing industry who claimed to practice "agile techniques" and yet when I went their actual source code (which, btw, claimed to use TDD), I only found ONE test case. As much as I'd like to say that was just an exception, I'm starting to be convinced more and more that it's just the standard practice here in SE Asia. In other words, you get what you pay for. With that in mind, the developers in the U.S. might be more costly, but the cost/quality tradeoff applies there as well. You might pay more to get your development work done in the U.S., but you can throw a rock in any direction and find at least more than a handful of good developers with more than five years of experience in almost any state. If the U.S. can compete when it comes to quality software development, then the only developers whose job will be at stake will be the ones that really, really suck. When the U.S. job market rids itself of the developers that can't do quality work, then everyone benefits because the senior devs that do their job well get to keep their jobs, and the lower-quality developers (i.e., the ones that submit one-rated article templates for the article submission queue) will be forced to find work in other more suitable fields, such as "knitting". So if you're a dev in the U.S. job market right now, your only recourse is to constantly improve the quality of your own work. Otherwise, if there's someone out there in some other country who can do the same quality of work as you can for half the price, then there's nothing stopping your employer from pulling the rug from under you. It's only "bad" for the American developer if they keep themselves isolated and they get complacent with their skills. It can be great if and only if you can ke
Philip Laureano wrote:
"knitting".
My mum used to knit, it takes some skill you know. Stones, glass houses and all that :D
I'm largely language agnostic
After a while they all bug me :doh:
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always trying to out-do me in the forums aren't you.
----------------------------------------------------------- Completion Deadline: two days before the day after tomorrow
jgasm wrote:
always trying to out-do me in the forums aren't you.
Huh? Marc
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One could write a dissertation subject. Global vs. local economy, analysis of actual cost benefits to the business, short term vs. long term investment/gains, the further economic stratification of society, emerging markets, company loyalty, cost of business in America (taxes, health care, labor laws, etc), shareholder pressure, global market competition, intellectual property, security, transfer of knowledge, the educational system, etc. However, the short answer, from my perspective as a software developer: Screw the dissertation. Outsourcing sucks. Marc
I don't even think the money is the heartbreaker, how many organisations have you heard of where they decide to outsource and their IP goes with it. Take a company send the bulk of your business knowledge OS and you have a serious problem. I have worked for 3 global organisations that have found they have lost all their internal skills for maintaining their core business software and have had to spend $M+ to build up the teams again. I'm not even convinced offshoring the donkey work is viable.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity RAH
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Judging by the quality of the posts in the C# forum, the American developer has little to fear.
Deja View - the feeling that you've seen this post before.
Pete O'Hanlon wrote:
American developer has little to fear.
But American (Oz, UK, EU etc) companies should be bloody horrified. You lose your skilled people (the next generation anyway)
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity RAH
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Given the economical climate in America today, what are the general feelings about most companies shipping their entire operations overseas and essentially placing the American expertise in the field of software development/engineering in jeopardy?
One thing often overlooked in outsourcing/offshoring is that many of these projects would have been canceled, or never started, otherwise. I actually interviewed some Indian developers about such a project (in that case, it never happened at all.)
Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. - P.J. O'Rourke
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Given the economical climate in America today, what are the general feelings about most companies shipping their entire operations overseas and essentially placing the American expertise in the field of software development/engineering in jeopardy?
CodeManX wrote:
Given the economical climate in America today, what are the general feelings about most companies shipping their entire operations overseas and essentially placing the American expertise in the field of software development/engineering in jeopardy?
okay, my two cents. The problem is not the jobs going overseas, that is a symptom, and it was long expected. It is only partly about the money/profit. The problem ultimately is the number of owners/managers who know absolutely nothing about the product they manage. I have worked for an owner who didn't know the difference between a one line change on his profit loss statement and a full scale bank reconciliation and W2 reporting programs. The cost analysis and prediction system was wasted on him, even though it gained him about 10 million during the first gulf war. He was ready to replace me long before I left, because a one line change took 2 hours, and the bank reconciliation two weeks, and the w2 magnetic media took me two weeks to write and two weeks to iron out communication with the IRS through official test channels. If one thing took two hours, then ALL things should take two hours. He was searching for a more cost effective employee long before I jumped ship. Those are the type of people that are looking at the buck and knowing nothing about quality, taking all the work elsewhere. If they were looking for quality the rarity of the person even overseas would quickly run the cost up with supply/demand. But as long as you remove quality supply is high therefore cost is low. There is your problem.
------------------ John Andrew Holmes "It is well to remember that the entire universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others."
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After personally seeing the quality of some of the outsourced software development work done here in Southeast Asia, you have nothing to worry about. The average level of experience required to be considered "senior" developer level is only three years, and the recruiters here can't seem to find or hire[^] developers who have more than five years of experience. To give you an idea of just how incompetent some of the devs here are, I've run into so-called senior "developers" working in the BPO/Outsourcing industry who claimed to practice "agile techniques" and yet when I went their actual source code (which, btw, claimed to use TDD), I only found ONE test case. As much as I'd like to say that was just an exception, I'm starting to be convinced more and more that it's just the standard practice here in SE Asia. In other words, you get what you pay for. With that in mind, the developers in the U.S. might be more costly, but the cost/quality tradeoff applies there as well. You might pay more to get your development work done in the U.S., but you can throw a rock in any direction and find at least more than a handful of good developers with more than five years of experience in almost any state. If the U.S. can compete when it comes to quality software development, then the only developers whose job will be at stake will be the ones that really, really suck. When the U.S. job market rids itself of the developers that can't do quality work, then everyone benefits because the senior devs that do their job well get to keep their jobs, and the lower-quality developers (i.e., the ones that submit one-rated article templates for the article submission queue) will be forced to find work in other more suitable fields, such as "knitting". So if you're a dev in the U.S. job market right now, your only recourse is to constantly improve the quality of your own work. Otherwise, if there's someone out there in some other country who can do the same quality of work as you can for half the price, then there's nothing stopping your employer from pulling the rug from under you. It's only "bad" for the American developer if they keep themselves isolated and they get complacent with their skills. It can be great if and only if you can ke
Just like competent programmers, incompetent programmers can also be found everywhere. I can point to the California DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles) blowing $92 million on a new re-vamped driver licensing and vehicle registration system, with nothing to show for it. All the work was done by local people. The Bay Area Rapid Transit gave a contract to Logica PLC (a UK company) to develop new train control software so that they could run trains with greater frequency and failed miserably. The budget was $42 million. The UK government under Tony Blair spent $6 billion to develop an integrated medical records system for its National Health Service and has diddly squat at this point in time for the exoenditure. Has anybody blown $6 billion on an outsourced project? Perhaps, the knee-jerk reactions we see on this site is an indication of the poor logical thinking ability among US and European programmers that might have led to the outsourcing of software projects in the first place. Now, I shall sit back and watch the drive-by 1 voters!
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It depends.... if you're a shareholder of the company, outsourcing means lower costs/higher profits. If you're an employee well... no job.... Question: Are American companies obligated to employ Americans?
SilimSayo wrote:
If you're an employee well... no job....
What prevents an employee to send some or all of his/her works to those who do it much cheaper, then just act as a supervisor, unless her/his boss prohibits that?
// "In the end it's a little boy expressing himself." Yanni while (I_am_alive)
{
cout<<"I love to do more than just programming.";
} -
I don't even think the money is the heartbreaker, how many organisations have you heard of where they decide to outsource and their IP goes with it. Take a company send the bulk of your business knowledge OS and you have a serious problem. I have worked for 3 global organisations that have found they have lost all their internal skills for maintaining their core business software and have had to spend $M+ to build up the teams again. I'm not even convinced offshoring the donkey work is viable.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity RAH
Mycroft Holmes wrote:
I'm not even convinced offshoring the donkey work is viable.
I think that there is no donkey work in programming, particularly in the enterprise. I feel that code must be written or at least reviewed (Open-BSD style) by experienced/seasoned programmers. After all, simple mistakes lead to big problems (bugs, security holes). Off-shoring can be done in-house. Go to another country, and hire decent professionals in a fully owned subsidiary. It keeps the IP in-house, and reduces costs. The quality can also be controlled adequately. It is viable, and many companies are doing that. The assumption that skills of an average off-shore professional is lower than resident ones is naive. The quality of software depends on the skills and enthusiasm of the team, and the processes that they follow. I think that the Obama suggestion of taking away tax breaks for big off-shoring companies (in-house or outsourced) is a good one. Why should the government encourage corporations to do that?
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CodeManX wrote:
Given the economical climate in America today, what are the general feelings about most companies shipping their entire operations overseas and essentially placing the American expertise in the field of software development/engineering in jeopardy?
okay, my two cents. The problem is not the jobs going overseas, that is a symptom, and it was long expected. It is only partly about the money/profit. The problem ultimately is the number of owners/managers who know absolutely nothing about the product they manage. I have worked for an owner who didn't know the difference between a one line change on his profit loss statement and a full scale bank reconciliation and W2 reporting programs. The cost analysis and prediction system was wasted on him, even though it gained him about 10 million during the first gulf war. He was ready to replace me long before I left, because a one line change took 2 hours, and the bank reconciliation two weeks, and the w2 magnetic media took me two weeks to write and two weeks to iron out communication with the IRS through official test channels. If one thing took two hours, then ALL things should take two hours. He was searching for a more cost effective employee long before I jumped ship. Those are the type of people that are looking at the buck and knowing nothing about quality, taking all the work elsewhere. If they were looking for quality the rarity of the person even overseas would quickly run the cost up with supply/demand. But as long as you remove quality supply is high therefore cost is low. There is your problem.
------------------ John Andrew Holmes "It is well to remember that the entire universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others."
Exactly. With the right processes and people, good results can be obtained irrespective of location. It starts with a sound product management (what features at what time and why), good development processes (comprehensive code review by experienced programmers is very important in my opinion, although very rarely done.), and hiring talented, skillful, and enthusiastic people. I once assembled a team of 10 outstanding professionals who made a system that competed with products made by 200+ strong development teams. We did extremely well in terms of quality and turnaround time.
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Mycroft Holmes wrote:
I'm not even convinced offshoring the donkey work is viable.
I think that there is no donkey work in programming, particularly in the enterprise. I feel that code must be written or at least reviewed (Open-BSD style) by experienced/seasoned programmers. After all, simple mistakes lead to big problems (bugs, security holes). Off-shoring can be done in-house. Go to another country, and hire decent professionals in a fully owned subsidiary. It keeps the IP in-house, and reduces costs. The quality can also be controlled adequately. It is viable, and many companies are doing that. The assumption that skills of an average off-shore professional is lower than resident ones is naive. The quality of software depends on the skills and enthusiasm of the team, and the processes that they follow. I think that the Obama suggestion of taking away tax breaks for big off-shoring companies (in-house or outsourced) is a good one. Why should the government encourage corporations to do that?
I know I'm going to gt smacked for this, but by donkey work I mean the work that takes no creativity, and little or no business interaction, infrastructure support may be one of these, development of any sort is not "donkey work". If you can get good communication and understanding with an offshore organisation you MAY get a good result. You have still lost the skills that created the solution you have limited control over your future development and support. For a small - medium organisation this may be viable but for a large, multinational I consider it suicide, or at least a REALLY bad business model.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity RAH
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I know I'm going to gt smacked for this, but by donkey work I mean the work that takes no creativity, and little or no business interaction, infrastructure support may be one of these, development of any sort is not "donkey work". If you can get good communication and understanding with an offshore organisation you MAY get a good result. You have still lost the skills that created the solution you have limited control over your future development and support. For a small - medium organisation this may be viable but for a large, multinational I consider it suicide, or at least a REALLY bad business model.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity RAH
I wanted to draw the distinction between outsourcing and off-shoring. Companies can outsource projects to native companies and lose the skill too. On the other hand, a company can open its own subsidiary off-shore, and own the skills in-house. Quality is also not a major concern in off-shoring. There are a good number of highly skilled people working in India, Russia, Brazil, and other off-shore outsourcing destinations. After all, manufacturing companies are able to get quality manufacturing from China; Chinese goods were considered the worst in quality only a few years back. It all boils down to the processes. One example: Intel has its new processors designed in Israel, manufactured in Taiwan (I think, not sure). I don't think that they lost anything in the process. It would have hardly mattered, if it was Brazil instead of Taiwan or Israel. They will have their own standards that they will adhere to; if the environment is not conducive for that, they will leave. Finally, it is up to the US government to decide whether they want to give incentives to companies that employ people locally. It is impossible for all the programmers in the US to move to an extreme skill level that is not available elsewhere; I say this because this increase in quality is being suggested as a solution to the exodus of jobs. There may be some amount of protectionism needed, or companies will have to find some reasons for doing work locally. Thomas