Continued discussion on the future of outsourcing
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A friend of mine was involved in a SAP project for a major company that went well despite being partially outsourced. I suspect 2 things contributed to its success. The first is that SAP's hard enough to use that idiots can't fake it for even a short period of time. The second is that instead of handing over a pile of requirements and saying "you've X months to implement this" and letting them go for X months the US and offshore teams were both working on the same parts of the code base at the same time, passing it back and forth as they went home for the evening. Answering "What did my partner do to the code I was working on overnight?" meant that there must have been a lot of informal code review going on providing a continuous idiot filter.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains. -- Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
That second half was the only reason the work I did, turned out at all. I checked the code daily and constantly reminded of missed deadlines, missed features, poor code, etc.
Christian Graus Driven to the arms of OSX by Vista. Read my blog to find out how I've worked around bugs in Microsoft tools and frameworks.
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Airbus recently outsourced A320 in China. I generally had a fear from airplanes, but that was before; after this news I’m plainly terrified…
The narrow specialist in the broad sense of the word is a complete idiot in the narrow sense of the word. Advertise here – minimum three posts per day are guaranteed.
link please ?
This signature was proudly tested on animals.
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A friend of mine was involved in a SAP project for a major company that went well despite being partially outsourced. I suspect 2 things contributed to its success. The first is that SAP's hard enough to use that idiots can't fake it for even a short period of time. The second is that instead of handing over a pile of requirements and saying "you've X months to implement this" and letting them go for X months the US and offshore teams were both working on the same parts of the code base at the same time, passing it back and forth as they went home for the evening. Answering "What did my partner do to the code I was working on overnight?" meant that there must have been a lot of informal code review going on providing a continuous idiot filter.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains. -- Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
Yes, that's the way good project should be handled. It adds time though for the constant review that most managers don't understand.
only two letters away from being an asset
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link please ?
This signature was proudly tested on animals.
http://www.codeproject.com/Lounge.aspx?msg=3110278#xx3110278xx[^]
The narrow specialist in the broad sense of the word is a complete idiot in the narrow sense of the word. Advertise here – minimum three posts per day are guaranteed.
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Yes, that's the way good project should be handled. It adds time though for the constant review that most managers don't understand.
only two letters away from being an asset
Hopefully the continued decline in quality will eventually cause folks to realize the value of local developers. There is still a great market for good local guys and gals!
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The lounge seemed a better place to continue this discussion http://www.codeproject.com/Messages/3109848/Re-hello-guide-me-please.aspx[^]
only two letters away from being an asset
I've often said that programming has become the new factory work of our day. Any time that a product or service becomes a commodity then the value is reduced and quality becomes less of an issue than price. Because coding is now a commodity, to the bean counters in the head office it makes no sense to pay $80-90k a year when they can get someone in a different country to do it for a fraction of that cost. Local programmers may be the ones who have to go back in and clean up the mess (which is likely to be due just as much to the mess that international project management creates as any lack of skills in third world coders), but as anyone who's been in the business knows, programmers don't have a significant voice in high level business decisions. Like factory workers of old, they're just the hired help. Many people disagree with me about the factory work analogy, but I suspect time will unfortunately bear me out, at least in the US. As supply continues to increase both domestically and globally, dev technology continues to dumb down the arena to make it easy for anyone to sling code without any particular talent or education. Fast forward ten or twenty years from now and it's unlikely that coding will be the equivalent of today's $80k job. When it takes no more skill to crank out yet another business app than it does to work on a factory assemply line, the pay will come in line with the latter. That said, global outsourcing is not the sole villian in this play. Supply and demand coupled with dumbed down dev platforms would have ultimately created the factory work scenario just the same. The fact that those making a good living in the US are now competing with those in other countries working for the equivalent salary of a burger flipper simply expedites the process. On the bright side, each new generation of programmers will be raised with lower and lower salary expectations, and thus they'll be perfectly comfortable with the fact that they're getting paid $20k to do what was once a 6 figure job.
Christopher Duncan www.PracticalUSA.com Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes In the US? Explore our Career Coaching.
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I've often said that programming has become the new factory work of our day. Any time that a product or service becomes a commodity then the value is reduced and quality becomes less of an issue than price. Because coding is now a commodity, to the bean counters in the head office it makes no sense to pay $80-90k a year when they can get someone in a different country to do it for a fraction of that cost. Local programmers may be the ones who have to go back in and clean up the mess (which is likely to be due just as much to the mess that international project management creates as any lack of skills in third world coders), but as anyone who's been in the business knows, programmers don't have a significant voice in high level business decisions. Like factory workers of old, they're just the hired help. Many people disagree with me about the factory work analogy, but I suspect time will unfortunately bear me out, at least in the US. As supply continues to increase both domestically and globally, dev technology continues to dumb down the arena to make it easy for anyone to sling code without any particular talent or education. Fast forward ten or twenty years from now and it's unlikely that coding will be the equivalent of today's $80k job. When it takes no more skill to crank out yet another business app than it does to work on a factory assemply line, the pay will come in line with the latter. That said, global outsourcing is not the sole villian in this play. Supply and demand coupled with dumbed down dev platforms would have ultimately created the factory work scenario just the same. The fact that those making a good living in the US are now competing with those in other countries working for the equivalent salary of a burger flipper simply expedites the process. On the bright side, each new generation of programmers will be raised with lower and lower salary expectations, and thus they'll be perfectly comfortable with the fact that they're getting paid $20k to do what was once a 6 figure job.
Christopher Duncan www.PracticalUSA.com Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes In the US? Explore our Career Coaching.
And until we are on the subject, when exactly the Apocalypse will come?
The narrow specialist in the broad sense of the word is a complete idiot in the narrow sense of the word. Advertise here – minimum three posts per day are guaranteed.
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I've often said that programming has become the new factory work of our day. Any time that a product or service becomes a commodity then the value is reduced and quality becomes less of an issue than price. Because coding is now a commodity, to the bean counters in the head office it makes no sense to pay $80-90k a year when they can get someone in a different country to do it for a fraction of that cost. Local programmers may be the ones who have to go back in and clean up the mess (which is likely to be due just as much to the mess that international project management creates as any lack of skills in third world coders), but as anyone who's been in the business knows, programmers don't have a significant voice in high level business decisions. Like factory workers of old, they're just the hired help. Many people disagree with me about the factory work analogy, but I suspect time will unfortunately bear me out, at least in the US. As supply continues to increase both domestically and globally, dev technology continues to dumb down the arena to make it easy for anyone to sling code without any particular talent or education. Fast forward ten or twenty years from now and it's unlikely that coding will be the equivalent of today's $80k job. When it takes no more skill to crank out yet another business app than it does to work on a factory assemply line, the pay will come in line with the latter. That said, global outsourcing is not the sole villian in this play. Supply and demand coupled with dumbed down dev platforms would have ultimately created the factory work scenario just the same. The fact that those making a good living in the US are now competing with those in other countries working for the equivalent salary of a burger flipper simply expedites the process. On the bright side, each new generation of programmers will be raised with lower and lower salary expectations, and thus they'll be perfectly comfortable with the fact that they're getting paid $20k to do what was once a 6 figure job.
Christopher Duncan www.PracticalUSA.com Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes In the US? Explore our Career Coaching.
I think to a degree you are correct. Which is why we must move up into management if we intend to continue to flourish. I think it's the only decent way to make it.
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The lounge seemed a better place to continue this discussion http://www.codeproject.com/Messages/3109848/Re-hello-guide-me-please.aspx[^]
only two letters away from being an asset
First of a general and a incorrect idea that most people carry is that most of the programmers in India are like the "Urgnt Plzz" programmers in CP forums. In fact I would say that only minority of programmers are like that. The majority may not even frequent CP let alone ask questions in the forums. That being said good outsourcing companies have quality people and they charge more. Not so good companies charge less and hand over "urgent" work to unskilled programmers. Outsourcing will end when it is no longer cheaper to get quality work done at a lower price. That can happen when quality declines or when the income levels increase in outsourced countries to par level (which it has).
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I've often said that programming has become the new factory work of our day. Any time that a product or service becomes a commodity then the value is reduced and quality becomes less of an issue than price. Because coding is now a commodity, to the bean counters in the head office it makes no sense to pay $80-90k a year when they can get someone in a different country to do it for a fraction of that cost. Local programmers may be the ones who have to go back in and clean up the mess (which is likely to be due just as much to the mess that international project management creates as any lack of skills in third world coders), but as anyone who's been in the business knows, programmers don't have a significant voice in high level business decisions. Like factory workers of old, they're just the hired help. Many people disagree with me about the factory work analogy, but I suspect time will unfortunately bear me out, at least in the US. As supply continues to increase both domestically and globally, dev technology continues to dumb down the arena to make it easy for anyone to sling code without any particular talent or education. Fast forward ten or twenty years from now and it's unlikely that coding will be the equivalent of today's $80k job. When it takes no more skill to crank out yet another business app than it does to work on a factory assemply line, the pay will come in line with the latter. That said, global outsourcing is not the sole villian in this play. Supply and demand coupled with dumbed down dev platforms would have ultimately created the factory work scenario just the same. The fact that those making a good living in the US are now competing with those in other countries working for the equivalent salary of a burger flipper simply expedites the process. On the bright side, each new generation of programmers will be raised with lower and lower salary expectations, and thus they'll be perfectly comfortable with the fact that they're getting paid $20k to do what was once a 6 figure job.
Christopher Duncan www.PracticalUSA.com Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes In the US? Explore our Career Coaching.
I agree with this, 100%. It's one of the reasons I am wondering what I will do next ( although not for a while, but long term, I don't think I will code all my life )
Christian Graus Driven to the arms of OSX by Vista. Read my blog to find out how I've worked around bugs in Microsoft tools and frameworks.
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I've often said that programming has become the new factory work of our day. Any time that a product or service becomes a commodity then the value is reduced and quality becomes less of an issue than price. Because coding is now a commodity, to the bean counters in the head office it makes no sense to pay $80-90k a year when they can get someone in a different country to do it for a fraction of that cost. Local programmers may be the ones who have to go back in and clean up the mess (which is likely to be due just as much to the mess that international project management creates as any lack of skills in third world coders), but as anyone who's been in the business knows, programmers don't have a significant voice in high level business decisions. Like factory workers of old, they're just the hired help. Many people disagree with me about the factory work analogy, but I suspect time will unfortunately bear me out, at least in the US. As supply continues to increase both domestically and globally, dev technology continues to dumb down the arena to make it easy for anyone to sling code without any particular talent or education. Fast forward ten or twenty years from now and it's unlikely that coding will be the equivalent of today's $80k job. When it takes no more skill to crank out yet another business app than it does to work on a factory assemply line, the pay will come in line with the latter. That said, global outsourcing is not the sole villian in this play. Supply and demand coupled with dumbed down dev platforms would have ultimately created the factory work scenario just the same. The fact that those making a good living in the US are now competing with those in other countries working for the equivalent salary of a burger flipper simply expedites the process. On the bright side, each new generation of programmers will be raised with lower and lower salary expectations, and thus they'll be perfectly comfortable with the fact that they're getting paid $20k to do what was once a 6 figure job.
Christopher Duncan www.PracticalUSA.com Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes In the US? Explore our Career Coaching.
The other day, the first time you came up with the analogy of devs-factory workers, i.e., a dev being a 'component' or 'resource' that could be replaced, my reaction was, "WTF!". But the more I thought about it, the truer it struck me, and I have come around to accept that.
Christopher Duncan wrote:
they'll be perfectly comfortable with the fact that they're getting paid $20k to do what was once a 6 figure job.
If I'm not wrong, the 6-figure times were during the late 90s boom, right? It may not be entirely fair to compare today's poor pay to the bubble that was always going to burst.
Cheers, Vikram. (Proud to have finally cracked a CCC!)
Recent activities: TV series: Friends, season 10 Books: Fooled by Randomness, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
Carpe Diem.
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And until we are on the subject, when exactly the Apocalypse will come?
The narrow specialist in the broad sense of the word is a complete idiot in the narrow sense of the word. Advertise here – minimum three posts per day are guaranteed.
The Apocalypse is already upon you. Everything beyond that is just a matter of degree. :)
Christopher Duncan www.PracticalUSA.com Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes In the US? Explore our Career Coaching.
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I've often said that programming has become the new factory work of our day. Any time that a product or service becomes a commodity then the value is reduced and quality becomes less of an issue than price. Because coding is now a commodity, to the bean counters in the head office it makes no sense to pay $80-90k a year when they can get someone in a different country to do it for a fraction of that cost. Local programmers may be the ones who have to go back in and clean up the mess (which is likely to be due just as much to the mess that international project management creates as any lack of skills in third world coders), but as anyone who's been in the business knows, programmers don't have a significant voice in high level business decisions. Like factory workers of old, they're just the hired help. Many people disagree with me about the factory work analogy, but I suspect time will unfortunately bear me out, at least in the US. As supply continues to increase both domestically and globally, dev technology continues to dumb down the arena to make it easy for anyone to sling code without any particular talent or education. Fast forward ten or twenty years from now and it's unlikely that coding will be the equivalent of today's $80k job. When it takes no more skill to crank out yet another business app than it does to work on a factory assemply line, the pay will come in line with the latter. That said, global outsourcing is not the sole villian in this play. Supply and demand coupled with dumbed down dev platforms would have ultimately created the factory work scenario just the same. The fact that those making a good living in the US are now competing with those in other countries working for the equivalent salary of a burger flipper simply expedites the process. On the bright side, each new generation of programmers will be raised with lower and lower salary expectations, and thus they'll be perfectly comfortable with the fact that they're getting paid $20k to do what was once a 6 figure job.
Christopher Duncan www.PracticalUSA.com Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes In the US? Explore our Career Coaching.
I agree with commoditization of software development. I have a client now that has constantly been on me about why we can't simply write one set of code that will work in all the business he wants to target. After a couple of projects he is beginning to realize that although you can have a core platform with common features every business is different, with different datasources and requirements that requires some level of customization. What he wanted was to write it once, install it everywhere, and collect the checks.
only two letters away from being an asset
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First of a general and a incorrect idea that most people carry is that most of the programmers in India are like the "Urgnt Plzz" programmers in CP forums. In fact I would say that only minority of programmers are like that. The majority may not even frequent CP let alone ask questions in the forums. That being said good outsourcing companies have quality people and they charge more. Not so good companies charge less and hand over "urgent" work to unskilled programmers. Outsourcing will end when it is no longer cheaper to get quality work done at a lower price. That can happen when quality declines or when the income levels increase in outsourced countries to par level (which it has).
I have no doubt that this is true, and I'm always at pains in discussing this, to state what is hopefully obvious - the number of bad programmers we see from India, is not a representation of all Indian programmers, although it is mostly a representation of how much financial incentive the West has given people there to take jobs they cannot do. I have to say, the one experience I've had with this, I hired about four times, through different 'rentacoder' type sites, and even when I took the highest bid, I never found anyone who was remotely up to the standards I hoped for. Conversely, I've done remote work with a number of people, most of whom have been Indian, and when I've hired from people who live in the US, I've always had a great experience and a great final product. The perception that people have in a place like CP, is going to be different from the knowledge of someone who has been to India. I do have a friend who managed a team there for Sun, and my overall feeling was that the big difference is, if your company manages the office, and can fly there to interview/hire people, you will get the cream of the crop. If you get someone bidding to do 2 months work, you get the dregs.
Christian Graus Driven to the arms of OSX by Vista. Read my blog to find out how I've worked around bugs in Microsoft tools and frameworks.
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I think to a degree you are correct. Which is why we must move up into management if we intend to continue to flourish. I think it's the only decent way to make it.
Management is certainly one escape route as it's never been as subject to supply and demand as the jobs of those who actually do the work. If you have leadership skills and can cope with corporate bureaucracy, it's a good path. Because of my books and background, I'm currently focusing my career coaching efforts on helping the software industry. Between what I've mentioned about factory work and the current economy, there are a lot of careers out there that are starting to crumble underfoot (not to mention veterans who are just getting burned out on the gig). I'm encourging such clients to explore the other things they love in life and showing them how they can use their current tech career as a springboard to move on to something new, fresh and exciting. In my grandfather's day, people aspired to work one career, often with one company, for the rest of their lives. Today, it's not uncommon for people to change careers several times. We spend a ton of hours each week involved in work. If the experience sucks, then life begins to suck as well, so I'm a big proponent of keeping your eyes on the horizon and changing horses before the one you're riding falls over dead.
Christopher Duncan www.PracticalUSA.com Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes In the US? Explore our Career Coaching.
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I agree with this, 100%. It's one of the reasons I am wondering what I will do next ( although not for a while, but long term, I don't think I will code all my life )
Christian Graus Driven to the arms of OSX by Vista. Read my blog to find out how I've worked around bugs in Microsoft tools and frameworks.
Yeah, that's why I shifted my efforts to focus on writing, speaking, career coaching and that sort of thing. 20 years in the trenches was enough for me. I'll probably continue to do a lot of this work with people in the tech industry just because I know what they're going through, but that's a lot different than life as a cubicle rat.
Christopher Duncan www.PracticalUSA.com Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes In the US? Explore our Career Coaching.
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The other day, the first time you came up with the analogy of devs-factory workers, i.e., a dev being a 'component' or 'resource' that could be replaced, my reaction was, "WTF!". But the more I thought about it, the truer it struck me, and I have come around to accept that.
Christopher Duncan wrote:
they'll be perfectly comfortable with the fact that they're getting paid $20k to do what was once a 6 figure job.
If I'm not wrong, the 6-figure times were during the late 90s boom, right? It may not be entirely fair to compare today's poor pay to the bubble that was always going to burst.
Cheers, Vikram. (Proud to have finally cracked a CCC!)
Recent activities: TV series: Friends, season 10 Books: Fooled by Randomness, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
Carpe Diem.
Well, in fairness, it's never comfortable for people to have what they're doing for a living compared to a menial, minimum wage job. I think many mistakenly believe I'm being demeaning with such a reference when in fact I'm just trying to alert them to career dangers that lurk just over the horizon. 6 figure gigs have continued to be around even after the crash, although it's easier to get as a contractor than a perm employee. However, what I've seen is a significant decline in contract positions, forcing people to take the lower paying perm gigs. And ultimately, what the perm gigs pay will decrease over time. Of course, career change is nothing new to me. I'm on my fourth career as we speak, and I'm only 51. Imagine how many I'll have under my belt by the time I'm 100. :-D
Christopher Duncan www.PracticalUSA.com Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes In the US? Explore our Career Coaching.
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I've often said that programming has become the new factory work of our day. Any time that a product or service becomes a commodity then the value is reduced and quality becomes less of an issue than price. Because coding is now a commodity, to the bean counters in the head office it makes no sense to pay $80-90k a year when they can get someone in a different country to do it for a fraction of that cost. Local programmers may be the ones who have to go back in and clean up the mess (which is likely to be due just as much to the mess that international project management creates as any lack of skills in third world coders), but as anyone who's been in the business knows, programmers don't have a significant voice in high level business decisions. Like factory workers of old, they're just the hired help. Many people disagree with me about the factory work analogy, but I suspect time will unfortunately bear me out, at least in the US. As supply continues to increase both domestically and globally, dev technology continues to dumb down the arena to make it easy for anyone to sling code without any particular talent or education. Fast forward ten or twenty years from now and it's unlikely that coding will be the equivalent of today's $80k job. When it takes no more skill to crank out yet another business app than it does to work on a factory assemply line, the pay will come in line with the latter. That said, global outsourcing is not the sole villian in this play. Supply and demand coupled with dumbed down dev platforms would have ultimately created the factory work scenario just the same. The fact that those making a good living in the US are now competing with those in other countries working for the equivalent salary of a burger flipper simply expedites the process. On the bright side, each new generation of programmers will be raised with lower and lower salary expectations, and thus they'll be perfectly comfortable with the fact that they're getting paid $20k to do what was once a 6 figure job.
Christopher Duncan www.PracticalUSA.com Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes In the US? Explore our Career Coaching.
There are different kind of programming jobs and most of it can become factory work. I don't think there is anything wrong with that. Hence the concept of software factories[^] and intentional programming[^]. But on the other hand there are lot of other software which require real skill. Programmers and architects will always be needed for that and it will continue to pay.
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I agree with commoditization of software development. I have a client now that has constantly been on me about why we can't simply write one set of code that will work in all the business he wants to target. After a couple of projects he is beginning to realize that although you can have a core platform with common features every business is different, with different datasources and requirements that requires some level of customization. What he wanted was to write it once, install it everywhere, and collect the checks.
only two letters away from being an asset
Yeah, and I would imagine those expectations will only continue to increase over time. Part of it is due to the "it's all been done" syndrome. When you look around at business software, we really spend most of our time reinventing the same wheel with database driven apps. Add to that the rise in modular, open source web based systems like Joomla and business people start looking at what we create as little more than Legos. I think that decades from now, software development will indeed become what your client is hoping for (much to our dismay), but we're just not there yet.
Christopher Duncan www.PracticalUSA.com Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes In the US? Explore our Career Coaching.
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There are different kind of programming jobs and most of it can become factory work. I don't think there is anything wrong with that. Hence the concept of software factories[^] and intentional programming[^]. But on the other hand there are lot of other software which require real skill. Programmers and architects will always be needed for that and it will continue to pay.
Rama Krishna Vavilala wrote:
most of it can become factory work. I don't think there is anything wrong with that
Clearly, you've never experienced the mind numbing life of working in an actual factory. :) I do agree that there will always be gigs where actual skill is required, but consider the fact that pay is relative. If coding becomes a $20k job for the average factory worker, then those needing real talent might be willing to pay as much as double for it. You are young, telented and still enthusiastic about the biz, and so far it's treating you well. However, life is changing more rapidly today than ever before. If you think that the reality you see today bears any resemblance to what you'll see when you're 50, I think you're in for some unpleasant surprises. I don't advocate change just for the sake of change, but I do encourage people to think at least ten years ahead. If I'm wrong, then you'll still have a happy life at 50 slinging code and the effort will have cost you little. However, if I'm right and you're not prepared, you're screwed. That's even more embarrassing when it's avoidable. :-D
Christopher Duncan www.PracticalUSA.com Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes In the US? Explore our Career Coaching.
modified on Tuesday, July 7, 2009 12:44 PM