Software outsourcing
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I think they should force the companies that ship jobs (any kind!) out of the country where it is BASED to pay the difference to the dole account so that the governement can afford to pay off the people who have gotten sacked in this manner. Let the jobs go. Why fight a losing game? Our country needs to find the next big technology or industry that will put us another step ahead and bring in more money. We won't have a profitable future by trying to hold on to things that *will* move away to places where they cost less to do or make. Sean Winstead
Sean Winstead wrote: Our country needs to find the next big technology or industry that will put us another step ahead and bring in more money I'll add to this that offshore programmers entering this area are often new people (barely over 2 years in IT commitment) and as such don't have the background required to manage the low-level stuff, like COM plumbing for instance. Another example, the behaviors and actual knowledge of the underlying OS takes time and involvement, which is contrary to the fact that we are talking people who would take US and western Europe jobs but are : - young, new in this area - under worse pressure from management This is good news for us in our thirties. My recommendation is also to STOP answering technical questions for free (newsgroups, ...). Let them tank. After all, if you can make bucks with your technical knowledge, why should you give it away for free? Taking advantage of InternetExplorer to steal user's name and password. Taking advantage of InternetExplorer to steal user's clipboard.
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This smells of protectionism - isn't that anti-capitalist? Anti-free market? Shouldn't companies be free to source their labour from wherever will generate maximum profits? If that means job cuts in the rich West then shouldn't we brace ourselves - isn't a company's number one responsibility to create profit for its shareholders? I agree that a lot of people here on CP are going to be affected by this in the coming years but getting companies to pay some form of social renumeration to offset job losses is not the answer. We need a new market for our skills - and if our skills can be found cheaper elsewhere then we need to do something else! It is going to be impossible to compete with India and China simply because their workforces cost so much less yet are highly educated. Uncomfortable as many of us cosy Westerners are with outsourcing like this, I think we need to take a reality check - this is gonna bite many of us where it hurts the most (our wallets). I for one am a little concerned - ask me again in 5 years time and I expect I'll be crapping logs. Time to start learning a new trade? Not yet, at least not here in the UK where outsourcing seems to be call centres rather than development - but it's on the horizon I fear.Just my 2c.
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
Robert Edward Caldecott wrote: We need a new market for our skills Doesn't this question CodeProject "Free source code"? Taking advantage of InternetExplorer to steal user's name and password. Taking advantage of InternetExplorer to steal user's clipboard.
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Hi guys! What do you think about the increasing outsourcing trend to India and China? What's the future of the software industry? Bye, Orbital^ Thanks you all for participating to this (84 messages to this moment). It is very interesting to see how the world market is affecting our way of life. ...the night is long ... but not long enought to do some real coding ...
As I work with small to medium size business, then I don't see it as an issue. My clients like the face to face approach which gives me an advantage over the rest. I've recently worked with a large American company who have outsourced a lot of their development to an Indian company. The Indian developers have done a top rate job, and from one professional to another you have to admire that. I still think there is plenty of room for the smaller development house who offer a more personal service. The trick is to provide a full broad development service rather than just being a coder for hire. Michael 'War is at best barbarism...Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation. War is hell.' - General William Sherman, 1879
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As long as peoply rather buy cheap than good, there's no question where this will lead. When "1st+new world" software developers can't stand up to the QUALITY challenge, they are dead.
"Der Geist des Kriegers ist erwacht / Ich hab die Macht" StS
sighist | Agile Programming | doxygenI was working for a company who recently started outsourcing some of their work to an Indian company. They might have been cheaper than their UK counterparts, but their work was excellent. I couldn't find any fault with their quality. Michael 'War is at best barbarism...Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation. War is hell.' - General William Sherman, 1879
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This smells of protectionism - isn't that anti-capitalist? Anti-free market? Shouldn't companies be free to source their labour from wherever will generate maximum profits? If that means job cuts in the rich West then shouldn't we brace ourselves - isn't a company's number one responsibility to create profit for its shareholders? I agree that a lot of people here on CP are going to be affected by this in the coming years but getting companies to pay some form of social renumeration to offset job losses is not the answer. We need a new market for our skills - and if our skills can be found cheaper elsewhere then we need to do something else! It is going to be impossible to compete with India and China simply because their workforces cost so much less yet are highly educated. Uncomfortable as many of us cosy Westerners are with outsourcing like this, I think we need to take a reality check - this is gonna bite many of us where it hurts the most (our wallets). I for one am a little concerned - ask me again in 5 years time and I expect I'll be crapping logs. Time to start learning a new trade? Not yet, at least not here in the UK where outsourcing seems to be call centres rather than development - but it's on the horizon I fear.Just my 2c.
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
Robert Edward Caldecott wrote: Time to start learning a new trade? Not yet, at least not here in the UK where outsourcing seems to be call centres rather than development - but it's on the horizon I fear.Just my 2c. I have recently been contracting to a UK call-centre doing some development work. They had developed their software platform in house. Along comes an American corporation and buys them and two other call-centres out. They merge, and then all new development is out-sourced. Some to an Indian company and some to an American company. The interesting thing is that the Indian company did a far better job than the Americans. Michael 'War is at best barbarism...Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation. War is hell.' - General William Sherman, 1879
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As I work with small to medium size business, then I don't see it as an issue. My clients like the face to face approach which gives me an advantage over the rest. I've recently worked with a large American company who have outsourced a lot of their development to an Indian company. The Indian developers have done a top rate job, and from one professional to another you have to admire that. I still think there is plenty of room for the smaller development house who offer a more personal service. The trick is to provide a full broad development service rather than just being a coder for hire. Michael 'War is at best barbarism...Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation. War is hell.' - General William Sherman, 1879
Michael P Butler wrote: As I work with small to medium size business, then I don't see it as an issue. You totally miss the point. Does not matter where you are located, it is a global killer. If one country charges less to work selling themselves short, then the other countries economy drops due to workers being displaced. As their economies drop, maybe their will sink lower and charge less for work to pick up more jobs. Now other countries have the same problem. A circle to poverty for everyone buy a handful of people who control the large companies playing games with peoples lives. Not bad if you are one of the few who owns a large company raping every one into slave labor. Sound drastic? Well, I would hate to see what would have happened to the U.S. economy had Tech not have came along to bail it out. Now Tech is sliding, it does not look real rosy! Mr. Wilson, has an excellent phrase: Think globally, act locally! The only way to provide a stable economy (other than one rich person and the rest slaves) it to protect, yes I am using that word, the economy of each country by making sure jobs remain in their country. Back in the days when the U.S. had a battle with automobile imports, it appeared that all our companies were bound for the scape yard. If I remember correctly, the government stepped in and imposed tariffs to make the price of those imports closer to the price of locally built machines. This was fair to provide protection to our local jobs. Same thing should be in effect for software. Those jobs should remain local and tariffs or something of this nature should come into play to insure they do remain in this country. Charge companies to use outside labor! It is not a lack of demand in this country for programmers, it is the greed of companies that just want to make more money at the cost of people and country! Do you think that someone outsoucing to India to create a new server software package is going to reduce the price of their products? What a joke, they will charge the same, if not more and make multitudes more revenue for the few. It is only the programmers (and not just of this country) that is damaged by this practice. I would love to see a national boycott on all companies that call themselves American and ship the jobs overseas! That is not an American company. That is not even a responible company, it is a greedy pollutant to our world! No country should be proud to host this type of company. I know I wi
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peterchen wrote: As long as peoply rather buy cheap than good, there's no question where this will lead. When "1st+new world" software developers can't stand up to the QUALITY challenge, they are dead. Please, don't assume that people from other countries code worse than on the US. Actually, when you outsource projects to, e.g., Brazil you can easily find a very good PhD for about US$40/hour. The guy who substituted Alan Cox on Linux Kernel updates is Marcelo Tosatti, a 19 year-old brazilian who (past year numbers) receives about US$35/hour working at Conectiva. Today, only him and Linus Torvalds control "cvs ci". Why this happens? Because we are better than you? No, not at all. I even believe that we have much more VB programmers than on the US, which proves we suck at programming. This happens because here 30% of the population starve, but the rest get a pretty decent life with a very low cost. My homemaid costs me about $120/month. Last month, 2000 people formed a queue all day long under a strong sun on Rio de Janeiro for a job to get $80/month (only 50 of them would really get the job). All of this reduces the living cost for the privileged people here, which happens to be the programmers, lawyers, engineers, and so on. I bet the same thing happens on India and China, which are the main outsourcing destinations for language reasons. Acting as a substitute for God, he becomes a dispenser of justice. - Alexandre Dumas
Daniel, I was talking about the two destinaitons mentioned in particular. I am not saying Indians or Chinese cannot code as good. But, ath the average, quality will be worse. The industry thast is our customer is strongly moving production to China. Main problem: Quality, and communication. I've talked to guys from inidia, they painted a horrible picture - one of them said: "India? All swindlers. Be careful when you do business with them." Similar I heard about India here on CP, when we discussed Programming Education in India. My experience with China is that they chiefly boil in their own Water - the contact to the outside is weak, and the influence from the outside even weaker. When loking at the questions, and the code posted by Chinese people here, I see an almost invincible wall of culture here. Consumers have accepted blenders with an unintelligible manual - because it's cheap, and only has an on/off button. Will customers accept a Word made in China, because it's cheap? I agree with you - shops go there because it's cheap. And CEO's will believe everything when they you tell them he can replace his coding diva's with $80 Brazilians grateful to be allowed to work. We can't win the price race. My apartment costs $400, I get along with extra $200 running cost in a good month. I could reduce, hitting a brick wall at maybe 50%. To shop cheaper I'd need a car, I'd be further away from work, in a less beautiful part of town. For a starving Brazilian this sounds remote and arrogant, but I am not willing to do that. (btw. I am from Germany, not the US)
"Der Geist des Kriegers ist erwacht / Ich hab die Macht" StS
sighist | Agile Programming | doxygen -
I was working for a company who recently started outsourcing some of their work to an Indian company. They might have been cheaper than their UK counterparts, but their work was excellent. I couldn't find any fault with their quality. Michael 'War is at best barbarism...Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation. War is hell.' - General William Sherman, 1879
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Michael P Butler wrote: As I work with small to medium size business, then I don't see it as an issue. You totally miss the point. Does not matter where you are located, it is a global killer. If one country charges less to work selling themselves short, then the other countries economy drops due to workers being displaced. As their economies drop, maybe their will sink lower and charge less for work to pick up more jobs. Now other countries have the same problem. A circle to poverty for everyone buy a handful of people who control the large companies playing games with peoples lives. Not bad if you are one of the few who owns a large company raping every one into slave labor. Sound drastic? Well, I would hate to see what would have happened to the U.S. economy had Tech not have came along to bail it out. Now Tech is sliding, it does not look real rosy! Mr. Wilson, has an excellent phrase: Think globally, act locally! The only way to provide a stable economy (other than one rich person and the rest slaves) it to protect, yes I am using that word, the economy of each country by making sure jobs remain in their country. Back in the days when the U.S. had a battle with automobile imports, it appeared that all our companies were bound for the scape yard. If I remember correctly, the government stepped in and imposed tariffs to make the price of those imports closer to the price of locally built machines. This was fair to provide protection to our local jobs. Same thing should be in effect for software. Those jobs should remain local and tariffs or something of this nature should come into play to insure they do remain in this country. Charge companies to use outside labor! It is not a lack of demand in this country for programmers, it is the greed of companies that just want to make more money at the cost of people and country! Do you think that someone outsoucing to India to create a new server software package is going to reduce the price of their products? What a joke, they will charge the same, if not more and make multitudes more revenue for the few. It is only the programmers (and not just of this country) that is damaged by this practice. I would love to see a national boycott on all companies that call themselves American and ship the jobs overseas! That is not an American company. That is not even a responible company, it is a greedy pollutant to our world! No country should be proud to host this type of company. I know I wi
Rocky Moore wrote: You totally miss the point. I was saying that it won't affect me - personally. There will always be a demand for people who can work hard and provide the right service. I'm a product of Thatcher's Britain. I've seen a lot of our old industries wiped out by the effects you describe. (Coal, Steel, Car etc). You have to learn to adapt and change to circumstances. I work for myself, I build custom solutions for small businesses. I don't get paid a fortune, because I don't need a fortune. However I do manage to pay my bills every month and still have enough to enjoy life. There will always be a need for people like me. It's just a matter of getting on my bike and finding the work. Michael 'War is at best barbarism...Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation. War is hell.' - General William Sherman, 1879
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... do we need visa's to move in China? :) Bye, Orbital^ ...the night is long ... but not long enought to do some real coding ...
Orbital^ wrote: do we need visa's to move in China? Yes, you do. But it's probably not a good idea. There more people looking for work there than anywhere else in the world, take the US unemployment number and multiply it by 10 at least. ;)
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Are you implying third-world coders aren't as good as coders in the West and Oz? :|
Vikram.
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Vikram Punathambekar wrote: Are you implying third-world coders aren't as good as I can's speak for Mike. But here is my opinion. % wise I believe only a small amount of the Indian programmers (20%) actually have the ability to produce quality code. Most of the people I worked with turned out to be copy paste people. This might be because there is an enormous overflow of programmers. The best programmers % wise I have seen come from East Europe - Russia, Romania, Croatia, etc.
I don't choose the targets - they present themselves to me in an almost garish display of submission and sacrifice. It's my duty to react as I do. - John Simmons/Outlaw Programmer
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As long as peoply rather buy cheap than good, there's no question where this will lead. When "1st+new world" software developers can't stand up to the QUALITY challenge, they are dead.
"Der Geist des Kriegers ist erwacht / Ich hab die Macht" StS
sighist | Agile Programming | doxygenpeterchen wrote: As long as peoply rather buy cheap than good, there's no question where this will lead. People don't just choose cheap products, they choose the best products they can afford, which happens to be worse than the products they can't afford. Not every country with cheap (and cheaper) labor can produce the same quality products as India and China. Also, if the same products were produced in US and Germany with the same cost, the quality will probably be even lower.
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What kind of work (backend/processing/UI...), and how much (code monkeys, minor/architectural/design decisions=) did they do?
"Der Geist des Kriegers ist erwacht / Ich hab die Macht" StS
sighist | Agile Programming | doxygenThey created a proof of concept application for a web-based holiday reservation system. They did everything from requirements gathering through to producing a portion of the system. They've now got the job of producing the full system. There was about 4 of them on the team that came over from India. Good guys, professional - only let down by the fact that most of us couldn't understand what they were saying because of their accents. I'm not the best person to judge the quality of the code as it was a VB.NET ASP.NET system which is something I'm not too familiar with. There documentation was pretty good though. Michael 'War is at best barbarism...Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation. War is hell.' - General William Sherman, 1879
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Nick Parker wrote: you won't get fast, high quality code at a low price. This assert is wrong IMHO. Take codeproject code to reduce time to market for anything regarding MFC controls and the like. Then take all those people answering technical questions in newsgroups. Don't they allow a better time to market, while at the same time the guy at the other end is a complete VB schmuck? Taking advantage of InternetExplorer to steal user's name and password. Taking advantage of InternetExplorer to steal user's clipboard.
Stephane Rodriguez. wrote: This assert is wrong IMHO. Take codeproject code to reduce time to market for anything regarding MFC controls and the like. Then take all those people answering technical questions in newsgroups. Don't they allow a better time to market, while at the same time the guy at the other end is a complete VB schmuck? Ok, I buy what you are saying here, that's not entirely what I meant though. There are plenty of sources out there; CP included that promote quicker, higher quality code, however I don't think they are a complete means to the end (if that came out right). -Nick Parker
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Vikram Punathambekar wrote: Are you implying third-world coders aren't as good as I can's speak for Mike. But here is my opinion. % wise I believe only a small amount of the Indian programmers (20%) actually have the ability to produce quality code. Most of the people I worked with turned out to be copy paste people. This might be because there is an enormous overflow of programmers. The best programmers % wise I have seen come from East Europe - Russia, Romania, Croatia, etc.
I don't choose the targets - they present themselves to me in an almost garish display of submission and sacrifice. It's my duty to react as I do. - John Simmons/Outlaw Programmer
Rama Krishna wrote: The best programmers % wise I have seen come from East Europe - Russia, Romania, Croatia, etc. Do you think there is a specific reason for this? -Nick Parker
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Rama Krishna wrote: The best programmers % wise I have seen come from East Europe - Russia, Romania, Croatia, etc. Do you think there is a specific reason for this? -Nick Parker
No idea. Probably similar reasons to why best runners come from West Africa.
I don't choose the targets - they present themselves to me in an almost garish display of submission and sacrifice. It's my duty to react as I do. - John Simmons/Outlaw Programmer
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Rocky Moore wrote: You totally miss the point. I was saying that it won't affect me - personally. There will always be a demand for people who can work hard and provide the right service. I'm a product of Thatcher's Britain. I've seen a lot of our old industries wiped out by the effects you describe. (Coal, Steel, Car etc). You have to learn to adapt and change to circumstances. I work for myself, I build custom solutions for small businesses. I don't get paid a fortune, because I don't need a fortune. However I do manage to pay my bills every month and still have enough to enjoy life. There will always be a need for people like me. It's just a matter of getting on my bike and finding the work. Michael 'War is at best barbarism...Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation. War is hell.' - General William Sherman, 1879
Michael P Butler wrote: I was saying that it won't affect me - personally. "First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists, but I was neither, so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew so I did not speak out. And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me." –Martin Niemoeller This will be you and everyone else shortly, and you're living in a dream if you think otherwise.
Todd C. Wilson (meme@nopcode.com) NOPcode.com "Flow with whatever may happen and let your mind be free: Stay centered by accepting whatever you are doing. This is the Way." - Chuang-Tzu "Zen in the Martial Arts"
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Michael P Butler wrote: I was saying that it won't affect me - personally. "First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists, but I was neither, so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew so I did not speak out. And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me." –Martin Niemoeller This will be you and everyone else shortly, and you're living in a dream if you think otherwise.
Todd C. Wilson (meme@nopcode.com) NOPcode.com "Flow with whatever may happen and let your mind be free: Stay centered by accepting whatever you are doing. This is the Way." - Chuang-Tzu "Zen in the Martial Arts"
Todd C. Wilson wrote: This will be you and everyone else shortly, and you're living in a dream if you think otherwise. I don't usually get involved with these kind of debates because the reality depends greatly upon our own point of view. We live in a global economy, I've seen what the loss of our coal industry did to my country. Outsourcing development will not affect me directly, and there is very little I can do about the indirect effect. So I just do what I do, I provide software solutions for people who want my services - it pays the bills and puts food on the table. I'm not smart enough to think globally. I leave that to people smarter than me. Economies go up and down based on the whims of the time. People adapt, survival of the fittest and all that. Show me a way that I can make a difference. I don't work for big corporations because I've seen the way they treat people. That's why I work for myself. People will always want to do business with people they know, people with a proven track record, people who understand their problems and know how to help solve them. So that's what I do. Michael 'War is at best barbarism...Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation. War is hell.' - General William Sherman, 1879
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So I take it you're going to be changing your job path - let us know how it goes! We're all rooting for you and your new faboulous career in burger flipping!
Todd C. Wilson (meme@nopcode.com) NOPcode.com "Flow with whatever may happen and let your mind be free: Stay centered by accepting whatever you are doing. This is the Way." - Chuang-Tzu "Zen in the Martial Arts"
So I take it you're going to be changing your job path - let us know how it goes! We're all rooting for you and your new faboulous career in burger flipping! :) Is it at all conceivable to you that at some point, one can give up something pretty good for something even better? Perhaps that something does not yet exist but could exist if the right people went looking for it? Perhaps the transition comes over the span of a few years or decades rather than all at once as your fears would lead you to believe? Sean Winstead
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peterchen wrote: As long as peoply rather buy cheap than good, there's no question where this will lead. People don't just choose cheap products, they choose the best products they can afford, which happens to be worse than the products they can't afford. Not every country with cheap (and cheaper) labor can produce the same quality products as India and China. Also, if the same products were produced in US and Germany with the same cost, the quality will probably be even lower.
Anonymous101 wrote: they choose the best products they can afford Software, still, yes. But wiht everyday goods, especially over here in germany, the trend is frightening.
"Der Geist des Kriegers ist erwacht / Ich hab die Macht" StS
sighist | Agile Programming | doxygen