Why I don't do offshore code
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"I" have never chosen to offshore code. "They" meaning companies I have worked for occasionally have. It was always a fiasco. "My" experience. Maybe YOU have had different ones. :-) I agree. The only reason most companies off-shore to save a buck. And they get what they pay for. :-) -- modified at 18:30 Thursday 27th October, 2005
Then the company chose so low as to hurt themselves. Still their choice. You can buy a volkswagen beetle for the purpose of toying a 5th wheel, but its the fault of the buyer for not buying what he needed instead of the cheapest thing he can get. _________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)
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So you are saying: Offshore quality of code is: Horribly written! And on-shore quality is (like at your end!!!) : losing code, periodically crashing hard-drives, no systematic archiving process - total Chaos!!! I think the offshore quality of status-quo is much much better than on-shore! I am not being dis-respectful here, but certainly your post was like one! No hard-feelings! :-)
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My development machine hrad drive crashed recently. I had all my critical work backed up. But there were a few piddly projects that I never got around to archiving. I had never tried it before, but figured I would at least see what it was all about, so I got a highly recommended disassembler, and gave it a shot on an executable which I had lost the source for. Actually, it worked pretty well. I was able to rebuild the source in a pretty short time - it was a piddly project as I have said. Then it hit me! "This is just like working with code written offshore!" There were no comments. No formatting. No meaningful variable names. Just a lot of "text1, text2, text3, num1, num2, num3" etc. Exactly like code written offshore! :-) Except that I had a huge advantage because I wrote the original code so I was able to reconstruct it into something that was actually useful again. :-) I think I'll keep a copy of the disassembly code. And the next time someone brings up offshoring, I'll bring out my personal source, and say "Is this what you want?" and then bring out the disassembly version and then say "Because this is what you'll get". 'Nuff said? (Sorry if those were your toes....) ;P
One reason a lot of people get bad experiences with offshoring is that they go for the cheapest developer available. Instead of trying to find someone who works at 5% of what you'd have to pay someone in your country, try and find someone good who'd probably ask for 50% what you'd pay someone in your country. It won't sound like so much of a bargain but you get good quality code.
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rwestgraham wrote:
There were no comments. No formatting. No meaningful variable names.
Offshore code, just like onshore code is human dependant. If you buy the cheapest rate, $1 an hour, previously graduated from mining rocks to mining data, you get bad code. If you invest in groups that have the education, training, and work ethics, you pay more, but you get better quality. It is still "you" dependant, you get what YOU pay for, if you aren't willing to pay for quality, you will never get quality. So if you are looking for whome to blame, don't blame the offshore coders. _________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)
Jeffry J. Brickley wrote:
If you invest in groups that have the education, training, and work ethics,
When you check, you find that bench time in major off-shore (Indian) companies is used for training people in new technologies. Investment in training is highest in Indian off-shore companies. Does anyone think that Larry Ellison will pay to train his staff in Microsoft technologies or that Bill Gates would have his employees train in Oracle? Of course, in companies with in-house IT staff, the first thing to be cut during a financial crunch is the miniscule training budget.
Jeffry J. Brickley wrote:
It is still "you" dependant, you get what YOU pay for, if you aren't willing to pay for quality, you will never get quality. So if you are looking for whome to blame, don't blame the offshore coders.
Amen!
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One reason a lot of people get bad experiences with offshoring is that they go for the cheapest developer available. Instead of trying to find someone who works at 5% of what you'd have to pay someone in your country, try and find someone good who'd probably ask for 50% what you'd pay someone in your country. It won't sound like so much of a bargain but you get good quality code.
First of all, people who are off-shoring any kind of core mission critical code are not interested in quality period. On the other hand, there are many tasks which are not the best utilization of your lead developers. But on those tasks I can do MUCH better by out-sourcing them here at home. I sometimes use local college students. A junior has some coding knowledge, and I can get some things from them that are much harder to get from off-shore: 1) An economical rate from a person I can meet face to face with. 2) A person who is very motivated to do a very good job because I am not just offering them some money, but something of much greater value - experience, a reference, and something to put on their resume before they go into their senior year interview process. 3) Someone who actually listens to what I want them to do, not someone who just does it however they decide to do it. 4) Someone who is willing to look at my existing code as a guide and willing to adopt a similar style so I get reasonably homogeneous code. But that is just in terms of code. I get some other things that are impossible to get offshore: 5) A chance to keep my money in my community where it belongs. 6) A chance to give a young person in my community an opportunity to share in the burden of this once great nation - although they often end up being under the minimum tax, they still get to pay FICA along with me. :-) And then I get some really good stuff that has nopthing to do with code: 7) I get the personal satisfaction of mentoring a young person. 8) I get the opportunity to help a young person improve their ability career prospects. 9) I get the satisfaction of knowing that I did not just pay for some code, but rather I made an investment that will hopefully one day provide a return for my society. Why off-shore when I can do so much better locally??? :-)
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First of all, people who are off-shoring any kind of core mission critical code are not interested in quality period. On the other hand, there are many tasks which are not the best utilization of your lead developers. But on those tasks I can do MUCH better by out-sourcing them here at home. I sometimes use local college students. A junior has some coding knowledge, and I can get some things from them that are much harder to get from off-shore: 1) An economical rate from a person I can meet face to face with. 2) A person who is very motivated to do a very good job because I am not just offering them some money, but something of much greater value - experience, a reference, and something to put on their resume before they go into their senior year interview process. 3) Someone who actually listens to what I want them to do, not someone who just does it however they decide to do it. 4) Someone who is willing to look at my existing code as a guide and willing to adopt a similar style so I get reasonably homogeneous code. But that is just in terms of code. I get some other things that are impossible to get offshore: 5) A chance to keep my money in my community where it belongs. 6) A chance to give a young person in my community an opportunity to share in the burden of this once great nation - although they often end up being under the minimum tax, they still get to pay FICA along with me. :-) And then I get some really good stuff that has nopthing to do with code: 7) I get the personal satisfaction of mentoring a young person. 8) I get the opportunity to help a young person improve their ability career prospects. 9) I get the satisfaction of knowing that I did not just pay for some code, but rather I made an investment that will hopefully one day provide a return for my society. Why off-shore when I can do so much better locally??? :-)
rwestgraham wrote:
Why off-shore when I can do so much better locally???
Okay, what works for you works for you. But for many others, offshoring does work - for instance, Microsoft adds 1000s of jobs to their India office every year. They wouldn't do that unless they got something out of it.
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rwestgraham wrote:
There were no comments. No formatting. No meaningful variable names.
Offshore code, just like onshore code is human dependant. If you buy the cheapest rate, $1 an hour, previously graduated from mining rocks to mining data, you get bad code. If you invest in groups that have the education, training, and work ethics, you pay more, but you get better quality. It is still "you" dependant, you get what YOU pay for, if you aren't willing to pay for quality, you will never get quality. So if you are looking for whome to blame, don't blame the offshore coders. _________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)
Jeffry J. Brickley wrote:
It is still "you" dependant, you get what YOU pay for, if you aren't willing to pay for quality, you will never get quality. So if you are looking for whome to blame, don't blame the offshore coders.
Damn right! The same goes for local developers - if you are only looking to pay them $30/hr or $60K/yr, then you get what you pay for...! Peace! -=- James
If you think it costs a lot to do it right, just wait until you find out how much it costs to do it wrong!
Tip for new SUV drivers: Professional Driver on Closed Course does not mean your Dumb Ass on a Public Road!
DeleteFXPFiles & CheckFavorites (Please rate this post!) -
Jeffry J. Brickley wrote:
It is still "you" dependant, you get what YOU pay for, if you aren't willing to pay for quality, you will never get quality. So if you are looking for whome to blame, don't blame the offshore coders.
Damn right! The same goes for local developers - if you are only looking to pay them $30/hr or $60K/yr, then you get what you pay for...! Peace! -=- James
If you think it costs a lot to do it right, just wait until you find out how much it costs to do it wrong!
Tip for new SUV drivers: Professional Driver on Closed Course does not mean your Dumb Ass on a Public Road!
DeleteFXPFiles & CheckFavorites (Please rate this post!)James R. Twine wrote:
Damn right! The same goes for local developers - if you are only looking to pay them $30/hr or $60K/yr, then you get what you pay for...!
err... :sigh: hopefully you mean they should pay me more rather than fire me and hire someone more expensive.... :sigh: _________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)
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James R. Twine wrote:
Damn right! The same goes for local developers - if you are only looking to pay them $30/hr or $60K/yr, then you get what you pay for...!
err... :sigh: hopefully you mean they should pay me more rather than fire me and hire someone more expensive.... :sigh: _________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)
Uh, yeah...! I was assuming that you were being paid better than that! :~ Peace! -=- James
If you think it costs a lot to do it right, just wait until you find out how much it costs to do it wrong!
Tip for new SUV drivers: Professional Driver on Closed Course does not mean your Dumb Ass on a Public Road!
DeleteFXPFiles & CheckFavorites (Please rate this post!) -
Uh, yeah...! I was assuming that you were being paid better than that! :~ Peace! -=- James
If you think it costs a lot to do it right, just wait until you find out how much it costs to do it wrong!
Tip for new SUV drivers: Professional Driver on Closed Course does not mean your Dumb Ass on a Public Road!
DeleteFXPFiles & CheckFavorites (Please rate this post!)James R. Twine wrote:
I was assuming that you were being paid better than that!
Slightly, but not significantly. No degree, 15 years experience in this market, 5 years previously in business accounting programming. Combined with working near the border where all wages are low. :) it's still better than my starting wage 20 years ago... $5.25/hr as a programmer/accountant. _________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)