Outsourcing to India

[Gonzo]

I am sure that we have covered this before but I think it is a good moment to do a quick straw poll.

I do mean outsourcing to Bob here, rather than importing Bobs.




.... Poll to follow

[MarillionFan]

Less. But only because other countries will become more cost effective

[Lockhouse]

Less. But only because other countries will become more cost effective

WHS

[Scrag Meister]

I used to manage a dev team in India and a job that would have taken the in house team a couple of days to do took weeks.

It was very frustrating, this spec, that spec, this authorisation, this change, more signoff, the list was endless. They seemed to have NO initiative, and spent their time chasing authorisations etc to cover their @rses.

[MarillionFan]

I was managing a team out of Bangalore and an Indian on-shore team in the US found them to be pretty good. But then again I invested a lot of time in managing them, taking them out & socialising as a team when I went over, communication and ensuring they knew what initiative they could take.

It all depends on whether you can manage or not.

[d000hg]

I used to manage a dev team in India and a job that would have taken the in house team a couple of days to do took weeks.

It was very frustrating, this spec, that spec, this authorisation, this change, more signoff, the list was endless. They seemed to have NO initiative, and spent their time chasing authorisations etc to cover their @rses.

Maybe you should have chosen good developers, the problem seems more the management structures than individual developers' technical ability... of course many developers are naff too but if you recruit your own offshore team members rather than giving the whole thing to TCS et al, you'd get better results.

[Gonzo]

I used to manage a dev team in India and a job that would have taken the in house team a couple of days to do took weeks.

It was very frustrating, this spec, that spec, this authorisation, this change, more signoff, the list was endless. They seemed to have NO initiative, and spent their time chasing authorisations etc to cover their @rses.

A friend was telling me about talking to a new client about the development work that would be needed to get them up and running. He tried to reassure them that all the work would be done in London and they wouldn't use the development team in India.

The new client was most disappointed. They had the impression that if the work was done in India it would be done quicker. He had to explain that it would be cheaper but it would take much longer.

His firm has abandoned their Indian team now. They have set up a new development shop in Poland .....

[Gonzo]

Anyway, the reason for asking about this today is because late this afternoon there was a distinct smell in the office of senior execs crapping themselves.

I only saw the first two lines of an email on someone else's screen before they closed it and told me that it was not for my eyes, but the gist of it was they have suddenly become overcome with worry about having to bring all the functions run from India back onshore tomorrow.

It could be that they have only just become aware of what is going on there today even though it has been known about for some time (that is a possibility, or maybe even a probability) or they have received new information today that has suddenly scared the crap out of them.

[Troll]

Hmmm the offshore team has just declared an immediate holiday due to an emergency situation...

A good job they're only two weeks overdue with delivery already

[The_Equalizer]

Don't Bobs generally consider coding a low level job and are keen to move up the ranks after a couple of years? In which cases the good ones do move up and the basic pool is always either very green or generally crap.