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Lessons from Outsourcing to India, China and the Philippines

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Re: Lessons from Outsourcing to India, China and the Philippines

#71
post #54
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$60k puts you in the same order of magnitude as other western countries: E.g. ~$65k gets you a senior developer in Berlin (=€60k) and similarly in Canada (=90k CAD), so a lot more competition in that bracket.

I'd say good programmers are relatively underpaid in Western Europe compared to the rest of the globe.

Absolutely - if they work as regular employees. In Munich a senior dev can be offered around 100k. If he's single and without kids, the government will immediately take more than half of that. Then the apartment will set him back around 1000 euro a month. This leaves him with around 3000€/month.

I can make that in less than a week as a contractor doing the same thing in literally the same place.

Re: Lessons from Outsourcing to India, China and the Philippines

#72
That was a great outsourcing article, except showing one picture of Manila slums and calling the country poor.

Here is my suggestion -- don't use outsourcing agencies (acknowledging, easier said than done.) With an agency you end up with invisible HR problems. When something weird is going on at the office, you won't know about it. If senior developers are slacking off and giving junior devs all the work, you will not know. Hire the developers directly, give them the full salary, listen when they ask for something, give them flexible time off.

If what they are working on is really important, take the time to fly and go meet them in person, or if you have a team fly everyone to the same spot.

Re: Lessons from Outsourcing to India, China and the Philippines

#73

Nice article and on the spot. There is a difference between offshoring and cheap-shoring (i.e what I call offshoring at very low costs). Most of the bad experiences you get from India are a result of cheap-shoring. You get what you pay for. Cheapshoring undervalues good engineers and overvalues a lot of bad engineers. I have seen this for almost 15 years (from the Indian side), and I don't like it. While some people…

> While some people see Indian IT as growing with the likes of Infosys, TCS, Wipro, etc - I personally saw that as crippling good CS talent in India There's two sides to that coin though - these companies and other cheap-shorers, as crappy as they may be, provide better employment opportunities than most other available ones to people in smaller cities and villages. I've known many such people, and most of them see t…

Exploitative employment should be allowed because "think of the people in villages"

Re: Lessons from Outsourcing to India, China and the Philippines

#74

Nice article and on the spot. There is a difference between offshoring and cheap-shoring (i.e what I call offshoring at very low costs). Most of the bad experiences you get from India are a result of cheap-shoring. You get what you pay for. Cheapshoring undervalues good engineers and overvalues a lot of bad engineers. I have seen this for almost 15 years (from the Indian side), and I don't like it. While some people…

> So if you are paying 120K in the US, the same should cost you 54-60K USD when the engineer is in India

When you are comparing to the US, are you talking about Silicon Valley or the Midwest? In Silicon Valley, $120K is probably a junior engineer that would cost $54-60K in the Midwest.

Re: Lessons from Outsourcing to India, China and the Philippines

#75
post #49

Nice article and on the spot. There is a difference between offshoring and cheap-shoring (i.e what I call offshoring at very low costs). Most of the bad experiences you get from India are a result of cheap-shoring. You get what you pay for. Cheapshoring undervalues good engineers and overvalues a lot of bad engineers. I have seen this for almost 15 years (from the Indian side), and I don't like it. While some people…

$60k puts you in the same order of magnitude as other western countries: E.g. ~$65k gets you a senior developer in Berlin (=€60k) and similarly in Canada (=90k CAD), so a lot more competition in that bracket.

This is what I don't understand about offshoring. People keep going to India and China to find devs when they can get very high quality English speaking devs from the UK, Australia, and Canada for about the same price (factoring in all costs).

Re: Lessons from Outsourcing to India, China and the Philippines

#76
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say good programmers are relatively underpaid in Western Europe compared to the rest of the globe.

Absolutely - if they work as regular employees. In Munich a senior dev can be offered around 100k. If he's single and without kids, the government will immediately take more than half of that. Then the apartment will set him back around 1000 euro a month. This leaves him with around 3000€/month. I can make that in less than a week as a contractor doing the same thing in literally the same place.

And that's Germany, a country that's relatively well paying for engineers (like Switzerland). If you're from The Netherlands forget about that salary.

Re: Lessons from Outsourcing to India, China and the Philippines

#77

Nice article and on the spot. There is a difference between offshoring and cheap-shoring (i.e what I call offshoring at very low costs). Most of the bad experiences you get from India are a result of cheap-shoring. You get what you pay for. Cheapshoring undervalues good engineers and overvalues a lot of bad engineers. I have seen this for almost 15 years (from the Indian side), and I don't like it. While some people…

> While some people see Indian IT as growing with the likes of Infosys, TCS, Wipro, etc - I personally saw that as crippling good CS talent in India There's two sides to that coin though - these companies and other cheap-shorers, as crappy as they may be, provide better employment opportunities than most other available ones to people in smaller cities and villages. I've known many such people, and most of them see t…

BPO/KPO?

Re: Lessons from Outsourcing to India, China and the Philippines

#78
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, in some cases people will do it because otherwise their employer may fire them. Living in the US most of us are at will, and don't have that much luxury to give employers the finger.

What's your value to your employer? If you're not willing to stay late to do a cross time zone meeting then I agree that you're worth a bit less to your boss than you otherwise would be. Personally I would rather accept a bit less pay to be rid of a nuisance like a boss who thinks I'll inconvenience myself and my family for stupid shit like adjusting myself to his outsourced labour's schedule. I do stay late when shi…

I've got a feeling your anger stems from the fact that you're describing what you wish you could do, instead of your actual situation.

Re: Lessons from Outsourcing to India, China and the Philippines

#80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> While some people see Indian IT as growing with the likes of Infosys, TCS, Wipro, etc - I personally saw that as crippling good CS talent in India There's two sides to that coin though - these companies and other cheap-shorers, as crappy as they may be, provide better employment opportunities than most other available ones to people in smaller cities and villages. I've known many such people, and most of them see t…

BPO/KPO?

Business process outsourcing/Knowledge process outsourcing
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