21–30 of 32 posts
This should be a wake up call. What about north american universities? Aren't they the best? Maybe, but they're not affordable to every american. This countries subsidize upper studies so their citizens can access this kind of education. I think is just a matter of priorities. Instead of spending so much on X thing, spend more on scholarships for the top students in the country in specialized science areas. Universit…
What the WSJ article was describing is offshoring.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Soon most of the management will be outsourced as well. It makes sense to have someone who understands the culture of the workers.
Not too wise. Google for "787 Dreamliner outsourcing". It was costly experience for Boeing.
As far as outsourcing stories go, I find this one to have a very nice silver lining for developed countries. R&D is not factory floor oppressive work for people who have no options and often little political power. It is the domain of the intelligent; people with options who are more fully aware of what their options are. IOW, a true middle class. The more the thinking class grows the better all of us are. R&D is not…
> R&D is not a zero sum game like manufacturing. With manufacturing there is only so much demand for the manufactured goods; only so much material with which to make the goods etc. The material wasn't really a problem in most industries since early 1950s. The demand is also permanently growing, with population levels increasing, wealth being created etc. R&D however always follows manufacturing, it's just the nature…
"R&D however always follows manufacturing, it's just the nature of their relationship" This is true but R&D leads to whole new markets with explosive growth as opposed to commodity plateaus and slower incremental growth based on population or other rate limited market phenomena.
1. Just like in the US, quality is dependent on the people you hire (duh).
2. In India, unlike the US, it seems the more oversight you offer (while observing #1), the better the results. In the US, you generally hire smart people and get out of the way. In India, I found it was necessary to do high touch dev....I don't think this is a result of developer quality, but rather shared understanding and culture. In the US you can say "we are doing X b/c of Y sorta like Z" and usually you can get to the point without being too explicit. That is lacking, making MORE effort needed to communicate. Again, not a bad thing, just a point.
3. I never, ever understood thinking offshoring to a place that doesn't speak your native language (well) AND has a huge timezone offset was a good idea.
The absolute best experience I had and will constantly advocate for US companies is to use New Zealand. Native English speakers, 4 hour (and 1 day) offset from SF... a place your developers would LOVE to visit to train people. About a 1/4 - 1/2 the cost situation as well, so bang for the buck is usually much, much higher than China, India and Vietnam where timezone and language is usually a problem.
As someone who has gone through offshore outsourcing and offshoring, I can offer a couple of thoughts. 1. Just like in the US, quality is dependent on the people you hire (duh). 2. In India, unlike the US, it seems the more oversight you offer (while observing #1), the better the results. In the US, you generally hire smart people and get out of the way. In India, I found it was necessary to do high touch dev....I do…
The population of NZ is just 4.3 Million (http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=population+of+new+zeala...)
A single city in India has more people and thus more trained engineers and researchers than all of NZ!!
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=population+of+Mumbai
If you haven't heard, NZ currently welcomes trained engineers to immigrate from India.
The sad fact is that Europe/Japan/Aus+NZ combined dont train engineers to match India + China forget about rest of the world. Not to forget the fact that the former continents are rapidly ageing.
And when you are doing research on next gen. materials or algorithms or drugs, timezones are immaterial. As far as language is concerned, while you might not find cheap Java devs with good English skills, people who do research, generally have much better English skills.
I guess what I'm getting at, is that I wonder how much of these R&D facilities are being set up as a way to reduce costs as some people are speculating, and how many are being forced in order to side step red tape and continue pushing their products into new markets?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Soon most of the management will be outsourced as well. It makes sense to have someone who understands the culture of the workers.
I've been thinking this for years. Why not just outsource management?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The truth of the matter is that everything that can be outsourced will be outsourced. The idea that "brain work" would remain in the US was just a rationalization to enable the first wave of outsourcing to get underway. In the 1980's the driving force was quality and the ones to emulate were the Japanese. Now the driving force is cost, quality is not that important, and the ones to emulate are the Chinese/Indians.
Exactly. The "brain work" rationalization was just a way to sell outsourcing to the middle class, enabling conservatives to break working-class political power. The next wave, well underway since the tech bubble reduced communication costs to zero, will break the middle class.