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Why I Will Never Feel Threatened by Programmers in India

blog.jpl-consulting.com

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Re: Why I Will Never Feel Threatened by Programmers in India

#31

Post by suprgeek »

compay wrote: post #15

I'm a partner at a Ruby outsourcing company in Argentina. I sympathize with the author, but I think the conclusion that outsourcing doesn't work is overly broad. The crux of the problem is that working with a remote team is a very different proposition than working with people onsite - a fact that is obvious but that people generally fail to act on. Quite often at my company we're contacted by clients want to hire fo…

For a project of any significant size : * Have a crystal clear idea of what you want built.* This is itself most of the work. It is surprisingly hard for business people to understand that writing software is actually "specifying What needs to be coded" for 50% of the effort.

Re: Why I Will Never Feel Threatened by Programmers in India

#32

Post by matwood »

bguthrie wrote: post #27
andrewfelix wrote: post #10

Why I Will Never Feel Threatened by Bad Programmers I fixed the title for you. Next time try and avoid generalizing entire countries.

This is correct. Good programmers in India, like good programmers everywhere, cost more than bad programmers. If you would like to hire a decent shop, there are boutiques and larger firms available, but they will charge $40-50/hour, not $15. The problem isn't in the outsourcing, it's treating development like a $15/hour commodity. We all know that it doesn't work that way. The author described paying an hourly rate f…

If you would like to hire a decent shop, there are boutiques and larger firms available, but they will charge $40-50/hour, not $15.

And at that point it's just easier to hire local developers.

I just don't get the push to hire cheap people. Even if you do find someone who is a rock star in the Philippines for cheap they might work for 3-6 months before job hopping again. Any sizable business is going to have systems and businesses processes that take time to learn and if you're constantly churning through people you end up not getting much real work done.

Re: Why I Will Never Feel Threatened by Programmers in India

#33

Post by king_magic »

andrewfelix wrote: post #10

Why I Will Never Feel Threatened by Bad Programmers I fixed the title for you. Next time try and avoid generalizing entire countries.

The author had several good points that are specific to India - e.g., the language barrier, time zone differences, etc - IMO, those points are perfectly valid reasons to single out India.

Re: Why I Will Never Feel Threatened by Programmers in India

#34

Post by jrockway »

The problem with outsourcing to India is the problem with outsourcing: when you give someone a spec and x dollars to implement it, you get exactly what you specified. Most of the time, that's not what you want. You need someone to say "no" to bad ideas and features that will take too long to implement relative to the value they'll provide. Outsourcing companies won't do this, since the incentives are set up for them to take as long as possible.

There are two reasons why you deserve your $250/hour rate: because you know how to build software, and because you know what not to build. If you can't do the second one, you're not going to make your $250 an hour.

Re: Why I Will Never Feel Threatened by Programmers in India

#35

Post by jrockway »

beachgeek wrote: post #13
mopoke wrote: post #4

Why single out India? Sure, it's become a bit of a byword for "outsource" but I think you'd find the same were you to outsource to any country - even within your own country. The problems pointed out largely surrounding happen due to the difficulty of communicating with a remote team. Having the product owner and the development team geographically distant make everything ten times harder; doesn't matter if they're i…

Agree that communication (or lack thereof) is a key issue. That can be worked out but having 11PM conference calls or combined hacking sessions stretching to 2-3 AM gets old very quickly. Another is the fact that the culture within a lot of contract shops isn't exactly innovation-driven. I really don't understand how you could get an engineer/coder passionate enough to be interested in some stranger's project. Net ne…

I don't think however that big companies (Cisco/Microsoft: any company with a big India development center) will ever hire legions of US programmers again though. That train has long since left the station.

Are you sure? Lots of US companies are hiring lots of US developers. Google comes to mind immediately, but I'm sure everyone else is too.

Re: Why I Will Never Feel Threatened by Programmers in India

#37

Post by jrockway »

bguthrie wrote: post #27
andrewfelix wrote: post #10

Why I Will Never Feel Threatened by Bad Programmers I fixed the title for you. Next time try and avoid generalizing entire countries.

This is correct. Good programmers in India, like good programmers everywhere, cost more than bad programmers. If you would like to hire a decent shop, there are boutiques and larger firms available, but they will charge $40-50/hour, not $15. The problem isn't in the outsourcing, it's treating development like a $15/hour commodity. We all know that it doesn't work that way. The author described paying an hourly rate f…

But there are plenty of good programmers in the US that will work for $50 an hour, which ends up being about $100,000 a year. And if you can have your users, analysts, and programmers in the same building for what it costs to outsource, why outsource?

Re: Why I Will Never Feel Threatened by Programmers in India

#38

Post by compay »

suprgeek wrote: post #31
compay wrote: post #15

I'm a partner at a Ruby outsourcing company in Argentina. I sympathize with the author, but I think the conclusion that outsourcing doesn't work is overly broad. The crux of the problem is that working with a remote team is a very different proposition than working with people onsite - a fact that is obvious but that people generally fail to act on. Quite often at my company we're contacted by clients want to hire fo…

For a project of any significant size : * Have a crystal clear idea of what you want built.* This is itself most of the work. It is surprisingly hard for business people to understand that writing software is actually "specifying What needs to be coded" for 50% of the effort.

Right on. I don't mean companies need to have a project spec in hand from day one though, but rather that their own goals are clearly defined.

I'm happy to help them come up with the spec. But if the client can't give you an elevator pitch for what you're going to build for them, run for the door.

Re: Why I Will Never Feel Threatened by Programmers in India

#40

Post by andrewfelix »

king_magic wrote: post #33
andrewfelix wrote: post #10

Why I Will Never Feel Threatened by Bad Programmers I fixed the title for you. Next time try and avoid generalizing entire countries.

The author had several good points that are specific to India - e.g., the language barrier, time zone differences, etc - IMO, those points are perfectly valid reasons to single out India.

Those points are not specific to India.
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