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Is a trillion dollars’ worth of programming lying on the ground?

blog.cerebralab.com

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Re: Is a trillion dollars’ worth of programming lying on the ground?

#41

Post by ryanianian »

gbasin wrote: post #8
Yanu-3452 wrote: post #4

This is an odd analysis, because as it highlights, salaries are strongly correlated with wealth of the country. So the question really becomes, not why are salaries different, but "why is programming difficult to offshore". If programming was easy to import and export then either salaries would even out or, more likely, would be relocated to cheaper countries like many kinds of manufacturing. But software is difficul…

Turns out, the hard part of software is figuring out what to build. The rest is cheap in comparison, whether done in SF or Bangalore.

Yes. And how to build it. I worked with a brilliant but rather lazy contractor once. His code was unmaintainable despite him being obviously competent. His rationale was very explicitly that maintainable code doesn't make for good job-security. You don't want to be held hostage by your own code.

Re: Is a trillion dollars’ worth of programming lying on the ground?

#44

Post by silvestrov »

crote wrote: post #13

It seems to be missing a very big factor: culture. If your goal is to implement some code for, say, healthcare, it is a lot easier to explain the business process to someone who is already familiar with how stuff is done on a higher level. Whenever you hire someone from a different culture / country, you need to start from the basics by explaining the very core of your society. An American programmer might not be too…

Another aspect of culture: how one-sided the communication is.

Silicon Valley and Scandinavian cultures are very flat, so it is possible for "the man on the floor" to tell management that it doesn't work to put diesel into a gasoline car.

In authoritarian cultures this would be a mistake as it's seen as embarrassing the management by saying they made a mistake. If you want to continue being employed then it is much better to pretend there is no problem.

Catching problems early saves a lot of money in software development, so a non-authoritarian culture can save a lot of time and thus have a lot higher wage.

Re: Is a trillion dollars’ worth of programming lying on the ground?

#45

Post by z3t4 »

Engineering is super cheap! If you go to the grocery store to buy beer, one beer cost $1, another $5 and it taste slightly better you get the one for $5 then if you go to a restaurant, you pay $10 for the same beer. If you go into a restaurant and they ask $30 for the beer, that's expensive, but still you wont leave. Now if they did charge $300 for one beer you would walk out and buy it from Asia.

Re: Is a trillion dollars’ worth of programming lying on the ground?

#46

Post by matz1 »

crote wrote: post #13

It seems to be missing a very big factor: culture. If your goal is to implement some code for, say, healthcare, it is a lot easier to explain the business process to someone who is already familiar with how stuff is done on a higher level. Whenever you hire someone from a different culture / country, you need to start from the basics by explaining the very core of your society. An American programmer might not be too…

This remind me of the recent Microsoft AI that can write code demo.

You give the AI instruction and explanation in English, preferably as clear and as detailed as possible and you get back code.

Essentially its very similar workflow when working with offshore developer, in the future you could in theory replace the offshore dev with AI, except with much less latency.

Re: Is a trillion dollars’ worth of programming lying on the ground?

#47

Post by AmericanBlarney »

I work with teams around the world - it's a real challenge, as there's no single time that everyone is online. Should run that analysis by time zone + education. Also, software development is not as fungible as you might think. Some specific disciplines (e.g. marketing, finance) require a lot of domain knowledge, which had been built up in a pool of workers in specific areas over many years.

Re: Is a trillion dollars’ worth of programming lying on the ground?

#48

Post by ibeckermayer »

commandlinefan wrote: post #36
throwaway4220 wrote: post #7

“ Doctors in the US and UK are very expensive, that's not because nobody has noticed there are equally skilled doctors in other countries that charge 1/5th the price (or even algorithms that can do most of it for pennies). It's because practicing medicine in those countries requires to go through a regulatory gauntlet that would make Kafka feel like an unimaginative fraud.” Ouch. Yeah some US/UK doctors are overpaid…

> go through a regulatory gauntlet A lot of people like to point to regulations and licensing as a source of inefficiency, but in reality the lack of any sort of professional licensing around programming drives all sorts of alternate inefficiency: with no objective standard to measure applicants against, employers are stuck trying to make up their own, usually broken standards.

The lack of violently enforced standards doesn’t mean there are “no objective standards”, nor does violently enforcing a standard like they do in medicine make it an objective standard (see: how careless and dogmatic your typical MD is)

Re: Is a trillion dollars’ worth of programming lying on the ground?

#49

Post by simias »

VMisTheWay wrote: post #9
Yanu-3452 wrote: post #4

This is an odd analysis, because as it highlights, salaries are strongly correlated with wealth of the country. So the question really becomes, not why are salaries different, but "why is programming difficult to offshore". If programming was easy to import and export then either salaries would even out or, more likely, would be relocated to cheaper countries like many kinds of manufacturing. But software is difficul…

I found it quite difficult to outsource Engineering work to Engineers in another country. It might be a cultural thing, but issues I've ran into- Slow/low prioritization, no movement unless you follow up often, lack of experience. Don't get me wrong, I can be lazy too. But when things are outsourced it's really hard to keep positive relations and get stuff done on time with high quality.

In my experience the core of the problem, regardless of outsourcing, cultural issues or other considerations, is the good old "if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys". Good software engineers are highly coveted wherever they are. If you attempt to outsource work to a country with much lower wages in order to save money you're not going to get the local rockstars working for you.

Those outsourced teams are also aware of their status as "disposable cheap workforce" and are not super invested in the project. They have very little chance of career growth within the company since their whole reason to be here is to be cheap. They do the bare minimum to meet the objectives and nothing more, and in their place I'd probably do the exact same thing.

Re: Is a trillion dollars’ worth of programming lying on the ground?

#50

Post by neutronicus »

bluejekyll wrote: post #29
siscia wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reality I see, is that all of us are overworked / with a lot of responsibilities. So it is easy to miss important emails or details. As long as we are close to each other, very important things don't get lost.

Slack (or similar) seems to be filling this void. The tap on the shoulder, “hey, did you notice this?” The problem is, you can have 10-20 people tapping you on the shoulder all at once.

Yes, and unlike Slack, in-person communication implements a Mutex where someone will see that someone else is talking to you and come back later without requiring any explanation or indeed awareness on your part.
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