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Why India outsourcing is doomed

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Re: Why India outsourcing is doomed

#61

Post by dominotw »

neindanke wrote: post #6

Not sure why the author seems to insinuate that the problems he/she has described are somehow specific to India. We had a disaster when we outsourced a large piece of design work to Denmark. We found out that the outsourcer in Denmark was themselves outsourcing chunks of work to Ukraine. Our bias assuming that an expensive Scandinavian outsourcer would be magically better than a cheaper Asian alternative led us astra…

I don't think he says the problems are specific to India. He is just presenting India as a case study, perhaps because it the most popular outsourcing destination.

Re: Why India outsourcing is doomed

#62

Post by JamesBarney »

I worked with one of the top 5's and the biggest issue was the hierarchical culture that seemed to give managers more status and money than coders.

I think this meant there wasn't a lot of incentive to become a great coder so people worked very hard to take on management responsibilities and not as hard at becoming great coders.

I'd really like to hear from people with more experience if this was just true of this one consulting company(one of he top 5) or was this true of many companies.

(first posted from cell phone, edited for readability)

Re: Why India outsourcing is doomed

#63

Post by ColinCera »

Every problem he mentions, except the timezone difference, is exactly the same when you're outsourcing to large IT consulting companies in the US. The only difference is the US companies charge 5x-20x more for their crappy deliverables.

How many people here have worked with a major IT consultancy in the US? How many were satisfied with the process and result? I would be astonished if even 5 out of 100 projects outsourced within the US turn out so well that customers say, "That was great, we can't wait to work with those consultants again."

As a veteran of half a dozen such projects using half a dozen different IT consulting firms, my experience was they were all terrible experiences, with rampant price-gouging (novice programmers billed at $300/hour, "senior" people at $600-1,000/hour), conflicts of interest, poor communication, etc., and the work products in every case were massive total failures (and no, they do not give refunds).

I don't put much stock in this article as a specific critique of India, but as an article about outsourcing in general it's dead-on accurate.

Re: Why India outsourcing is doomed

#64

Post by autokad »

curiousDog wrote: post #24

Oh not this stupid argument again. Many problems he mentions aren't specific to India, you'll find them across all developing economies (We had most of the same issues contracting work to a Chinese and Brazilian company). At the end of the day, you get what you pay for. And some companies are clearly okay with said cheap work. There's a reason the IT industry in Hyderabad/B'lore is booming. Want solid contracting wor…

I definitely agree the title of the argument is jumping to conclusions, but the problems are very real from what I have experienced.

paying more (to Indian (as in, in India) developers) doesn't alleviate those problems. people have really stretched what xenophobia and racism means anymore.

Why should they work for peanuts when their friends are working at google and FB making bank? because peanuts where they are is a very high standard of living, and lets face it, they do not have the skills or they would be working at fb and google making bank as well. One should never do a poor job just because they think they aren't compensated enough.

Re: Why India outsourcing is doomed

#65

Post by abhi_kr »

kamaal wrote: post #45
jeswin wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll try to reply cautiously, but I don't think your picture of innovation is accurate. To start with, the big-5 IT majors find it very difficult to attract talent. Even back when I was in college ('98-), the IT majors were a fallback option for most people. In fact, the best students didn't even bother applying there. This has only gotten worse now, from what I hear. It is also my opinion that there isn't a lot of i…

>>In fact, the best students didn't even bother applying there. This has only gotten worse now, from what I hear. Largely because these companies pay less, not because quality of work in product companies is higher. I worked at a onsite location for a company which is one of the largest internet companies. We were all hired to work there after elaborate interviews. And we used to be repeatedly told they hire only the…

I'm preparing for my campus placements and I feel so frustrated by having to solve algorithmic puzzles because that's all that companies ask in interviews, everything else is secondary. I have so much interest in OS and networks but so few companies are there that offer challenging or exciting jobs in these fields in India. Most of the work is testing and validation and all the design and architecture work is done in the US division of the companies. This leaves students with no other option but to study what is required for the interviews and get trapped in the eternal interview-study-promotion-interview loop. The lucky ones go to US.

Re: Why India outsourcing is doomed

#66

Post by kyllo »

JamesBarney wrote: post #62

I worked with one of the top 5's and the biggest issue was the hierarchical culture that seemed to give managers more status and money than coders. I think this meant there wasn't a lot of incentive to become a great coder so people worked very hard to take on management responsibilities and not as hard at becoming great coders. I'd really like to hear from people with more experience if this was just true of this on…

This phenomenon (career advancement = promotion to middle management) is also the case at the client companies, which is part of the reason why outsourcing is tempting to them in the first place. The never ending desire to commoditize their inputs.

Re: Why India outsourcing is doomed

#67

Post by akbar501 »

There are known causes of failure in software projects many of which overlap with project failure in general. As there are two companies involved, a post-mortem of failed projects must include problems on both sides.

On the purchaser side:

- poor specification is a major project for both internal and external projects

- abdication of responsibility for resource appropriateness. Yes, you are responsible for ensuring the vendor's engineers are a good fit for your project.

- failure to manage the project. PM of external resources is a specialized PM skill.

- changing objectives: this flows from poor specs, and results in changing targets

- communication failures: nuff said

- no QA: Yes, you must quality check work of external vendors. It's amazing how often this basic step is skipped.

On the vendor side:

- everything above, plus

- failure to include specification as a line item in budget

- poor estimation

- failure to align resources to task at hand

- underbidding

- inexperience in problem domain

Re: Why India outsourcing is doomed

#69

Post by throwawaykf05 »

kamaal wrote: post #29
raverbashing wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Most of the big IT services firms have very elaborate and very active community of people who innovate all the time." I really , REALLY doubt that. Or you don't know what innovation is. It's not about India, it's about the companies and the mentality.

>>Or you don't know what innovation is. May be I don't. >>It's not about India, it's about the companies and the mentality. It's not about companies either. Its largely about which project you are going to work for. I'm pretty sure even at Google there are a lot of 'keep the wheels running' kind of projects. And there might be a lot of politics too.

> May be I don't.

Nonetheless, I am curious. Can you give examples of what (you consider are) innovations that you've seen? For what it's worth, I am aware that some of the bigger Indian outsourcing companies have initiatives for innovative and research-oriented work, but I have not seen what they actually produce.

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