May
1st, 2008
This is what happens when you blindly outsource to India (keyword: blindly)
Update: Seems the title of the post is misleading. I have no issues with outsourcing to India or Indians (I’m Indian). It’s the blind nature of what happened that I’m writing about. India, Australia or Silicon Valley…that’s irrelevant.
There’s a popular myth that outsourcing to India can save you lots of money in development costs. While the statement alone isn’t false, it leaves a lot to the imagination. You know the part of the imagination that thinks about what you’ll do with the raise you’re probably not going to be getting next year. Outsourcing development to India is only a good idea when a team of technical experts assess the options and determine that it’s a good idea. Product managers and other not technical employees have no business making such a decision. When they do disaster looms…as you’ll read about in this article.
In the beginning…
My former co-worker/co-founder at Photagious embarked on a journey in January of 2007. We started talking with a small group of established businessmen who wanted to venture into the world of online photo printing. They had a novel idea, had been successful in business and were older and wiser than most people we were in contact with. In April of 2007 we finalized the details of how things would be divided up and set out to complete developing a photo printing site in 2 months with 3 people (two engineers and one designer). It was a very aggressive timeline but after creating Photagious we felt we had about as much experience as anyone with online photo sites.
The only thing worse than over engineering is this
We completed the site on schedule but there were last minute modifications which made us miss the target date by 2 or 3 weeks. Once we completed the site it was going to be time for a marketing blitz. We were led to believe that a significant sum of money would be raised and spent to market the product. One of the biggest advantages was that it was going to be first to market. However, instead of marketing the business group decided to hire a “user interface expert” to critique the design. They were told and believed that the colors used were all wrong and should be changed. Mind you that not a single visitor had come to the site and launching early was a major goal. We tried to reason with them but couldn’t convince them and proceeded to redesign the entire site within a month of completing a design that they had already approved of.
FFW
Fast forwarding a few months it became apparent that the stockpile of cash which was going to be used for marketing never materialized. In September I got a job offer from Yahoo! and promptly notified them that I won’t be able to continue developing their site. We had actually decided to no longer work on the site as a team and were committed to helping them hire good replacements. In an email sent on September 6th 2007 I gave specific skill sets which they should look for and offered to help them interview candidates. Here was the email:
Developer: Fluent in PHP and MySQL Experience using custom frameworks Experience using JavaScript Familiarity with OOP using PHP Knowledge of profiling PHP code for efficiency Experience optimizing queries Knowledge of creating web services Knowledge of accessing 3rd party APIs Knowledge of JavaScript libraries a plus System Administrator: Experience managing multi server networks Familiarity with Gentoo Linux Familiarity with adminstering Apache, PHP and MySQL Experience with firewalls using iptables/ipchains Experience with load balancing using heartbeat and ldirectord Experience with MySQL replication Familiarity with traffic shaping/bandwidth throttling Experience working with networks that scaled exponentially - a plus
Putting off the inevitable and dealing with the consequences
They waited until December (I started my position at Yahoo! in November) and notified us that they had hired two replacements. Unfortunately they must not have received my email because the two replacements were marketing folks masquerading as having a clue about technology. This is where the saga truly begins. I was busy packing and getting ready to move across the country within the month. It was at this time that they decided to physically move the site from being hosted in our colocation cabinet to somewhere else. I don’t argue that it was a bad idea but it should have happened months before. Needless to say the migration did not go as smoothly as they had expected.
Marketers masquerading as engineers
These marketing folks had a hard time with the transition. They couldn’t figure out how to use Subversion to download all of the source code for the site. They didn’t understand why we didn’t have ftp access to our servers. To top it all off they somehow convinced the business guys with whom we had a working relationship with for 2 years that we were the incompetent ones. The next brilliant idea they had was to outsource development to India. Because of the way they handled the transition I was not available to do any knowledge transfer and they ended up rewriting parts of the site. Not a horrible idea but when the company you hire does a piss poor job and you have no idea it goes to prove that you’re making wild guesses on what to do.
Jaisen’s top 10
Some of the highlights of the resulting site was that the directory structure looked like this:
photos
|- car
|- 200801
|- ...
|- 200812
|- laptop
|- 200801
|- ...
|- 200812
|- original
|- 200801
|- ...
|- 200812
|- 200801
|- ...
|- 200812
|- uploadedphoto1.jpg
|- uploadedphoto2.jpg
|- ...
|- ...
|- ...
|- uploadedphoto10000
I don’t get it either. But thankfully they left directory browsing on so you can view everyone’s photos as soon as they upload them.
Another ingenious move was to store all of the photos uploaded while on trial in a ginormous xml file. I guess they were too lazy to create a database table. It will be interesting to see how well that xml file scales once it gets to be a few megabytes in size. The icing on the cake was when I saw a url which looked like this:
I was curious enough to see if I could specify /etc/group and much to my surprise (not really) I was looking at all the groups on their server.
Conclusion
These are just a few reasons why outsourcing to India doesn’t always save you money. Similar experiences? Share them!
May 8th, 2008 at 8:06 am
I was once told by a wise man that if you’re going to outsource programming, outsource it to the Russians. They’re still pretty cheap and they will take your specifications and build exactly what you ask them to build (even if it’s a bad plan). The Indians and Chinese, however, will look at your plans and make revisions according to how they -think- the project should be done… which can be good or it can be VERY bad for your project.
Don’t be surprised if you get back comments like.. “oh, we didn’t think you needed that feature…” and a whole bunch of lame excuses.
Personally, I’ve hired excellent American developers and paid them all that they’re worth (75/hour+) but if you’re going to try to outsource and build apps on the cheap, go Russian (and you don’t even need to thank them when they’re done, they don’t like that soft shit - just send the checks).
May 8th, 2008 at 8:19 am
@James, well this goes for outsourcing in general. Even if you hire another company locally to do the work for you. If you don’t know what you’re doing it can have disasterous results.
India is just a prime suspect since there’s this myth that they have great programmers that will work for cheap. Which doesn’t solve the problem of not knowing what you’re doing.
I’m indian…and I am not surprised by your comments. I can see how they would try to shape your product instead of just building to spec. It’s kinda part of the culture.
May 8th, 2008 at 8:55 am
That also has something to do with the usage of substandard technologies such as MySQL, Gentoo and PHP. Having used PostgreSQL and Debian, say, was almost guaranteed to have needed better people.
May 8th, 2008 at 8:57 am
We had 3 developers from Sri-Lanka working on two projects for about a year and a half. They had to do a part of our main product, and a new product to complement the main one. We had re-written every line of their code since letting them go. You would see stuff like:
bool bChecked = true;
if(bChecked.ToString().Lenght == 4){
//do something
}
and reading XML file as a text file and stripping and line by line to commit the value to the string variables.
and:
if(i == 0)
{
i==0;
}
I wish I was making this up. It took us about a year to eliminate all of their code replacing it with code that works.
May 8th, 2008 at 9:00 am
@Leandro, I agree with part of your comment. Low quality Postgres devs are a minority. But that doesn’t mean you can’t find MySql devs of equal quality if you look.
On the flip side you’ll have a harder time filling Postgres positions than you will for MySql. Either way…if you know what you’re doing it’s not an issue.
May 8th, 2008 at 9:02 am
don’t blur, I can reproduce the URL
May 8th, 2008 at 9:13 am
@JamesP : “Personally, I’ve hired excellent American developers and paid them all that they’re worth (75/hour+) ”
wtf ?? dude seriously ? i mean .. wow .. i have worked in this sector for over 20 yrs and trust me i have yet to come across a more wtf statement .. u sound more like one of those half assed web dev whose job went to the nearest 16 yr old who cud do your job AND more with his eyes closed … pls pls pls remember -
“Cheap Elbonian outsourcing companies suck because they are cheap outsourcing companies, not because they’re Elbonians” - Scott Adams
May 8th, 2008 at 9:16 am
We use Indians for a lot of the manual labor type work we do and they are very good at boring, repetitive tasks if you are able to make sure they are well defined.
However, don’t ever pay Indians to think, as this is a long, downhill path that will lead you to ruin.
May 8th, 2008 at 9:26 am
Jaisen,
I think you got this whole argument wrong. I forget to assess the cause of this failure. As you article states the marketing folks were pretending to understand the technology very well. So, my view is the problem started there. Keeping that is perspective, this project was bound for a failure to matter where it was outsourced to. Even, if the marketing folks had programmers camping next to their cubicle, and if we assume that the marketing folks had a final say in how things were going to be done, then, the same disaster would have ensued.
In the spirit of disclosure, I am an Indian , but working in the US. I understand the difficulties faced during offshore process, but its no different that the business and IT folks fighting it out in every organization.
May 8th, 2008 at 9:28 am
@JamesP:
Are you serious? 75/hr? I am doing PHP coding part-time and only making less than US$20 per hour. I’ve searched local job ads for hours and applied for numerous jobs, finding nothing.
May 8th, 2008 at 9:31 am
Why are your product managers not technical?
May 8th, 2008 at 9:32 am
It is a sad testament to how little some folks value our trade.
I once spoke to a hr chap who solemnly declared that it was foolish to hire a developer in America when a new college grad in India was equivalent to a software engineer in the States with 5+ years of experience.
Having picked myself up of the floor I pointed out to him that at some point someone is going to figure out that development involves creativity and the task that can be truly out sourced are those that have become by rote form filling occupations, hr for instance.
May 8th, 2008 at 9:35 am
Curious, perhaps you only get US$20 because you don’t have a decade experience, or don’t do functional programming, or haven’t built anything outstanding yet.
Perhaps the problem is just PHP.
May 8th, 2008 at 9:37 am
@Alex, marked over the domain. Thanks for the tip.
May 8th, 2008 at 9:39 am
HAHAHA, i work for a company that outsourced to India 2 years ago. I told them not to, but they didn’t listen to me, because their cousin worked out there and assured them everything would be fine. Sure enough 2 years latter, they hired me on to take over the project because it was taking them to long to finish it. They didn’t were given the offline product to mimic online. Not hard stuff. Could have been done by 2 ppl in around 3 months. They kept getting back emails saying “This cannot be done” Sure enough i did it. I even had to learn laszlo to fix shit. This they have the worst db ever, no relational data, no nothing. everytime someone signs up all the data gets put into someones folder and db table, Even data that is static and doesn’t change. There is over 1g of extra data that im currently weeding out. They stored everything as varchars, EVERYTHING. I see I realized this when i tried to oder something by date instead of ID (only those were integers), After learning laszlo, i realized how brutal their code was. They used laszlo completely wrong. I told my employer i would fix basic bugs, but im re-writting the whole thing. I’ve started and it will take me around 4 months - 6months to complete.
Some days i just dont work because fixing on bug breaks the entire site.
May 8th, 2008 at 9:41 am
Hey Jefferey, isn’t it interesting how generalizations, like you just made, get made from handful of individual experiences, and lot of personal grudges. Besides, if a project which you yourself handled, fails, well it is just plain bad-luck, and if someone else is involved (outsourced) blaming becomes easy. Its just natural human tendency.
May 8th, 2008 at 9:46 am
cmon 75/hour for *making homepages*??
pffthhh
May 8th, 2008 at 9:46 am
$75/hour is not uncommon at the senior level. You have to either have some really good general purpose skills, or you have to be an expert in particularly complex product/database/etc, but it does happen.
May 8th, 2008 at 9:50 am
Leandro, I believe a big part of it is that I needed to work part-time. I could not do full-time due to carpal-tunnel syndrome, not that I’ve told any employer about that. Here in the USA, if you get a major disease or need surgery, an employer will fire you quickly, and then you’ll have no luck in getting medical care for the problem. But yes I do have years of experience.
May 8th, 2008 at 9:54 am
Jaisen -
I don’t get it. What the poor design and directory indexing has to do with India? Or outsourcing in India for that matter? That outright stupid.
Also, to some references on not paying Indians to think, should I laugh? No really, should I. Go look up in your history books guys.
This is not a racial debate. Indians, in the context of outsourcing, are not bonded labors, but knowledge workers just like chinese, russians or what have you….
Note: This is what happens when you write something without thinking enough about it.
May 8th, 2008 at 10:01 am
@Indian, Didn’t mean to be derogatory towards Indians (I’m Indian). If you haven’t read the article then I would do that first. I also added an update/disclaimer stating that it really doesn’t have anything to do with Indians. The focus is on blindly outsourcing…my example just happened to be to India.
May 8th, 2008 at 10:12 am
The feeling is mutual dude. I am just disappointed (should have said enraged) by some of the comments.
I am not opposed to or offended by people who say outsourcing doesn’t work. It doesn’t is some regards and everyone knows that. That is the nature of every business. If you don’t have the right setting, no arrangement will work for you.
The point is, don’t put the blame on Indians or Chinese or Russians or Uzbeks, wherever you out source to, for your complacence and lack of experience in handling such projects.
Outsourcing is not a magic bullet. Outsourcing takes much more than just signing the contracts. If people don’t understand this simple fact then they are missing on a lot of material.
@Justin, you are right. An Indian grad fesh out of college is not better than an Indian or American or Chinese or anyone in the heck for that matter who has a good solid 5 yrs of experience that you do. Heck, I would take an offence at that myself if I was compared to a grad and told that he is better than I unless he is some child prodigy.
FYI, I did read the article and the comments both very well :-)
May 8th, 2008 at 10:12 am
I run a consulting company in Melbourne, Australia and I have hired Indian network consultants before, has to be one of my biggest mistakes unfortunately.
It seems to be a cultural trait that they do NOT have any initiative or ability to think for themselves. If directions are given in precise step by step details then the tasks might be 80% completed, but really the time it takes to explain things in such detail, you could have done the work quicker yourself.
Something that you don’t see mentioned much but found to be almost universal with Indian consultants: they lie badly on their resumes. I don’t mean small exaggerations, I mean claiming flat out to have specific skills when in reality they have never even touched the equipment!
Seems the ruse is to get a high paying contract and see how long they can survive without being fired. They can earn in 1 month in Aus more that they can earn in a year in India; all they have to do is fake things for a month. Sad situation.
May 8th, 2008 at 10:20 am
That thing Euan is really sad. I hate that part myself but I always have had one point of contention and that is that the interviewer is to be blamed equally for any such debacle.
When you are hiring someone, you know your requirements, you know what you are looking for so why do you slip on your expectations and fall for a cheaper bill?
I would request you not to be discouraged by one isolated experience and label Indians as zombies. Do give it a try but this time please manage your expectations and be prepared to wait long before you find the right person for the job(might not be Indian, but Chinese, Russian or Australian for that matter).
Incompetence is not an Asian brand guys…its a human nature
May 8th, 2008 at 10:22 am
@Curious
Are YOU serious < $20/hr? Learn your craft or how to network, man
May 8th, 2008 at 10:23 am
HAHAHA, i work for a company that outsourced to India 2 years ago. I told them not to, but they didn’t listen to me, because their cousin worked out there and assured them everything would be fine. Sure enough 2 years latter, they hired me on to take over the project because it was taking them to long to finish it. They didn’t were given the offline product to mimic online. Not hard stuff. Could have been done by 2 ppl in around 3 months. They kept getting back emails saying “This cannot be done” Sure enough i did it. I even had to learn laszlo to fix shit. This they have the worst db ever, no relational data, no nothing. everytime someone signs up all the data gets put into someones folder and db table, Even data that is static and doesn’t change. There is over 1g of extra data that im currently weeding out. They stored everything as varchars, EVERYTHING. I see I realized this when i tried to oder something by date instead of ID (only those were integers), After learning laszlo, i realized how brutal their code was. They used laszlo completely wrong. I told my employer i would fix basic bugs, but im re-writting the whole thing. I’ve started and it will take me around 4 months - 6months to complete.
Some days i just dont work because fixing on bug breaks the entire site.
more info at thedangler.wordpress.com
May 8th, 2008 at 10:27 am
This is so lame.
I mean if you don’t hire right people with right skill set or training this will happen. Has happened all the time everywhere.
Ever heard of Social Security Numbers “accidently” posted online ?
Ever heard of servers wiped clean using rm -rf ?
This has nothing to do with outsourcing and/or SPECIFICALLY INDIANS.
You want cheap crap, you hiring mindlessly . The problem was not developers - the problem was they guy who hired them.
You are indian but that doesn’t give you excuse to bash India. Your entire perception is just funny rather lame.
May 8th, 2008 at 10:28 am
@Curious - I’m not in a particularly high cost of living market (ie, NY/CA), and there are 100k developer jobs here for people who have php/mysql/lamp experience. But these are jobs for experienced developers who can easily master new things, who architect things which are scalable, maintainable, secure, have robust experience, and usually ones who are deeply knowledgeable in many areas - for example, I’m equally comfortable tweaking and compiling a linux kernel and then tuning the system as I am with writing an application in PHP. Thousands of queries per second on your MySQL server? No problem, my designs accommodate that. Transparent caching, data replication. I spent 5 years running a 50M/yr security practice, so there’s a decent chance my code will be secure. Then on the UI side, custom jQuery modules, easy - and fun.
When you have 10 years under your belt doing things like that and somehow seem to produce functional stuff in 10-20% of the time, or less, than others, then you won’t have to wonder how people get $75/hour - because you’ll be getting it.
May 8th, 2008 at 10:30 am
JamesP, the wise man you speak of is not so wise. Trust me, I’m speaking from a lot of experience in this area.
The Chinese will do exactly as you say, even if there is a typo in the spec that indicates the application should format the hard drive.
The Indians will keep coming back with questions about requirements & documentation & specifications. But they’re SEI Level 5, so they’ve got that going for them….
The Russians… oh, the Russians. They’re smart, they’re educated (not the same thing), and they’re clinical (i.e., they’re not emotionally attached to their work.) If you tell the Russian to sort a list using a bubble sort, he’ll say, “That’s inferior, you should use shellsort/mergesort/quicksort/blah…” Then you say, “Please just use the damn bubble sort”. Then Yuri goes ahead and codes it as a mergesort anyway because it’s the superior solution. A bit arrogant, a bit gruff, but efficient and skilled.
May 8th, 2008 at 10:35 am
aha! Dan !
What a nice observation. Such an elegant generalization.
Its amazing how you can just simply generalize entire countries and people.
So, your lot of experience is interacting with how many people from each country ?
What a wise thing to do. You have achieved what a no sociologist could ever do. Yet.
May 8th, 2008 at 10:35 am
Here is what is happening in the USA:
We have become a drive-by management country, in the sense of “drive-by shooting”. Unethical job-hopping managers or CEOs see the opportunity to make a quick profit for themselves through outsourcing, which higher-ups universally think is a good idea because they are gullible and have fallen for economic-liberalism propaganda (like The World is Flat nonsense). These bad managers promote their scam to higher-ups or share-holders and evangelize for economic liberalism a bit, then ditch the situation just before it fails.
Before leaving, the manager or CEO pockets a bonus, or a promotion, or a golden parachute, whereupon he or she moves on to either a new job or a corner office and lets everyone else deal with the bad consequences.
People like Carly Fiorina have based their careers on this technique of ditching bad situations.
May 8th, 2008 at 10:36 am
why don’t you pick up a real programing language instead of a kids toy. there are BAD developers everywhere India, US, Europe you name it… this post sucks a##….heheheh. btw PHP developer should not be valid …. PHP enthusiast sounds about right
May 8th, 2008 at 10:37 am
Curious:
Travel the world first then tell us if the world is indeed flat or a non-sense !
You have no idea.
May 8th, 2008 at 10:40 am
Change the title of this post you dumbass
May 8th, 2008 at 10:50 am
yeah i got ripped off by indians too. Luckily they only took 2k. I gave them a simple task of creating a cms in php and what they gave me was a hackable phpbb framework with a cms that didnt work. Oh well, I rather give the task to a good CS student that is into programming any day
May 8th, 2008 at 10:50 am
Where can i start with you losers.
1. When a software projects fails its 99.99% of the times it is a failure of PROJECT MANAGEMENT. If you hired a bad team, thats YOUR FAULT. Stop looking for scapegoats in the form of a 1 billion large population. Statistically, there are are thousands of people smarter than you in India, so fuck you.
2. The really good programmers in India work with NetApp or Veritas or some cool startup or kernel level consulting company. Career PHP programmers in small consulting firms are not best of breed by a far stretch. You get what you pay for NO MATTER which continent you are on.
3. You got a job at Yahoo? Obviously you tried Google too, but got rejected. So you make yourself feel better by trashing some random easily targeted group. Nice. Your family should be proud of you.
4. There are teams executing brilliantly in India. Because the guys who run the show UNDERSTAND how to hire the right people and run a cross-continental development team.
I could go on really, but I’ll stop here. Its 12:17 am and I have to run some tests. ( Yeah - developers unit test their stuff before throwing it at QA and meet deadlines no matter what - IN BANGALORE .. You need to know where to look.)
May 8th, 2008 at 10:53 am
Well Said gimme_a_break !! Very well said.
I can bet $2000 that this dumbass got rejected from google !
May 8th, 2008 at 10:53 am
@MasterChief - So I guess the big tech companies: Yahoo, Facebook, Digg, etc… should pick up a real programming language? It’s fine if you don’t like PHP but that’s just your opinion - to each his own. Not sure why you care what others are doing, especially if, presumably, what you do is so much superior. And as you said, there are plenty of bad developers, be it PHP, C#, or whatever, just as there are good developers in each of them too.
It seems that a lot of people are misunderstanding what I think Jaisen is saying here. He’s not bashing India or Indians - as he said, he’s Indian. It just happens that in this situation it was outsourced to India, and in general in the tech industry people always talk about outsourcing to India. Too many people are focusing on India or Indians and not about the point of the post - that you shouldn’t blindly outsource because it’s cheap or what others have done.
May 8th, 2008 at 10:55 am
Kvein:
Then he should rephrase the title of the post.
Only word for the title is : Misleading.
If title is misleading how much does that speak for the guy who wrote it ?
May 8th, 2008 at 11:04 am
I’ve seen the end result of Indian outsourcing too many times to ever trust it. From help desk to programming, the results are just lousy. I knew a manager at Oracle who used his American team to do nothing but fix mistakes from his Indian team. When they told him the American team was going to get laid off, he quit rather than deal the Indians and their crappy code.
May 8th, 2008 at 11:04 am
This is the lamest shit ever. The author is a freaking loser . If you hire a software engg and send him to space, what do you expect? IF you hire a marketer *ANYWHERE* in the world to write your code, he will screw you over. What has it to do with India or Outsourcing?
If anything, this shows how idiotic you are. Nothing else. Moron.
May 8th, 2008 at 11:13 am
@gimme_a_break, @this_is_lame - if you had any reading comprehension you would be able to understand that the article IS talking about bad project management and not about where it was outsourced. Where it was outsourced just happened to be India - not the point of the article.
@gimme_a_break - “You got a job at Yahoo? Obviously you tried Google too, but got rejected” - a bit hypocritical when you are complaining about someone ripping on someone else. Also, it’s an ad hominem attack - a logical fallacy - it has nothing to do with the article.
May 8th, 2008 at 11:18 am
@this_is_lame: even if the title is misleading, that doesn’t account for what you and others are saying about the content of the article. It either means you guys read the title only and commented or were driven by emotion and not logic.
May 8th, 2008 at 11:19 am
I find it interesting that such a knowledgeable group has, in very many instances, such a profound problem with grammar, sentence construction, or simply managing to type without typos (particularly when one considers that the interface you all most commonly use is a keyboard). It is apparent that some of you aren’t worth 75¢/hr let alone $75/hr.
May 8th, 2008 at 11:20 am
you work for yahoo? Good you are my hero. now stfu and stop trashing the indians or whatever. you have let the racists out of the woods. and also for crissake stop suffixing your sentences with “I am indian”.
you had no idea what to do, when to do , how to do and you go about rabidly blaming the developers.
seriously stfu. you are doing irreparable damage to us (real) indian. asshole
— a wise traveler would never speak ill of his country
May 8th, 2008 at 11:34 am
I’ve worked overseas and I’ve seen better project management in Europe than at any job I’ve had in the USA, because there the workers are respected and quality of life matters.
What’s going wrong in India and China is for other people to debate, since I’ve not worked in either place, BUT it is the snake-oil selling managers and uber-capitalists (who hate the middle class) who insist that the world is flat.
These are the same type of people who blame the demise of the US auto industry on the US worker, rather than on management types who refuse to let US workers innovate.
May 8th, 2008 at 11:35 am
Kevin:
You talking about being logical. RIght ;
Here is what you wrote in two consecutive
1) @gimme_a_break, @this_is_lame - if you had any reading comprehension you would be able to understand that the article IS talking about bad project management and not about where it was outsourced. Where it was outsourced just happened to be India - not the point of the article.
2) @this_is_lame: even if the title is misleading, that doesn’t account for what you and others are saying about the content of the article. It either means you guys read the title only and commented or were driven by emotion and not logic.
We are saying about both content and title of article:
Title: Misleading. Should be more like “This is what happens when you blindly outsource”
Content: yeah no shit sherlock ! Hire a bad team and thats what happens.
May 8th, 2008 at 11:44 am
@This_IS_Lame - did I strike a nerve?
I’ve completed 6 projects with Russians, 5 with Indians, 5 with Chinese. Total of 12 different firms (the firm selection process is outside my control, I would prefer to find one vendor & build a relationship instead of fire & hire).
Of course what I said are generalizations. I never said anything to the contrary. When you grow up you’ll learn that life is full of generalizations — German and Japanese cars are good, Chinese labor is cheap, Americans are overweight. Generally these statements are true. Are there exceptions to each? Of course.
But at least my generalizations are based on experience, not ancecdotes or emotional rhetoric. I’ve joked with the Russians about my opinion, and they pretty much agree with it.
I don’t know if you’ve brushed up on your Shakespeare, but the saying “The lady doth protest too much, methinks” comes to mind….
P.S. Thank you for the compliments on my achievements in sociology. I consider myself a student of many disciplines.
May 8th, 2008 at 11:54 am
I really cannot understand what this author seems to be saying. The title has no co-relation to the content in any way.
In the first few lines itself the guy admits he’s got the title wrong.
He also unknowingly reveals he’s completely pissed off by everyone else.
Then he goes on to show how dumb the guys managing the show are.
Then the end result is poor coding he says.
And somehow it’s blamed on outsourcing???
May 8th, 2008 at 11:55 am
And from the negative perspective in this post it just appears the author was actually sacked from the project - which is why he appears so pissed off!
May 8th, 2008 at 12:01 pm
all pathetic talks happening out here…with ppl from US putting out their frustration…well as they say, some one has to give side to other to let him overtake…thats what has been done…and there is no second known future to it.
May 8th, 2008 at 12:04 pm
@travis, It was indeed a horrible experience. I acknowledge that I willingly signed on to be involved. However, I was a co-founder of the company which was originally contracted out to. In theory, you’re correct…I sacked myself when I left.
I am by no means bitter as some of the comments suggest. This all ended months ago and I’m just blogging about it now. I also went to decent measures to make sure that the company I’m talking about isn’t revealed in any way.
Bad experience which I learned from. How’s that make me bitter?
May 8th, 2008 at 1:01 pm
Nicely written. I am seeing a lot of companies now who are writing software in-house but outsourcing the maintainence. Getting outsourcing done correctly is a long and tedious process.
But when you are going down and grasping at straws, I really wouldn’t blame anyone. You can find crap everywhere at every level.
May 8th, 2008 at 2:03 pm
About 3 years ago, I hired two indian companies to complete firmware and software development projects for us in the US. They did a splendid job - their code had very few bugs in it and was delivered on time.
To achieve this, we had a very close relationship with their project manager, which I suspect is what most people had trouble with.
Did I mention we got this done at 1/6th the cost of the company we were working with in the US?
May 8th, 2008 at 2:31 pm
AFAIK leaving directory listing on is not a mistake committed by your coders…is it ? What the company lacked was/is a good sysadmin.
May 8th, 2008 at 2:52 pm
Those who are gleeful about outsourcing and brag about saving money usually stand to benefit financially themselves, and/or have an axe to grind against the middle-class. From their internal imbalance comes destruction for others. With power (over projects, over workers) comes responsibility, but capitalism encourages socially-irresponsible behavior. The Founding Fathers knew this, which is why they greatly limited what corporations could do, giving them a fixed lifespan and not even letting them own land, for instance. All to prevent business people from harming society. Ah, how far the USA has drifted since then…
May 8th, 2008 at 2:54 pm
The only real solution to bad software companies is free & open source software and the abolition of software patents.
May 8th, 2008 at 3:20 pm
I’m Australian and my best friend’s an Indian from Hyderabad. I really enjoy Indian Philosophy and Classical Music - tabla, sitar, sarod etc and can even speak a little Hindi but you know what? I will never outsource any more work to India, though I have tried many times over three years and each time was a disaster. This has NOT been the case for me when outsourcing to Belarus / Russia / Uzbekistan etc. Those guys are just great.
Why is it so? I think there’s a number of reasons. Remember these are generalisations just like I can make generalise about the idiosyncrocies of Australian’s also.
- My friend says Indians don’t ever like to say “I don’t know” - they would rather pretend to know then say “I don’t understand, can you please clarify?”
- In a country with such a hard caste/class heirarchy, your degree(s) and education are much more important than doinng what you really a) Are fit to be doing b) Really passionate about doing and so I think you end up with a lot of people doing software development who just aren’t meant to be doing it.
- When my friend studied his Master’s in IT here in Australia, he said the education system is very bad. In India, he said the lecturer would show and explain everything. Here, they would talk about general concepts and then you would have to go and learn how to do it on your own.
Call me a generalising idiot if you want but my experience tells me that in a country where competition is so high, they have a lot to gain from try and not much to lose if they fail, so they will nod their heads (sideways, as is the indian way) promising a thousand things but can rarely deliver.
May 8th, 2008 at 3:52 pm
Oh boy, I’m rehabilitating a sourcebase that was originally written offshore.
It’s horribly coupled; there is code duplication across dozens of objects (with minor changes to instance… making it difficult); the database schema is normalized (* — 1st normal formal… hahaha).
I’m not working on it because I’m some sap. I know real architecture; and I get up to speed on stuff fast.
Come to think of it… shitty offshore programmers equate to more money for me fixing their problems.
My only problem is the complete lack of satisfaction in converting a shitty product into something marginal (when it should almost be rewritten as something excellent, for the same effort).
So if you want to “save a dime”… go ahead, be my guest… or not. I’m available at premium rates to fix it.
May 8th, 2008 at 4:08 pm
I tried the following links on your website and am getting an ‘Invalid request error’ ..
http://episuite.jaisenmathai.com/
http://episuite.jaisenmathai.com/docs/
start fixing your problem first ..just because you work in yahoo doesn’t mean we blindly believe that you know what you are talking about.
May 8th, 2008 at 4:25 pm
I had the task of fixing some code on a PHP project initially written by outsourced Indian programmers. While most of it was just sloppy and undocumented, it worked. Some portions though were truly memorable. Like instead of using a LEFT JOIN against two database tables, a single SELECT, a for loop, and a new SELECT for each joined record. These were huge, un-indexed tables. Once fixed, the performance gains were measured in the 1000s of percentages.
You get what you pay for typically. And often, the more expensive programmer is cheaper in the end — just Google “CheaperTalentHypothesis.”
May 8th, 2008 at 4:49 pm
Curious, You may be able to fix your carpal-tunnel syndrome by taking vitamin B6.
See:
http://www.drweil.com/drw/u/id/QAA400244
I just took a high dose mutli-B vitamin (You’ll find them labeled B100 or B50, etc.) and mine went away. Good luck!
May 8th, 2008 at 4:54 pm
I am a WAN engineer and we work with India all the time, particularly Reliance. I can say without hesitation that accepting sites for management in India is huge mistake my company made, and it is costing them dearly, in their reputation and engineering resources. Reliance is hands down the most useless telecommunications company in the world and trying to get them to fix anything is akin to pulling your own teeth out. Now I like Indians, and many of them are quite brilliant but you have to wonder how they can compete in a world market, we never have such problems with the China Telcoms, which usually have problems fixed within a day. All our clients are discussing getting satellite dishes for their traffic in India the only hindrance to that is the monsoons in the south which can hamper satellite traffic.
May 8th, 2008 at 5:11 pm
@ReplyToCurious
Thanks for the tip, but I should say that that I learned while taking a Nutrition course is that Vitamin B6 in large amounts is dangerously toxic. Over 300mg per day can cause nerve damage. Looks like Weil is suggesting around that amount.
Two things that work are are safe that I know of are: (A) cease all caffeine intake, and (B) take an anti-inflammatory medication.
-Curious
May 8th, 2008 at 5:30 pm
“The only real solution to bad software companies is free & open source software and the abolition of software patents.”
Free crap is still crap.
May 8th, 2008 at 6:20 pm
Well I disagree it’s not about outsourcing to India - to say that is BS.
I don’t ever outsource to India or anywhere else because I can do it myself, and plus I don’t trust other people working on my ideas or code. But I don’t have a problem with Indians or anyone else doing it for that matter - it was really your mistake.
You didn’t tell them what you wanted, and you didn’t properly investigate and research the coders. It’s crucial that you always ask for references and get as much info on how they work and plan to approach the project before hiring them. There are a lot of people who claim to be programmers, but just go on line and steal code - that’s why you really have to do research even on something as simple as outsourcing a project like this.
May 8th, 2008 at 6:39 pm
The moral of the story is this: If you want your developers to do a good job you need to own them. Hire them, keep them in house, give them permanent jobs, and incentives for long term success, and you get to monitor them. If you outsource you get someone’s attention for the term of the contract and they will care about the product only for as long as you pay them, because they will soon be working on someone else’s product. This goes for software developers, operations staff, call center, everyone. That’s the key point most managers miss when outsourcing… there is no free lunch.
I’ve had the same experiences with Indian developers as everyone here. I’ve seen bad ones who can’t communicate and lie on their resumes, and I’ve seen very smart ones who I make sure to keep on my short list wherever I go. One thing many commenters are missing is that when a company outsources they rarely get to interview the individuals who will be working on the project, so quality control is much more difficult to achieve than if you hire individuals.
May 8th, 2008 at 6:40 pm
As a developer it’s very easy to criticize hiring managers or project managers in general and it’s truly amazing what kind of ego from development they have to put up with on a daily basis.
I have always been a developer and while I played around with being lead about 10 years ago, I promptly gave up all the meetings to get back to coding. I too used to bash management continuously for making all the wrong decisions but I think back now and realize that I was also full of a lot of hot air as many of the posts are on this site.
When hiring, the “tests” that are given to candidates to see if they can cut the mustard are usually sub standard. I can’t remember how many interviews I have been to where I get the same questions over and over: Can I make a destructor virtual? Why should I? .. If I get a coding “challenge”, it’s usually watered down and requires little thought if any. If it’s a “puzzle”, then it does little to show my skills in coding.
The first skills coders pick up is how to impress the HR people with the appropriate buzzwords to get their foot in the door.
If a coder has been on the other side of the fence and has interviewed candidates for a position, then their is practically not a job that he/she cant get as they KNOW that the company wants them just as much or more then they want the job.
Getting back to management. Most project managers I have come across are very competent but are not following tech closely any more due to other responsibilities so the tech screening is left up to the leads.
The leads usually have their heads wrapped around issues and are either not focussed on interviewing or are not accomplished interviewers so it’s truly amazing when someone of merit actually gets hired!
Even if you are lucky enough to hire someone competent, they will have a good chance to get pregnant, pressure crack, jump ship, move, burn out, etc..
Outsourcing costs money because distances make communication amongst software teams incredibly difficult. Even working in remote offices which communicated with central offices in silicon valley was almost impossible
Ohh.. and for the record, since everyone is saying they are Indian, I should point out that I am not, but I did go to bed with one once..
May 8th, 2008 at 6:52 pm
@Curious
He mentions the possible nerve damage. I don’t think he was recommending taking that high of a dose long term.
As for myself, I just took 100mg a day for a while and then went down to 50mg a day.
May 8th, 2008 at 7:36 pm
Dude, that update does nothing to undo the misunderstanding generated by your original post title! Your being Indian (or non-Indian) does not mitigate the fact that it seems highly opportunistic indeed to have a title like that. If you were indeed honest about your general rant against blind outsourcing, the title could have been more on the likes of
“This is what happes when you blindly outsource”. Period.
As an addendum, I would like to comment that there are “visionary” programmers and “idiot” programmers (and the whole spectrum in between) in ANY country with a decent population and a working education system (No, not for the educational merits but for the exposure to technical fields that it undeliberately provides). Please don’t let your bad experience provide an avenue for innately racist folks to vent their ire. If the whole scheme was so messed up, it would not exist in the first place. That is, however, a completely different issue not to be discussed here. I have a problem with the wording of your blog and even more with the motives which let you persist with such a derogatory title.
And yes, I am an Indian too. And please, whatever you do want to express, have the moral courage to own up to it. Helps. Really. It does! ;-)
Peace!
z0ltan.
May 8th, 2008 at 7:44 pm
@Timmy, I agree with most of what you said. I didn’t change the content because it is what it is. The title is accurate and does a good job of summarizing what I intended. I could have left out the word “India” or added in “Silicon Valley” and maintained accuracy. But everyone on here that’s upset overlooked the word “blindly”. I pick words very carefully and don’t hold myself responsible when others don’t do their due diligence and read what I write in context.
I did add “(keyword: blindly)” to the title to clarify. My original post does not in the least bit insinuate something against India or Indians. I can see how it was offensive when readers jump to conclusions and do not read everything in context.
I don’t write to target those readers. But I stand by my apology for any misunderstanding. I’m not trying to be a prick about it…but what I wrote is how I felt/feel and I’d rather clarify the post than change it.
May 8th, 2008 at 9:29 pm
Please put commas. Bit difficult to understand your tone.
May 8th, 2008 at 9:53 pm
@Dan It’s one person’s opinion. I’ll note what you say.. my friend has had the opportunity to outsource a lot but he’s not 20+ years in the business so he “may not be so wise”. Also, he knew damn well who he was hiring. The Russians also knew who he was and who his friends were and if the job wasn’t done right, would probably hear about it. If you don’t have any of these personal connections to where the work is being outsourced, who knows what would happen.
To those who a skeptical of American programmers making 75/hr.. well.. that’s essentially what I’m paying them to do ASP.NET / C# programming so maybe I’m an idiot. But they’re fast, experienced, I tell them to create something and they do it. I’ve worked for PHP programmers who charged 100/hr. This is not that abnormal for people at the top of their game. In fact, if you don’t ask for these kinds of prices, how do you seriously pay bills and run a business? They ask for the price, they get it..
I don’t really care who is doing the work as long as it’s being done correctly. I’m sure there are awesome Indian developers.. Chinese, Russian, Estonian.. Americans. For every disaster project there’s probably a successful one and massive savings. My point is that there’s a certain level of skill… and after that the most important thing is trust.. and trust is not so easily built across the sea. I didn’t have enough faith that I could work with the Russians so I looked closer to home.
May 9th, 2008 at 12:48 am
Most of the time projects fail because of bad management rather than because of bad coding.
Ultimately, the success of the project is the management’s responsibility. They have been entrusted with funds and time by investors and they must use these wisely to achieve the desired aims.
It is the management’s responsibility to constantly monitor the progress on the project - to ensure that corrective action is taken as early as possible. Corrective action includes changing the team, if necessary, or changing the constitution of the team.
If the management did not bother to verify the antecedents of the delivery team, if they didn’t bother to see that the delivery team made intermediate deliveries which are thoroughly checked (including code reviews) then it means that the management wasn’t controlling the project at all.
It is also clear that your management was quite clueless and decided to make widespread design changes right before deployment.
I am not surprised that the project failed.
May 9th, 2008 at 2:25 am
You can’t keep saying “I’m Indian” every time somebody accuses you of being racist. Your post has racist overtones and you should be ashamed of writing such a post.
As some reader pointed out earlier, your experience was about a bad application design. Why relate it to outsourcing? And why specifically point out India?
And what’s so great and unique about your experience? There are several such examples on “thedailywtf” every day that have nothing to do with outsourcing. Bad programmers write bad code.
And even if the point you are trying to make about outsourcing is valid, can I humbly request you to be more sensitive about how you choose to present it to the world. why don’t you realize that you are a representative of your own country and that your choice of words and style has done great disservice to people from India? Didn’t your stomach churn when you read some of these commenters spewing out venom about your country? But then, who am I trying to explain this to? A half baked confused desi who speaks in a fake accent and feels happy to be “mainstream”?
Posts like yours give a chance to these scavengers from the developed world to rant me-too me-too about their “bad experiences”. More often than not, they don’t have a problem with our ” programming skills”, you fool, the problem they have is with our “native-ness”. If it’s not programming, it’s our language or accent or table manners or culture etc. etc. etc. they want to crib about.
Where do you think developers sitting in the Indian branches of Thoughtworks, Microsoft and Google come from?
And what are your credentials, may I ask? Are you an H1B holder? If so then you are no different from the Indians you chose to malign by your post. Chances are your employer hired you for cost benefits rather than your “skills”.
If your post is about outsourcing in general, change the subject and wordings you moron. And don’t assume I didn’t do my due diligence or whatever. I know what problems exist with outsourcing but I also know how to deal with them. It’s time you did your due diligence and took things in the right perspective.
Shame on you!!
Jai Hind.
May 9th, 2008 at 3:04 am
@Jaisen
I hate to disagree with the widely unacceptable title(&Conclusion) of yours.
I’d just like to state you that if a company cant hire the right people for a job. Then its not the problem with the society as a whole, but the problem is with the recruiters as such. They r the ones kicked out first. so that they don’t hire in more such kinds.!
Your situation has a problem. Whether its US, India or UK, whether its outsourced, immigrated worker. or whatever.. if you cant find a good replacement for your profile (as in your case). Its a bad thing that the business has inflicted on itself.
I hardly doubt India or any other country has anything to do with this !.
May 9th, 2008 at 3:14 am
Frankly speaking, I fail to see what India or Indians have got to do with it !! It could have been anyone….
Instead of writing “outsource blindly to India”, you should write “outsource blindly”, if you really mean what you say in your update.
May 9th, 2008 at 4:03 am
If I may, this can be boiled down to the old adage:
Good…..Fast….Cheap
Pick any two.
May 9th, 2008 at 4:14 am
You should have realized that there is very limited PHP talent in India, and most of that top talent is cornered by the software biggies or companies with deep pockets.
In my 3 years of software development experience, I have met only one PHP programmer. They are rare here.
Also, you should realize that in a typical team in Indian software firms, there is one technical lead who is the brains. Most of the others in the team are fresh out of college or average developers.
Do you know that many Indian companies(non-software) outsource their IT to American software companies like IBM and Accenture? IBM particularly has maximum Indian telecom software projects. The World is Flat, What?
It was fun reading the comments, BTW..
Truly, a very misleading title.
May 9th, 2008 at 4:48 am
I think I have to back what someone already said. The problem began when the marketers who thought they knew the technology got involved. I must say, those types really get in the way of getting anything useful/functional created. I have some personal experience working with some absolute morons that came from the marketing side of things and tried to create websites. Its crap…and no concern for security, speed, maintainability, etc.
That being said, I’ve known several places that have outsourced to India and have had nothing but bad luck with it. One company blew a ton of money, only to have to start over from scratch with our firm. My brother-in-laws company has to go over every line of code that comes back from their India resource and either completely throw out, send it back to be re-done, or just rewrite it in-house more than 75% of the time. Again, not that Indian developers are bad, hell those Indians I’ve worked with here actually very knowledgeable and better then many of my colleagues. I think its just that with the way the Indian economy is growing over there, everyone wants in on the game and there are many companies just trying to get some of the action without having the talent on board.
Finally, weighing in on pay…I won’t even consider a job, PHP or otherwise, for less than $80/hr. (Though I’ve done my share of flat-fee projects which I now try to avoid like the plague).
May 9th, 2008 at 8:56 am
I have been in the Development business for 20+ years, and I am no longer amazed by businesses ability to run over cliffs into the unknown.
Outsourcing is so full of unknowns but promise unlimited benefits. It’s like the continuing saga of Microsoft’s vaporware. (now that term shows my age)
Microsoft promises the next release, or cheaper developers, code reuse, total integration, without any proof or evidence that these goals can be achieved, but management only responds to the enthusiasm for the technology and the unrealistic promise.
All the while, the Open Source world continues to deliver on the promise. With Linux, Apache, etc…
I once had a manager tell me we could not use open source Apache web servers, so I ask which he preferred, his answer, we want to use something we can depend on, Oracle’s web server. So I agreed his choice was better, since Oracle used Apache.
My job was recently outsourced to India, and my problem wasn’t that the company chose to replace with a cheaper developer, but the fact that he could not speak English, he lied that he was in this country when I did the transfer of knowledge, he had no clue to how to use the technology, he had a year or two at best of experience, not sure how they would know, they never asked, and the outsourcing company refused to provide a resume for the people they were sending in.
I would hope it was cheaper to outsource, my replacement had 20 years less experience, was essentially homeless, and could not speak or read the language the company’s software, documentation, and specifications were written in.
If they would have hired someone that had these qualifications, they would have cost more, since they would have been bi-lingual.
So I see the issue is not what nationality work is being outsourced to, but the denial to acknowledge the differences are more than skin deep, education, institutional knowledge, social morays, and skill sets are the major factors that will contribute to the success or failure of any project.
May 9th, 2008 at 11:58 am
Regarding the salary issue, I would be interested to learn where people are getting the high-paid PHP coding jobs.
I’ve looked on Craigslist but I find mainly cheapskate employers there.
On Dice I find only headhunters’ ads. I’ve never had a good experience with a headhunter yet.
Thanks for any info.
May 9th, 2008 at 1:52 pm
@Curious:
I’m a PHP developer and have a salaried job that works out to just under $30/hour — not bad for a salary, 401K, vacation, and in the upstate NY area. I also do freelance work at $60/hour and I could get as much freelance work as I want using any one of dozens of freelance/contract web sites available. If you take a job for $18/hour, that’s your fault — of course a client will pay that if that’s all you ask for. If they scoff at that price, don’t bother and find something else.
If you want a steady paycheck, post your resume on Monster and update it every time you complete a new project. I update my Monster resume about once per quarter, and I get at least 10 calls per week soon after the update since your resume will float to the top of search result when it is updated recently. Most of those jobs are out of the area, and I’m married now so I don’t want to move, but I could work in NYC for 100K if I didn’t mind commuting by train 3 hours a day.
There are jobs out there, you just have to stick to a fair price for yourself, and don’t say yes to everything. An old freelance rule is that if you’ve never lost a job/client because of your price, you’re not charging enough.
May 9th, 2008 at 6:47 pm
I really don’t see where all this relates to India, or even to outsourcing. A bunch of idiots sitting in the same room under the nose of their clueless contractor would produce the same level of crap…
May 10th, 2008 at 8:49 am
@Don Strawsburg:
I find it hard to believe that your replacement from India was homeless.. Even by Indian standards, it is very, very, very unlikely that ANY programmer is even close to being homeless.
Having said that, yes, I do agree that the management is not always smart about how they outsource.
There are many, many instances where outsourcing has worked wonders.. and there are many instances where it has failed catastrophically.
Outsourcing, as in everything else, can be done right or wrong.
Some tips for those who want to outsource:
1. Outsource in a phased manner and carefully monitor the progress taking corrective actions as needed.
2. Build up your offshore team like you would build any team - slowly. Also, maintain constant interaction. Visit them often and monitor their progress closely till things settle down and everything is on track. Once that happens then slowly step back and get less hands-on but still continue to monitor progress closely.
3. If you are not willing to monitor the offshore team closely, do not outsource.
4. Do not ever outsource your core business expertise.
The way one deals with an offshore team will necessarily have to be different from how one deals with a team sitting right inside the same office. There is a MUCH higher likelihood of misunderstandings, miscommunication and general management goof-ups happening when the team is widely distributed.
If the management style does not account for this, then failure is certain.
May 11th, 2008 at 4:01 am
I think if you are blind enough, anything can happen not just by outsourcing to India but any part of the world. Developing any project is not a joke, & especially web development project. There are lots of things that client should know, sometimes they even don’t know how to make a screen shot. So what gonna happen, you think..so that’s completely wrong sentence..You outsource blindly to anywhere..you will get this (~i~)
May 11th, 2008 at 10:47 am
I think the real message here isn’t about India, or marketers for that matter.
Instead, this article presents 2 examples where technical work is not recognized as being closer to a art or craft than a skill.
To illustrate by way of analogy: Anyone with basic cooking skills can prepare a meal, but only someone with talent can cook a fine meal. It’s all in the details. Anyone can put paint on paper, but only someone with a solid understanding and good taste can paint the next Picasso (or recognize it, for that matter).
The marketers, in this case, claimed they had the know-how to build a website. This is probably somewhat true in the most basic sense, but doesn’t speak to the quality or elegance of the final execution.
The same is often true with outsourced or old-school “professional” “experienced” “enterprise” developers (i.e. CS grads from pre-2001). Sure, they have the skills to build a website, but only using ASP, table-based layouts, etc. Just like in this article, the final product doesn’t meets today’s standards, at least according to those of us who see the subtley, and recognize elegant, artfully coded websites.
In other words: web dev/sys admin experience isn’t a skill you either possess or don’t. Those days are over. It’s not that black and white, anymore. Instead, it’s about being able to see the art in code (or lack thereof), and making good choices about which Coding Artists you contract with and which Coding Connoisseurs (the marketers, in this case) you hire.
May 11th, 2008 at 7:04 pm
@pkp
I said “essentially homeless”, and I stick to it, at the time my replacement was sitting in India, lying to the employer, that he was in the states. He had no home in the USA, and would be living in a rented hotel room, paid for by his outsourcing company, until he made a paycheck.
In my book, this is homeless, shipped to a foreign country, and provided for by a outsourcing company. My point is this kind of US employee replacement is short sighted and unfair to everyone involved.
Once this developer realizes that the USA isn’t quite as cheap as living in India.
I have seen this happen so many times, I developed a friendship with one poor guy, back in 98, promised the world by some contracting firm, shipped here, had to stay in a apartment with 5 other guys, was getting $20 an hour, but had to pay for his part of the room, food, couldn’t afford a car, repaying bi-weekly for training, certificates, travel to US, working on a Green card sponsored by the contracting firm. Guy was frantically e-mailing and FTPing code to and from his friends in India, because he was so inexperienced.
My point is, management, doesn’t want to use common sense, they only hear cheap. And it doesn’t matter who gets hurt, they just have some unknown face to blame when it all goes bad. Not a good way to treat people regardless of where they are from.
Don
May 11th, 2008 at 8:25 pm
To those who claim that the code from outside of the US and especially from India is horrendous while at the same time implying that anything done by Americans is of great quality - let me just say that I am now managing a project for a US company. We are working on fixing the messed up code written by their internal all-American programmers.
The company is profoundly grateful to us for saving their business because their clients were starting to walk away because of the mess their internal development team was making. We have been able to fix most of these issues from India.
That doesn’t go to prove that all American programming teams are disorganized and unproductive.. and neither does it go to prove that all Indian software development outfits do a good job.
But at the same time, I just wanted to indicate that Americans can screw up too. And also that not all Indians are screw ups like some would like to believe.
May 12th, 2008 at 4:28 am
More a question of whining so will add to it.
We integrate a module supplied by an American company developing in America. Enhancement requests for even a small but critical fault takes up to a month with all dry run data made available to them.
Releases are unreliable and need to go through two weeks of testing before release to any customer. And last time we needed a feature to log a certain statistics for engineering runs, they added it as a feature which cant ever be disabled and will just keep on logging data endlessly to a massive file, no questions asked. Took some time to figure that out because this was effectively beyond our imagination.
All this on a high speed setup just entering the market with close deadlines and against a well established player…. Great!!!
May 13th, 2008 at 1:49 am
For much the same reason, my India based startup is not going to outsource to the US. I have a lot of experience working with American companies, both in America and tele-commuting from India, and I think they don’t know anything about technology or good engineering design.
Am I just generalizing? Maybe I just had a bad experience with all the Americans I’ve dealt with? Ah, forget it. It sounds much better if I brand all Americans as dumb. I shall recommend to all involved in the emerging startup wave in India to not outsource to the US.
May 15th, 2008 at 11:12 pm
I have worked with many American / Canadian companies on their outsourced project. What i understood base on my experience is and what would cause problem when you blindly outsource to India
1) Unclear requirement: - Whoever is outsourcing to India should have clear understanding of requirements If they don’t have then later on they may blame on the company who is doing their work. Many time it happen that person giving work knows only 20% of what actually s/he wants.
2) Hiring People: You have to be very careful when you are hiring people. For that you can make your recruitment team responsible to fill the space with right person and right attitude.
3) Unrealistic deadline - which create problem in terms of productivity. See chat application can be developed in a day or it may take more than a year so when you demand you should know that How many features you need and in how much time.
Indian really work from heart and they normally leave company just because of the top management who are giving wrong commitment to their CEO and pressurized team for the unrealistic delivery.
4) Retaining Resources - India is growing like anything and in such a competitive market retaining resources is a big challenge. HOW do you do that? Well as per me you can show them some long term plan in terms of work as well as in term of finance. Still India many people like to go abroad so visit to foreign country for a month at least would work for you.
Employee (Real developers) are getting lower salary compare to the market standard. Management should make sure of whoever are working on the project they are happy with what they are getting OR that has to be competitive otherwise you may loose them.
5) Hire Manager: Always hire working manager than a talkative manager. :)
People outsource work to India just because of
1) Cost effective Resources
2) Highly talented and Multi skilled people
3) Productive
4) Reliable
5) Socialize - Keep good balance between their professional and personal life which is missing everywhere apart from India.
Finally never blindly outsource to India (OR anywhere) always go through proper channel and participate into all the phases of your outsource work and you will get success for sure.
May 16th, 2008 at 12:54 am
Topic should have been “Blindly Outsourcing to any countries/Not Hiring skilled/Proffessional Programmers” i will definetely not agree on the current topic.
Currently working on the outsourced projects in india i should say why this happens ” Unrealistic deadlines and speically the adhoc requirements that creep in during these deadlines”
Finally what it matters is if you have convidence/skilled people in your country to get all the necessary stuffs done on time why do you want outsource it to any other countries?????
June 9th, 2008 at 11:46 am
my 2 cents.
Don’t get me wrong, I work in one of the Big IT companies in India, but now I am sick and tired of their hiring policies. Read on
Software companies in India are recruiting “Lamers” who don’t have any experience…, wait a minute, they don’t even know a thing about computer science. Don’t believe me? Let me give you an example, a person hired straight from college as a software developer by a Big Indian IT Company (A Really Big One.. They have got the BT project… you know..!), he has been chosen as a developer on java, he came crying to me asking he can’t figure out how to create an ODBC connection (in windows). Can you believe this? I explained him the process with screen-shots from modemhelp.net( cause I was running Linux on my system so..). More surprises, he couln’t differentiate Linux from windows (it was obvious, he had never ever seen a non-windows system in his life so far), so when he saw my terminal (I had Open-suse with default KDE running on my system with a terminal/console open), he asked me to show him how to create the ODBC connection from the control panel… what a Lamer! People selected for .Net have no idea about what an web-server is and what is IIS.
People are hired from non-IT background and sometimes non-computer background (students from civil, mechanical, or electronics engineering) on the basis of merit tests where they ask questions like in the banking jobs(??). This is done intentionally so that they can force these lamers to work for peanuts for almost 12 hours a day regularly. Most of the time, lamers are overworked and underpaid and they don’t have the skill to finish the job in an efficient manner. They are always frightened of losing their jobs and so they manage to finish their responsibility in every irresponsible way possible. You know what I mean, sorry, English is my second language!
Companies prefer these novice people over trained professionals because they can pay a lot less.
As far as IT and software is concerned, this is no easy job and definitely not for an average joe, we all know that. One has to be pretty strong technically to understand the specifications, leave out writing codes. We are at the edge of unparalalled complex business demand and increased complexity of software design getting more and more complex every day with standards like web2 and distributed architecture. Now how far do you think hires like these can go even with specialised training. They put an intense pressure on these employees forcing them to learn the technologies and they simply don’t have foundations to build on. It’s like pushing a business graduate to cram up Quantum Physics!
If you happen to visit any of the Indian IT firms, you will come to know about an amazingly bad work culture where people always find their excuses for an unfinished job. Some companies are run like pumping stations where you come, you sit, you roam around, you have your lunch, you chat with the lady sitting in the next cubicle or on the Internet, ok it’s 4:30 in the evening, let’s go home half an hour early. The word “proactive” is not a part of their dictionary.
Consequently, these Indian IT companies are losing quality of the service in the domestic market as well as in the international market. God only knows how they meet their deadlines even after hundreads of reviews of code and scary programming practices. Companies like Tata Consultancy Services, Tech Mahindra are losing projects in india as well (they have got a very bad remarks from clients like SBI, Central Bank of India and many others and they are steadily losing projects even in Indian markets for hiring these lamers).
Some US companies have taken back their projects to US after finding out the truth about Indian IT Companies A lot of them have found out they can manage to achieve a productivity 2 to 6 times greater than what it was when outsourced to India!
Bottom line——-
DO NOT OUTSOURCE YOUR PROJECTS TO INDIA, ITS GOING TO COST YOU MORE IN EVERY POSSIBLE WAY AND YOU WILL LOSE GOOD WILL OF YOUR CUSTOMERS. DO NOT FEED THESE LAMERS WHEN YOU HAVE AN EXCELLENT IT STAFF IN YOUR COUNTRY UNEMPLOYED!
June 13th, 2008 at 5:33 am
Never outsource to INDIA. My business colleagues had very bad experiences. The Indian programmers dont follow IT standards, write crappy code with full of IF ELSE statements etc.
No wonder MICROSOFT corp which started hiring lots of Indian programmers for the past few years has their product quality going down. If APPLE corp starts to hire Indian programmers, then it will also lose its design competence.
THE REALITY-
OUTSOURCING TO EASTERN EUROPE, EAST ASIA IS MUCH MUCH BETTER THEN TO INDIA.
NEVER EVER OUTSOURCE TO INDIA.
June 14th, 2008 at 3:54 am
To jkojs:
You perhaps never thought to consider the fact that perhaps your business colleagues contributed to the mess? Or did you take it for granted that since your business colleagues are American that they couldn’t possibly have messed up?
And even if your business colleagues did absolutely nothing to mess things up, you cannot quote their experience as THE definitive experience and extrapolate widely based on that.
If your implication that ALL Indians are screwups is right, then how do you explain this: a lot of big leading American firms have Indians working for them in key leadership roles. Many of these Indians were educated in India and only traveled overseas on work. Many of they people have played critical roles in developing the flagship products of these companies.
September 11th, 2008 at 8:48 pm
Is this the place where angry and inept people leave their comments? I thought I was in the proper queue, but I lost my spot during the stampede after some guy complained about his company outsourcing important work to India.
November 18th, 2008 at 4:21 am
If Indians screw up code and Americans are used to fix it up, that means outsourcing to dumbos help bring economic balance and generate more employment :D :D :D
November 21st, 2008 at 5:03 pm
I work for a major corp that has outsourced alot of jobs to Wipro. They brag about never having layoffs of FTEs, but in truth they use these wipro contractors because they are cheap, there’s hardly any benefit costs and they can get rid of them at a moments notice. There are ALOT of contracters, but they count for nothing when the company gives the spin talk about “the employees”. The truth is, it’s resulted in the company becoming very lazy about the people side of management. That seems to be human nature because you start to value less what is cheap, especially when there is an endless supply. I am a longtime employee and the culture has changed completely. I know when I leave I would not be replaced by an american because jobs are not back-filled. Not that contractors are treated well. They are kept seperate from FTEs and most don’t even get cubicles, just these little slots to sit in - which I think some factory farmed animals have more room. The whole scene is depressing. But never underestimate a corporation’s ability to spin (aka lie). We recently had “celebrate diversity” day!! It would be diverse if they ever hire an American again.
December 12th, 2008 at 11:27 am
I moved to INDIA last year July and am back to The US to search for Companies who want to outsource work to INDIA. As i have worked for ten years in the US and for Companies like AT & T and Dell Financial Services, i understand the quality of work tha needs to be delivered. The Team that i have set up specializes in LAMP technology Linux, Apache, mysql and PHP. I am positive that i will find enough wokr that i can develope in INDIA and deliver inthe US.
January 18th, 2009 at 11:13 am
Well Sura i agree with you that if you are blind enough, anything can happen not just by outsourcing to India but any part of the world. So its not about one specific country.
May 17th, 2009 at 4:40 pm
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA! and I have to disagree with that part about Indians only being good for boring tedious grunt work but don’t ask them to think.
That’s what you’re going to get ANYWHERE if you hire low paid unqualified people so you can sell their labor cheap, in India or anywhere else.
But I LOVE this story: It shows how you have 3 qualified people who basically completed the project on time give or take a week and were ready to do a test launch then you give it to these high priced “user interface” guys and the first thing they start doing is talking about the colors. Don’t get me wrong, UI is important, but it has very little to do with colors. Any “UI guy” who talks about colors first thing isn’t a UI guy. Then the original team leaves and the decision makers hire some new guys (who are marketing guys masquerading as web developers) and they Snafu the whole thing by exposing /etc/group and they use huge XML file because they can’t figure out how to use a database! OMG that is just TOO FUNNY!
The root problem of course and as usual is ignorant twits posing as managers and hiring their ignorant marketing-guy-posing as-web-developer friends. The tools are such today that any fool can put crap up on the web and even make it superficially look like a functional website to those who can’t tell the difference.