August 21, 2009 at 1:36 am
At the same time, I'm helping someone keep a job that they are quite possibly growing in to. I'm helping a company that might otherwise have to lay someone off to afford a contractor. And so on.
and the other scenario is, that you are helping a outsourcing company stay in business, by answering the questions that their staff cannot answer, even thought the outsource has promised that their staff can do the job. so the business suffers as a whole by paying for inexperienced staff.
and to your other point, I have been a contractor for over 15 years, working all over the uk and abroad and I have never seen fulltime staff laid off to allow a contractor to be recruited. it isnt cost effective to lose a fulltime employee, purely based on the facts that a contractor is purely a short term resource, and then you would have to go through the expense of recruiting and training a new fulltime employee. it is cheaper to train the employee than employ a contractor.
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August 21, 2009 at 1:40 am
At the same time, I'm helping someone keep a job that they are quite possibly growing in to. I'm helping a company that might otherwise have to lay someone off to afford a contractor. And so on.
and the other scenario is, that you are helping a outsourcing company stay in business, by answering the questions that their staff cannot answer, even thought the outsource has promised that their staff can do the job. so the business suffers as a whole by paying for inexperienced staff.
and to your other point, I have been a contractor for over 15 years, working all over the uk and abroad and I have never seen fulltime staff laid off to allow a contractor to be recruited. it isnt cost effective to lose a fulltime employee, purely based on the facts that a contractor is purely a short term resource, and then you would have to go through the expense of recruiting and training a new fulltime employee. it is cheaper to train the employee than employ a contractor.
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August 21, 2009 at 7:02 am
Silverfox (8/21/2009)
At the same time, I'm helping someone keep a job that they are quite possibly growing in to. I'm helping a company that might otherwise have to lay someone off to afford a contractor. And so on.
and the other scenario is, that you are helping a outsourcing company stay in business, by answering the questions that their staff cannot answer, even thought the outsource has promised that their staff can do the job. so the business suffers as a whole by paying for inexperienced staff.
and to your other point, I have been a contractor for over 15 years, working all over the uk and abroad and I have never seen fulltime staff laid off to allow a contractor to be recruited. it isnt cost effective to lose a fulltime employee, purely based on the facts that a contractor is purely a short term resource, and then you would have to go through the expense of recruiting and training a new fulltime employee. it is cheaper to train the employee than employ a contractor.
As mentioned, it cuts both ways, and I have to take responsibility for all possible effects.
- Gus "GSquared", RSVP, OODA, MAP, NMVP, FAQ, SAT, SQL, DNA, RNA, UOI, IOU, AM, PM, AD, BC, BCE, USA, UN, CF, ROFL, LOL, ETC
Property of The Thread
"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everyone agrees it's old enough to know better." - Anon
August 21, 2009 at 9:20 am
In line with what I've been reading from many of the posters in this thread, my experience with outsourcing has been largely negative. In my case, the main objective behind outsourcing was not to save money, but rather to get a project across the finish line when the main developer resigned midway through.
The idea was that to replace the resource in-house would take weeks, but an offshore team of 4-5 folks could step in quickly and keep the project on track. So the .Net development would be performed in India while the back-end (SQLServer) and DAL would be handled in-house.
The problem was that this project had a fairly large scope (it was transferring the business' main app from an Access front-end to .Net) and the outsourcing company spent about 6 hours analyzing the work to date before submitting their proposal.
I'm sure many of you can guess the outcome: as deadlines were continually missed, the company cried scope creep at every turn. The quality of code was disappointing, the interface (which they claimed was one of their specialties) was full of holes (e.g., they couldn't come up with a consistent Save/Cancel scheme); and they just couldn't seem to fully grasp how the DAL worked.
Now, since they had inherited a project that was half-complete, I will readily admit that this was an awkward project for anyone to take on. But, the end result was 6 figure fees and a late and buggy launch.
Right before launch we had finally hired a new in-house developer, and spent the next few months refactoring the outsourced code to get the app to where it needed to be (though we still find blocks of code that are baffling in their design and need complete refactoring).
I'd be hard-pressed to come up with a compelling argument for outsourcing projects like this in the future.
August 24, 2009 at 9:01 am
Ivanna Noh (8/20/2009)
@SteveMaybe I should send him a large quantity of posts from this forum? There are plenty of Americans answering questions and doing work for people overseas here
How ironic would it be if people from the (overseas) outsourcing firm were posting questions here and receiving assistance from those who were displaced from their jobs by the move to outsourcing in the first place?
just sayin'
😉
I thought people on forums help others (Indians or otherwise) get out of a sticky situation. Never realized they were doing the entire project (for Indians)! Comparing intelligence of a newbie, based on the quality of question posted, to the experts here, maybe with 10+ yrs of experience, would be quite ironic.
If this forum answering approach is hurting so many, one of the solutions could be to review all questions originating from an IP address located in India. And if the "quality" of post is not found to be up to the standards then never let that question show up on forums. The only worry-point would be the inferior quality posts originating from machines on a VPN tunnel where the IP address would appear to be from a country of the experts' origin. {Please don't ban me for this suggestion 😛 }.
Another amusing thing I realized, how we have replaced the word offshore with overseas (sounds more chic) to mean India {heck, even I didn't realize for a while that no-one specifically said India :angry:}
August 24, 2009 at 9:16 am
I'm hoping that suggestion was a joke.
There are plenty of Americans getting jobs and posting on this site because they don't understand what they're doing.
My comment was that an Indian CEO said that Americans can't do IT. It's true and not true, just as it's true that some Indians (or any race/ethnicity/country) do fantastic jobs, and some suck. That doesn't always match the position they're in.
My experience with workers in the UK, India, and China has been mixed. Some do a good job, some don't. The same as my experience with fellow Americans.
August 25, 2009 at 12:55 am
Steve Jones - Editor (8/24/2009)
I'm hoping that suggestion was a joke.There are plenty of Americans getting jobs and posting on this site because they don't understand what they're doing.
I hope ur joking about that, if they dont know what they are doing, they shouldnt have got the job in the first place
Steve Jones - Editor (8/24/2009)
My experience with workers in the UK, India, and China has been mixed. Some do a good job, some don't. The same as my experience with fellow Americans.
Your quite fortunate, it has been mostly bad for me and I have been using databases and working all over since I was just a kid. although I know some good nigerian DBA's.
I have worked with some americans, they seem to think they are better than anyone else, maybe I have just met the wrong ones, or maybe I just bring out the worst in people 😛
I liked your comments Steve, shows honesty, dont back down and be a sheep. everyone has an opinion.
and to be totally contentious, I meant India in all of my comments and if anyone wants to take exception to that, You can get a plane ticket, and when you get off the plane you can explain to me how good offshore/overseas staff are. and if you can prove me wrong I will refund your ticket and buy you a drink 😀
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August 25, 2009 at 9:14 am
Silverfox (8/25/2009)
Steve Jones - Editor (8/24/2009)
I'm hoping that suggestion was a joke.There are plenty of Americans getting jobs and posting on this site because they don't understand what they're doing.
I hope ur joking about that, if they dont know what they are doing, they shouldnt have got the job in the first place
The context was n00bs and forums at many times are a great place to learn (I most of the times just look at discussions and learn a thing or two). Can't say about Mr. Buttons, born with 10+ years of experience in the requisite field!
Silverfox (8/25/2009)
I have worked with some americans, they seem to think they are better than anyone else, maybe I have just met the wrong ones, ...
Silverfox (8/25/2009)
I liked your comments Steve, shows honesty, dont back down and be a sheep...
Silverfox (8/25/2009)
and to be totally contentious, I meant India in all of my comments and if anyone wants to take exception to that, You can get a plane ticket, and when you get off the plane you can explain to me how good offshore/overseas staff are...
Silverfox (8/25/2009)
or maybe I just bring out the worst in people 😛
Some smooth talker you are :rolleyes:
August 26, 2009 at 9:43 am
Take toasters, for example. You just can't buy a good toaster any more (where 'good' is defined as one that evenly browns bread and lasts more than a couple of years). The companies that produced good toasters were driven from the marketplace because all consumers cared about was price.
My fear is that IT services will suffer the same fate, with good people being driven from the marketplace because all managers care about is price.
Ultimately I think the problem is that managers aren't being held responsible for bad outsourcing decisions the way (say) a DBA would be held responsible for not backing up databases.
Robb
August 26, 2009 at 1:37 pm
Very true re: toasters - and just about all other consumer products
The problem is also that many companies (i.e. the people in charge of running them) are only interested in short term profit, and maximising the immediate returns to the shareholder - rather than investing in development and building better, more durable products. If that means using cheaper components, materials and moving manufacturing 'offshore' so be it. If one part breaks the entire item is rendered useless and gets thrown away - and the customer just buys another one. Not really progress is it?
:w00t:
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