bruce.armstrong wrote: Somebody just said it better than I did, and with more chops to say it:
Open Letter to Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg & Facebook Mobile
In the world of IT, outsourcing is
either the dirtiest word you can
utter or a brilliant one; it's all about
who says it to whom and where it is
said.
No matter who uses it, it is a word
most often said in private. When corporate
managers use the word, it is always
mentioned in a most confidential fashion
as a potential cost-cutting tactic, a magic bullet
to increase margins.
When technical people use the word in public
it is always with a hushed tone, as if speaking it
aloud would give management the idea. In private
it is discussed as if it were the greatest evil
ever to befall the world, a faceless monster from
far away.
The reality falls somewhere in the middle.
Outsourcing can be an extremely complex and
complicated undertaking. Each piece of the
process needs to be considered with great care
and executed with precision. There is little margin
for error halfway around the world. Once a
company decides to outsource its code, programmers
know their days are numbered. It's just
a question of when the ax will fall. It is also just a
matter of time before a major project goes completely
out of control and craters, leaving hapless
managers thrashing about with a project team in
India.
So today we have corporate managers blindly
sending work halfway around the world - and an
endless drain of jobs overseas. Who came up with
this latest corporate fad? How we got here is an
interesting paradox.
Let's take a walk down memory lane. During
the dotcom days, American code writers as a
group became major prima donnas. It all started
with the attitude, "I'm a programmer and I can
wear anything I want to work," which was taken
to the extreme by some people.
Management was wearing suits, and
in contrast the programmers looked
like they came from some alien planet.
The more outrageous the better.
From there, showing up at work
at the same time as the rest of the
staff became optional - the later the
better - with the excuse that they
were up all night writing code. It's true that a lot
of code writers were up late at night writing code,
but often not for their day job. An awful lot of
people were busy writing code at night for dotcom
business plans with IPO dollars in their
dreams, while the more pragmatic moonlighted
for other companies desperate for anyone who
could write code.
Then the "I have to bring my dog to work" concept
started. All of a sudden a menagerie of pets
started showing up at work. Further, some programmers
demanded and received trampolines.
And not being happy even with all this, everyone
was always ready to jump ship for more money
and toys.
The final straw was the attitude, "I must work
from home; you people are distracting me and I
do much better work at home."
Well, to quote John Lennon, "The dream is over,
what can I say. I was the Walrus and now I am
John."
It is unfair to blame India for the loss of programming
jobs. It was the prima donnas that got
management going in this direction. Indians as a
group are very polite and humble people who
focus on doing a good job and are a pleasure to
deal with. I haven't heard of any Indian companies
demanding that corporate clients subsidize
the cost of trampolines for their workers.
Next month I will discuss how to partially remedy
this situation.
About Jacques Martin Jack Martin, editor-in-chief of WebSphere Journal, is cofounder and CEO of Simplex Knowledge Company (publisher of Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance Journal http://www.s-ox.com), an Internet software boutique specializing in WebSphere development. Simplex developed the first remote video transmission system designed specifically for childcare centers, which received worldwide media attention, and the world's first diagnostic quality ultrasound broadcast system. Jack is co-author of Understanding WebSphere, from Prentice Hall.
Reader Feedback: Page 1 of 1
#7
Drache commented on 20 Jan 2004
Even though this might seem to be out of line, my experience with overseas third world programming skills, software design and quality has been third rate or ranging to nil at best.
The management types sell these overseas fodder as equivalent or even better than home grown talent. Well, they've sold out their responsibility to the share holders by created sub-par products that can not be maintain, managed or even improved upon. Pretty much a throw away piece of software, that you push down your customers throat. For example, look at the buggy worthless products from and equivalent problems with outsourced support. Now, the question comes to improvement and experience as our overseas coders will eventually gain. In time (a long time in this case) our lacking in vision management types will discover the damage they've wrought and offshore coding will be frowned upon.
In the last two years I know of three Bay area VC projects by different startups that discovered to their misfortune the quality of outsourced projects. No, they're not around anymore.
Reality:
1. Nothing worth anything is cheaply produced.
2. Software developers/designers are not churned out of diploma mills, trade schools or your village hut. This ability among people who are proficient is more akin to an artistic talent, no matter what the management view of reality might be.
In the short term we're seeing the mass exodus of projects to far away lands, but the following will be the nagging issue:
1. Quality. It's not there and never has been. Some 15 years of experience has shown me you can train people, but either they have the skill or don't. You can't take people and force feed them skill and talent. The result is a monkey banging away at the keyboard, that produces a rather poor and confused imitation of a survivable product.
2. Cost. As these overseas IT people gain income they'll want more. Oh.. Greed isn't a factor, then why are we risking the quality of the product for such a small amount of money?
3. Control. Base people desire to be in control and ego is the overwhelming motivation, there's no way that our management neanderthals could never swallow this in the long run. Imagine when things go wrong and they're unable to micro-manage a project to even lesser quality or survivability. They'll want to have our management over there to micromanage the product development and draw more costs until the whole stinking mess dawns upon them.
4. Location. Where do you thing the talented people from these countries might actually be? Are they back home? Nope, anyone with any skill came here and became citizens. Shees, we've emptied out the talent pool, and left nothing over there but the dregs. Oh! I'm forgetting you can create talent off an assembly line of diploma mills and trade schools. How shameful of me to forget that obvious and undeniable fact.
Face the music people, we do live in interesting times. As a contractor I'm not worried at this point given the fact people with skill an knowledge will eventually earn an income. I have not been without contracts the entire time of the IT downturn, but have noticed the number of short-cuts, shoddy work and poor business sense of various management types.
#6
Pranab commented on 16 Dec 2003
Don't bet on the Indian software professionals. Salaries are rising there at 15-20 % annual rate. It many not be too long before they also become prima donnas and start demanding trampolines at work.
#5
Mark commented on 15 Dec 2003
I don't know where the author was working for the past 10 years, but it's nothing like the client sites at which I served. Trampolines? Pets? Did the author get a gig at the IT Department of Cirque de Solei? Build apps for the government of France? My latest client wouldn't permit blue jeans on their corporate campus except on the occasional casual Friday. I know of but one developer who thought he could flex his schedule to come in at noon. Management wasn't amused, and he was dismissed. Blaming the current state of outsourcing on such nonsense is commiting the ultimate Freudian mistake by assuming that the rest of us are as messed up as the author and his environs. Obviously, management in the author's part of the world was no longer in charge, if employees were able to extort perks such as pets at work. You don't have to offshore all the way to India to put a stop to that foolishness. Kansas City or St. Louis would be far enough. That the author would take the time to pen a hypothesis that IT is being outsourced and offshored due to such shenanigans tells me clearly that he has no idea what's driving current trends in IT.
#4
Jay commented on 5 Dec 2003
This article understandably raises my hackles a little bit but I won't bother rehashing the obvious (the above comments should be sufficient).
I would like to say, however, that despite all of the talk of "Oh, outsourcing is risky and complex, etc.", from what I've seen this has zero relevance.
Basically, management takes a "Yea, yea, risky, whatever... we'll make it work" kind of attitude. Even if it ends up costing them MORE in the long run, the *perception* is that it's cheaper and so the cost/savings numbers will very rarely be even looked at.
#3
commented on 1 Dec 2003
Maybe some of that about the boom is true of developers. Who cares.
I assume we are talking about real developement of a product, not client service. Client service can work this way without a hitch, no doubt.
What management needs to keep in mind is that outsourcing development IS very complex, especially when it is half a world away. There are two scenarios:
If you completely outsource, and fire your development staff, then you have just increased your respobsibilities orders of magnitude. No longer do you have people that also have a stake in your success, you have folks that will execute according to the requirements that YOU have created and signed off on... to the letter and no further. Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn't. It depends on your talents as a manager, and that IS different. Inhouse professional developers will generally figure out what you mean and determine what you really meant to say, because it is in their own interests to.
If, on the other hand, you go with a hybrid approach (development team here and larger cheaper team there) it is even more complicated. Now you've got to coordinate two sets of developers, keep them on the same page, manage two disjoint sets of scheduless, etc. Plus, now developers have to collaborate with folks they don't know, with different customs (and these can be large obstacles), in a different timezone. The bottom line is, if you (as management) choose to go this route, you MUST understand that you are greatly incresing YOUR responsibilities and the savings you gain in developer costs may just be balanced by large quantities of YOUR own time. You'll be working the hours your developers used to.
It takes an extraordinary manager to pull this off successfully.
#2
p lall commented on 1 Dec 2003
Your article makes it sound like developers are responsible for the current trend of outsourcing jobs to countries like India. In my opinion, nothing could be farther from the truth. The cause of this trend can be summed up in one two words - corporate greed. Developers are and have always been the backbone of this industry. They often work twice as hard as their counterparts in management. For every trivial point you make about such things as "dress codes", I could counter by telling you of numerous instances where Managment received huge bonuses because of the work done by their development teams. I also now of numerous instances where developers were blamed for mistakes made at the managerial level. In short, credit rolls uphill, and blame rolls downhill. As a CEO, it is obvious that you are biased on this issue. Try coming out of your ivory tower for a while and look at the faces of those who work for you. They are far from the irresponsible people you make them out to be. They care about the quality of their work, and the welfare of their company - wereas people like you only seem to care about how to secure their next bonus, and a golden parachute. But after years of layoffs, etc, we have become a bit cynical about the company's loyalty to us. Outsourcing jobs in just the latest in a series of things managment has done to make us feel this way. Not only are they giving us the shaft, but they are doing the same to our Indian counterparts.
Drache wrote: Even though this might seem to be out of line, my experience with overseas third world programming skills, software design and quality has been third rate or ranging to nil at best.
The management types sell these overseas fodder as equivalent or even better than home grown talent. Well, they've sold out their responsibility to the share holders by created sub-par products that can not be maintain, managed or even improved upon. Pretty much a throw away piece of software, that you push down your customers throat. For example, look at the buggy worthless products from and equivalent problems with outsourced support. Now, the question comes to improvement and experience as our overseas coders will eventually gain. In time (a long time in this case) our lacking in vision management types will discover the damage they've wrought and offshore coding will be frowned upon.
In the last t...
Pranab wrote: Don't bet on the Indian software professionals. Salaries are rising there at 15-20 % annual rate. It many not be too long before they also become prima donnas and start demanding trampolines at work.
Mark wrote: I don't know where the author was working for the past 10 years, but it's nothing like the client sites at which I served. Trampolines? Pets? Did the author get a gig at the IT Department of Cirque de Solei? Build apps for the government of France? My latest client wouldn't permit blue jeans on their corporate campus except on the occasional casual Friday. I know of but one developer who thought he could flex his schedule to come in at noon. Management wasn't amused, and he was dismissed. Blaming the current state of outsourcing on such nonsense is commiting the ultimate Freudian mistake by assuming that the rest of us are as messed up as the author and his environs. Obviously, management in the author's part of the world was no longer in charge, if employees were able to extort perks such as pets at work. You don't have to offshore all the way to India to put a stop to that foolishness....
Jay wrote: This article understandably raises my hackles a little bit but I won't bother rehashing the obvious (the above comments should be sufficient).
I would like to say, however, that despite all of the talk of "Oh, outsourcing is risky and complex, etc.", from what I've seen this has zero relevance.
Basically, management takes a "Yea, yea, risky, whatever... we'll make it work" kind of attitude. Even if it ends up costing them MORE in the long run, the *perception* is that it's cheaper and so the cost/savings numbers will very rarely be even looked at.
wrote: Maybe some of that about the boom is true of developers. Who cares.
I assume we are talking about real developement of a product, not client service. Client service can work this way without a hitch, no doubt.
What management needs to keep in mind is that outsourcing development IS very complex, especially when it is half a world away. There are two scenarios:
If you completely outsource, and fire your development staff, then you have just increased your respobsibilities orders of magnitude. No longer do you have people that also have a stake in your success, you have folks that will execute according to the requirements that YOU have created and signed off on... to the letter and no further. Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn't. It depends on your talents as a manager, and that IS different. Inhouse professional developers will generally figure out what you mean and...
p lall wrote: Your article makes it sound like developers are responsible for the current trend of outsourcing jobs to countries like India. In my opinion, nothing could be farther from the truth. The cause of this trend can be summed up in one two words - corporate greed. Developers are and have always been the backbone of this industry. They often work twice as hard as their counterparts in management. For every trivial point you make about such things as "dress codes", I could counter by telling you of numerous instances where Managment received huge bonuses because of the work done by their development teams. I also now of numerous instances where developers were blamed for mistakes made at the managerial level. In short, credit rolls uphill, and blame rolls downhill. As a CEO, it is obvious that you are biased on this issue. Try coming out of your ivory tower for a while and look at the faces of...
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