As someone who works in Financial Services and has dealt with this issue repeatedly over my now thirty year long career I think I'm qualified to answer your question: Because it's not cheaper and the quality of work (software, labor, time to remedy issues, etc..) suffers horribly.
American high-tech workers are far more diverse in their skill-sets (generally speaking) vs. their India and other Asian counterparts. In the environments I've worked in, American information and high-tech workers are in-tune with business requirements and workflows whereas India and other Asian counterparts are not.
I can go on, but I point to these two specific things because they matter the most. Knowing how a business actually works vs. focusing on technical requirements (which is what I've seen the large India based outsourcing firms do) makes a dramatic difference in software usability and reliability from an end-user perspective. They have tremendous impacts to things like uptime, availability and reliability.
American information technology and high tech workers far more often than not maintain more diverse skill-sets across platforms and tools to craft solutions that work out of the box and are easy to mature vs. the "specialized" nature of India and Asia information technology workers who more often than not require far larger teams to accomplish tasks.
Those far larger teams may be cheaper per hour per individual however when taken as a whole, they are more expensive and they take more time to accomplish tasks.
The global financial services firm I work for outsourced three years ago. The promises of saving money lured the bean counters and business folks to shove 2/3rds of my IT friends out the door within 60 days of inking the outsourcing deal. After year one they wanted out of the contracts they signed with IBM, Infosys and WiPro because cost skyrocketed.
Our three year contracts expired in January of this year. Our CIO and CTO announced we are re-insourcing almost 1,000 highly paid jobs and cutting ties with Infosys and WiPro while leaving our very large mainframe complex managed by IBM because frankly, they have us by the balls.
Then the China Virus hit. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find and onboard people right now? Not because they're not out there, because finding and onboarding quality people right now is damn' tough. Onboarding in a remote-work scenario is not something my employer was fully setup to do.
And yet, our uptime, availability and reliability dramatically improved vs. Infosys and WiPro almost immediately after not renewing those contracts. Yes, it takes a little longer to implement new systems however they're done right without performance or downtime related issues (bugs, configuration issues) and our KPI's show it.
IMO one of the best things that's happening to this country is not allowing cheap foreign labor (which is NOT cheaper when properly accounted for!) to displace American workers in any industry. American workers are the best. Period.
Summary:
Spec: Put circle A in square box B
Overseas programmer: OK (proceeds to cut circle down into square)
US programmer: Does/will not work. Suggest we make the receptical circular or come up with the proper solution.
The limitations you describe in dealing with Indians and other Asians would seem to be applicable regardless of whether the Indian/Asian in question is working in Asia or in the U.S. So what advantage does a U.S. employer have in using these foreign workers regardless of where they are located?
Re ibm mainframe management.
Nothing has changed in 40 years.
I remember when small environments had the box written with one length contract and the crts with a different length contract so the shop would be locked in forever because it could not afford to carry either contract and buy from a different vendor.
Thanks for posting, FRiend!
“our uptime, availability and reliability dramatically improved vs. Infosys and WiPro almost immediately after not renewing those contracts. Yes, it takes a little longer to implement new systems however they’re done right without performance or downtime related issues (bugs, configuration issues) and our KPI’s show it.
“IMO one of the best things that’s happening to this country is not allowing cheap foreign labor (which is NOT cheaper when properly accounted for!) to displace American workers in any industry. American workers are the best. Period.”
Bears repeating.