Why I Outsource Offshore

Friday, July 18, 2003 | Me

[FoxPro]

I'll wager I can do what 3 people from your Russian team can do in the same amount of time,

Hey RockyMtnMan we have already, well, we are actually almost done with it. Do you want me to send you the specs, and do it again? How good is your Java? I have an active NDA on the whole thing, which could cause a problem.

How about the next big project we have, you could try that one out. It entails cutting out and resizing 250,000 digital images. I will send them to you and lets see if you can beat the 100 graphic designers who I am assembling in India. We think it will take them 2 months to plow through them. Wana race?

[RobFromGa]

bump to read later. interesting question raised.

I personally sell European machinery (as well as American machinery) in the USA for (gasp) money.

[RockyMtnMan]

How many people assembled your deliverable and how long did it take? If the metrics are right I might take you up on a redo or I could tell you how long it would have taken me based on my past experiences (good info for you). Although I was looking for a simple sub-task in a larger current project plan that could be measured.

I do have a job of my own so I have to limit my time to the realm of the reasonable. Perhaps your next Java project we can compete. I am a Java expert in many areas, XML, J2EE, etc. NDA's are not a problem, I just have to sign them.

As for your low skilled monkey job, I'll leave that to your Indian branch. I have no problem with unskilled labor going to foreign countries only high paying professional jobs (cutting and pasting is not graphics design).

You don't by chance work with porn sites do you?

[FoxPro]

You don't by chance work with porn sites do you?

Nnnnnooooo....... But if you can get me a job in a porn movie, I will do that for free; I would definitely not outsource that! I have always wanted to perform in a porn movie, and I think I would do very well. In fact every time I have performed using these skills, the results have been quite good. In fact this is one area that I would probably beat the Russians in every time.

Get me into a porn movie and I will let you do all the Java you want.

[RockyMtnMan]

Get me into a porn movie and I will let you do all the Java you want.

LOL! You sound like someone I know that's moving to LA to make it in a band. He knows a few people I'll ask him to set you up. You have to pay me for the Java work though (no porn work though, against my beliefs) ;-)

[mdmathis6]

"No and no. No US Java programmer is going to work for $14 per hour. And even if they did, they would probally not have a very good attitude about it."


After-all as an RN, 16 years in the career dealing with poop, spit and blood, I make around 23/hr not including shift differential.(I started at 8.25/hr). Coders with advanced degrees aren't going to accept 14/hr when they know that a career field such as nursing that is undervalued in society(not in a money sense) is paying starting nurses around 16 to 18/hr. (many RN's have just AAS degrees too, not BSN's)

There have been attempts to bring in nurses from other countries, to in part relieve the nursing shortage for years, but the attrition and burn-out rates are so high,(with the need also for nurses in other countries) the importees hardly make a dent. Also the importees, often have not tested well on the required tests and their language skills are limited. Filopino's have adapted fairly well in the past, though the latest crop haven't been as good.

Nursing is also a field in which nurses tend to "eat their young". The work-place models tend to foster a "pecking order" scenario, coupled with a dominantly female heir-archy which is stuck some-where between the enjoyment of the perks of Chivalry with the so called "empowerment" of modern feminism. Males can survive as nurses better now than before, though I am often bemused at the confusion in the women as to how to treat the males. There is simmering resentment because the male is doing 'woman's work, but they can't admit to it because feminism says there should be no gender based discrimination. The work has changed, it calls for much more analytical thinking and planning(which men do a good job at) for what to do for your patients and less of the mopping of the brow and the holding of the hand(though that is important too).

I don't know about the social world of coding, but it some-times seems more attractive, even at 14/hr then some of the social crap I have to put up with, and that's not from the patients! Just observe what happens on a nursing unit when a nurse announces all the crimes of her current consort and that she plans to leave him. The males have to step very carefully around that afflicted one,transference issues are very common, pro and con. One male may be seen as the white knight and the other the very likeness of the Satanic husband himself. Men get criticized for not "thinking emotionally", but that actually is a very good stregnth as allows him to be "above the fray" in an emergency in a way that woman have trouble understanding.

I would like them try to out-source nursing...what is happening more and more instead, is that nurses are being "credentialed" to do more of what physicians used to do, there-fore reducing the need for higher priced physicians.

[lelio]

This brings up some related questions: if the offshore team fails to perform or includes some horrendous bug that shows up only after delivery, do you, as the broker, assume all liability?

You could have written into your contract that your liability limit is the cost of your fee.
However this brings up another point: what happens if those programmers you've hired turn around and use the same code on another project? Now a second company has the first one's IP and might use that to gain access to their system.
Granted that can happen with any programmers you hire.

[BlazingArizona]

Actually, in 20 years, I have never worked on a failed computer project, so I am not sure what I would do. It seems like a very remote possibility. Failure is never an option.

Oh, you're infallible then. But my question stands: do the clients believe that? And if you need to insure against E & O, what fraction of your client rate does that work out to?

[FoxPro]

Oh, you're infallible then. But my question stands: do the clients believe that? And if you need to insure against E & O, what fraction of your client rate does that work out to?

No, it really never gets to that if you set your milestones properly. Most development fails because of management arrogance. Project failure is always based on political arrogance, which was always based on outdated American management models. We don’t work that way. We don’t do anything we don’t completely understand. That is not an issue here. We don’t do politics.

[austinTparty]

You obviously don't know Jefferson too well, then.

[riri]

them to you and lets see if you can beat the 100 graphic designers who I am assembling in India. We think it will take them 2 months to plow through them

Can you explain this process further? I am a graphic designer and you have peaked my curiosity.

[FoxPro]

Send an email to jroehl2 @ yahoo.com. (minus spaces). What I have to tell you will blow you away. You wont forget the phone call we will eventually have.

[BackSlidenDemocrat]

Good luck with your new endeavor foxpro! I was fortunate enough to be laid off in the first wave of the IT downsizing/off-shoring phenomenon. Seven months later I took a job for almost 30% less than what I was originally making. It was still decent money, and I feel fortunate to be employed now for the last two years in the IT industry. What would one expect when the value of highly leveraged tech stocks plummeted almost 90% in the Nasdaq. The company’s stock that I work for now was trading over a hundred dollars a share then, and now it bounces between twelve and sixteen dollars a share.

However, I know I am one of hundreds of thousands US wide that are now questioning everything that I have done for the last 15 years due to this offshore phenomenon. It started with the manufacturing industry and has moved into the IT industry. The real question is what will be the next industry to deal with this vortex that is sucking jobs and money out of the US and into somewhere else in the world. Looking at the big picture of this phenomenon shows me an America that is not as rich and wealthy in the middle-class structure in the future. That means that the overall tax revenue base is reduced long term, and with Government spending increasing each year at three to four times the rate of inflation, I see a breaking point that will cause most middle-class Americans to shake in their shoes.

I’m not a doom-and-gloomer, but I know something has to give down the road though, and if most of the unemployed middle-class Americans have to accept 30% to 60 % pay cuts, we have only seen the beginning of the losses to come. The first wave of Baby boomers start retiring in seven years and the Government deficits are now at early 80’s levels. At that time, there was a lot of opportunity springing up from centralized computing systems moving to distributing computing systems. Unfortunately, I don’t see anything like that at this point. I wish we all could become PM’s and have our own little group of mad Russian programmers, but then again, I think you are very fortunate Foxpro. Just don’t be surprised when you bid a big job in the future and are on the line for more code than you can deliver yourself in a lifetime and the Russians are no where to be found. Trust me, they will follow the money, and if someone comes along and gives them a dollar more, you my friend will be scurrying to find new programmers. Don’t fret though there’s a world out there full of them now.

What I see is a world around me where my fellow brothers are now suffering because of this offshore phenomenon. No, I wouldn’t want you to think it is anyone in particulars fault, but just remember this age old truth that has been passed on for thousands of years: Do unto your neighbor that which you wish him to do unto you.

Good luck Foxpro, and let your conscious be your guide.

[austinTparty]

When you have a global economy, you have to have global agencies to govern it. An economy is what a government is based on.

Nope. And nope. Taking the second part first: A government exists to secure our rights. Period. As for the first, all that is necessary for worldwide trade is enforceable contract law and private property protection. You actually need more government interference to REGULATE trade; with free trade (i.e. no tariffs, no quotas) you don't. Regulate trade, regulate everything else... sure.

[BraveMan]

Made right here in America, with highly skilled, highly paid Union labor. Sold all over the world. Battled by tough competitors in the U.S. and abroad; China, India, Germany, Italy, Japan, Australia & Great Britain, to name a few.

Employee owned, in our 135th year. Don't condesend to tell me it can't be done . . .

[Cronos]

Aye, that's the things. Good ole American ingenuity will get us through. getting complacent about being an 'expert' in obsolete technologies and expecting a job for life or being an 'expert' in HTML (I have heard of quite a few folks who term themselves as such, with the same level of knowledge and then gripe about their jobs being lost) is silly and asking for a Japan like recession. We can beat this and not become a commie state with government funded controls under the 'rats.

[William Terrell]

Nope. And nope.

Nope and nope. That is, (first) when you have a global economy, you don't have global agencies to govern it; and, (second) an economy is not what a government is based on?

Taking the second part first: A government exists to secure our rights. Period.

What in the world does the purpose of a government have to do with what enables it?

As for the first, all that is necessary for worldwide trade is enforceable contract law and private property protection. You actually need more government interference to REGULATE trade; with free trade (i.e. no tariffs, no quotas) you don't. Regulate trade, regulate everything else... sure.

Oh? Who enforces that "enforcable contract law and proterty protection"? The regulatory agency of a particular country? Which country?

And here I thought the WTO stood for "World Trade Organization".

[austinTparty]

Essential to capitalism and trade are effective judicial systems in EACH country which are recognized by the others. This does not equal "global agencies". Who enforces? We do not belong to a World Court. Groups such as the WTO are far different from a government with an enforcement branch. Trade agreements are voluntary--the threat of retaliatory trade sanctions is sufficient for agreement.

With free trade even this would not be an issue.

[JoeSchem]

If you need a tech writer who can write in good, everyday english for the non-technical end user, let me know!

[PuNcH]

"I had [once] persuaded myself that a nation distant as we are from the contentions of Europe, avoiding all offences to other powers and not over-hasty in resenting offence from them, doing justice to all, faithfully fulfilling the duties of neutrality, performing all offices of amity and administering to their interests by the benefits of our commerce--that such a nation, I say, might expect to live in peace and consider itself merely as a member of the great family of mankind; that in such case it might devote itself to whatever it could best produce, secure of a peaceable exchange of surplus for what could be more advantageously furnished by others, as takes place between one country and another of France. But experience has shown that continued peace depends not merely on our own justice and prudence but on that of others also; that when forced into war, the interception of exchanges which must be made across a wide ocean becomes a powerful weapon in the hands of an enemy domineering over that element, and to the distresses of war adds the want of all those necessaries for which we have permitted ourselves to be dependent on others, even arms and clothing. This fact, therefore, solves the question by reducing it to its ultimate form, whether profit or preservation is the first interest of a State? We are consequently become manufacturers to a degree incredible to those who do not see it and who only consider the short period of time during which we [had] been driven to them by the suicidal policy of England." --Thomas Jefferson

Jefferson was a strict constructionist towards the constitution btw. That might put a little more context on his quotes.