Why Moving to India Won't Really Help IT

I, Cringely ^ | August 7, 2003 | Robert X. Cringely

[Snuffington]

I missed this one when it was published a couple of weeks ago, but in my opinion, it's right on the money.

I've been harping for months that the main problem in American IT is that the companies doing it - especially those betting the farm on offshoring - don't seem to understand how the work gets done. I keep walking into fat, bloated, disfunctional processes. When I have the opportunity, I have had great success improving productivity by forming smaller, rather than larger teams. Generally a lot smaller than similar projects I see run the more typical way. The key is establishing excellent communication across the key roles within a project team. That's extremely hard to do with a team spread across the world. Even harder when you have to span cultures as well as time zones. So offshore teams are generally forced to stick with fat, documentation heavy, long timeline projects, from the communication overhead alone.

The "Agile" development framework, still fairly early and broad, seems to be moving in the right direction. Not coincidentally, it also contradicts the reasons one would choose to offshore IT.

Incidentally...

Ironically, there lies here an enormous opportunity for someone. An organization of talented people that can get its collective head around this problem and begin to see its industry, its work, and its goals in a different way will have a terrific advantage. IBM and companies like it are vulnerable.

I totally agree with this part too. If anyone can point me to a company that is focusing on this, rather than obsessively worrying about quarter to quarter expenses and stock performance while giving a back seat to long-term strategy, let me know.

[Snuffington]

Last time I saw you in an offshore thread, you seemed to need a little pick-me-up. Her ya' go.

[Snuffington]

Thought you might be interested.

[Snuffington]

Ping.

[jjm2111]

Good post.

[Lazamataz]

Why Moving to India Won't Really Help IT

YEAH! Moving IT to India won't really help!

(You were, after all, the most recent person who posted to me on this topic. Therefore, I have enthusiastically adopted your views.)

[wbill]

Bump for later read.

[Steely Tom]

Offshoring is the result of the commoditization of computing power and programming expertise. The computing hardware we have today is tens of thousands of times more powerful than that which was available 30 years ago; the availability and cost of that hardware is more favorable by a similar factor. Most (but by no means all) of that power is going into increased "user friendlyness" (FreeRepublic wouldn't be possible without the Graphical User Interface, which makes profligate use of CPU power). The vast increase in availability of computing power has made it possible for people to make a living by working on computers without really programming the hardware. The vast majority of "IT" professionals are not computer programmers at all; they are sort of "meta programmers;" programmers of programs, as it were. A much simpler job.

At the same time, the need for large numbers of these people has vastly increased. The computer and communications power that gave these people their job opportunities is at the same time threatening them, because their skills are so fungible.

There are at least two solutions: one is for them to offer their skills to the marketplace at a wage level that is more commensurate with its true economic worth, which is not what it used to be. Let's face it, very few people who go around calling themselves "computer scientists" are any such thing.

The other possibility is for some of those individuals, the reall smart ones, to actually figure out how to do something with all that computer power they are in touch with every day, something more interesting than setting up a LINUX e-mail system or whatever.

There has never been a better time, in all of human history, to be a creative person. If DaVinci or Gallileo were alive today, they'd look at the tools we have at our fingertips and say "Why aren't you all rich?"

(steely)

[daviddennis]

I'm an extreme example of this - our company runs a web-based CRM system that I developed for them using one (1) employee, namely me. When things are needed, I build them. When something needs to be fixed, I fix it. And I did the whole thing from scratch. It took about a year to fully get into operation (but benefits were started around three months into that).

I ran into an example of outsourcing to India last night, when I tried to get support for my Netgear DSL router. It was a dismal experience. I waited 52 minutes for an operator, got someone who didn't know what he was doing, he eventually transferred me to someone else, who almost knew what he was doing, and now I'm waiting for a callback from another team.

Doesn't sound either cheap or efficient to me, and everyone had nearly incomprehensible accents.

I'm buying a different brand in the future, and I will try to give priority to companies that haven't offshored their support -- because it would mean significantly better service and more comprehensible employees.

I'd rather spend a few extra bucks and actually be able to talk to someone I can understand.

But maybe that's just me?

D

[warchild9]

Here in the Triangle, SAS, under the private ownership of Goodnight, is a tech juggernaut. The OWNER (not the mercenary suit at the top) cares about the company and his empoyees. It shows in every company policy I ever hear about, and the competition for a position there is awesome.
The problem is that scum rises to the top in corporate life. I've been there, and I know. Republicans worship executives; executives consider everyone else either competition or units to be used for their own profit.

[Hop A Long Cassidy]

One important point the Agile boys point out is that its a BIG mistake to separate the DESIGN and the PROGRAMMING functions. This appears to be happening alot in the offshoring to India model. Not only that, when design is moved along with programming, they become separated from the customer.

The basic reason that this is happening is that many of the companies involved have revenue drops of up to 50 % in certain divisions. They are in a survival mode. I think some of the companies are covering up their sheer desperation.

Hoppy

[Snuffington]

There has never been a better time, in all of human history, to be a creative person. If DaVinci or Gallileo were alive today, they'd look at the tools we have at our fingertips and say "Why aren't you all rich?"

Not sure DaVinci and Gallileo were so concerned about monetary wealth, but your point about the possibilities is very true. Instead of coming out with version 27.4 of a word processor that has worked fine since version 3, why not try to do something new? I think it's just a matter of time before people stop seeing IT work as arcane science, and start taking advantage of the amazing tools already in their hands that they already understand.

[Snuffington]

But maybe that's just me?

Nope. :-)

[brbethke]

fyi bump

[Libertarianize the GOP]

ping

[dfwgator]

The real value will come from individuals who can make heads or tails out of the myriad of options that are available, in order to provide the best solutions for clients. This requires a very broad knowledge of technology, and it takes a lot of time researching to get past the marketing propaganda, and the bigotry. Most individuals in IT are specialists; what we need are more good generalists that can truly and un-biasedly design the right solutions instead of merely employing "resume-driven" design.

[FreedomAvatar]

Outsourcing is the latest corporate crack.

[Snuffington]

One important point the Agile boys point out is that its a BIG mistake to separate the DESIGN and the PROGRAMMING functions.

Exactly. I experienced this myself when my company forced us to "get our offshore numbers up" to "increase our margins." We obediently tried to comply, sending the heavy coding to teams offshore after completing the design onshore. What a disaster. We tried to improve it constantly, but the end result was having to choose between some combination of: slower delivery, lower quality, or missing our offshore labor targets.

The communication hit you take offshoring is not nearly as small as the current bean-counters are estimating. I think their mistake is that they compare the numbers of disfunctional onshore development to using the same model offshore. They could save money and improve their business a lot better by cleaning up their onshore process.

[dfwgator]

Outsourcing or offshoring? I have worked for outsourcing companies my whole career. Outsourcing makes sense in that running an IT department entails a lot of risk, especially if it is not part of your core business. You constantly worry about turnover because as soon as an individual gains marketable skills, they start looking for greener pastures. There is also tremendous cost in resources of keeping up with technology. By outsourcing, you leverage that risk onto a company who makes managing this risk their business. Now offshoring, on the other hand, is a whole other kettle of fish.

[Steely Tom]

The real value will come from individuals who can make heads or tails out of the myriad of options that are available, in order to provide the best solutions for clients.

I respectfully disagree. People who "advise their clients of their options" are more akin to attorneys than to engineers to my way of thinking. They do not represent the same order of creativity, or productivity. The act of advising someone of their options is not creativity. It is, at best, the result of a detailed understanding of somebody else's system; regardless of whether we are talking about a legal system or an operating system.

Not the same thing at all, IMHO.

(steely)