[oneoftheothers]

Pure trash. I have known a company to put out 3M in product development in India and get no more than they would have done with local software engineers.

If you really want to know what the problem is, it is poor company management. Managers who are not qualified in their position to make the decisions necessary to get the job done. Not knowing who to hire or fire, not knowing what is going on under their watch, not knowing what is ultimatly going to make the company fail and how to fix it. You can see it very clearly if you look at a sucessful company vs. a poorly managed one. If the leadership is unqualified and uninformed, then everything underneath will likely also fail.

Regarding outsourcing, do what is right for your company -- don't follow a fad.

[The Duke]

There are some factors that are not being considered in this article. For example, protection of intellectual property. In much of the developing world this is a tremendous risk.

Another factor not considered is that often the cost of doing the work is dwarfed by the actual or anticipated value of the product, and that in such cases shipping the goose that lays the golden eggs offshore just to get a cheaper barnyard simply is not an option. (e.g. if Google moved their search engine development offshore tomorrow then I would expect to get access to their technology in short order.)

Also not addressed is the fact that lower cost of offshore labor allows companies to explore new directions and product offerings that they could not even consider previously - thereby creating *MORE* work.