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US outsourcing

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Topic: US outsourcing
Posted By: the boss
Subject: US outsourcing
Date Posted: 29 October 2004 at 10:49pm
what do u think of US outsourcing to India??

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Replies:
Posted By: dpyers
Date Posted: 30 October 2004 at 1:16am

Been working with offshore development for about 5 years now. Earlier this year did a gig with a large insurance company to integrate an offshore outfit into their internal project staffing process.

The biggest problem corporates find with offshore development is the need for frozen specifications. If you can state exact requirements that are not likely to change, you have a shot. For better or worse, that's unlikely to happen, so you get a lot of "You gave me what I asked for, but not what I wanted."

Offshore development tends to be geared towards waterfall development cycles and is really difficult for iterative development which most corporates are either doing or trying to do. Almost all Internet initiatives are iterative in the corporate world. You can forget about offshore if your department is into Xtreme programing or Agile development.

Bottom line is it's a diminishing threat to developer jobs as companies become familiar with the strengths and deficiencies of the business model. Companies are also getting negative feedback from customers when helpdesks are off-shored. Some are experimenting with offshoring QA which has some potential. Fortune 500's put 20-40% of a projects' cost into QA.



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Posted By: xeerex
Date Posted: 30 October 2004 at 11:18am
Great post dypers!

<soapbox on>

Although I am very very conservative, I don't have a problem with outsourcing of jobs. Market economics will determine the longevity of the "outsourcing craze" that everyone seems so focused on right now. It may be cheaper short-term for businesses, but long term remains to be seen.

From my personal standpoint on "Help Desks", the only disadvantage is the language barrier. Other than that, the help is no better or worse than US-staffed help desks. Let's be realists. They all read from the same "book" or screen on troubleshooting. Most help desks are not manned by truly qualified individuals with real-world experience in the problems. I had a [ http://www.rexpage.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=206 - problem with an HP computer ] about a month ago. I called HP support on a Saturday, which was routed to India. The guy was absolutely polite and took care of the problem without hesitation. I even gave him thanks before the conversation ended to let him know his job was appreciated even from a conservative Southerner from Texas.

If you look at the [ http://www.factcheck.org/article.aspx@docID=108.html - real ecomonic numbers ] for the US and shy away from the "doom and gloomers", you will see that outsourcing is having no ill effect. As a matter of fact, if you are a true study of market dynamics, some of the money that is saved with outsourcing will go back into our economy. Also, the outsourcing countries will have more income to spend and will spend a portion of that on US products. Our own economic numbers are continuing to get stronger and stronger even with all the geo-policitcal issues. [ http://www.bea.doc.gov/bea/newsrel/gdpnewsrelease.htm - Our GDP ] is nearly twice that of any other nation, [ http://www.factcheck.org/UploadedFiles/US%20Unemployment%201948%202003.xls - our unemployment ](.xls link) is returning to 90's levels, and if you look at the [ http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm - Household Survey ], we are definitely on the upswing, albeit we all wish it were faster.

Originally posted by HouseHold Survey Sept 04 HouseHold Survey Sept 04 wrote:


   Nonfarm payroll employment continued to trend upward in September, increasing by 96,000, and the unemployment rate was unchanged at 5.4 percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today.  Over the prior 3 months, payroll employment rose by 103,000 on average.  In September, modest job gains occurred in a few service-providing industries


<soapbox off>


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