[ale] Indian outsourcing

[Stuffed Crust]

On Thu, Jan 29, 2004 at 01:54:15PM -0800, Adam Levenstein wrote:
> I think it's already starting to slow down, if not turn around
> completely. Dell's had to pull back. IBM is still offshoring, but
> they've scaled it down.

Dell turned back for their highest-end corporate stuff only.  I believe 
everything else is still in India, and if I recall, the numbers are 
going up.

IBM in particular is an interestinb east.  You know that oft-publicised 
"We're creating 15,000 jobs in the next couple of years" quote?  only 
about 5000 of them are in the US.  

> Eh. I think Enrons will be with us as long as we have capitalism. These
> days, accounting requires more "creative thinking" than
> number-crunching. (Sometimes I half-joke that nobody's made a dime in
> 30 years, they just tweak the numbers to pretend that they have.)

If you'd ever taken a class in accounting, you'd realize just how true 
your words really are.

> IP licensing? Yuk! You ought to be more ashamed of that than the
> outsourcing thing. :)

Actually, I am... *grins* But that IP comes in the form of software, and
source code at that.  Plunk down the cash, you get a steaming mound of
source code and documentation to tell you how to integrate into your
product, and that's the end of it.  One of our selling points is that
"It'll cost you a lot more to develop it on your own.."

So it's still essentially contract work, only the work is predefined and
already completed.  :)  

....none of that software patent bullshit.  *retch*

> It's a quality thing. Language barriers + time zone issues (ever have a
> 3 a.m. staff meeting?) + cultural differences + increased QA problems =
> lower quality. Which will hurt in the long term. But the thing with IT
> is that "long term" can be on the order of several weeks; what took
> years to observe in the "old" economy can be seen to happen almost in
> minutes in the IT economy.

I've been on both ends of the outsourcing/offshoring fad.  It truly 
sucks for everyone involved, even under ideal circumstances.

> Offshoring will last a couple years, then fizzle. The US still
> manufactures cars, IT work will still be done here.

As long as we can manage to hang in there in the mean time.  It's been 
getting harder; among our potential clients the trend is still 
worsening.

 - Pizza
-- 
Solomon Peachy                                   pizza at f*cktheusers.org
                                                           ICQ #1318444
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur                 Melbourne, FL
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