How many years left ?

Smoggy

It's a question I have been thinking about for a while, the company I work for has been taken over by a much larger multinational and is now looking into outsourcing.

Now at some point my job will head east, but my question is when do people think that software development as a whole will head east ? is it inevitable ? Does anyone see this as a temporary trend ? or will the trend be that development will always stay local until a time when the company grows to a size that it can take advantage of using cheap resources ?

My opinion is that development will always head to cheaper sources when large companies move in, but there will always be development for the few choreographing the cheaper resources and in the smaller companies who don't have the size to take advantage.

John_Mc

Smoggy wrote: »

It's a question I have been thinking about for a while, the company I work for has been taken over by a much larger multinational and is now looking into outsourcing.

Now at some point my job will head east, but my question is when do people think that software development as a whole will head east ? is it inevitable ? Does anyone see this as a temporary trend ? or will the trend be that development will always stay local until a time when the company grows to a size that it can take advantage of using cheap resources ?

My opinion is that development will always head to cheaper sources when large companies move in, but there will always be development for the few choreographing the cheaper resources and in the smaller companies who don't have the size to take advantage.

We've outsourced the design & development of a project to the east and it's been a bit of a disaster. They've no design skills, no intuition and will sit on a problem for days until you specifically ask if they have any problems.

If we did the technical design ourselves and gave it to them, then they'd be alright I think. With most companies moving towards Agile development, I'm thinking that's going to be less and less of an option.

Everyone I've talked to who's been involved with projects outsourcing to the east has had the same experience so I'm not worried about my development job yet.

padraig_f

Outsourcing development isn't as easy as outsourcing manufacturing, see The Pitfalls of Outsourcing Programmers

komodosp

John_Mc wrote: »

We've outsourced the design & development of a project to the east and it's been a bit of a disaster. They've no design skills, no intuition and will sit on a problem for days until you specifically ask if they have any problems.

If we did the technical design ourselves and gave it to them, then they'd be alright I think. With most companies moving towards Agile development, I'm thinking that's going to be less and less of an option.

Everyone I've talked to who's been involved with projects outsourcing to the east has had the same experience so I'm not worried about my development job yet.

I know the feeling. Also what I found was the source (from India) to be constantly rotating their employees. Sure they devised systems of documentation (CMMI) that in theory should mean that anyone should be able to work on any task, but that is no substitute for the intuition that comes from experience. You'd find basic mistakes that you might have made on your first day, but never make again. It also made it difficult for us to develop a rapport with our Indian team members.

However, I would be very surprised if they weren't working on this - sooner or later they would realise it is costing them business and they would be idiots not to tackle it.

Captain Commie

problem is there are always idiots that are willing to offer work to the cheapest bidder, which is how these companies get the work. Have dealt with a couple such companies over the years when needed some work done (mostly html/php/mysql) and can honestly say that its cost me more in the long run, they cant keep to deadlines (that they set themselves) and then suddenly you can not get in touch with them.

Although in saying that, I have also outsourced some work out west to a company in canada recently and have been getting much of the same. I think its time for me to suck it up and learn to do the work myself properly and give myself more time to do it.

Smoggy

Here's my job, business analysts hit the company and document all processes that need to be changed. The new processes are passed off to developers like myself who have product and code knowledge who draw up specs from varying levels of detailed to abstract. These specs are then passed off to developers who code the solutions.

Now I agree that the last step of this process can be passed out to off shore as it should be a case of following the instructions, many of you have said this has been done with varying sucess. But surely if I can hand docs off to european developers inhouse and get it developed it must be possible to do the same with off shore ?

Now take my role, All I have is product and code knowledge, surely an offshore team working with the code and product long enough will learn the product and understand the coding methodologies and structure etc ?

This leaves the BA's, but these need to be local to analyse the companies processes, but whats to stop a team of x offshores coming over from a month or two to do the analysis ?

Hellm0

The great threat of development disappearing off to foreign shores is mostly a myth. Larger companies I have worked with do have offshore components but there is little to no threat to existing onshore operations.

BostonB

Smoggy wrote: »

.... surely an offshore team working with the code and product long enough will learn the product and understand the coding methodologies and structure etc...

A good one will, a bad one one. There is a big range of ability out there. It really depends on the people involved.

Developers are often bad communicators, add distance, cultural differences, and perhaps language into the mix and it can make it more difficult. its not any more complicated than that. There's also some people who have no problem communicating over a distance or email, some people can't communicate when they are in the same room.

I think there will always be local developers. What size that market will be, who knows. Outsourcing has been around for many years. However the local IT market is still pretty healthy.

srsly78

Low skill IT jobs are vulnerable to outsourcing. Don't do low skills jobs and you don't have to worry.

MysticalRain

srsly78 wrote: »

Low skill IT jobs are vulnerable to outsourcing. Don't do low skills jobs and you don't have to worry.

Removing lower level jobs does make it more difficult for new graduates to enter the market, and work their way up the ladder. I think that's probably one of the most negative effects of outsourcing.

Yahew

What kind of programming is low skilled then?

Anyway, I think that trend is reversing. The problem with outsourcing is that you really dont know what you can get over there. I have had to take over two projects where the code was either useless - crashy and buggy and needed a total rewrite - or just wasn't available. An inordinate number of Indian App outsourcing companies keep the code. If things go wrong they charge for updates. Most companies who were cheap now pay more money for peace of mind, or for getting their IP.

I am sure that there are good Indian companies but you would need someone skilled on this side to test their code, to find the good ones from the bad. If you have him, you may not need to outsource.

The only way outsourcing works is with a technical team on the two continents.

COYW

Yahew wrote: »

What kind of programming is low skilled then

I think he is talking about low-skilled jobs in IT, as opposed to a specific category of programming jobs.

Hellm0

Yahew wrote: »

What kind of programming is low skilled then?

...Ruby on Rails

komodosp

There is such thing as low(er) skilled programming all the same... Take repetitive COBOL work for example. The company I worked for pretty much had the designers writing the code and the coders copying it and (hopefully) testing/removing the bugs. There were lots of similar programs each that had to be written independently because no one bothered to set up a generic one that varied using parameters.

Not to mention testing of same... Basically working your way through long-winded test-scripts. Creating these test-scripts was a matter of taking something from a similar project and making sure it applied to the new one. It was time consuming and monotonous, and would be suitable to "low-skilled" programmers.

0vertone

Smoggy wrote: »

It's a question I have been thinking about for a while, the company I work for has been taken over by a much larger multinational and is now looking into outsourcing.

Now at some point my job will head east, but my question is when do people think that software development as a whole will head east ? is it inevitable ? Does anyone see this as a temporary trend ? or will the trend be that development will always stay local until a time when the company grows to a size that it can take advantage of using cheap resources ?

My opinion is that development will always head to cheaper sources when large companies move in, but there will always be development for the few choreographing the cheaper resources and in the smaller companies who don't have the size to take advantage.

I'm only an intern in a small web development company but after asking all the senior guys, they all have the same story.

East just aren't interested in quality or design. They're extremely hierarchial and they just want the money. They'll trap people by putting the seniors on the clients first project. After that they get the inexperienced (like myself) and it costs the client more in the long run.

Even the tech centers are moving back west and I feel history will be doomed to repeat itself until they start to show some actual care in their work.

Hellm0 wrote: »

...Ruby on Rails

Tell me about it. all the senior guys where I work are adamant its a legitmate language and the best thing ever. Response I got was "I'm just an intern, what do i know"

P.s I Also got slated for being a Java programmer

srsly78

loljava

Evil Phil

0vertone wrote: »

I Also got slated for being a Java programmer

Actually slated or just a friendly slagging? I'm hoping the latter, code and programming languages are just a tool, it's how you use it that counts.

irishguy

I work for a large US MNC ($30-40M dev spend per year) who took this view about 10-12 years ago and outsourced all the dev to India. Now there systems are in a total mess, products are outdated and they are loosing lots of business as a result. So now they are moving a large chunk of there dev to Ireland (and some to the US). Outsourcing will only save money in the short term it will cost large amounts of money in the medium to long term. Wait 10-15 years and IT wages in India will be approaching what they are here and there will be no incentive to move to India and the like.

I would only get worried if our corporate tax rate went up a lot and R&D credits come down.

Procasinator

irishguy wrote: »

Outsourcing will only save money in the short term it will cost large amounts of money in the medium to long term.

So is the US company outsourcing some it's development work to Ireland a bad idea?

irishguy

Procasinator wrote: »

So is the US company outsourcing some it's development work to Ireland a bad idea?

Its not outsourcing we work directly for the company, the company in India didnt.

Procasinator

irishguy wrote: »

Its not outsourcing we work directly for the company, the company in India didnt.

My mistake.