'cos they dont speak good enough English, unlike Indians who for many English is common place in their every day lives.

it doesn't matter if your offshoring development, testing and data services - not all offshoring is callcentre.

Anonymous Superhero

"unlike Indians who for many English is common place in their every day lives."

Bones to Captain Kirk: "It's English Jim, but not as we know it...".

After many months in Bangalore last year reviewing countless Specification Docs, Design Docs, Code Reviews etc, I can honestly say that it definitely isn't English - some bastard child, perhaps.

The number of times that you need to re-explain the same damned thing until they get the concept right, in design, and then repeating yourself to make sure that their code follows the design instead of being a dumb hack-job.

Worse than all that is the fact that everyone there is a beuracratic robot that refuse to show any initiative - except that which there are explicitly told to do - hence you get zero value-added benefits from them; and it is exasperating when they don't perform what anyone else would consider bloody obvious!

Besides, only a fool would bet against China. Short of the US declaring war (Hot; it's already fairly cold on all fronts), they will continue to go forward on all fronts with their consistent double-digit growth figures.

Not being fluent in English, is actually far worse if you are developing code, testing, or providing data services. Mainly because, the spec/design/scripts/data is generally in English. It also means you can end up with nonsensical comments trying to describe how complex code actually works.

From my experience, i have found some of our offshored code a nightmare to maintain. Generally because i have to disregard the comments* and trawl through it line by line to find out how it works, and, in some cases, it's doing something completely different to what the design actually says its supposed to be doing.

*the comments generally do say exactly what the code is doing, but, in most cases, are much harder to decipher than reading the actual code.

Seconded - but I can't swallow your comments on India.

I suggest you try BT's "help lines" or perhaps Virgin Trains, HP anyone ?

Overseas helplines - particularly Indian ones - are worse than useless.

It's like banging your head against a particularly sharp bit of wall, whilst emptying your pockets into the drain.

When our foreign friends do understand, then they are unable to help because they are crippled by processes that don't work, (or perhaps they just aren't paid enough to give a shit).

I chose my ISP by the process of ringing each ISP's helplines - I kept going until I found someone English who actually gave a flying f**k.

Offshoring may be a reality, but we don't have to support it by using companies who torture us with offshore "helplines".

</rant>

That India was out-sourcing to China and the USA...

...in a huge amount of O2, process it and blows it out as CO2. Is that what you meant Dave?

For specialising in stating the bleeding obvious, and then charging middle management a bloody fortune for such foresight. Can't deny they're successful at it though....

would at least consider the chance of a huge resource war in Asia with the associated business fatalities. I hope I am wrong of course.

Offshoring has nothing to do with putting all your eggs in one basket, it's about exploiting cheap slave labour in third world countries where people can be employed for two bits of rat poo a day. Like AC "China Sucks", I chose an ISP (Internode) whose call centre was located in my own country (Australia), whose operators can speak clear, unaccented English and who are being paid what they're worth. Internode are not the cheapest, but the service is well worth the extra, and I'm willing to part with my dollars to support fellow Australians instead of greedy multinationals with no scruples or social responsibility, who exploit the third world and deprive Australians of jobs.

2 things: My employer has about 4,000 people in Mumbai - have to say they are so risk averse and set in their ways. Everything has to be written down step for step. Also they do not want to do "time intesive tasks" (which to be honest is the whole point of off shoring) They see these as being beneth them.

China, jury is still out. We had to return 3 new sets of christmas lights to the shop because they stunk of kerosene. Turns out that the factory in china decided to reduce the paint drying time from 10 days to 3 so as to get more out the door. so they were packaged before they were dry. The chain where I got them were sending back several HUNDRED pallets of lights ( I would say about 300 packs per pallet) Now this will be expensive...... And such a waste of resources.

All I can say is be wary of China - you heard it here first.

wen i is callen verging boardbanned an that cos me inner net int worken an shit i wants to be speaken 2 sumun proper bri'ish like, oo can speak da proper bri'ish langage yeh, like i does. isn't it?

Because customers like Steve Roper (OK and me too), who are prepared to pay a little extra for a product/service that actually works, are very much the exception - both as individuals and as businesses. Businesses are driven by purchasing dept beancounters who don't care what the quality is like as long as they can demonstrate a cost saving to justify their next bonus payment. In-duh-viduals surf the web for hours in order to find a 'bargain' that will save them a few quid, valuing their time at something like a fiver below minimum wage.

There is hardly anything in the world that someone can’t make a little worse and sell a little cheaper and he who considers price alone is this man's lawful prey.

John Ruskin (1819-1900)

Con's:

Time Difference (every turnaround takes another day)

Risk Averse

Language issues

Turnover

Pro's:

Significant cost reduction

One thing no one has mentioned is the reducing rate of return for sending work to a 3rd world country. Despite much larger populations, a very small percentage (much smaller than developed nations) are the highly skilled employees we are looking for. Potentially even in absolute terms. This means each job sent out there increases the overall cost to the developed nations as they hunt an increasingly in-demand group of experienced people. This demand does attract extra people into the industry/roles, but I don't believe that they have the infrastructure to add people as quickly as in the developed world.

Our current offshoring partner (a major multinational) is struggling to retain staff. Either they cost a lot of money (lot's of work chasing a small group of experienced resources) or are cheap but need training up (whereupon they become a flight risk).

It's tough this one.

The definition of globalization: how to make a quick buck on cheap labor with no concern whatsoever on the environment, social implication and product quality.

The U.S. economy is choking because of mismanagement and corruption.

How many have noticed BTs online billing site is in asia?

I checked it out when I was getting timeouts and general slow response from it.

Disgusting they cant even host their own billing site in the UK.