would you trust indian IT outsourcers ?

[voodooflux]

So how was your time with them?

Lucrative

[d000hg]

I think it can work if you can individually choose each guy on the team, and outsource work that has clear specification and can be parceled up neatly. These companies don't seem to work that way though?

[HeliCraig]

Its bad enough that I have to put up with imported Indian outsourcing at ClientCo as it is now. Damn OfficeIdiot - I will catch him!

Not much cheapness in this case, but plenty quickness. All at the expense of thinking about things and doing them properly! And the mis-communications which are caused are hilarious:

"I would look into this aspect set piece today afternoon." WTF?

(Mind you, in fairness my Hindi is terrible too! )

The annoying thing is, in my experience, the f**k ups are usually over-ridingly caused by a genuine desire to please and do everything you want. Just not thought about!

[rootsnall]

For application maintenance or for production support quite some savings could be achieved if managed well. But development no, I have never seen a succesful case either, unless the whole process, including the analysis and management is outsourced in which case perhaps...

WHS

For development it is nothing more than a scam by the big consultancies but they seem to be getting away with it. On the projects I'm familiar with I wouldn't even say it was close in terms of eventual costs to the client, I would hazard a guess at the bill being double.

[d000hg]

The annoying thing is, in my experience, the f**k ups are usually over-ridingly caused by a genuine desire to please and do everything you want. Just not thought about!

We worked with Tata/TCS and that was definitely the case. Their work ethic was incredibly dedicated, they view 12 hour days as normal and are happy to adjust their sleeping schedule based on timezone differences. It's like the way the UK apparently was back in the days when miners/factory workers would work long shifts and then go to night school to better themselves... we could learn a lot as a nation from them.

But (un)fortunately their actual skills were not very good

[Purple Dalek]

I was looking at some dodgy code from an outsourced project.

They even wrote their own string copying routines.

The language was Java.

I'm all in favour of outsourcing. It makes me look really cheap and effective, even when I just sit and witter on this board all day.

[PM-Junkie]

I would sum my experience of working with Indian developers as a PM in one word. Frustrating.

Everything, and I mean everything, needs to be black and white. Instructions need to be absolutely to the letter and they need to be micro-managed. That can be an additional hidden cost that people tend to forget about. I always make it perfectly clear.

What you get from UK developers that you don't get from Indian developers is what I would call extra value. What I mean from that is that if you are building something, and there is a better way of doing some part of it, a UK developer is often looking for it and will tell you, and Indian developer won't because you may not have asked for it.

A generalisation, which I prefer to avoid so apologies if it offends anyone, but that has been my personal experience.

[Zippy]

My experience was that the developers were technically very good but the management was well dodgy. They were allegedly using an agile methodology but I don't think they really got it. Requirements were misunderstood and questions about them had to be routed through a three level hierarchy which slowed things down a bit
Having said that, the code always functioned (just didn't do what you wanted it to). Because of this lack of communication costing time, I don't think they worked out any cheaper than hiring UK developers (except we won't usually do 12 hour days for nowt)

[Manic]

I would sum my experience of working with Indian developers as a PM in one word. Frustrating.

Everything, and I mean everything, needs to be black and white. Instructions need to be absolutely to the letter and they need to be micro-managed. That can be an additional hidden cost that people tend to forget about. I always make it perfectly clear.

What you get from UK developers that you don't get from Indian developers is what I would call extra value. What I mean from that is that if you are building something, and there is a better way of doing some part of it, a UK developer is often looking for it and will tell you, and Indian developer won't because you may not have asked for it.

A generalisation, which I prefer to avoid so apologies if it offends anyone, but that has been my personal experience.

Agreed, I've always maintained they can't (don't) think 'out of the box'. it's the same with call centres though, deviate from their script and they are in trouble.

[minestrone]

On the projects I'm familiar with I wouldn't even say it was close in terms of eventual costs to the client, I would hazard a guess at the bill being double.

I have seen an outsourced project go 100 times over budget, seriously 100 times, it's hard to believe but true.

Admittedly it was the clients fault, they should have questioned the ability of a bunch of guys in India who had never worked in the financial arena writing a trading platform for £100,000 in a technology they had never used.