Outsourcing to India

[Zippy]

He will be out of work in a few years. It makes me glum.

Oh no.

[d000hg]

Oh dear me.

Being a coder hasn't just involved coding for - ooohh - the last 20 years. Unless you are a Bob. This is the weakness of yer average Bob.
I've worked with 'em and - IMO - they need direction. Constantly. To the point where you have to specify where error messages occur, when they occur (including obvious input errors by the user) and - oh yes - exactly what the messages should say.
Apart from that, they are fine.
Might as well do the bugger yourself.

Again - you need to apply more rigor to your hiring process. I hire a few contractors remotely which means I really couldn't care where they are as long as they know their stuff and speak OK English. Some of the best people have been from India and Eastern Europe BUT I interview them as individuals and would never trust any 3rd part to hire on my behalf, unless my company becomes big enough I hire my own hiring manager.

[Grinder]

All the off-shore IT guys I work with are "entry-level" staff. I reckon you could employ entry-level staff in the UK for the same money and get the same level of performance from them.

Low-cost sourcing will continue across the globe, but the market will mature as consultancies work out where effective savings can be made.

At the moment we go around the loop a dozen times to implement the simplest functionality, because good BAs and SysAns are undervalued. Average BAs are not producing the required level of documentation needed to write the code.

Historically, this has been good enough, because a canny developer figures out what they meant. But it doesn't suit entry-level developers, because they can't work it out.