Off shore costs

[DallasDad]

Sue Ellen has it spot on I worked for a fairly huge IT company and I absolutely loathed any form of off shore engagement.
The worst was handovers where UK based teams were effectively making themselves redundant which was quite common a few years ago.

It often meant by the time things went tits up no one over here was left to sort it out.

It was often a case of, after doing an extensive and well documented handover to an offshore team, that a client would find out sometimes only a matter of weeks later that there had been a total churn of offshore staff. To the point all the knowledge transfer had been lost and as for those teams referring to, and updating the documentation if they could find it...........

To be honest it is imho better now but 10 - 15 years ago it was not funny at all.

[SueEllen]

Had a contract a few years ago for a major US IT firm
Senior salesforce.com technical architect US or Eur based $900 pd
India based $9 per day (+ paracetamol $0.10 per day for any headache this causes)

(All internal staff)

That presumes you know the actual number of Indian staff on your project off-shore.

They use smoke and mirrors to hide the fact that they have just lost a load of staff who just walked down the road and got a better paying job, so don't have enough people to staff the projects they have. Obviously this fails if the clientco is intelligent enough to hire a British male who speaks one their languages and keeps popping over there.

I've worked alongside some of the intra-company transfer people including one who worked for an employer I worked for. The employer was not very nice to us but treated the Bobs, who were our replacements,like complete dirt. Luckily the guy escaped.

[Andy2]

Everytime i start a gig at new place, they always have a project about to be undertaken by some indian outfit

I have the noticed the same in every contract recently. Even highly secretive swiss banks where storage of data outside Switzerland is illegal for the local banks have started offshoring circumventing the rules. IT industry employment is shrinking in size and will continue to do so.

[NotAllThere]

The way to reduce costs when outsourcing is to pay the offshoring company their retainer, but continue to do the actual work yourself.

The CIO at currently client has had to oversee offshoring - he's generally opposed to it, but the Finance director insists. The reason is the company divested itself of one part that brought in 30% of the income, but didn't account for 30% of the cost, so 30% savings have to be made. Offshoring is a quick way of appearing to do this.

[bobspud]

How much do you reckon it costs companies to get "the needful" done by offshore teams?

I would've thought that enough firms would have been stung and word got round that long run, in terms of support and re-writing poor systems delivered by offshore devs, that it would have started to naturally cease to be an option, especially for big companies.

Everytime i start a gig at new place, they always have a project about to be undertaken by some indian outfit and are already struggling, straight from the get go, to convey requirements etc...

It really must be peanuts they are pating out to want to go through all that arseache again and again.

I worked with a company that has some offshore teams that they sell to unsuspecting idiots on a regular basis. When I was there, the cost to the client for a rampant skills-less engineer was £5 per day less than having a contractor

But the model was 80% of the project gets (mal)handled by the Z team and at the end they start paying guys like me to put it straight or drag it back on track. I made damn sure they paid through the nose for that.

But the stereotype amongst the managers are that they are intelligent and good at what they do. :howell

[OnceStonedRose]

The cost is irrelevant, the pain is irrelevant, the quality is relevant, the achievement is irrelevant.

The only thing that matters is the wad of cash paid from the consultancies to senior management, after they have been wined and dined during the tour of the offshore facilities.

And the quality?

[ChimpMaster]

How much do you reckon it costs companies to get "the needful" done by offshore teams?

I would've thought that enough firms would have been stung and word got round that long run, in terms of support and re-writing poor systems delivered by offshore devs, that it would have started to naturally cease to be an option, especially for big companies.

Everytime i start a gig at new place, they always have a project about to be undertaken by some indian outfit and are already struggling, straight from the get go, to convey requirements etc...

It really must be peanuts they are pating out to want to go through all that arseache again and again.

The cost is irrelevant, the pain is irrelevant, the quality is relevant, the achievement is irrelevant.

The only thing that matters is the wad of cash paid from the consultancies to senior management, after they have been wined and dined during the tour of the offshore facilities.

[Fandango]

My current gig the client has offshored some of its web development projects to Vietnam through a UK recruitment agencies offshore arm.

All their devs were being were being charged at ~£120/day +vat

There did have to have an "Engagement Manager" for a couple of days/month @~£800+vat
And I'm sure there was a some UK PM days as well at a typical UK rate.

It would seem that the Vietnamese don't have a back stabbing culture like the indian outfits do, but the small amount of interaction I had it them I found the language barrier and the ability to convey requirements and for them to understand business processes etc a complete nightmare, so I distanced myself from anything to do with it.

[Eirikur]

Had a contract a few years ago for a major US IT firm
Senior salesforce.com technical architect US or Eur based $900 pd
India based $9 per day (+ paracetamol $0.10 per day for any headache this causes)

(All internal staff)

[tomtomagain]

Although most techies hate off-shoring a significant number of managers don't.

The manager doesn't have to "gather the requirements" or run the testing, or write the code or even usually deal with the fall-out from unhappy end users.

(S)he get's to read and write status reports and attend meetings where nothing much really happens.

So they don't have any skin in the game ... and if it does fail, then they just blame the out-sourcing company and then select another one.


..... and corporations have a very short-term memory. The ones that outsourced a few years ago no longer remember what it was like to have in-house teams, so they just assume the massive pain ,high risk of failure and cost overruns is normal.

[clearedforlanding]

On your books you can shift OPEX to CAPEX & that is very important in your quarterly reports.

[MarillionFan]

How much do you reckon it costs companies to get "the needful" done by offshore teams?

I would've thought that enough firms would have been stung and word got round that long run, in terms of support and re-writing poor systems delivered by offshore devs, that it would have started to naturally cease to be an option, especially for big companies.

Everytime i start a gig at new place, they always have a project about to be undertaken by some indian outfit and are already struggling, straight from the get go, to convey requirements etc...

It really must be peanuts they are pating out to want to go through all that arseache again and again.

Yes, but when you compare the resources you have onshore, to offshore, you realize quite quickly that most onshore resources are bloody useless money grabbing opportunists who can't even find the on switch on a laptop.

[OnceStonedRose]

How much do you reckon it costs companies to get "the needful" done by offshore teams?

I would've thought that enough firms would have been stung and word got round that long run, in terms of support and re-writing poor systems delivered by offshore devs, that it would have started to naturally cease to be an option, especially for big companies.

Everytime i start a gig at new place, they always have a project about to be undertaken by some indian outfit and are already struggling, straight from the get go, to convey requirements etc...

It really must be peanuts they are pating out to want to go through all that arseache again and again.