Reply to: No tulip sherlock award for the BBC

[BoredBloke]

The guy BT assigned to me had the cheek to call me after I'd been replaced (by him) to ask me to help him do my old job for which he was being paid. He even did the voice off that fonejacker internet providings thing....but vy vont you help me in his best whiny voice

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrfML...eature=related

[PM-Junkie]

maybe they they should interview each of these people before they are let near a project.........you know, technical questions etc.....

Sadly, in my experience outsourcing is a board level strategy and these people are usually foisted on projects whether the PM and the rest of the team like it or not - despite sasguru's juvenile and uneducated little dig. Getting anything of quality out of them can be a full time job in itself.

[jmo21]

maybe they they should interview each of these people before they are let near a project.........you know, technical questions etc.....

[TimberWolf]

BT are raking it in on other large projects, like the NHS's multi-billion NpFIT money laundering programme. Boomed.

[Mich the Tester]

Indian company blagging their way onto site? No! Perish the thought!

Oh never; at my last clientco some compliancy chappy decided to ask the Indians to produce certificates for all the Masters degrees, Oracle certifications etc that they claimed to have. After much photoshopping and misspelt certificates ('sorry that was version 0.1 of my masters degree yes sir acha!') he determined that about half the Indians supplied by a very well known western insultancy firm had fake diplomas and reported this to senior management, who did nothing (perhaps some of them might have bought their MBAs?).

[sasguru]

...it very rarely does.

Surely the fault of the PM?

[PM-Junkie]

At a bank which shall remain nameless I tested on a project which involved adding one field to a database table, a query, the resulting output file and the xml interface of another app. All built plenty cheapness in India at a cost of 300,000 euros. Basically the Indians were taking advantage of the fact that the bank hadn’t enough technical expertise in house to work out what would be a reasonable budget for such a puny project. I informed the acceptants of my concerns that the project budget seemed a little expensive and they just sighed ‘well the powers that be have told us the Indians are cheaper so we have to use them now’.

And no, what was delivered didn't work.

...it very rarely does.

[lightng]

At a bank which shall remain nameless I tested on a project which involved adding one field to a database table, a query, the resulting output file and the xml interface of another app. All built plenty cheapness in India at a cost of 300,000 euros. Basically the Indians were taking advantage of the fact that the bank hadn’t enough technical expertise in house to work out what would be a reasonable budget for such a puny project. I informed the acceptants of my concerns that the project budget seemed a little expensive and they just sighed ‘well the powers that be have told us the Indians are cheaper so we have to use them now’.

And no, what was delivered didn't work.

Get their feet under the table under the argument of cheapness then take ten times as long to do something at half the hourly rate. Result: The client gets something that doesn't work for five times the price. Where have I seen this before?

Hopefully all such companies employing myopic off-shoring strategies will be replaced by companies who actually know what they're doing.

[Menelaus]

On my gig last year in Hong Kong, we had a dev team from Bangalore model building. There were three of them: one who was *very* good - so good, in fact, that I'm trying to get him a visa to come to UK to work for me, one was a fresh grad (read into that what you will) and the third who was basically a waste of DNA.

After HK I went over as supervisory modeller to Saudi Arabia and the team that the clientco had brought in were from a small consultancy in India (can't remember the name) who would basically:

(a) agree with everything I said
(b) be writing it all down

Indian company blagging their way onto site? No! Perish the thought!

[Mich the Tester]

lol,

I was at BT GS, I had the misfortune to work with TM guys, what a joke.
They were so cheap and cost effective that one piece of work farmed out for 2 months at about £300pd. After 2 months and zero progress I did the work in half a day.

hmmm me £200 to do the job TM £12,000 to not do the job. Total cost £12200.

BARGAIN!!!!!!

and the guy doing the work was one of their best, there was worse

At a bank which shall remain nameless I tested on a project which involved adding one field to a database table, a query, the resulting output file and the xml interface of another app. All built plenty cheapness in India at a cost of 300,000 euros. Basically the Indians were taking advantage of the fact that the bank hadn’t enough technical expertise in house to work out what would be a reasonable budget for such a puny project. I informed the acceptants of my concerns that the project budget seemed a little expensive and they just sighed ‘well the powers that be have told us the Indians are cheaper so we have to use them now’.

And no, what was delivered didn't work.

[MrsGoof]

lol,

I was at BT GS, I had the misfortune to work with TM guys, what a joke.
They were so cheap and cost effective that one piece of work farmed out for 2 months at about £300pd. After 2 months and zero progress I did the work in half a day.

hmmm me £200 to do the job TM £12,000 to not do the job. Total cost £12200.

BARGAIN!!!!!!

and the guy doing the work was one of their best, there was worse

[Alf W]

BT are in the tulip and are upsetting clients at quite a rate of knots. I am working on at least two potential clients who I know are about to pull the plug on their outsourcing deals with them and take the work back in house. Both as a result of BT's 'cost cutting' measures.

[BoredBloke]

I worked in that office for a while for GS and was part of their cull in March. The Tech M guys were not very good and from all accounts, in the config management bit I worked in they are not exactly doing a good job - but BT will not admit that their much cheapness option is not working out.

[PM-Junkie]

...and then later on those of us who do know what we're doing can clean up the mess, and charge the Earth for doing it.

[sasguru]

Why not just role this out across UK PLC... everyone sit back and let the Indians do everything, there's plenty to go round.

Yes they probably can spell better - and have better grammar.