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rjv_rnjn

Posted Monday, August 17, 2009 12:42 PM

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GilaMonster (8/17/2009)

rjv_rnjn(8/17/2009)

I guess, OP was talking specifically about offshore outsourcing.

He was?

Unless I am reading the whole first post wrong! {I don't think title of the thread alone should be considered}

Silverfox (8/17/2009)

I still wonder how the company exists considering the people that were flown over to do knowledge transfer, didnt know one end of a database from another, and the other thing that was funny, is that some of the systems had to remain in the uk, because of the sensitivity of the data, how on earth it could be supported from india, I have no idea.

Confirmed! :)

Silverfox (8/17/2009)

I was talking about offshore outsourcing where the entire it function is offshored...

I am with you on this point. This should never be done and there are multitudes of examples where it went wrong.

Silverfox (8/17/2009)

... and for the record I have seen a lot of work both development including .net and tsql where there is absolutely no understanding of the tool used. To put it bluntly we have to send the code back or do it ourselves.

Silverfox (8/17/2009)

When I get asked about simple select queries and the syntax for restoring a database...

Really???

I guess you guys have got a really bad vendor or you are exaggerating.

Silverfox (8/17/2009)

It makes you wonder how companies that outsource their it keep on running.

The world has its mysterious ways! Tongue

Post #772175

Grant Fritchey

Posted Monday, August 17, 2009 12:42 PM

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At my current company we've tried one offshore outsourcing of a single development project because it would "save money" not to mention deliver the project faster, and it would work better, and require less management time to implement, and make our mouth fresher... Anyway, it was an unmitigated disaster. It ran longer than the original in-house programming estimates. Cost WAY more than it would have, didn't work right, at all, at any step in the process, took more time from the management team than they've ever had to give to the in-house projects, and I never got that full minty-fresh feeling.

I have to say, I was very nervous leading into the experiment, but it failed so badly that the nervousness just went away, along with the outsourcing company. BTW, we successfully rewrote the app in less time than our initial estimates.

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Post #772176

GSquared

Posted Monday, August 17, 2009 1:59 PM

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My main outsourcing experience started with the owner of the company we would be ourtsourcing to flying to the US to meet us.

He took one look at the database I'd built, condemned the many "newbie mistakes" in it (he was right, that version of the database was junk by my current standards), and proceded to tell the owners of the company I worked for about how it would all be so much better once they had taken over all of the IT functions except hardware maintenance.

The contract was signed, and less than 6 hours later, one of their devs had run an unrestricted update in the production database that reset all customer passwords to some multisylabic word that I don't remember and couldn't pronounce at the time anyway. This locked out everyone from their data, which resulted in refunds being needed in order to keep customers.

Fortunately, I had audit logging set up, and was able to recover all the passwords.

We were promised that the person responsible had been fired and this would never, ever happen again. While they were on the phone promising that, another person there ran another unrestricted update, on the orders table this time, messing up every order that had ever been placed. Again, audit logs allowed me to fix the problem in relatively short order. Again, refunds had to happen to placate understandably upset (and confused) customers.

While this was beginning to feel like the credits for Monty Python's Quest for the Holy Grail ("those responsible for sacking the people responsible for the credits have been sacked"), it had considerably less entertainment value.

So I locked them out of the production server entirely, and my boss, one of the company owners, explained to them that their services would not be needed for any database work, and negotiated a change of contract where they would only be working on .NET development for us, and all database development would go through me. (When you consider that I still didn't even know what "normal forms" were, and hadn't figured out what "relational" meant, and that I was the better of the two options, you'll begin to see the magnitude of suck here.)

The company that was doing all of our .NET work then proceded to work out a routine for speccing out work for these guys to do, and rapidly found that it took less time to write the code in the first place than it took to write a detailed enough specification in order to get something that would approach the desired functionality. Within a month, the cost of outsourcing the software development was greater than the cost of writing it locally, and the contract was terminated.

Now, nobody at our company lost their jobs over this. Had it worked out well, I would have gone back to sales and marketing, and would have been making more money on that anyway. So I didn't have any emotional stake in their failure. But wow did they fail!

I haven't experienced any other attempts at outsourcing (offshoring, to be more precise), but I certainly hope this was atypically bad.

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Post #772232

rjv_rnjn

Posted Monday, August 17, 2009 3:00 PM

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GSquared (8/17/2009)

While this was beginning to feel like the credits for Monty Python's Quest for the Holy Grail ("those responsible for sacking the people responsible for the credits have been sacked"), it had considerably less entertainment value.

Yes, The Updaters beats Monty Python any given day. BigGrin

I just realized one surprising thing. Nowhere on any of the boards, have I heard people narrating a good experience with offshore s/w professionals and still that industry seems to be bulging all the time (maybe not now in this economic environment). Is it one of those anomalies?

Post #772292

Lynn Pettis

Posted Monday, August 17, 2009 3:41 PM

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rjv_rnjn (8/17/2009)

GSquared (8/17/2009)

Yes, The Updaters beats Monty Python any given day. BigGrin

Proven through various studies, word of mouth advertising the best (or worst) for a company. Studies show that an individual with a good experience with a company will talk to 3 others. A person with a bad experience will talk to 11 others. So, the moral, avoid bad word of mouth advertising. Do good by all your customers!

Cool

Lynn Pettis

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Post #772328

Vijay Mishra

Posted Monday, August 17, 2009 8:51 PM

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The point is not seeing you $$ for value, its management who feels that they saves $$ by outsourcing. If the quality of service was so bad and all the work was useless. I don't think that any sensible managment in the world can afford to outsource keep going.

You can move to management itself to save your future jobs :)

Best Regards,

Vijay Mishra

Post #772402

Silverfox

Posted Tuesday, August 18, 2009 1:18 AM

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It will be a cold day in hell, before I even think about moving into management, havent sunk that low Tongue

Just found out that the client I am working for atm, has just outsourced to HCL. The sense of impending doom is approaching.

Checking them out on the net. I find some interesting quotes from their CEO

"When questioned about his firm's US hiring, Information Week reports that Vineet Nayar, the CEO of the Indian outsourcing giant HCL Technologies, showed he can stereotype with the best of them, telling an audience in NYC that most American tech grads are 'unemployable.' Explaining that Americans are far less willing than students from developing economies like India, China, and Brazil to master the 'boring' details of tech process and methodology, the HCL chief added that most Americans are just too expensive to train. HCL, which was reportedly awarded a secretive $170 million outsourcing contract by Microsoft last April, gets a personal thumbs-up from Steve Ballmer for 'walking the extra mile.' Ballmer was busy last week pitching more H-1B visas as the cure for America's job ills at The National Summit."

I have also seen another quote from this CEO, saying 'Americans suck at IT'.

I have also seen a post on these forums, where someone has said that their developers are terrible Tongue

My contract renewal is up in 7 weeks, if they try and force me to sign with HCL. It will be time for this old soldier to move on and find another battlefield Tongue

anyone else had dealings with HCL, love to hear your experiences.

~Silverfox~

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Post #772452

Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Posted Tuesday, August 18, 2009 7:45 AM

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What's HCL?

I'm after wary of outsourcing companies since they are so cost driven as to place that above being effective. That can be frustrating.

If your CEO thinks the US is that bad, perhaps it's just time to move on.

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