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Can China Pull An India?

Posted by timothy on from the many-hands-quick-work dept.

ricst writes: "The New York Times has a story about how China is trying to leap ahead of India as the world's second-largest producer of software. Apparently the Chinese are trying to learn everything they can from the Indian software developers. It's not clear that if China becomes a strong competitor to India that 'jobs will be lost or simply not created' in the U.S. My guess is that the most creative software opportunities will remain in the US for some time, and the more routine development efforts will continue to be transfered overseas."

2 of 346 comments (clear)

  1. Remote engineers... by Pengo · · Score: 5, Interesting


    Just like Dilberts company had their secret Albonians, our company had Romanians.

    Our company did it for two years, and for a good reason we don't do it anymore. Not that there is no good work that comes out of it.. it was just a nightmare to manage. Our software is not one that can just be packaged and shipped, but was an ASP (Java) that requires constant work and modifications for new customers.

    I suppose with something like Windows applications it might be easier to outsource, but web based applications it was a managment nightmare and ended up just not working.

    I will not go into the differences of culture and work ethic or the irritations due to time zone differences.

    1. Re:Remote engineers... by ppetru · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Being a romanian myself, I feel obliged to add the fact that this is a generic issue with telecommuting: there are certain kinds of work which simply don't fit in, no matter if the team is romanian or indian or chinese or whatever.

      On the other hand, if you have good management, outsourcing can be a godsend, for a couple reasons:

      • It can be cheaper
      • It allows easier access to otherwise rare or expensive talent or expertise
      • If there's a time zone difference, you can turn that to your advantage and literally work around the clock
      • The culture difference can be an advantage too: different ways of thinking lead to a bigger pool of ideas, and generally results in tighter code/design discipline.
      (none of the above depend on each other).

      In conclusion, I think there's a general misconception about outsourcing, caused by the false assumption that cheaper always means worse. Sure, you get what you deserve if you hire a-dime-a-dozen {romanians,indians,chinese,whatever}, but there are also good people out there, and they are way cheaper than the US counterparts. You can have a top romanian programmers for around $1000-1500 and I can assure you they'll be sharp even by the most demanding standards.

      --

      Petru