25 Years Old and an Offshore IT Manager

dcblogs writes "The Chinese outsourcing market, at $1.7 billion last year, is growing at 38% a year, according to research by the Everest Group. This is creating opportunities for Westerners who want to go to China, learn the language, and help these Chinese offshore companies reach overseas markets. There are job opportunities for people with management experience or who are young and willing to gamble. Here's the story of one 25-year-old who started learning Mandarin on his plane ride over to China, three years ago, and is now an international development manager for an IT offshoring firm."

Comments

Poor quality....

[cavtroop]

I didn't RTFA, but maybe this is why quality is not so great in offshore products? We have unqualified people flying over to 'take a chance' and end up in management roles, without the requisite experience needed to get the job done correctly.

Re:Poor quality....

[ErichTheRed]

I tend to agree...for the most part.

Many arguments about offshore development often are nothing more than xenophobic rants from people who have been displaced by cheaper workers. One of my relatives works for a large consulting firm who does tons of IT outsourcing engagements for large companies. He's got a different take on things...He told me that most of the people complaining about quality of offshore work is done by the same people sitting around on IM and surfing the web for 7 out of 8 hours a day.

Obviously, these two extremes aren't 100% indicative of the whole issue. The actual facts are:

• Employers are shifting a lot of work offshore to take advantage of cheap labor. This is almost always the reason for doing this.
  
• Workers in these countries do tend to have a better work ethic than Western programmers. Questions remain as to why -- my opinion is that there's a higher focus on education and a greater motivation to make money.
  
• Even though the work ethic is better, projects tend to come in late. Maybe it's language, maybe it's the distance, whatever.
  
• Quality tends to suffer. Why? Part of it has to do with skill level, but I think the other part is that requirements are filtered through several layers of project managers and analysts.
  

With these facts in mind, what's next? I'd hate to think that there will be no more purely technical jobs here. I'm not a project manager, and don't want to live in a country that can't do anything other than manage projects. On the other hand, how do you convince an employer that you can do a better job than someone who makes 10% of your salary? This is especially hazy in the enterprise software realm, where you have to build something that "just works", not "works great."

Part of me really wants to see the US IT workforce shrink. Getting people who are just not suited for the work into other jobs would probably be the best thing yet for code and system quality. Example pet peeves from my side of the house (systems) are developers who have no clue about things like code optimization and don't know the code they're working on inside and out.

The other part of me is a little worried about what I'm going to be doing in 10 years. I love problem solving and don't really want to give up an IT career!

Re:Poor quality....

[93 Escort Wagon]

One of my relatives works for a large consulting firm who does tons of IT outsourcing engagements for large companies. He's got a different take on things...He told me that most of the people complaining about quality of offshore work is done by the same people sitting around on IM and surfing the web for 7 out of 8 hours a day. I'd prefer not to speak disrespectively of your relative - but on what basis is he making this sweeping statement? Has he actually toured those companies that've hired him and observed the work ethic of those soon-to-be-fired workers?

This basically sounds like he's rationalizing in order to legitimize the fact he's making money from other peoples' misfortune.

Putting on my hat as an IT consumer: I've had the opportunity to compare a few companies' outsourced IT services (tech support) with their previous onshore support. I can't think of one instance where the quality of support didn't plummet once the service went offshore. There's no good reason that it has to be that way; but when cutting costs is the only motivation, decline is inevitable.

Re:Poor quality....

[Anonymous Coward]

Most outsourcing goes to India, and the software quality usually is crap because:

1) The cheapest programmers are fresh out of college, where due to budget constraints they've typically they've had little if any actual hands-on programming experience! IIT is good, but most Indian schools comp-sci is a complete joke
2) The outsourcing shop turnover is very high (30%/yr typical) because the market is so hot. Employees just cross the hallway to a higher paying job at the drop of a hat
3) They endemically lie on their resumes, so even the little experince you thought they had is non-existant. Sad, but true.

The only IT outsourcing that I've heard sucess stories from are for testing (to detailed test specs) rather than for development. IOW think of them as cheap labor, and you'll be OK (as long as your specifications were thorough and unambiguous). Think of them as a cheaper alternative to your experienced and competent domestic team, and youll be disappointed.

Re:Poor quality....

[pla]

Many arguments about offshore development often are nothing more than xenophobic rants [...] most of the people complaining about quality of offshore work is done by the same people sitting around on IM and surfing the web for 7 out of 8 hours a day.

From the middle-America stereotype of xenophobia, to the mid-management paranoia about lazy programmers. Well done, old chap! Well done indeed!



Workers in these countries do tend to have a better work ethic than Western programmers. Questions remain as to why

No. This counts as a peeve of mine, which you appear to have bought into whole-heartedly, and it all centers around your comment that:
This is especially hazy in the enterprise software realm, where you have to build something that "just works", not "works great".

I take pride in my work - The quality of my work, not the speed with which I can satisfy the spec (a document I consider myself lucky when I have a halfway decent one first place). The problem comes about when you consider the specificity of the task - You have apples and oranges trying to compare in-house coders to outsourced ones, because they don't do the same job. Yes, I do want my programs to "work great", not "just work".

Put simply, outsourcing can work, as long as you have someone in-house who understands, at both a business and technical level, what the company needs - And can document that in painstaking detail for an outsourced dev team to implement. In the real world, that doesn't happen, because "software engineer" doesn't mean "code monkey". My job involves about half coding, half badgering management to make up their damned minds about feature-X... And then re-writing feature X when management changes its mind a week later.



Put another way: Most halfway-decent American coders, given a sufficiently detailed spec and only the thinnest of contractual obligations to implement it to the letter (exactly what offshore coding houses work to), could do any given take in a tenth the time/budget as well. And when that "working" app crashes at 2am resutling in the loss of millions of transactions, because your MBA-wielding Head of Outsourcing doesn't understand the difference between "RAID" and "backup", just take comfort in in how much you saved by not going with lazy in-house programmers.

Re:Poor quality....

[frank_adrian314159]

Even though the work ethic is better, projects tend to come in late. Maybe it's language, maybe it's the distance, whatever.

Here are some reasons projects come in late:

• Bad specifications. In general, most organizations do not know how to write specifications to the level of detail necessary to allow off-site teams to produce work only using the specification. This is usually discovered in the integration or installation phase of the project and thus, almost always causes lateness.
• Time zones cut communication. For all of the talk of people working in other countries while you are sleeping, quite likely the scenario is actually other people waiting for answers in other countries while you are sleeping. It makes a hell of a lot more sense to offshore north-south rather than east-west. It's a lot easier on workers, too, who usually either have to com ein early or stay late (or both) to get the "face time" in.
• Lack of a software engineering culture. No matter how bad you think your managers are in the US (or Europe), at least a fair number of them will have come up through the trenches and, even though they don't know how to manage people all that well, usually understand that niceties like source control systems and systematic testing are a good thing. It takes a couple of generations of people working in the industry, pushing best practices ahead, before one can reliably find these practices understood as necessary and adhered to. The software engineering cultures in India and China are not necessarily at the point where best practices in software hygiene are being followed consistently.
• Poor communications technology and non-native speakers. Phone lines between here and there still suck. Your ability to be understood over noisy lines still sucks. Even though most (all?) Indian programmers do understand English, it is still painful to try to listen over sucky phone lines for long periods of time (Also, will someone please tell non-native speakers of English that speaking fast only cuts down on their intelligibility?). Chinese communication infrastructure is even worse. And most of Chinese workers (outside of project managers) are nowhere close to fluent in English.
• Autocratic management. In general, it's easier to say nothing or to leave than to try to fix something that's broken. This is true every where, but it is especially true in societies that are culturally autocratic in nature. Given the growth in India's technology, would you rather try to fix something where you were or move to a new job with a 20% pay increase? They're no more stupid than we are. In China, it's a bit more difficult in switching jobs, but the issues are still similar.

It's not that any of these things are permanent, nor are they a reflection on individuals' abilities. I've worked with people in both China and India and they are just as smart and (maybe) more hard working than we are. It's just that the software engineering culture, the communications infrastructure, and the management culture isn't yet set up to produce good software without a great deal of intervention from team members with a lot more experience in software engineering practice and management. It will come... it's just not there yet. There is "no royal road" to software engineering maturity. Give them another ten to fifteen years and I expect that they'll have everything in place to make these projects succeed (probably by just sending entire projects there), but for now, it's a real gamble when you offshore development. Expect to put in a lot more effort on the US (or Europe) side to make it succeed than you expected to.

Re:Poor quality....

[ErichTheRed]

This basically sounds like he's rationalizing in order to legitimize the fact he's making money from other peoples' misfortune. You are correct in your observation, I think. I've seen plenty of lazy IT workers who just do the minimum to keep their (very high salary) job, and I've seen committed workers who produce good quality stuff. He's probably colored by the fact that the lazy ones tend to complain very loudly while the good ones keep quiet and do their job. In my experience, there's also a lot more lazy people, adding to the observation.

The central problem is that we're stuck in the middle. We have to convince management that we're worth the extra money. This is sometimes impossible due to the very large salary difference. In addition, lower-level IT managers do their best to shield the top decision makers from things like missed deadlines, over-budget projects, etc. These major problems get rolled up into 2 or 3 bullet points on a PowerPoint slide. Similarly, all these cost numbers are rolled up into one line in a balance sheet. 100K for a developer vs. 20K for what seems to be an interchangeable developer is a no-brainer.

Re:Poor quality....

[Sentry21]

One of the recurring issues I've seen in American attitudes towards offshoring and immigrants smacks largely of racism and racial superiority. A lot of people, sadly, seem to have a sense of entitlement, a sense that they deserve the jobs or have somehow earned them through no action whatsoever.

In my experience, I've noticed that the immigrants who 'take our jobs' generally take one of two types of jobs:

1. Undesirable jobs that 'white people' don't want to do - e.g. janitorial work, low-paying service jobs, monotonous jobs like security guard, or hard jobs like construction (hours in the sun, hours in the rain, etc.).
2. Highly skilled, educated jobs involving science or technology.

The reasons I've come up with to explain this, and I could be completely off here, are as such:

1. Coming from poorer, less-educated countries, immigrants appreciate the value of a dollar. They don't take for granted that there will be food on the table, good working conditions, and a roof over their heads. They work for it because they know what it's like to go without it (or they've seen it a lot closer than 'we' have).
2. They know the value of hard work. You don't get something for nothing, but people these days (myself included) try to get their something for as little as they can. Poorer Americans in particular are always looking for the 'quick fix', because they've been deluded into believing in the 'American Dream' - dream long enough and good things will come out of nowhere. They don't try to raise themselves up, because they expect someone else to do it for them.
3. Once they get something, they work to keep it. They know that there's always someone else who'll take their job if they don't want it, there's always someone else who wants their apartment. They know they can't coast, because there's no safety net to protect them. I've seen a lot of people get hired for jobs and then act as though the company can't do without them, sometimes immediately. The result is that the company puts up with them as long as they need to, then lets them go.

Point three was particularly emphasized during the dot-com boom, where anyone who could install Linux demanded a six-figure income, stock options, company car, and six weeks of paid vacation a year. When crunch time came, there were a lot of people who would gladly do this supposed $120k job for a measly $60k, and who wouldn't barter for anything other than their wages. Suddenly the arrogant 'I'm the king of the world' geeks found themselves a lot less welcome than they had been.

I've considered that this most likely extends from the American Supremacy doctrine that most Americans seem to be taught - that America, God bless her, is the best country in the world, and everyone else is just jealous because they're second-best. This seems to engender an attitude of American people being better than non-Americans, because... well, I'm not sure. Everyone seems to have their own reasons that they come up with from their own personal experiences or opinions.

All this wraps up to an immigrant workforce who's willing to get their hands dirty andwork to earn their wage, and who won't take their employer for granted. Sound good to you? Sounds good to me.

Now let's consider outsourcing. The average salary for a Sr. Software Engineer in the US is around $90k according to PayScale.com. Not bad, that's more than I make. In India, however, the wage is about 580,000 rupees, or around $13,500. You could pay someone in India pretty well by Indian standards and still save a ton of money by American standards.

Most opponents of outsourcing point to several things at this point. First, foreign workers aren't well-educated like American workers are. Secondly, the quality of their work is lousy (possibly as a result). The problem with these two statements is the staggering number of completely incompetent, short-sighted, narrow-minded 'programmers' I've seen with degrees from universities in the US. The fact is that while a good education makes a b

Re:Poor quality....

[tom's a-cold]

# Employers are shifting a lot of work offshore to take advantage of cheap labor. This is almost always the reason for doing this.

Agree.

# Workers in these countries do tend to have a better work ethic than Western programmers. Questions remain as to why -- my opinion is that there's a higher focus on education and a greater motivation to make money.

Disagree. They are from much poorer countries, and the compensation gap between an IT job and alternative employment is higher. So they need the income more desperately than a Westerner who is better able to find alternative employment.

# Even though the work ethic is better, projects tend to come in late. Maybe it's language, maybe it's the distance, whatever.

The work ethic, is not better. What looks to you like a work ethic is greater desperation and being on the receiving end of harshly explotative tentacle of globalization.

# Quality tends to suffer. Why? Part of it has to do with skill level, but I think the other part is that requirements are filtered through several layers of project managers and analysts.

And since they're exploited, the can't talk back to the boss. So they'll do what they're told whether it makes sense or not. One of the innovations that drove quality improvements was to empower any assembly-line worker to stop the line if a quality problem was detected. Offshoring has been optimized to balance two factors: cost to the buyer, and how much the middleman rakes off for the transaction. There also tends to be a big emphasis on schedule, since it's a big cost driver for the buyer. But in achieving these optimizations, the system has firewalled off any feedback path that could be used to improve product quality.

I've been working in IT jobs in the US for my whole career. The idea that there is such a thing as cheap, crappy, quality-insensitive commodity computing was always a beancounter's brainfart and nothing else.

Oh, and regarding your wish to see the IT workforce shrink: I was in aerospace during two of its brutal contractions. Don't assume that some kind of Darwinian selection by skill level takes place as they staff down. The selective advantage is to whoever can hang onto a job. That can be accomplished by skills, showmanship, ass-kissing or nepotism. Don't bet on it always being skills. Once we lost 90% of our software-engineering workforce, the quality of the survivors did not improve. The percentage of the workforce who had either family ties to senior management or incriminating videos did go up, though.

Re:Poor quality....

[Anonymous Coward]

100K for a developer vs. 20K for what seems to be an interchangeable developer is a no-brainer.

This has always amazed me. I've worked in the field for two decades, and it is not often that I find somebody worth 100k. In fact, in my market 70k is the norm, and you'd better know your crap dead to rights on your technology of choice.

In addition, the Chinese need to let their currency float. That would kill about 25% of their advantage right there. Now only if we had a president with balls looking out for the middle class...

I know.. doesn't exist.

Anyway, since they seem to have a problem making cough syrup or dog food ingredients without poisoning it (or even toys without lead), it really makes me wonder what's in the code.

I've got a few buddies, most of whom are electrical engineering DROPOUTS who are recoding and repairing multiple projects that were previously "outsourced" for big bucks at Fortune 50 companies.

Re:Poor quality....

[billcopc]

That's because history has proven that any idiot can be President, regardless of age. Perhaps more accurately, we've seen that no matter how hard one tries to do good, half the country will disagree. We might as well have a wheel of fortune that is spun every time a decision needs to be made on national affairs.

Anyway back to the topic, I've met some people who are natural leaders and can lead a company to riches from their teen years. I've also met people who think they're leaders, but they're really just glorified assholes, sadly these are the predominant species. Then you've got people who are neither leaders nor assholes, they just got promoted into the wrong job and are stuck in bureaucracy.

If this young guy is doing good, more power to him! The fact that he's featured in a press article casts a bit of doubt on his character though, at least in my books. Real hard workers don't have time to whore out for attention. If this dude is as good as we're told, he should be contracting his services to other outfits, reaping the big bucks and streamlining global I.T., but he's not. I say fire him, blow up the building, and repatriate the jobs back home... just my random opinion :)

Re:Poor quality....

[garlicbready]

At the end of the day you get what you pay for, cheap but cheerful
you pay cheap you get cheap

I have some experience myself working with offshore teams (Indian instead of Chinese) half of the team of which I'm a part is offshore. Also we have to deal with other technical teams on a regular basis which are also part onshore / part offshore (in a support capacity not programming) Our role is sort mini-project management (low paid work, which is a cross between project management and a call center, usually for the preparation of quotes for individual PC's / Servers etc, but we typically end up getting involved with things far above our station on a regular basis

Part of the problem can be the language barrier you see you'll usually get individuals with skills in communication (such as call center staff who need to have good English) or individuals with skills in a technical role (such as server Support) But it can be quite hard to find someone who has skills in both areas (technical and can speak English fairly well) this is quite rare. This puts added pressure on the onshore staff that are still remaining to compensate, especially when it comes down to someone who is speaking very fast in a heavy accent, trying to describe some technical problem about Active Directory in half English. This leaves the on-shore guys trying to do double the work they did originally with the missing staff (some of the on-shore staff have already left at our place simply because of the added pressure) The best you can do to get around this is to use something like MS Communicator, or some form of IM which at least cuts out the heavy accent

Another problem is that part of the mentality within these offshore areas is to do exactly what your told to do.
in some ways this is good, in others bad.
Somewhat similar to a machine type mentality, "we follow the process exactly as it's written with no room for flexibility"
you can of course tell them to do something different, but this again still takes time to act as interpreter from an onshore perspective
again this puts added pressure on the remaining onshore teams to compensate when something unexpected comes along which they can't deal with

The above point also leads in some cases to a lack of technical vetting, and experience with the way things such as email accounts are configured within the company. The onshore staff who usually know what they're doing can usually pick up on something when someone asks them to setup something that doesn't smell quite right but for offshore individuals this isn't always the case, who usually take the approach, do it anyway fix it later

One example of this was a test distribution list that was setup recently on the email system, with the number of people working within the company (we're talking above several thousand here, we have several companies tied into the same network via domains) you need to be careful about allowing these sorts of lists to feed into higher level lists that include everyone everywhere. (usually if you do have such a list, it's setup in such a way so that only certain individuals can send to it) Needles to say a new "test" distribution list was created by one of the offshore team, at which point some moronic project manager decided to send a "test" email which then went to everyone's mailbox at the same time This however was not the problem, the problem was when several users decided to hit "Reply-All" which of course sent the reply to all users everywhere and these replies where then replied to with messages such as "should I be on this list?" The end result was that the outlook servers ground to a complete and utter halt, with the sheer volume of crap flying around on the system

Meanwhile once the two onshore employees that had been replaced heard about this, they basically laughed they're asses off

One last final comment, another trick they do here over in the UK is to bring the offshore guys onshore, but then still pay them the going cheap r

Re:Poor quality....

[poot_rootbeer]

A lot of people, sadly, seem to have a sense of entitlement, a sense that they deserve the jobs or have somehow earned them through no action whatsoever.

Is this something that has been empirically observed, or is it just a stereotype you've cultivated anecdotally?

The average salary for a Sr. Software Engineer in the US is around $90k according to PayScale.com. Not bad, that's more than I make. In India, however, the wage is about 580,000 rupees, or around $13,500.

1. Is the Indian figure for "Senior Software Engineer", as well?
2. Are the skill sets and duties of a "Senior Software Engineer" comparable in both countries? (IT job titles, you will find, are often not very well-defined, even within a single geographic market.)

You could pay someone in India pretty well by Indian standards and still save a ton of money by American standards.

Assuming, as bean-counters too often do, that the work produced by the $90K American and by the $14K Indian will be equivalent in value to the American company. And there are plenty of reasons not rooted in racism or irrational xenophobia that would refute that assumption.

The fact is that while a good education makes a big difference, the real question of how good someone is depends on how well they learn and how open-minded they are

I don't disagree with this; however, it has been my non-empirical experience that the culture of learning in the United States does put a greater emphasis on open-mindedness, innovation, and exploration than do the learning cultures of other countries currently exporting programming talent.

If they're taught Java in an American university and O'Caml in an Indian university, the American is going to have a better immediate skillset

*sigh* A university education is not meant to be vocational training.

American universities can pump out idiots just as fast as Indian universities do, they just do it for a much higher price.

Maybe so. But a hiring manager stands a better chance of accurately evaluating whether a new grad would be a valuable contributor to their organization when he's sitting across a conference room table and speaking the same American English dialect as the candidate, as opposed to being a nameless resource listed on page five of a project bid document that's being discussed in an international teleconference, represented by a team lead who speaks with a thick accent.

Re:Poor quality....

[Lunch2000]

One of the recurring issues I've seen in American attitudes towards offshoring and immigrants smacks largely of racism and racial superiority. A lot of people, sadly, seem to have a sense of entitlement, a sense that they deserve the jobs or have somehow earned them through no action whatsoever. You know..I see this argument a lot about America entitlement to jobs...and here is what I have to say. If someone wants to come to this country and become a citizen and pay taxes, let them. Let them become part of our economy and culture. Diversity can only help us. Where I have a problem is when
a company that exists in America whose success rests mainly on the largess of the infrastructure that *MY* tax dollars maintain; then yeah, I do feel Americans are entitled to jobs from that company. Many large corporations in the US rely on major tax breaks from the gov. This means that my taxes make up the difference. In short while you may think I am not entitled to *jobs* , I don't think someone in India is entitled to *my tax dollars*, because to some extent this is what happens when a company outsources. Think about that next time you trot out the argument that "Americans are entitled". Given that our taxes help drive and maintain many of the economic giants in our country can you blame us if we would like to keep the jobs that those companies generate?

Why are you asking management questions on /.?

[moderators_are_w*nke]

Its a tech site. Go visit businessweek or something. If you want my opinion, 25 years old is not experienced enough to do it because it's not experienced enough to realise its a bad idea.

Re:Why are you asking management questions on /.?

[Anonymous Coward]

Idiots are often converted to smarter idiots as they age, but I argue that age and experience aren't as important as many claim they are.

Both of our views should be taken with a grain of salt: I'm in my 20s, and I'm guessing you're not.

Re:Why are you asking management questions on /.?

[MrMr]

You're probably right and, amusingly, like so many 20 year olds you presume that the old farts you're arguing with skipped from their teens straight to their forties and fifties without learning anything that you don't know already.

Now get off my lawn.

Pffft.

[Hawthorne01]

When I was 25, I was also a manager.

Ok, so it was the night manager at the local Taco Bell, but that's the same thing, right?

Re:Pffft.

[Anne Thwacks]

Taco Bell needs more highly skilled managers than some of the off-shore outfits, because its easier for irate customers to trash the place.

Keep in mind

[TubeSteak]

Learning the Chinese language isn't enough.
You have to learn the culture too.

The good news is that being white is a free status booster.
The bad news is that being dark skinned means the exact opposite.

Re:Keep in mind

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, the cats in America just don't taste right without a lot of ketchup.

I Wonder

[jav1231]

Are these some of the same jobs helping expand China's "all seeing eye?" (http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/05/18/1630208P

Hey, as long as we're making money who cares, right? Fuck China in their all-seeing-outsourcing-expanding asses!

Why only offshore?

[www.sorehands.com]

Much of recent software quality is CRAP! That is partly because these "kids" don't get a strong foundation in the basics, ie. assembler, C, and hardware. Also it is because people accept crap quality in software. Why write good solid software where it's ok to say "We'll fix it in the next patch?" I had the tech support from Sage, say that one of the new features in Act! is that it releases the resources that has allocated, but no longer needs. When I took C, I would have lost points points when I didn't free an unneeded allocation or close an open file.

Re:Why only offshore?

[Anonymous Coward]

That is also probably caused by the ridiculous amount of overtime people do and people going on 4 or less hours of sleep. They appear to be and think they are working hard while producing shit quality code that takes even more time to fix.

Re:Why only offshore?

[Darkness404]

No the reason is hardware has improved enough to take over bad programming. Just look at Vista, it is one of the main highlights of this, it eats up RAM very quickly, wastes time in CPU cycles and inherits all the stupidities that MS did on DOS and previous versions of Windows. However, Vista, when computers with 4 gigs of RAM are common and even laptops have 2-3 GHZ multi-core CPUs, Vista will be classified as usable.

Re:Why only offshore?

[Metasquares]

You would have also lost points points for a double free :)

I agree. Knowledge of low-level languages and architecture will help you as a programmer, since you'll understand more of what is actually going on when your program executes. I think some algorithmic theory is also helpful. At the same time, however, there are high-level tools out there that will make your problems easier to solve, and it would be foolish to ignore them. (Whether languages such as C# and Java do this is debatable, but the principle still holds in general.)

Don't wait until someone teaches you these things to begin, though. As much as people like to give "kids" a rap, the most important thing you can do as a programmer is to start early and practice consistently. Good tools can't replace a lack of skill.

Re:Why only offshore?

[ErichTheRed]

This is actually a big pet peeve of mine in the systems world. Ever since the Internet made patching software super-easy, every vendor on the planet has been rushing software out the door with major bugs in it. I've had big vendors tell me the same thing -- "Yep, we know about this bug. It's going to be fixed in the next service pack, due out next February." Some of them are real rookie bugs too, stuff like driver crashes due to memory access violations.

What's your solution though? There's no way universites are going to raise the barrier in their CS programs. I actually came into IT from the science field, so I'm not really well versed in what they teach. However, people like you have been complaining a lot lately that there's a lack of fundamentals. How do we improve the quality of CS graduates?

Re:Why only offshore?

[Darkness404]

every vendor on the planet has been rushing software out the door with major bugs in it.

Many times though, some software with bugs is better then no software at all. Think of Linux for example, it really wasn't any better then GNU Hurd, but it came out first and it was adopted. In fact, some called the Hurd much better then Linux, but because it was out first it was adopted. Today, Linux is very stable and Hurd is not even a beta yet. Now granted, there are some times not to rush out software particularly if it is proprietary, (just look at Vista) and there is a replacement for it. But if it is open-source and needed, then release early, release often.

What's your solution though? There's no way universites are going to raise the barrier in their CS programs. I actually came into IT from the science field, so I'm not really well versed in what they teach. However, people like you have been complaining a lot lately that there's a lack of fundamentals. How do we improve the quality of CS graduates?

Make software with clean code. Make software free. When writing proprietary software it is easy to give in to temptations to write something that will compile and run but doesn't have the cleanest of code. And as no one is going to see the code, its no big deal right? With open source code both the program has to run and the code to be clean for it to be adopted well, (now, of course those working on the project will clean up source code, but if it is a mess to begin with, who will work on it?). Proprietary software encourages rushed-out-the-door projects, open-source doesn't.

Re:Why only offshore?

[mini me]

Higher quality software costs exponentially more to create. The market has decided that it wants buggy but cheap software. Personally, I agree with the market. I could shell out $100,000 for a bug free copy of Act!, but I'd rather take my chances with a $100 copy and I'm sure you would too.

Re:Why only offshore?

[Anonymous Coward]

look at Vista, it is one of the main highlights of this, it eats up RAM very quickly

Not this again. Vista does eat up RAM for application cache. This means it is effectively using the RAM you spent money on. Once the RAM is needed for more important things Vista will release whatever is required. Why have RAM if your OS doesn't use it?

Re:Why only offshore?

[stephanruby]

This is actually a big pet peeve of mine in the systems world. Ever since the Internet made patching software super-easy, every vendor on the planet has been rushing software out the door with major bugs in it.

This is nothing new. Ever since the video camcorder became so affordable, that almost any teenager could get one -- the professional camera man cringed. Ever since MS Access came out for $50 a pop and just about any office administrator were given the role of being the unofficial "database administrator" -- and yet just stuffed all their data into just one large table -- all the professional database designers/admins moaned. The same went for Word Processing or even Type Setting, there used to be a time when one needed an expensive professional Word Processing consultant just to recommend, select, install, train, troubleshoot, make the thing print, and/or make sense of the numerous Word Processing packages that came before Word Perfect and Word.

The reality is that this is the way the world works. It ebbs and flows. It evolves. It innovates, then it consolidates. It turns your work into a commodity. And soon enough, your non-technical kid sister can do the same work you used to do ten years ago, only in about a fraction of the time, and in the most sloppily fashion imaginable.

If you want to do something about it, you can teach, you can write a technical book, you can create your own certification program, and/or you can help make the tools that will help the new script kiddies that are about to replace you. After all, those kiddies -- those newbies -- are coming. They're just step behind you. And when they end up getting your job, they're not going to get paid much.

Another option is simply to look for new opportunities, predict where the next waves are coming from, retrain yourself constantly, go into management, start a business, or simply do nothing and -- continue to bitch about how the World is going to hell -- at exactly the precise time you ended up mastering your own trade.

Re:Why only offshore?

[Darkness404]

Hmmm? Even though I think this is some attempt to get a +5 funny mod.... That still doesn't explain why it needs 1 Gig to run anything other then Home Basic, while Ubuntu (8.04) with more advanced 3D effects, more applications, and more drivers, ran just fine on my old Intel M 1.5 GHZ CPU, cheap Intel graphic card and 512 MB of RAM with 3-D effects, and Xubuntu (8.04) runs just fine on my desktop from 2002 that hasn't been upgraded.

Re:Why only offshore?

[ardle]

I've never seen that type of situation with all the unpaid OT... You'd be surprised at the number of IT workers that find themselves in that situation. A starter without much experience requires time to build:
- the understanding required to realise that they are being exploited (either through over-work, lack of training or a deliberately inefficient workflow being implemented in their workplace)
- the knowledge that will make another company want to hire them or allow them to work as an independent consultant
I noticed that you said that you will never work for free again, which suggests that you have been through some similar experience, as I have also (even as a contractor). I have always been willing to pay myself back time worked late on subsequent days (via shorter work days, longer breaks, etc. - nobody has given me grief doing it yet :-) but am aware that, in total, I have worked more hours than I have been paid. I'm getting better at avoiding the long days in the first place but, ironically, the only way you can guarantee this is to become familiar with code and practices in your workplace, which takes time in the first place ;-)
In programming work, the most important point-of-failure is in your head: if you can't understand a problem, you can't fix it, so can't reasonably expect to be paid. I haven't grudged an employer hours I have spent educating myself, only hours spent trying to understand bad code that would not have existed if the employer knew what they wanted in the first place (some poor sod had to code features before a design - or even proper requirements - were supplied, which leads to spaghetti code, copy-n-paste errors, etc., then I come along and I have to fix it in the process of adding another feature).

Re:Why only offshore?

[squizzar]

But if you think about it that may be the correct behaviour for best performance. I agree Windows memory management is terrible, and often seems to do stupid things, but I think that the case for optimal performance is a little more complex than you mention.

An (horrific and oversimplified) example: I run a simulation with a very large dataset (in the order of hundreds of megabytes to gigabytes of data), but it's in the background/not all the data is required at once. In the meantime I open and close firefox a few times. Now in your ideal, as much of my simulation data would remain in memory as possible, and firefox would be left out of the cache. However that won't lead to the optimum performance since firefox will be reloaded from disk each time which will be slower. In fact assuming all my RAM is used up by the simulation data, then some of it will have to page out to load firefox. It makes more sense to keep the firefox object code in RAM even after it has closed since it will respond faster if it is used again, and the simulation data was paged out anyway because there was not enough RAM, so no matter what it will have to be reloaded. It is admittedly a gamble, but I can see the case for paging out data that is incredibly rarely used in favour of having more memory available for a performance enhancing cache. This same behaviour is used on Linux and no doubt other systems.

That said I do agree that Windows seems to cling too much to its application cache, if you have several applications consuming very large amounts of memory and CPU time it seems that Windows is incapable of distributing the resources well. I have used Solaris systems that have had 6 or 7 simulations, each with gigabytes of data running simultaneously on a four processor machine. I only noticed that there was this much load when I went to run a simulation myself and it was quite slow. The responsiveness of other applications and the user interface was barely affected, something which I'd attribute to an operating system that does the right thing with memory and processor allocation.

Managing people is sooooo fun

[heroine]

Yes, managing people is everyone's goal in life. They get up in the morning and can't wait for another day of laying people off, interviewing people, assessing performance, allocating worthless raises, telling people they're not going to be able to pay their mortgage.

Have a feeling this guy either didn't have the mustard to get a job in U. Know. Where. or had another reason for being in China besides the career. There's no mention of what people are allowed to say on that "crystal clear connection" from the back of a cab, either.

Re:Managing people is sooooo fun

[justinlee37]

Yes, managing people is everyone's goal in life. They get up in the morning and can't wait for another day of laying people off, interviewing people, assessing performance, allocating worthless raises, telling people they're not going to be able to pay their mortgage.

Hey, just because you're not an asshole doesn't mean that isn't someone else's dream job. Stop acting so smug and self-important.

Re:Managing people is sooooo fun

[Kjella]

Yes, managing people is everyone's goal in life. They get up in the morning and can't wait for another day of laying people off, interviewing people, assessing performance, allocating worthless raises, telling people they're not going to be able to pay their mortgage. Hmm let's try a rewrite of that for the slashdot stereotype:
"Yes, developing software is everyone's goal in life. They get up in the morning and can't wait for another day of writing meaningless code based on business PHBs that don't know what they want, recieving changed requirements, upcoming deadlines, fixing obscure bugs, taking angry support calls all while getting as little social interaction as at all possible."

Fair description? Probably not. A lot of people really do like to make a team good - in case you haven't noticed being team captain, officer, chairman or any other "management" position is usually quite sought after. You should think IT people were used to be a support system. Well, then realize that managers are a support system so that a large group of people can do something reasonably coherent. Why should an IT manager be any less proud of making his team delivering a kick-ass application than each coder that supplied the bits? Is working around all sorts of lame bugs and design in the code really that much more fulfilling or productive? Having a good manager can easily swing the productivity of a team more than any individual can manage, no matter how brilliant. Or to be more precise, a lousy manager can deteroriate a team's performance much more than any useless coder could. I think those accomplishments as well as the paycheck is quite enough, very few find the raw doing of their work that fulfilling. I certainly take my biggest inspiration from seeing my code doing something useful, not all the design/coding/testing etc. as such, they're means to an end and if the code fails to achieve that end it's no fun. I figure that's much the same with managers, dealing with team problems is no fun but if you can see the team's performance improve that's all the inspiration they need.

Work in China?

[SilverJets]

No thanks, I like my freedoms right where they are.

Re:Work in China?

[plasmacutter]

I assume you live in canada?

I'm american, and I liked my freedoms the way they were before 1998

I'm confused

[Anonymous Coward]

The Chinese outsourcing market, at $1.7 billion last year, is growing at 38% a year, according to research by the Everest Group. This is creating opportunities for Westerners who want to go to China, learn the language, and help these Chinese offshore companies reach overseas markets.

So... the chinese are outsourcing to Westerners? Does that mean outsourcing has become recursive? Are there actually people working somewhere?

And, "Chinese offshore companies"? does that mean they operate on a boat?

Here's the story of one 25-year-old who started learning Mandarin on his plane ride over to China, three years ago

A 3 year long plane "ride"?

Selling out?

[plasmacutter]

Not many people can say they directly contribute to the pillaging of peoples' employment opportunity for the enrichment of a nation with no labor or even human rights, but, as with all corruption, there is serious money to be made if you can ignore or more preferably kill off those annoying morals.

So basically this guy sold his soul to the devil in a manner worse than even the sleaziest of attorneys.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

I don't think we have any idea

[smchris]

My wife and I were unemployed about a year and a half ago and we decided to take several very decent classes on 21st century job hunting presented by our state job service. The thing is, it was mandatory networking/extroversion to introduce yourself in some detail each time. I'd say probably 1 in 20 was just back from teaching English on the Mainland (2), Taiwan (1) or Thailand (1). Who'da thunk, because how often are you free to survey a room full of the unemployed?

Note, however, that they were _back_ from those jobs looking for something else so that should hint that Asia wasn't paradise.

When was this article written?

[hengist]

lives in a high-rise apartment in Chengdu

As in, the Chengdu in Sichuan province that got hit by an earthquake a week ago?

25 is too young

[timmarhy]

if he was a real go getter i could see him in a junior role or an assistant manager at most, but really in a firm that big he can't possibly have enough background. it's not a judgement on his skill, it's just that 25 years isn't nearly enough time to experience all that he needs to. I work for a billion dollar company, i'm older than he is and i've only just pushed my way into managing a small team of 6. not for lack of skill - i'm well respected in the company for my work - but because there is so much more to learn.

Re:25 is too young

[Chibi]

I think you're missing the main reason he was hired. He wasn't hired for his great managerial skills. He was hired because he was a native English-speaker. He's the face/voice that the company would like to present back to their English customers.

So, while it's admirable that you really want to develop your skills, you have to remember that sometimes the perception is what matters more (to some folks, at least).

You do it every time you buy

[EmbeddedJanitor]

You're voting with your dollars. Each time you buy something made in China you are indirectly hiring a Chinese worker and un-hiring an American.

Every time you eat a Californian tomato you're exploiting low-wage Mexican workers.

Alternatively, you're a philanthropist providing people in developing countries with much-needed income.

The facts are fixed, but you can spin it any way you want to.

Re:You do it every time you buy

[Rob_Bryerton]

"Every time you eat a Californian tomato you're exploiting low-wage Mexican workers."

With this in mind, I'll actively seek out as much produce from California as I can find! Thanks!

Nothing left to make but coffee...

[TheNucleon]

I just got done taking a first-term conversational Mandarin course. It was super interesting. I've been to China and wouldn't mind going and living there a while. I can understand why an adventurous soul would take this opportunity.

Still, is it really our goal to have all technical work done overseas, with us just pulling the strings? Where's the fun in that? I know why CEOs like it ($$$). But do the vast majority of us who _aren't_ CEOs like it?

This is a classic short-term vs long-term issue. When the US is left without the ability to produce anything of value (i.e., pretty soon), where will all the money come from to pay for goods (including code) and services produced overseas? We can't be the world's CEO - they won't go for it, and they shouldn't. Our value in the value chain is going to diminish. This isn't xenophobia, really. This is just me wanting our country to have something left to do when the music stops.

Pretty soon, we'll have a bunch of offices here, and nothing left to make but coffee.

Guess I'll keep learning Mandarin :-)

Re:Nothing left to make but coffee...

[timmarhy]

why do you want everyone to stay working class? why not raise up your society to the level where their intellect itself is valuable? people were saying the exact same nonsense when america off shored it's manufacturing and the sky hasn't fallen.

Re:Nothing left to make but coffee...

[TheNucleon]

Our intellect is only valuable as long as we can sell it. When someone offshore will sell theirs more cheaply, then we are out of luck.

You'd see how quickly this would grind to a screeching halt if they could offshore CEOs. (But, can you imagine the savings?)

Offshoring our manufacturing didn't make the sky fall right away, but keep your helmet handy. The freefall of the dollar is going to drive up import prices. We can't adapt by simply making our own stuff, because we've mothballed our capacity to do so. Chicken Little may yet have the last laugh.

As far as inhouse IT goes

[falconwolf]

it's more important to have some piece of software up and running to generate useful results that it is to have perfectly modular software that can be reused by changing the a couple of inherited classes.

While I agree it's important to get production code out to where it's used, I'd add that it's important to continue development and have a test bed.

a good programmer who writes bug-free modular code will probably end up doing himself out of the job because as time goes by, there will be less code that needs to changed or upgraded per job request.

I don't think so, unless the programmer is only good with a couple of things. First all too often there's mission creep. Then there's new OSes along with their new sets of APIs. Even once software is released and the bugs are ironed out there will be a demand for a "New and Improved" version. Maybe with new features or options.

Falcon

Re:Outsource for what?

[evil_aar0n]

The guy left for a job as a teacher. To me, that doesn't sound like he was in it just for the money. It might have been for the adventure of it; you know, the "having a life" aspect. I can see it that way: imagine the stories he'll have when he comes back. I'm envious.

re: lazy I.T. workers

[King_TJ]

Truthfully, what I've found (and even experienced myself) is, many I.T. workers in the U.S. aren't properly utilized, so they wind up appearing to be "lazy" and "doing just the bare minimum" to get by.

In most cases, these people were hired and sometimes even promoted because they were intelligent, fairly knowledgeable folks who started out adding a lot of value to the business.

But after the first year or two, they tend to get burnt-out, because after they successfully rip through all of the piled-up, outstanding projects and issues the company had before they brought them in, the company starts leaving them to manage themselves. The mentality tends to be one of, "Well, he already proved he's capable of solving our problems efficiently and effectively - so no need to waste time managing him anymore! If we're not getting complaints from anyone, that means he's out there doing his job!"

The thing is though, most I.T. people like a regular flow of challenges. The "putting out fires" stuff is more of a necessary evil than a reason the job is "motivating". The things that provide good puzzles to solve are the projects where new hardware or software is brought in, 99% of the time. And since those involve significant monetary investments - they're the ones that, #1. don't happen that often, and #2. suddenly involve more "managing" than usual, because people have a vested interest in figuring out if they're getting a return on the investment.

So after a while, you have your systems administrator who automated everything he could to minimize his day-to-day support calls, and just sits around web-surfing and IMiing until a good project comes his way.

Age has nothing to do with it

[symbolset]

I'm a geezer, so this isn't about me. Management is about personal responsibility, leadership and attention to detail. Some people will never be up to it. Some have to be trained. Some are capable right out of high school. Choose the right people and you're in the berries.

For a team leader give me the 21 year old corporal just back from Baghdad any day. He'll cut to the facts, bind the team and bring it home every time. He can't help it - he doesn't know how to do it any other way. Move him up fast and he'll be running a few hundred people before Joe Harvard has his MBA.

Get a better job elsewhere?

[Travoltus]

Uh, exactly where?

Hello, did you not read this article - they're offshoring work. Any tech job that you can try to get is bombarded with super stiff competition. Show me a job listing that isn't bombed with 10,000 resumes. Do note before you try to B.S. me on this, that I run a data center and I personally see these resume floods.

Employers can screw their employees over with unpaid overtime because their jobs are so in demand. IT workers are easily replaceable.

So, basically, if you leave a job that has tons of unpaid overtime, you're going to have crap luck trying to get another job, especially one that doesn't force unpaid overtime on you - or that doesn't do something else horrible. And as hard as my peers treat salesmen (which you are when you go c2c 1099), that whole 1099 thing will run an IT person into an early grave.

My advice is to get the hell out of IT and get into something like insurance. IT is a doomed career path.

Re:Get a better job elsewhere?

[fractoid]

Employers can screw their employees over with unpaid overtime because their jobs are so in demand. IT workers are easily replaceable. God, send some of your excess IT guys to Australia! My last job, there was a standing $3000 headhunting bonus for anyone who could recruit a an employee who lasted more than 3 months. My old agent still rings me occasionally to ask how happy I am and whether I'd like to consider switching jobs...

Re:Get a better job elsewhere?

[Wulfstan]

Not so easy with the points-based immigration system. Just being able to "do IT" won't get you the visa, unfortunately, and the Oz government is much stricter on foreign applicants now...

Re:Get a better job elsewhere?

[fractoid]

Hmm... good point, actually. I was over in Europe a couple of years ago and I actually copped a bit of hostility from Londoners because they had so many Aussies job-hunting there, and yet our government won't let them work here for more than 3 months or so. It's easy to forget when you're one of the privileged few how cranky our government can be towards foreigners. :/

It's all in the currency, boys.

[xtremee]

I'm located in South America (AR) and i charge $150 (in our local currency, which is pesos) an hour for my work.
For other companies living in the same country as me that's an outrageous amount of money, but for an offshore company with a currency worth 3 times more (or 5 times, if it pays in euros) is very cheap.

That the currency is favorable for us, third-world countries, is not our fault, nor it demonstrates a lack of "expertise" nor "quality" in our fields.

Oh, and one more thing. I've been programming for 9 long years but i have never earned a degree but when i work with engineers or computer scientists from my country or others that are less experienced they usually don't know what they are doing very well. They usually have a lot of problems understanding that theory is VERY different from practice.

But i have to tell you though, even i agree that it's a very dumb thing to do to put a 25 year old as an IT Manager.

immigrants take

[falconwolf]

Undesirable jobs that 'white people' don't want to do - e.g. janitorial work, low-paying service jobs, monotonous jobs like security guard, or hard jobs like construction (hours in the sun, hours in the rain, etc.).

As a white American I've had two of the types of jobs you list, maybe three. I worked in house keeping, janitorial, and I've worked in construction. Specifically working with concrete and masonry. And I got the construction job through a day labor pool I worked at.

1. Coming from poorer, less-educated countries, immigrants appreciate the value of a dollar. They don't take for granted that there will be food on the table, good working conditions, and a roof over their heads. They work for it because they know what it's like to go without it

Though not all many of those people I worked with through the labor pool were homeless. Some slept under bridges, some in tents in the woods, and some in a vehicle.

2. They know the value of hard work. Poorer Americans in particular are always looking for the 'quick fix', because they've been deluded into believing in the 'American Dream' - dream long enough and good things will come out of nowhere. They don't try to raise themselves up, because they expect someone else to do it for them.

Though not all, some of those I met at the labor pools were some of the hardest working people I met. I first went to a labor pool, temp agency, as a student in college. I don't know of any student, except a few disabled students, who worked as hard as some of those at the labor pool.

Falcon

offshore

[British]

My whole office got shut down and what we were doing for the past 10 years moved offshore to Taiwan. Spending a week teaching QA stuff was, interesting to say the least. I did it. Just took multiple explanations to do it. It will be interesting to see what the next version of the product is going to be now that development is roughly 100% offshored. When I left the company, some know-how about the app left with me. Didn't feel like documenting it since it would take forever to explain.

Hey, I worked for Symbio...

[Squeeze Truck]

I work in outsourcing in China and I've worked under a few of these child managers. None of the ones I know speak any foreign language, yet they are in a position to manage teams speaking Japanese, Chinese, and Korean.

My experience has been that these guys perform unbelievably poorly, mostly because of their ignorance of the region and lack of language skills. East Asia is NOT the US, or even Europe. There are cultural differences, and then there are differences. The most markedly schism is between the Chinese and Japanese.

Trying to manage the reigon as if it was the same as anyplace else is a recipe for disaster, but these young managers never figure that out until its too late.

Red Herring

[Starky]

I am an American who currently lives in China and can assure you, while there are success stories, and certainly fortunes are being made here, the idea that Americans can pop on over to China and be masters of the universe is a red herring at best.

Some reasons that it is not all you might think it is:
1) The salaries are often lower. Much lower. It used to be that multinationals paid Western wages for work in China, but that is not always true today. You'll be told that the standard of living is lower, so that makes up for it, but even though you can live like a king in many areas for $10,000 / year, you aren't going to be saving much for retirement at that level.
2) The salaries are not necessarily going up for Westerners. A lot of foreigners are drawn by the oft-repeated story of the boom economy in China. As a result, there is downward pressure on salaries for Westerners in many sectors with companies offering less to people who they perceive as having a desire to live in China. When I was talking to a friend who has been here for some time about working in China, he said if you express a desire to work in China, they'll offer you Chinese wages.
3) There is a very real glass ceiling.
- Few foreigners really learn the language. It takes about 3-4 times as long to learn Chinese as another European language, and that's if you're really trying. Most foreigners come to China thinking they'll learn the language by osmosis and ultimately return home several years later knowing how to give directions to a cab driver and not much else.
- Moreover, the cultures are vastly different, and it's difficult to establish the kinds of quality relationships that you need to progress in business. And certain concepts such as honesty and integrity are very different here, resulting in many foreigners under the impression that they are establishing sound business relationships and friendships getting screwed in the end.
- There is still a very nationalistic "us versus them" kind of attitude among Chinese nationals, and this bias makes it difficult for a foreigner to be treated as an equal, even if they speak Chinese, in terms of promotion and opportunities for advancement.

While there are certainly opportunities here in China, I would recommend anyone thinking of making a career move to China doing extra due diligence before they dive in.