Re:My Company Uses Offshore Labor...
on
U.S. Jobs Jumping Ship
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Amen
Having rewritten 90% of the code we got back - after painfully detailed specs were prepared - I don't see any benefit in this offshore work. We have the same problems you are experiencing.
Bad communication.
Hopelessly inflated skill levels.
No real accountability.
Yet, and this is the kicker, management will continue to think this is worth it because these guys charge $6/h and I charge $60/h. No amount of common sense or proof of past screw-ups can convince them that the guy with the cheapest rate isn't always the cheapest guy to do the job.
More importantly. Emails prove that you said what you said. On the phone there is no record and it's just you against the other guy and if the other guy is the boss or more senior then you usually lose. With an email in their face they don't stand a chance.
I have successfully defended many a project decision by pulling out a critical email.
Note that not all MS Office tools work properly with tab like features? You open two excel files at the same time you get two listings on the taskbar, while the close button on top of each document window is for entire excel?
Go to the view tab in Excel/Word's Options (Tools Menu) and uncheck the box marked "Windows in Taskbar". Viola! All is back to normal with multiple documents contained within 1 window again.
This is all part of the plan you see. They get webmasters to subscribe so that they can use that 20min window to try and get a minimalist website going...
I don't really care if the person coding my project puts in a backdoor if I can sue them into oblivion when it's discovered/used.
Can somebody please explain to me what this huge american obsession is with suing people.?
How about just doing things right in the first place and taking some responsibility by checking things out instead of relying on a piece of paper and a lawyer to "fix" it later on.
Oh...I forgot. Nobody is ever responsible for their actions anymore.
I don't think it's going to be such a big secret as they're going to give the list to ISPs (I think). As long as they do that, I think it'll be ok. People will notice if they can suddenly no longer get to specific political sites or what-not.
The problem here is that most people won't realise why they couldn't access the website. (Unless a proper notice is returned saying why the site couldn't be accessed.) Thus, people will just think a site is down or had gone out of business.
I have to agree with you on this one. The US is way to obsessed with CC numbers. Somehow they magically believe that a CC history can tell you everything there is to know about a person.
Sadly, their conclusions are more often than not the complete opposite of what they should be. e.g. I can guarantee you that anybody that requested the CC history of the head honchos at Enron or Worldcom would have been blown away by how "good" these people were.
The absolute best defence is randomness. There is no possible strategy that can defeat randomness.
By profiling people - in any way whatsover - all you are doing is telling a potential hijacker what not to do.
The 9/11 hijackers did a number of flights to determine what would trigger the "alarms" and what wouldn't. Exactly the same thing will happen here until we reach a point where the only people to set off a search alarm will be honest citizens. The real criminals will have made sure that they have faded perfectly into the background.
However, if you search people randomly then the criminal will never know if he can sneak past or not.
"The expected £130m net annual income from the charge will be spent on improving bus services, which are disproportionately used by the poor."
'Nuff said
Let's talk again in 3 years time when the money has instead been spent something completely different. Where I come from, they levy a tax on your fuel to pay for road maintenance. Somehow, mysteriously, every year when the budget comes around this fund is drained and poured into whatever "cause of the day" the government deems to be worthy.
Don't even try to convince me that this won't happen here.
Rail travel should be the mode of choice over 50 miles. Instead it is cheaper to travel by car.
I can drive the family from here to the capital and back [about 150 miles] for about £25. Take the train and we're looking at £120 for the four of us.
Amen! I have family in the UK and when I visited them recently I was horrified at these prices. So, I also drove my family up to London, parked the car for the day and drove back. (All our expenses - including meals - came to less than 2/3 of the rail fare.) That's criminal!
I have said it before: If you want people to use the public transport then you have to make it appealling. Trying to make the alternatives less appealling doesn't work because people can eventually see through the deception.
If you are running windows, then run Proxomitron. It is a local proxy server. I run it all the time and never see popups. It also kills most other adverts as well.
Xml allows me to stamp out robust document schemas in minutes or hours, instead of months or even years if working from scratch.
Um, how has XML helped you to do this better than say using a binary format that you - and the guys you work with - thought up all on your own?
Now, don't get me wrong. I use XML to store my datafiles because I like storing things in ASCII so that anybody can grab stuff out of my files later and work with them.
The only advantage that XML has brought to the table compared to the straight ASCII that I was using before is that somebody looking at my file later will more easily be able to figure out where I stored the phone number and where I stored the serial number.
All of this could be done in ASCII. Hey, with a bit of patience on the second guy's part it can be done in binary as well. XML's contribution is nil or minor.
You posted a reply to a comment and thought you might get first post? Your low user id betrays you!
Uhm, "first post on this" meaning the first post discussing the parents peephole affinity.
The bus left. Everyone was on it. Except you.
from the original post...
Imagine a bus rounding a corner and the text compensating by scrolling.
I imagine what happened here was that the bus left, gvonk was on it, but the text scrolled past and he missed the key words.
Let me get this straight... these folks say they're promoting an "Open Standard" that costs twice as much to implement as much as Microsoft's proprietary solution?
The implementation cost has nothing to do with the selling price if you can afford to take a temporary loss. By taking a loss now, you can gain future market share at which time you can recover your money at your leisure.
If a site wants to charge me for viewing it's information, the chances are that there will be plenty of other sites that contain the same or similar information for free.
The problem is actually deeper than that. With this system I would pay and then look.
e.g. Search for a site on widget maintenance, fork over the cash and then discover that it was a useless site that didn't tell me anything I needed to know.
That more than anything else is what would bug me about a pay-per-view type internet.
Actually, I use SAP (one of the largest software companies in the world in case you weren't aware). Their products come with all the source code available to you. I have come across a number of funny comments embedded in the code.
Personally, I think the odd piece of humor adds to the project and is good even in a so called professional environment.
Slashdot Mirror
Amen
Having rewritten 90% of the code we got back - after painfully detailed specs were prepared - I don't see any benefit in this offshore work. We have the same problems you are experiencing.
Bad communication.
Hopelessly inflated skill levels.
No real accountability.
Yet, and this is the kicker, management will continue to think this is worth it because these guys charge $6/h and I charge $60/h. No amount of common sense or proof of past screw-ups can convince them that the guy with the cheapest rate isn't always the cheapest guy to do the job.
More importantly. Emails prove that you said what you said. On the phone there is no record and it's just you against the other guy and if the other guy is the boss or more senior then you usually lose. With an email in their face they don't stand a chance.
I have successfully defended many a project decision by pulling out a critical email.
Note that not all MS Office tools work properly with tab like features? You open two excel files at the same time you get two listings on the taskbar, while the close button on top of each document window is for entire excel?
Go to the view tab in Excel/Word's Options (Tools Menu) and uncheck the box marked "Windows in Taskbar". Viola! All is back to normal with multiple documents contained within 1 window again.
This is all part of the plan you see. They get webmasters to subscribe so that they can use that 20min window to try and get a minimalist website going...
I don't really care if the person coding my project puts in a backdoor if I can sue them into oblivion when it's discovered/used.
Can somebody please explain to me what this huge american obsession is with suing people.?
How about just doing things right in the first place and taking some responsibility by checking things out instead of relying on a piece of paper and a lawyer to "fix" it later on.
Oh...I forgot. Nobody is ever responsible for their actions anymore.
I don't think it's going to be such a big secret as they're going to give the list to ISPs (I think). As long as they do that, I think it'll be ok. People will notice if they can suddenly no longer get to specific political sites or what-not.
The problem here is that most people won't realise why they couldn't access the website. (Unless a proper notice is returned saying why the site couldn't be accessed.) Thus, people will just think a site is down or had gone out of business.
I have to agree with you on this one. The US is way to obsessed with CC numbers. Somehow they magically believe that a CC history can tell you everything there is to know about a person.
Sadly, their conclusions are more often than not the complete opposite of what they should be. e.g. I can guarantee you that anybody that requested the CC history of the head honchos at Enron or Worldcom would have been blown away by how "good" these people were.
The absolute best defence is randomness. There is no possible strategy that can defeat randomness.
By profiling people - in any way whatsover - all you are doing is telling a potential hijacker what not to do.
The 9/11 hijackers did a number of flights to determine what would trigger the "alarms" and what wouldn't. Exactly the same thing will happen here until we reach a point where the only people to set off a search alarm will be honest citizens. The real criminals will have made sure that they have faded perfectly into the background.
However, if you search people randomly then the criminal will never know if he can sneak past or not.
By opening it in a new tab it's easy to keep an eye on the "loading" indicator. (In Netscape it shows a spinning icon.)
That way I can easily continue browsing my current document and only flip over to the new document once it is completely loaded.
That might not seem like a big deal to a lot of people, but it makes all the difference for me.
"The expected £130m net annual income from the charge will be spent on improving bus services, which are disproportionately used by the poor."
'Nuff said
Let's talk again in 3 years time when the money has instead been spent something completely different. Where I come from, they levy a tax on your fuel to pay for road maintenance. Somehow, mysteriously, every year when the budget comes around this fund is drained and poured into whatever "cause of the day" the government deems to be worthy.
Don't even try to convince me that this won't happen here.
Rail travel should be the mode of choice over 50 miles. Instead it is cheaper to travel by car. I can drive the family from here to the capital and back [about 150 miles] for about £25. Take the train and we're looking at £120 for the four of us.
Amen! I have family in the UK and when I visited them recently I was horrified at these prices. So, I also drove my family up to London, parked the car for the day and drove back. (All our expenses - including meals - came to less than 2/3 of the rail fare.) That's criminal!
I have said it before: If you want people to use the public transport then you have to make it appealling. Trying to make the alternatives less appealling doesn't work because people can eventually see through the deception.
"rocket surgery"
Hah, now that's even funnier.
No this is a proper term. E.g. I believe Bush is planning some Rocket Surgery for Saddam Hussein.
If you are running windows, then run Proxomitron. It is a local proxy server. I run it all the time and never see popups. It also kills most other adverts as well.
Xml allows me to stamp out robust document schemas in minutes or hours, instead of months or even years if working from scratch.
Um, how has XML helped you to do this better than say using a binary format that you - and the guys you work with - thought up all on your own?
Now, don't get me wrong. I use XML to store my datafiles because I like storing things in ASCII so that anybody can grab stuff out of my files later and work with them.
The only advantage that XML has brought to the table compared to the straight ASCII that I was using before is that somebody looking at my file later will more easily be able to figure out where I stored the phone number and where I stored the serial number.
All of this could be done in ASCII. Hey, with a bit of patience on the second guy's part it can be done in binary as well. XML's contribution is nil or minor.
You posted a reply to a comment and thought you might get first post? Your low user id betrays you!
Uhm, "first post on this" meaning the first post discussing the parents peephole affinity.
The bus left. Everyone was on it. Except you.
from the original post...
Imagine a bus rounding a corner and the text compensating by scrolling.
I imagine what happened here was that the bus left, gvonk was on it, but the text scrolled past and he missed the key words.
Pulled from the article on CNN...
Critics say the Segway is a safety hazard on sidewalks because it weighs 69 pounds and travels at up to 12.5 mph
12mph is a little different from the 40mph you were throwing around.
You might want to repost this in another discussion as this one got a bit washed away with the avalanche of posts here.
/."
Even better - try to get it submitted as an "Ask
No, just a signed driver.
Let me get this straight... these folks say they're promoting an "Open Standard" that costs twice as much to implement as much as Microsoft's proprietary solution?
The implementation cost has nothing to do with the selling price if you can afford to take a temporary loss. By taking a loss now, you can gain future market share at which time you can recover your money at your leisure.
There are a number of countries (I can only think of South Africa as an example right now) that have banned VoIP and are forcing the ISPs to comply.
This has been done purely to protect the phone companies. With enough lobbying that can happen anywhere.
Now, if you could run the hot water through a hollow toilet seat for those cold winter mornings, then you will have something useful going.
If a site wants to charge me for viewing it's information, the chances are that there will be plenty of other sites that contain the same or similar information for free.
The problem is actually deeper than that. With this system I would pay and then look.
e.g. Search for a site on widget maintenance, fork over the cash and
then discover that it was a useless site that didn't tell me anything I needed to know.
That more than anything else is what would bug me about a pay-per-view type internet.
Sir, /. coming to? :)
I - and millions of others applaud you for your diligence. Going to check the spelling of a word!? What is
Seriously though, I know everybody always goes on about content rather than the spelling, but it just drives me nuts when I see loose instead of lose.
Thank you! (especially on important words like bosom)
Actually, I use SAP (one of the largest software companies in the world in case you weren't aware). Their products come with all the source code available to you. I have come across a number of funny comments embedded in the code.
Personally, I think the odd piece of humor adds to the project and is good even in a so called professional environment.
I dunno about you, but I don't envy her trying to CTRL-ALT-DEL her way out of a lockup.