I managed an Indian team we inherited when we were bought by an American company. When us Canadians looked at outsourcing to India years ago, we concluded that the Indian folks cost just as much as we did, so there was no point.
But like I said, we inherited this team and were told to use them. The price turned out to be maybe 25-35% cheaper than Canadians would have cost - that surprised us.
So we did the "communications intensive" thing - specified in fine detail, lots of late-night conference calls, code reviews, examples, feedback galore. Cost us a lot of time and effort.
And in the end we found that you get what you pay for. In spite of all our efforts the team did not perform - we had to throw out everything they did for us - it just didn't work. We asked around and found that a good team would cost us as much as good Canadians.
In the end, the Indians, and half the Canadians, and most of the Americans got laid off when the e-business bubble burst.
Slashdot Mirror
I managed an Indian team we inherited when we were bought by an American company. When us Canadians looked at outsourcing to India years ago, we concluded that the Indian folks cost just as much as we did, so there was no point.
But like I said, we inherited this team and were told to use them. The price turned out to be maybe 25-35% cheaper than Canadians would have cost - that surprised us.
So we did the "communications intensive" thing - specified in fine detail, lots of late-night conference calls, code reviews, examples, feedback galore. Cost us a lot of time and effort.
And in the end we found that you get what you pay for. In spite of all our efforts the team did not perform - we had to throw out everything they did for us - it just didn't work. We asked around and found that a good team would cost us as much as good Canadians.
In the end, the Indians, and half the Canadians, and most of the Americans got laid off when the e-business bubble burst.
Caveat emptor?