Jodi, a.k.a. Guinevere, recently posted this comment in regards to my off-shoring stories post. I didn’t want it buried in the comments, so here it is:
For many years I worked for a cbt/wbt company. My skills ranged from an artist and art director to project manager. About a year and a half before I quit and began contracting on my own, I worked on several projects that we were outsourced to India. Recently, I have been contracted to be a state side art director on a project where production is completed by another off-shore company located in India.
The most amazing part of using off-shore companies is the price. A friend of mine recently did some pricing for an off-shore project:
LMS - $200/day
artist/flash developer - $15/hr
programmers/developer - $20/hr
Instructional Designers -$20/hr
Their employees probably make one third of that, which is sad, but in their country it's a great salary where they can actually feed their family and afford a stove to cook it on.
Years ago when we first started working with off-shore production companies they were not a very large threat. We had to set up everything making it "idiot proof" so all they had to do was to plug in graphics, content or whatever. Recently, I've noticed that several years later, nothing has changed. They do not want to think for themselves, not even slightly; and if you don't tell them exactly what to it, it just might not get done. A developer friend of mine described it perfectly by stating, "If you tell them to build a blue house, but don't them the exact dimensions or where, they don't build it. Next time you meet with them, you ask "Hey, where's the blue house?' and they reply, 'you did not tell us where to put it, or how big, so we did not build it."
American companies are used to people doing some kinds of thinking for themselves. Often, there is not enough detail in the info we are supplying them to get the job completed as planned. Their solution is always to throw more people on the job. They do meet their deadlines, but with a lot of anxiety and stress from the American team.
They have a lot of very talented Developers, but the element of not having the ability to think for themselves, is a real problem. Most companies look to their developers for solutions to problems. They say, "We need this, and that" and the developer says, "then I recommend doing it this way, or that way." Well, the offshore companies often say, "How do you want us to do that?" Can you see the problem there?
I have known a few great foreign (from India specifically) developers that live and work in the states and they are excellent and free thinking, so it makes me wonder if it's not just a cultural thing, but a hierarchy issue; where they have been programmed to ask before thinking, as to not step on someone's toes. Upon working in America they quickly learn that things are different here.
I don't like off-shore outsourcing; some companies are calling it 'Global Resources'! The company I used to work for has laid off 40% of its production team. I believe every one of them has found work elsewhere, but many are not as happy, doing less than their qualifications and making less money. I will never believe that off-shore rescoring is good for the American economy, like I've read in several places. I will never believe that it's the perfect solution that corporations are trying to make believe.