Because nobody has ever had problems w/ expensive domestic contractors. * rolls eyes *
This story is meant to scare us away from offshoring but if I'm to be convinced I'd need to see some stats and studies that show wide-scale differences in code quality. Until then this story is just an anecdote and we all know how much those are worth.
I'd need to see some stats and studies that show wide-scale differences in code quality.
There's a good reason why offshore contractors have code of generally lower quality. Here's what a Chinese friend has told me about the employment situation for coders in China. The good programmers usually get good jobs at local firms--most of which don't do outsourcing. The outsourcing positions are primarily taken by the lower-quality programmers.
Thus, when you outsource to China, you're often effectively self-selecting the worst programmers to work on your project. This leads to stereotypes that Chinese programmers are incompetent idiots, when in fact the reality is just that bad Chinese programmers are incompetent idiots, no different than bad Western programmers.
Obviously I have no statistics on this, but I'm inclined to at least somewhat trust the word of someone who has lived there and had experience with the industry. It's also a better explanation than "Chinese are bad programmers" or some equally racist answer.
All Daily WTFs are anecdotes, designed to appeal to IT engineers and programmers, and usually portraying business owners and managers (and the other programmer) in an unfavorable light. It's a formula.
Totally useless for any insight about how to start or run a business.
All DailyWTFs submissions get mangled and rewritten by Alex before being posted, often to the point of having nothing left from the original. At least Atwood drops a few big <blockquote>s in before inserting his inept analysis.
He's a hack. He has a thing for turning factual accounts into shitty urban legends.
Joking aside, if you are in a place, or are in a situation where the legal system is not likely to provide much recourse if someone doesn't pay or tries to rip you off, I think some sort of backdoor isn't that bad an idea.
I don't like the part of not paying the offshore team. Sure, fire them if you want to, but pay up on billable hours.
On the other hand, since there is no legal recourse in some other countries, keeping some offshore teams on dev servers with no access to production systems may make sense. But, I tend to work with the same people in Russia, India, Brazil, and Vietnam over the years, and we develop a high level of mutual trust.
I had a similar experience outsourcing to India. While the English wasn't as broken, and as far as I could tell, the code was clean, the one week project took one month to finish with bugs in the end.
There are millions of programmers in India. Saying "Don't outsource to India, your project will be late and bug ridden" is like saying "Don't go to America, you'll be attacked by a bear".
This story is meant to scare us away from offshoring but if I'm to be convinced I'd need to see some stats and studies that show wide-scale differences in code quality. Until then this story is just an anecdote and we all know how much those are worth.