On 11/08/2016 04:37 PM, Todd Millecam wrote:

To me, your role is closest to that of a parasite. You aren't doing any real work, you aren't making anything new. I'd assert that in this scenario you are not helping your community, you're taking advantage of them in nearly every case.

So are most "recruiting firms" like Teksystems, and frankly even my current org to some extent, still I think much as you often do here. I have found people contact me/us, because we have good reputation, and they expect we can find other suitable candidates are are most *like* us. I find them someone, screen them for cruft, pass them along a suitable candidate, and did this for free for people for years, before realizing the really crappy ones even get 15-30% of their salary in exchange barely parasitic effort vs. my actually vetting them both personally and professionally. Most are usually happy to even pay, as they both trust our judgment and saved them a hassle of having to sort through hundreds or thousands of resumes.

The flip side, I get calls, emails, linkedin notices for jobs constantly from "recruiting firms" that send me random things like ".Net developer needed" or "Call Center Agents starting at $9.60/hr" because apparently they don't know the difference between me building call centers to working in one. I think most can attest to my love of microsoft anything that the former is likewise not appropriate, but since most are coming from Indian names, I usually can presume there is a call center full of these folks doing nothing more than scamming to make a buck, the Wipros and InfoSys's just developed a better pimp hand in the same scheme at a higher level. I can only imagine the guys jumping on these "wonderful opportunities" there trying to get over here, enough to fake an equally clueless acting recruiter there.

Hire an offshore dev and it won't be to specification, and you're most likely going to generate a subpar UX at best. You're burning your relationship with your clients by delivering crap. You are probably helping the offshore dev's community the most.

I've found most of these "engagements" to be traps, really. You almost never get a real, finished, quality product (pick 2! maybe 1, sometimes none), and as you said, subpar at best. It seems the promise is often more with 3-10 offshore engineers provided for any one american engineer, and you're bound to get *some* better value. Not imho, but I know plenty of american dirtbags that still get around in the industry somehow too making far more still too.

Hire someone locally at fair consulting wages, and really what value are you? If they take the time and do a direct hire, then they cut out the middle man (your costs) and get to devote more money to building a better product and a healthy business relationship. More money to the final product absolutely helps the community.

Local resources, in the office, and actually becoming part of their team is necessary. Any time I've worked for, been to, or been around mega-corps that do H1B, it almost becomes a perpetual cycle of fail. The ones most often cheering for more H1B's like Oracle, Microsoft, Google, and lots of local sweatshops even also coincidentally often have heavy penetration of Indian management too. Bringin' back something for da hood - theirs.

I saw this at one corp I'll decline to name to protect the stupid, talked about how big of a prior failure a crm rewrite was, how many millions were lost on it ~(50m I think was a number tossed), and everyone from csr's to management hated, and was practically a 4 letter word. Promises would be made that the 2.0 version would be better, they learned from their lessons, reviled the company that did it (one of the mega Indian outsource firms, again protecting the stupid), and said it would be better. They ended up giving it back to the same company, at triple the bid to "try again", went forward with the 2.0 project. SMH, wha?

After working with the engineers for a week after kickoff, it was quite apparently their people had no clue how to run the servers, build the apps, and simply hired a bunch of wet-behind-the-ears grad students pooped out of whatever they consider education/certification there, and while not stupid, had no experience, and in most cases, much common sense. It_was_painful to watch unfolding if not rather comedic if considered as bofh-ish or dilbertonian at how it should likely end.

I'm presuming there had to be some monumental credit/cash earned somewhere in doing this, either way stunk as bad as the garbage dump. This was also not the first or last time seeing the same since, cycle of pain repeats at most larger orgs as they outgrow their skins almost habitually and follow bad example in ousourcing as an alternative.

It was one of the proverbial straws that made me move on in my choice to do so. Years later, I've heard recounts how miserable a failure that was too from acquaintances come/gone/staying, so ad nauseum, some ~$200m absorbed somewhere, for some awful reasons as I saw it coldly.

Now, if you can justify your $85/hour and prove that you are adding that value to the product then you're lubricant in the wheels of business and needed to prevent gridlock. In any case, if I could use the analogy of a chemical reaction, you play either the role of an impurity or a catalyst--but in no situation are you a significant part of the solution so your take should be reflective of that.

What I find suspect is really that these things like said example above seem to have absolutely no rational sense when you look at them from the surface, that you wonder just how it could be done at all, let alone the fact I was internal to the engineering that showed nothing good was ever going to come of the clueless bastards they were unleashing. I've seen empirical data both first hand and third party that says it simply does not work, not just the above, but many times within the past 15 years, in many different orgs and even state/local to lesser extents.

Cisco is a good example of this, that you could plot a line in customer satisfaction and product quality on a distinct decline with the amount of outsourcing they began during the end of the 90's. It really made nothing better, it just gave them better on-paper bottom lines as they were plumping like a fat hog with rotten guts, but you also began to see more and more Indian management. In networking they're still the 3000lb hog that still succeeds like bad government, but their quality (read, stability) itself is often merely a shell of what it once was as a real leader. Simply too big to fail now either way, so why not do it dirty.

I often find the reasons suspect in outsourcing decisions too. Again in my experience, is once one outsourced person rises high enough, it's like the mob - they hire more out of gratuity or responsibility to their people, despite how frigging terrible the people are. Suddenly justifications are much easier and glossed over when the manager is the same, wants to bring their cousins over to pimp^H^H^H^Hmake a better life. Corporate and national nepotism at its finest.

It has become a warning sign to me for a company how bad it will be when there are certain percentages or samplings of "those folks" at a place. I remember walking around another large financial org here on an interview ages ago, entering the building felt like I just stepped off a bus in Bangalore, and was pretty much instantly disinterested in ever working there. Now I just figure out before ever stepping foot near a place.

YMMV

-mb

On Tue, Nov 8, 2016 at 2:23 PM, Eric Cope <eric.cope@gmail.com> wrote:

are you burning that $85? Will you save (which is then invested either through loans or invested in the market, same thing) or spend (which does affect the community)?
If you can create value for your customer, and you can find someone willing to work for less, then it sounds fine to me.

Thats called creating wealth.

On Tue, Nov 8, 2016 at 1:19 PM, Keith Smith <techlists@phpcoderusa.com> wrote:

Hi,

I am a PHP programmer and I have a knack for Internet marketing.

Say I decide to build a lead site or cultivate leads from the greater phoenix area. Projects you may qualify for. Then I hire an off shore developer. I pay this off shore developer $12 - $15 an hour while charging my client $100 or more an hour. I line my pockets with $85 plus and hour.

Does this course of action help my community?

What if my choice was to pay you a fair wage (or consulting fee) to work the project or hire that off shore developer for 25% of what your willing to work for? I would make much less as well.

I'd like you to tell me what to do. Hire you or someone off shore. Please tell me what to do.

Keith
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