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
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