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Comment by osrec | Hacker News Reader

I suppose it was a long time coming. Why send your work half way across the world, for it to be done/corrected 3 times over with often poor results, when you can do it once and do it right onshore. In my experience, offshoring is the absolute epitome of a false economy!

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The type of company that hires these companies don't have the corporate structures necessary to build decent software either. They'll build crap 3 times over with poor results and cost more doing it.

I'm sure you've heard about those people with 10 years of experience that are unable to code fizzbuzz? They hide out in those large corporate environments.

Yes, I've come to the realisation that large corporations are where the spirits of good developers go to die...

Microsoft, Apple, Google, FB and other places with awesome devs are also large corporations :)

I'm pretty sure the parent posters were referring to large corporations whose core product is not technology as such, although even there, you'd be surprised (or maybe you wouldn't). You don't have to get far from MS/Apple/Google/FB/etc. to walk into an alternate universe of complete mediocrity, where engineering and development are viewed as cost centres and/or fancy forms of typing...

Even within those companies lurk a lot of mediocrity, either acquired or homegrown. MS and Google have had some stinkers over the years, apple seems better, but the probably keep the worst of it internal.

If you ever read stories about internal political wars at those places, you will realize they aren't so great to work there.

Specially taking into account the type of assemments being done to the employees, or which R&D unit is driving the main products (e.g. WinDev vs DevTools).

Yes, places like Microsoft System Research are great, but that is just a unit from the whole corporation. Same applies to the others.

> for it to be done/corrected 3 times over with often poor results, when you can do it once and do it right onshore.

Well the Indian IT companies have been growing for the last 30 years so they must be doing something right.

Finding customers that will pay them for what they do?

Many people managing software teams or budgets don't understand the coding business at all. Those people are like vegetarians running steakhouses.

> Finding customers that will pay them for what they do?

I am not sure why are you so confused, that is how pretty much all for profit companies work or was it a poor attempt at sarcasm?

it was a direct answer to you saying 'they must be doing something right' the implication being that while they are able to find paying customers, what they are /not/ doing right is the actual work of developing software.

the parent points out that this market inefficiency exists because the people making purchasing decisions are not technically competent enough to truly evaluate the vendors that are selling them these development contracts.

A company can make money selling a bad product, it happens all the time; and its a well know phrase in finance that 'markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent'

First of all if you going to quote Keynes, use it in the right context. We are not talking about stock market here.

So you are telling me that these Indian outsourcing companies who have been growing for 30 years with billions of dollars in revenue is all because they are selling a bad product.

So the Indian companies are like wolves eating feeble Western companies like lambs. Do you realize how ridiculous that sounds.

Because the majority of the customers are not IT companies, they just want a bunch of developers to help them provide a customized solution to a specific problem.

After that they are perfectly fine not having IT people around.

The time each company had a set of developers to sit around and help them on as needed basis, is gone and won't be coming back.

Those that want to keep around onsite development need to upskill their social skills, and also be able to bridge between developer, architect and business relations.

> After that they are perfectly fine not having IT people around.

I've never seen this work in practice. It always takes almost as many people to properly maintain a solution as it did to build it, there is no "done" state where the can get rid of the developers. It was accepted as far back as the mythical man month that maintenance is where the vast bulk of software costs are.

> Those that want to keep around onsite development need to upskill their social skills, and also be able to bridge between developer, architect and business relations.

At this rate we're about a decade a way from expecting developers to be one man corporations.

> I've never seen this work in practice. It always takes almost as many people to properly maintain a solution as it did to build it, there is no "done" state where the can get rid of the developers. It was accepted as far back as the mythical man month that maintenance is where the vast bulk of software costs are.

Those companies see software development as a cost and not something that need to be kept around.

Usually we also don't have someone sitting on our building to repair the doors when they get broken, we call someone to repair or replace them, when the need arises.

> At this rate we're about a decade a way from expecting developers to be one man corporations.

If you are living in an European country this has already happen long time ago.

In countries like Portugal, many companies are hiring developers on "Green receipts", which are literally one man corporations.

Similarly in countries like Germany and Switzerland, many consultants are freelancers, or work for a consulting company that plays the same role as agents do for sport and movie industries, giving them a fee. Also expected to be an one man corporation from the customer point of view.

The glorified idea of the developer that codes all day long on his cubicle/desk without anything else to worry about is long dead, at least in western part of the globe, when targeting the industries that don't sell software.

It always takes almost as many people to properly maintain a solution as it did to build it, there is no "done" state where the can get rid of the developers. It was accepted as far back as the mythical man month that maintenance is where the vast bulk of software costs are.

... accepted by companies run by people who read the Mythical Man Month.

Then there's the rest of the corporate world. These things you say are absolutely true, and yet not a day goes by that a company isn't learning that lesson, quite expensively--or better yet, failing to learn that lesson over and over.

Just take every comments like these with a pinch of salt, some people are so against Indian IT firms that they spew all kinds of nonsense. "automation and AI" being one of it.

I already reviewed code delivered by several European consulting companies with worse quality than many Indian IT firms, including those on the article.

The sad reality is that the way software is delivered at enterprise level, there is hardly any company that can be shown as example of excellence.

Only price and the output of applications matter, not how they are running inside.

Yep, but there is disproportionate flak which certain countries face :)

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