Disconnected Thoughts On Outsourcing
March 02, 2004 | 
23 Comments
I’ve been thinking quite a bit about outsourcing in the last few months. I’ve read the Wired article, The New Face of The Silicon Age, and can really see both sides of the issue.
As with many things in life there is no real right or wrong. It all really depends on where you sit and what your situation is.
Outsourcing is no different. I do think that it can be a terrible risk, and if not done right it can backfire in a big, big way.
I also think there are times when outsourcing can be of great benefit. I’ve actually had the chance to work with Indian developers on a project, albeit in an ancillary way, and it worked out very well. It was tricky and had to be heavily managed on our end, but it allowed us to get projects done faster as they’d work while our developers slept. All in all it was a small gain, but a gain none the less.
That it worked in that particular situation is by no means a wholesale endorsement of outsourcing. I think with many projects and many job functions you are much better off bringing people in or using what resources you have available to you already in house.
Heck, I’ve seen local outsourcing fail much more often than not, and if you can’t make that work how do you expect off-shore or oversea outsourcing to work?
Outsourcing Web Jobs
Which brings me to my feelings on outsourcing and Web related jobs. After much thought and much discussion I’ve come to the conclusion that outsourcing Web design, development, and production is much to risky and much to hard to do right, to be worth attempting in most cases.
You’d really need to match the right project to the right outsourced talent. Something that most often is not done. I could see this changing in the future, but it’ll need to come from both ends. Right now the pool of outsourced talent seems to be rather hard to wade through.
It really depends on the company, the resources available and the projects needing to be worked on, but by and large, there are just too many things that can go wrong to justify any perceived cost savings.
I guess what I’m saying is that I think it could be done to some degree, but I’m just not sure it would be worth it. The management of outsourced workers alone should easily dissuade many companies against this, particularly on larger projects. I think many who will try outsourcing Web projects will quickly realize this.
It’s not so much the spacial separation that I see being a problem. I’ve worked on quite a few projects myself where I’ve never even talked to my clients on the phone, let alone met them face to face.
I just feel with many job functions you need someone who you can communicate accurately and quickly with. Time differences as well as language barriers and cultural differences can make this tricky at best. There can be no room for confusion when communicating about this projects. Confusion can cost you money.
This can be a challenge when dealing with many workers overseas. There are other issues, especailly when it comes to creative or communication work.
The other big misconception with outsourcing is that it’s all cheap. As with anything you’ll usually get what you pay for. Although there is no doubting the talent vs. cost benefits of overseas developers. They can just do the same things for cheaper. However, there are other costs involved with any type of outsoucing and even if you save some money in the short term, you may end up costing yourself long term.
There are just too many variables, and too many unknowns. If you’ve ever worked on a Web project with an outside firm you know what I’m talking about. Those perceived cost savings by outsourcing can go very quickly — and in my experience often does.
I, for one, wish it were a bit easier. I’d love to take my show on the road, line up some clients and head to South America or Europe for a year or so, working one projects to finance my trip. I can also see how, if managed properly and used in the right spots, how outsourcing could really free up a company’s internal resources.
I do think a pool of talented “outsoucers” or freelancers who went that extra mile and really worked on projects as if they were in house talent could work. But I don’t think it’d be cheap, and landing projects might be to difficult to make it worth their while.
It’s just, realistically, with much of what I and other Web professionals do, it’s so important to have someone who is dedicated to projects and for many organizations insourcing makes much more sense that outsourcing.
I predict a wave of insourcing in the next few years and organizations mature, get more comfortable with the Web and begin to take their Web projects, and the people behind them, more seriously.
I also predict some small, dedicated, focused and talented Web teams (and to a lesser extent individuals) to begin to offer quality outsourcing to those who can afford it. They’ll be able to mitigate the risks of outsourcing, by taking a more dedicated and focused approach. These folks will show us that outsourcing itself isn’t the problem (if there is one) it’s just how it’s done.
Filed under: Web General
Comments
1. andrew said:
Funny how your Google ads with this post offer links to companies that help with technology outsourcing. Seems you’ve found a way to make some money off outsourcing despite your misgivings! ;-)
I guess it would be cynical to call it unsurprising that someone with much to lose from outsourcing finds it “much to risky and much too hard to do right.” Many web developers think outsourcing is a good thing?
Posted on March 2, 2004 12:34 PM | #
2. Andrei Herasimchuk said:
“There are just too many variables, and too many unknowns. If you’ve ever worked on a Web project with an outside firm you know what I’m talking about. Those perceived cost savings by outsourcing can go very quickly — and in my experience often does.”
Ah… I appreciate the naivete, but you should recognize it as such.
Riddle me this: How can a company like Adobe outsource some of its projects and core components to places like India? After all, the code we work on is far more complicated than any web site, web application or web related development environmnet. We have lots of meetings here that need face time to get problems solved. The code is very complicated stuff, requiring very talented people to even consider writing it.
And yet, we have a large contigent of workers in India cranking on all sorts of projects. What does that tell you?
Once you digest that question, you should reconsider this entire article.
Posted on March 2, 2004 01:09 PM | #
3. Grant said:
Funny, I’ve been meaning to post something related to this topic. Anyway, I believe it comes down to core vs. context. If a company wants to “offshore” some of its work to save money, then they should look at shipping off their context activities (basic day-to-day operations/activities/technologies) and keep their core (new cutting-edge operations/activities/technologies) in-house. Foreign countries like India and China are cranking out highly educated and equally capable workers who can handle context jobs very well at a cheaper rate. These tasks are less likely to suffer from the hidden costs that Keith has alluded to. Foreign counties are not yet skilled to handle the core tasks, and therefore should be kept and developed in-house.
Speaking from a tech company who has moved heavily to the offshore model for web application development of context tasks I can say that this seems to work fairly well for us. We usually have one lead developer locally to define the general architecture, one lead analyst to flush out the detailed requirements, and a project manager to oversee the entire project. The offshore developers simply take the detailed requirements and proposed architecture, and write the code (front and backend) with our lead developer overseeing (and even coding) the technical process.
This is not to say that it hasn’t come with its problems like communication gaps, long meetings, etc, but I believe these are inherent in every new project team. Since the beginnings we’ve managed to take lessons learned and apply them to future projects, which has yielded great results. I suppose it comes down to how well was the overall project managed. If you have that skill in-house, then that certainly helps.
Posted on March 2, 2004 02:21 PM | #
4. Keith said:
Andrei. I hate to argue with you. I mean you know from experience but I’ve seen the the opposite…as well from experience.
It sounds like Adobe has the internal resources to manage their outsourcing. Great. I’ve worked for another large company, Boeing, who cost themselves hundreds of thousands of dollars on mismanaged outsourcing.
I’m not saying that outsourcing can’t be done. I’m saying it’s risky and has to be handled properly. Many organizations are not equipped to do this. Adobe is obviously an exception.
I’m more than aware that India (and other countries) have loads of talented developers that can communicate well and work like gangbusters on projects for much less than their counterparts in the US. It’s just that many companies could do better to allocate those financial resources to bringing good folks into their organization.
Again, it depends on the job function, the company and the project. I’ve seen, in my 8 years as a Web developer, more evidence of outsourcing gone wrong (both local and overseas) than I’ve seen it gone right.
You call it naivete. I call it experience.
That’s not to say outsourcing isn’t hear to stay. It’s just not for everyone.
Posted on March 2, 2004 02:32 PM | #
5. Keith said:
Andrew, I want to make something clear, I don’t think I’ve got anything to lose from outsourcing – but I can see how one might think that.
This was meant to be an opened-ended exploration of my thoughts on outsourcing. I really don’t have a strong opinion either for or against it. I really just depends on the situation. I thought I’d made that clear in my post.
It may have come off that I’m either against outsourcing or scared of it – I’m neither.
Posted on March 2, 2004 02:50 PM | #
6. Jennifer Grucza said:
What I don’t quite understand is outsourcing call centers to other countries. If a customer calls a company’s customer support, wouldn’t they really find it a better experience if they could speak to somebody else with an American accent? I’ve worked with many other software engineers from India (living here in America), so I’ve gotten pretty used to the accent (plus my coworker’s accents haven’t been too strong, on average), but I can see it being a frustrating experience for Mrs. Rural USA if she calls customer support and can’t find anyone she can easily understand. Especially if she’s already frustrated and angry because of whatever made her call support in the first place.
Posted on March 2, 2004 04:32 PM | #
7. Keith said:
Read Offshore Outsourcing: On Target or Off Base – it’s a nice piece that better touches on some of my own thoughts on outscourcing, both the pros and the cons.
One of the points brought up there, and I’ve seen this mentioned elsewhere as well, is that many companies are scaling back the outsourcing of call center and helpdesk operations for the very reason Jennifer brings up.
Posted on March 2, 2004 04:43 PM | #
8. Grant said:
To add another response to Jennifer’s question:
I believe having call centers around the globe help companies provide 24-hour support. I know our internal company support calls are routed all over the world depending where you are and what time of day it is. However, I do understand how it could be frustrating to people if international support engineers cannot speak English well or are poorly trained.
Posted on March 2, 2004 05:48 PM | #
9. Kelly Sims said:
Jennifer,
60 Minutes did a spot on this about two weeks ago. Some of these Indian companies spend a great deal of time teaching their people to handle American accents. And with the melange of cultures we have here in the States, is it all that unusual to hear an accent from another country? Here in Los Angeles, it’s almost become a norm.
Posted on March 2, 2004 05:50 PM | #
10. Kyle Fox said:
I, for one, am a bit scared by this trend. I’m a mid-level developer in a fairly large organization and frankly I feel that much of what I do could be outsourced fairly easily.
I hope that never happens and I’m trying to make myself more valuable to my company. Luckily I don’t think management here would have a clue how to go about it and may not even see that as a option. Hopefully by the time it may crop up I’ll have moved up to a more secure spot with broader, less easy to replace, responsibilities.
I can understand why you’re not as scared Keith, but more many of us who are trying to make our way as less mulit-faceded developers this can be pretty worrying.
My suggestion to everyone who might be worried about this is to keep learning, gain as much experience as you can and put yourself in a position where you’d be hard to replace.
Posted on March 2, 2004 06:39 PM | #
11. Andrei Herasimchuk said:
“That’s not to say outsourcing isn’t hear to stay. It’s just not for everyone.”
All I’m saying is it’s a matter of time, not job function. Given how much less complex a web devleopment environment is given to a desktop application coding environment, and given outsourcing is being done at places like HP, Intel and Adobe, all it will be is a matter of time until outsourcing hits all facets of high-tech work.
To not think so I think is being naive, imho… just as so many of us were naive in the early 90s thinking NAFTA only meant low-paying factory job were going over the borders.
Posted on March 2, 2004 11:53 PM | #
12. Sean said:
The thing that strikes me about this article (post) as well as the replies, is the embedded selfishness. Keith, I read your blog daily and I enjoy the content. However, this article essentially said what every other piece contradicting outsourcing says, “Yes, outsourcing can be done, but you can’t do my job, it’s much too important.” Then, in the comments, desktop application developers are ready to ship your job overseas because web development “isn’t that complicated,” but wish to protect their own futures with the same logic you employ.
Any job is “outsourcable.” Honestly, I think that a web project will fail more often than desktop application development because web projects tend to have less people working on them and require more creativity from the developer. It has been my experience that outsourcing ultimately fails when asked to think beyond a pre-defined task.
Posted on March 3, 2004 08:46 AM | #
13. Keith said:
Andrei – fair enough. I don’t agree with everything you say, but I respect your view.
Sean – you said, “outsourcing ultimately fails when asked to think beyond a pre-defined task.”
Something I have to do every day. I’m pretty sure it would be possible to outsource me. However, this could not be done currently, could not be done overseas and would be very difficult and most assuradly not cost effective in any case.
Selfish? Maybe, but it’s also realistic. But then again I’m not a “Web developer” – that is one of my job functions that could be outsourced, but only one. I think this is more common than not.
As far as “Web Development” not being as complicated as, say, desktop application coding. I think as a “job function” that is true, but how often is a “Web Developer” only responsible for “Web Development”???
Posted on March 3, 2004 09:45 AM | #
14. Sean King said:
I second that.
Teams need to interact on a personal level to truly understand the problems of experience design and creatively find from another country.
Programming and markup production jobs can be outsourced, but only if they are tightly constrained to a development plan and/or functional specification to ensure that you are creating the product to meet the problems defined in your strategy. These guides need to be clearly thought out and stated by a design team (and possibly translated!).
But let’s also be realistic here, web design is a messy business. No project (at least any I’ve worked on) can escape last minute changes, technical issues, and customer whims. The flexibility needed in the design process is the biggest deterrent to offshoring, because time and distance doesn’t bode well when deadlines are looming.
Posted on March 3, 2004 10:32 AM | #
15. Jennifer Grucza said:
Hi Kelly, sounds like that was an interesting 60 Minutes, too bad I missed it. Yes, I hear quite an array of accents day-to-day. But we both live in big cities - it’s often not the same in smaller towns and such. And customer support calls are already stressful enough for customers without having to deal with communication barriers. I’m glad that in at least some cases, the people staffing these lines are getting special training to deal with this.
Grant, 24-hour assistance is a great reason to outsource internationally. Though in that case, the outsourcing wouldn’t actually be taking jobs from Americans, right? It would just be in addition. Personally, I’d much rather have the ability to get support from somebody in another country at midnight than no support at all.
Posted on March 3, 2004 10:39 AM | #
16. jeremiah said:
is there anything left that will not be outsourced?
Posted on March 3, 2004 10:40 AM | #
17. 7 the designer said:
As long as the notion exists that profits matter more than people, there will be outsourcing. It is decimating our middle class and is a testimony to our love for money.
Posted on March 3, 2004 03:40 PM | #
18. Joanne said:
Looking at these posts, its quite amusing to me to see the posting time of the responses. Most are middle of the day. If you are so essential to be in your job, why is it that you have the luxury of posting to your personal blog during work hours?
Posted on March 4, 2004 05:54 AM | #
19. Jennifer Grucza said:
Hmm, well I have to wait 3-5 minutes each time I build and run our software before I can go and test what I’ve just coded, so that provides lots of opportunities to switch over to my browser and read and post a little.
Posted on March 4, 2004 11:10 AM | #
20. Adam S said:
The media and Democrats are making a huge issue over something going on for years.
Basically, EVERYTIME you buy a product that does not say “made in America”, you have, in effect, decided to support outsourcing.
You buy a light bulb “made in China”….why? Because you won’t pay three times the price to have it made Stateside. Most of the people who are screaming about “outsourcing” are the very ones driving it.
To answer Joanne’s point about the time some of us have to post, I can only say this:
Anyone making money by trading their hours for dollars isn’t likely to have much time. My income is not tied to the amount of time I devote. Creativity is what generates substantial income. If you are earning money through your own creativity, you will have plenty of free time to write or just enjoy life.
Posted on March 5, 2004 11:58 AM | #
21. Richard Rutter said:
Never mind outsourcing to the pools of IT-literate labour in India and China, with exchange rates as they are at the moment, it makes sense for UK Web companies to hire the very best of North American design talent.
With 1 UK pound buying 1.8 US dollars, you guys are currently a half price bargain! (Conversely iPods are a twice-the-price rip off as Apple charges us pounds instead of dollars).
Posted on March 11, 2004 08:08 AM | #
22. JC said:
Moderately on topic… have you seen this? Outsourcing a web project via a distributed coding network, with a goal of finishing even the largest applications within 24 hours. From what little I’ve seen, it works, too, if you plan it out clearly first and write up good documentation for each fuse (it depends on the fusebox development methodology). Still needs some tweaking on how the developers interface with the system though.
I don’t know anything much about indian coders, but I’ve occasionally worked with Russians – you can get a good russian programmer with a PhD and excellent english skills for not too terribly much more than the price of cigarettes and vodka. And they’re absolutely fantastic for programming… just don’t ask them to do design or implementation, it just isn’t their strong point. Cultural thing I suppose, design doesn’t seem to be as ingrained there. But their coding is absolutely top notch. (and so is the vodka)
Posted on March 11, 2004 02:23 PM | #
23. JC said:
Andrei, you’re actually being a bit naive yourself.
There are two ‘sweet spots’ for outsourcing. Large companies, who can benefit greatly from it, because they can dedicate the resources to building some infrastructure there to facilitate communications, and very small companies (independents, sole proprietership/consultant types, startups) who can contract out work to places like indonesia, india, and russia and can be flexible, can make the time to work with them despite time differences. But for most companies, it’s difficult. They don’t have the flexibility of a small group or individual, or the resources of a large one. Communication is a huge issue, not just in terms of language, but in terms of time zones. Midsized businesses have a hard time with that.
Posted on March 11, 2004 02:39 PM | #
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