Sat 6 Feb 2010
Global Resourcing for Technologists - Part 2 of N
Posted by Julio Hernandez-Miyares under All About Work, Jittr, Software Development, jittr.com
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If we outsource our Software Development , we can save considerable labor costs. For each USA based employee we can have 4 or 5 based on current ratios of India development resources. True, if the disparity between where the resources are currently located and where they will be outsourced to is large, you will save some personnel costs but is that the sole determinant whether it is a good idea or not?
Dispersing technology development/support (or operations) throughout the world has benefits besides cost and based on labor rate differentials. If you have a large enough inventory of sites to support that operate 24/7, having a team of System Administrators that overlap various timezones should improve the responsiveness when things inevitably go wrong. Also allows for system maintenance during the slow hours in whatever market the particular site has it’s lull. Also, you can smooth out the demand and supply imbalances in actual engineering resources that make acquiring engineering resources problematic regardless of what the pay scale is in certain markets.
On the other hand, if you are working in a domain that is subject to large amounts of uncertainty and market pressures in leap frogging features, what does a lower labor rate coupled with the latency inherent in time differences and maintaining context get you except 2nd , 3rd or further down in timely meeting the market need?
I have worked in situations where design is in the Eastern Time Zone and Web development on India time. A change in design would easily take 48 hour turnaround just to get the correct understanding of what the feature represented and how it fit into the rest of the product/design flow before anything could possibly be engineered. Given that Frontend Web development is relatively low technology this minimum latency is dysfunctional and has an attendant cost in frustration on the part of the involved product team including executive management as well as missed opportunities in the marketplace.
The aforementioned should not be cast as a criticism of engineering in India as those engineering teams are thrust into a position where success is not achievable.
Actually the form filling is being done for a host of exciting developments for myself. One for instance is the completion of my second Bachelor’s degree. Way back during my youth I decided to go for a Bachelors in Computer Science and Mathematics. It was a redundant BA as I already had one but I figured what I would learn and the actual confirming piece of paper would serve me well. I completed all of the requirements for the Degree except for those College specific general requirements like a Gym class and an additional English Comp. Class. I was not able to complete those 2 fundamental requirements as the act of living and making a living trumped pure academia. Fast forward a decade or two and I still have the desire for the “piece of paper” validating the investment in time and knowledge acquired. The gym class is no longer a requirement which is natural given 300 pounders are now the norm instead of the exception and in place of English I have a diversity class requirement in the Africana and Puerto Rican Studies Department. I decided to sign up in the spring semester 2010 for the Africana/PR class which is an intense reading and writing class. The first day of class was beautiful as the crew from “Revolution Books” sold the course texts in between a speech around class struggle and such. Revolution Books is the publishing wing of an avowed Communist Organization based partly in New York City (Where else!). At least the political slant at my beloved CUNY ( City University of New York) has remained consistent over the years from my original studies and degree and now that I know better it should make for an intense rapport during the actual class. Of course not so intense the Professor holds it against me during the grading process. The class professor is charming as well. Maybe half charming. When I asked about how to get reading assignments when a class is missed, I thought she was going to have a heart attack right there in front of us all that I could possibly miss a class. Well I have to miss a class and her suggestion of becoming a buddy with someone (a half clueless 18 year old) to get the assignment is dead on arrival. I will just read the entire course material which are presented by a short story anthology and a book of poems. Not a big deal! So far what I have read, (Collymore,Wickham,Marquez and Arenas) have been excellent except for Marquez’s one sentence “The Last Voyage of the Ghost Ship”. I just can’t deal with a 5 page run on sentence even if that is the way we think and the short story is basically a stream of consciousness.


