Craigslist and looking for a web/php/postgresql guy

[dsr-mzpnVDyJpH4k7aNtvndDlA at public.gmane.org (Dan Ritter)]

On Sat, Nov 01, 2008 at 12:35:46PM -0400, markw-FJ05HQ0HCKaWd6l5hS35sQ at public.gmane.org wrote:
> I posted an ad on Craigslist and explicitly stated that U.S. citizenship
> was required and then applicants MUST be on the Boston side of the rt-128
> loop.
> 
> I'm getting people from Pakistan, India, Russia, etc. answering the ad.
> 
> The rates are insanely low. $12/hour!!!
> 
> IMHO outsourcing is killing the software industry in the U.S. but how can
> companies resist paying software developers McDonald's wages?

Week 1: you do 80% of the work by writing the spec for the offshore
developers to follow.

Week 2: you are reassured by your Remote Project Manager at Offshore
Software Development Corporation Inc  that everything is coming along
just fine.

Week 8: the first list of questions from the developers emerges.  Half of
them are RTF-language-M trivia, and the other half don't make sense. You
spend the week giving appropriate pointers.

Week 12: Googling around, you trip over badly-worded ExpertsExchange
questions with recognizable snippets of your pseudo-code.

Week 13: Remote project manager says that the one bad egg has been fired
and replaced. Everything is coming along just fine.

Week 17: Project manager tells you the first release is ready for QA
and acceptance. After thirty-four hours downloading, you have a 72MB
ZIP file... corrupt.

Week 22: Project manager inquires as to whether the spec can be changed
to fix just one little issue. The proposed change completely defeats
the purpose of the program in the first place.

Week 25: A Linux programmer from Delhi announces an open-source project
that solves most of what you wanted. Version 0.1 is at least as good as
what you would have had after two weeks working on this yourself, and
he wrote it last night. You cancel your contract with Offshore Software
Development Corporation Inc and offer him a chunk of cash to finish it
the way you'd like it.

Week 27: The independent guy's code works pretty well. You give up on
trying to recover any money from OSDC Inc and stop sending them
checks.

If you were a large corporation, multiply the above timeline by a factor
of 2 or more, and the amount of money you spent by 10.  It's possibly that
changing corporate priorities and reshuffles could delay the discovery
that OSDC Inc doesn't do very much for years.


Summary: if it's critical to your business, you cannot outsource
it.


-dsr-

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