This is the result of rampant outsourcing

I'm losing it with all the Indian outsourcing. Every software product I try to use lately is a steaming pile of iguana dung. You call tech support and you get "Venkateera" who proceeds to talk down to you over a static-filled, high-latency, VOIP connection and when you point out the glaring deficiencies the response is "you shouldn't do that". I've used Orcad schematic capture for nearly 20 years. The latest version (all outsourced to India) is so bug-ridden that it's comical. I tried to point out to tech support that if you have more than several pages open then the program is so slow it's unusable and their response was "don't open so many pages". Uh, duh? Then they proceeded to have me hack at the registry as though that would make any difference (it didn't).
I can't speak openly here, but our company (global TK) tried to outsource important IT Stakes, we are in PUNE btw, and i cannot laugh at this things anymore.
With something like this, they destroy the reputation of a company , the customer don't get to know why...

Now we are insourcing again LoL
 
It seems that this kind of thing is going on with every business. Old management is retiring or being pushed out for lower paid, less experienced workers and the first thing everyone wants to do is cut cost to make themselves look good/valuable. The sad part is they don't look far enough into the future to see there may not be a company in a few years. Well known brands/names can carry them for awhile but it's just a matter of time. :(
 
Direct result of companies trying to maintain growth for shareholders. We do this to ourselves people, as everyone wants a cheaper price for everything. I deal with offshore developers in my job as well. It's cheap, and you get what you pay for holds true. Look at everything you buy, 10 bux says you go online and try to find it cheaper, and cheaper and cheaper.
 
10 bux says you go online and try to find it cheaper, and cheaper and cheaper.

Actually.....No! I always try local and if it's not available, then I head to amazon or ebay. Saving a few dollars and being in warranty & return hell just isn't worth it.
 
Actually.....No! I always try local and if it's not available, then I head to amazon or ebay. Saving a few dollars and being in warranty & return hell just isn't worth it.

99.999999999% of people. I also try to find made in usa, but it's become increasingly more difficult. bought a double beater pad for a kick drum from remo, flipped it over and it said made in USA and I almost fainted.
 
I feel your pain. I work with out sourced software development teams in my day job. Can be very frustrating communicating and then getting quality work back. We redo a lot of things, essentially paying twice for the new features.

I will say they do come through, some of the time. But it's not as frequent as I would like.
 
I'm so sorry to hear that you are having a problem with our software, Mr. Jerry. I will take care of your problem, so you don't have to worry at all. Can you hold for a few moments while I check something (and ask my supervisor to explain to me what the hell you just told me)?
 
There is good and bad IT ... Insourced or Outsourced.

in my experience ... I don't think it right to say that any country / culture is bad at providing outsourcing ... the pressures from the company that outsource will probably be looking to get the lowest cost and therefore corners will be cut.

I have seen shocking service delivery in both models and from both sides of the table.

Comes down to the old saying.

1. Cost (Cheap)
2. Speed
3. Quality

Pick 2 .... you can't have all 3
 
I'm losing it with all the Indian outsourcing. Every software product I try to use lately is a steaming pile of iguana dung. You call tech support and you get "Venkateera" who proceeds to talk down to you over a static-filled, high-latency, VOIP connection and when you point out the glaring deficiencies the response is "you shouldn't do that". I've used Orcad schematic capture for nearly 20 years. The latest version (all outsourced to India) is so bug-ridden that it's comical. I tried to point out to tech support that if you have more than several pages open then the program is so slow it's unusable and their response was "don't open so many pages". Uh, duh? Then they proceeded to have me hack at the registry as though that would make any difference (it didn't).

Sigh.... Cliff....... Your post makes me sad. I studied electronics for years, and worked in the industry for awhile. I miss being around Orcad, matlab, Autocad, etc.... It is like an old friend I haven't seen in years.


But, then again, it reminds me why I left it to go into teaching. So much BS in the industry now. I worked for a company that outsourced PCB manufacturing to China and India. We become a QC sorting operation overnight.....
 
The resume inflation and skills inflation along with the cheating on tests makes screening a real problem in India. I have supposed masters graduates in mechanical engineering that cannot correctly identify what a socket wrench is from a picture. As such, turnover is high as you are either cutting those who can't do the work or the people who can do the work get recruited out from under you, once you get a good reputation for not suffering with fools.

I hate to be stereotypcially judging, but man.... I took a graduate class last semester on Advanced Engineering Mathematics. Most of the students in the class were Master's in Mechanical Engineering students (around 50 students maybe), many who got their Bachelors in India, and came here for the Master's. The cheating was SO bad. So much so the professor brought in other professors who spoke Indian to come in and stand in the back of the room to translate. They got very dictator-like during tests, and kept changing the rules to throw off people. It was awful. It got so bad there were several complaints from both sides. I have never seen anything like it.....
 
Clinton-Trump-Sanders-Cruz:

Hey CC! Which of the above you think most likely to help you solve your (our) problem?
I don't think that Cliff is going to open up a political thing here, but in my opinion the answer would be none of them.

The government doesn't run the economy no matter how much they try to tell you otherwise. So long as the consumer chooses price over quality there is no incentive to change their business model.

Buying power is the only way to change this and unfortunately that ship sailed when we all sold our souls to WalMart and ran all local business out of town. I mean what happens if we actually stop importing a large portion of our goods? First off we'd have shortages because we don't have the manufacturing infrastructure in place because we all decided with our wallets not to support American made products. That would create even higher prices because demand would outweigh supply.

Now personally I wouldn't mind it if goods cost a bit more money if they supported jobs in our country. The insane low costs of everything today has made us accumulators of cheap crap. I don't think that any society has had the buying power that we have today in terms of the sheer volume of stuff that we can buy. Maybe it's because I grew up very poor that I remember that everything seemed so out of reach, but I honestly think that I can buy ten times the amount of stuff today than just 20 years ago. Instead of the low costs driving down the cost of living we just buy more crap.

I do think that we could do some things in terms of trade agreements and tax incentives for manufacturing stateside, but it's got to be done incrementally or it could cause a lot of problems. Even then it comes down to the consumer. If things cost too much then nobody is going to buy it. There are a lot of things that we consider to be necessary in our lifestyle that really are luxury items. You take those out of the market and it hurts the economy more than it helps in terms of job creation.

I mean just think about this for a second. If you are trying to compete or even replace a factory that pays it's worker $.65/hr with a factory that makes the exact same goods with workers making $8/hr the item is going to be overpriced in most of our eyes. And who's going to go and work their asses off for $8/hr when it's not even a livable wage....especially when the cost of everything goes up?

Not to be a pessimist, but I think that the only way that it works is if we experience a massive economic "correction" which was probably what the bail out postponed rather than avoided.

Of course I reserve the right to be a complete idiot as I am not a financial expert. This is all just based on my perception of reality which could be completely wrong.

I will say that I think that a lot of people feel like the bottom is going to fall out soon and that's why it's been so divisive lately. Everyone wants to point the finger for everything that is wrong at someone else.....sure there are some things that we can't control, but our consumer buying power is one of them and most of us (myself included) didn't use it wisely.
 
in my experience ... I don't think it right to say that any country / culture is bad at providing outsourcing ..

But it would be a true statement, to a large extent. There are language and cultural differences that absolutely impact the quality of an outsourced service, and the greater the language and cultural misalignment with the customer, the more quality will suffer. It's easy to bash India because most people have only experienced Indian outsourcing. To those people, I laugh and say try working with China sometime. I ran outsourced software development teams in China for 4 years, and it was a nightmare. It's not a racial issue, it's a cultural one. There are enormous cultural differences, even down to basic things like how "quality" and "honesty" are defined. It takes enormous work to overcome those issues, and the manufacturers have gotten it figured out fairly recently through brute-force micromanagement. On the software dev side, it's hopeless. Those issues caused projects to blow up frequently, which is why I don't do that for a living any more.

India, for all its challenges, is the most mature low-cost outsourcing region. Eastern Europe is pretty good for certain things. After those, it falls off very quickly.
 
I agree with you, there are cultural differences ... but given time / effort / money it can work.... but it does require commitment on both sides.

I work with fantastic indian employees who are awesome, no cultural issues at all.... equally I have worked with indians who have been useless .... same as I have worked with fantastic and unless people from the UK, Germany, France, USA etc.

personally I have not worked with Chinese outsourcing, so I cannot comment.

Have had 5 years experience with Slovakians - awesome ! ....Had experience with Hungarians - terrible experience 4 years ago... still dealing with the dented business consequences.
 
It's quite obvious to me that people who foist outsourcing upon their companies don't know squat about software project management. If they did, they'd know that putting half the team _in another building_ already creates a pretty serious communication barrier, which _will_ make it into the final product in the form of defects. Now consider putting half the team in the opposite timezone and hiring bottom of the barrel engineers who are willing to work for peanuts, and you get the predictable result: shit product. Add to this the fact that software (and hardware, and just about anything creative) is a product of a culture, and you can't emulate culture. There's a reason why most worldwide blockbuster products are created in the US, and none that I can think of are created in India.
 
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