Does Yahoo! Answers expose a problem with outsourcing?

Question

Lot's of American companies are outsourcing programming and design work to foreigners. If you read Yahoo! Answers: Programming & Design for just a few minutes, you notice just how absolutely awful communication skills are for many who use English as a second language.

We haven't done a lot of outsourcing where I work, but I can only imagine how difficult it would be for one of these people to gather accurate, meaningful requirements from an avagerage user, when the very basics of our language seem beyond their current grasp.

I'm not trying to be insulting or anything, don't get me wrong. I tend to think foreign outsourcing is even okay sometimes. But a half-price programmer that cannot communicate is not going to be a bargain in the long run. I have a feeling a lot of companies are making a short-sighted mistake of just looking at salary.

What do you think?

Answer 1

You are absolutely correct. The foreign outsourcing is making a huge turn at this point as well. What has happened is as someone becomes more accustomed to our language and how things are done here they become more attractive to other companies who are willing to pay more money(sound familiar). They go back and forth 3 or 4 times and suddenly they are making the same amount of money as people here. The foreign companies start passing the cost over and we start dropping contracts. You are really going to start hearing more of this over the next two years.

Answer 2

Outsourcing is really only effective FOR LARGE companies, the reason is because they have the manpower, money and resources to have their folks over there to oversee the operation. That means that they can hire quality local talent, manage them, and make sure that the work is getting done to their standards, while still saving a bundle in labor costs. There are talented people in all countries , its pretty universal that in a chosen profession, 10-15% of people are very talented, 60-80% are good to average and 15%-10% people are not very good at all.. The hard part in outsourcing is finding those folks in the top percentages, since all you have to go by is their word.

For smaller or mid-size companies, outsourcing is a big risk. The number one reason is there is no true accountability, international legal contracts between India or Eastern European countries are nearly impossible to enforce. Second, the talent pool varies tremendously everyone in these foreign countries claims to be an expert in everything, its only once you commit and send them work that their real skill level becomes apparent. Because of the big difference in pay, some are just looking for any money... regardless of whether they can complete the work or not.

That said outsourcing has its pros and cons, there are times when it make sense to use, just as a small business you need to weigh advantages and risks..

Answer 3

Much of the "outsourcing mania" has passed. Some companies are actually bringing call centers back to the USA, and simply locating them in states with low average incomes. That way, they save money AND have native speakers answering calls.

I get a laugh because many of my company's customers complain to me about foreign call centers, when ours are located inside the USA (Oklahoma City, for one...) Because we are an open society, many of our domestic employees are immigrants with various accents.

Its a fact of life we aren't ever going to be free of.

BY the way-- did you ever try reading the instruction manual on an item manufactured in Japan or other country? Hard-to-follow technical instructions are nothing new...

Answer 4

The raison d'etre for any company is to make profits - that's what the shareholders and the market demands. The horizon is usually the next profit report or dividend payment. If the product works well enough, who cares if the minions don't speak English as long as they continue to toil on the production line.

It's all about the bottom line - the curse of the capitalist economic ideology.