I used to work for an Indian MNC first, I was their eyes and hands in United States so I had to work with a lot of remote teams every single day.
Like everything, working with remote teams is also a skill. May be you worked with some team in poland and they were brilliant, good for you; you don't have to manage. But all remote teams aren't like that. The mantra for working with any remote teams is to micro manage. Have everyday calls with them, specifically tell them what you are expecting.
Before that, I myself was a remote developer, before traveling to US. As many of you already pointed, this depends on the vendor you go with. There are lot of multinational companies who outsource work and some of them are really good. A lot of discussion is going on that the teams have reduced the specifications given to them again I would tell you that it all depends on the team you choose. I never did that myself, hell the person who outsourced the worked to me, was not very knowledgeable. So does that mean I can judge everybody who outsourced work to us?
makecheck said, the software outsourcing never really worked, when I was working in that MNCs we had projects ranging from huge telecom companies to Aviation companies. And those projects ran close to 5 years - 10 years. How did the CXO reap the benefits for 10 years if he doesn't see value in it?
Honestly, having worked in corporate IT, a project big enough to last for 5-10 years has an enormous amount of inertia behind it from the tens or hundreds of people in the company who got behind it, all the "ra ra" project newsletters, the political capital expended to get the project budget approved, etc..
Even if it was going absolutely terribly and wasting millions of dollars, the project sponsor has every incentive in the world to keep moving forward and try to get something out of it to justify all of that. The failure of a big project like that might kill somebody's career at that company; a lackluster deployment a few years behind schedule is survived more easily.
Here's the big question, though: I have to put in a lot of work to manage an overseas team. In many cases, more than I would have to put in to manage a local team. And the costs aren't really that much cheaper. So if I have to put up with all that, why would I want to outsource?
"And those projects ran close to 5 years - 10 years. How did the CXO reap the benefits for 10 years if he doesn't see value in it?"
Did anyone ever actually do the analysis? I doubt it. They saw a cost reduction in one quarter and called it good. They haven't taken into account the extra work needed, the costs of reimplementing stuff after they get it because it's so bad, or anything like that. And because the CXO spearheaded the initiative, anyone who questions it is going to be questioning the CXO's competence.
Like everything, working with remote teams is also a skill. May be you worked with some team in poland and they were brilliant, good for you; you don't have to manage. But all remote teams aren't like that. The mantra for working with any remote teams is to micro manage. Have everyday calls with them, specifically tell them what you are expecting.
Before that, I myself was a remote developer, before traveling to US. As many of you already pointed, this depends on the vendor you go with. There are lot of multinational companies who outsource work and some of them are really good. A lot of discussion is going on that the teams have reduced the specifications given to them again I would tell you that it all depends on the team you choose. I never did that myself, hell the person who outsourced the worked to me, was not very knowledgeable. So does that mean I can judge everybody who outsourced work to us?
makecheck said, the software outsourcing never really worked, when I was working in that MNCs we had projects ranging from huge telecom companies to Aviation companies. And those projects ran close to 5 years - 10 years. How did the CXO reap the benefits for 10 years if he doesn't see value in it?