glh's Journal: Snake Pics & Other

Here are the snake pics as promised (see my last JE if you missed the story).

In other news, we had an interesting meeting at work yesterday. Apparently, our competition is undercutting our sales and the big reason for this is work being done in India. We had a meeting and it was said that we basically have to start levarging India for resourcing our projects... And no new hiring in the US for entry level people. I think it came accross a little more harsh than it should have. A lot of people were pretty uncomfortable afterwards, and the question was even asked at the meeting- "How do I stay competitive as an american IT professional?"... I think that was on a lot of people's minds. It begs the question- why should anyone pay me 10x the salary that my Indian counterpart is making if they can do the job? Especially if the competition is cutting prices?

Anyone else running into this sort of thing at work? I was just reading in a trade mag how demand for talented IT workers are going up in the US. WHERE?? :) Also, we had a project that we tried to use India for last year that went terribly- all the US based people ended up working twice as hard and redoing a lot of the work because of the poor quality. I'm not saying that is the norm, but it's what happened. Granted, it was a pretty complex project with pretty complex business rules, but everything was documented well and communication was a high priority.

Snake, India

[jfollas]

That thing would probably have scared me, too, if I saw it in my driveway. It's huge!

http://www.avidpets.com/Snakes/east-fox-snake.htm [avidpets.com]

And I can see how it would be confused with the Timber Rattlesnake:

http://www.oplin.org/snake/fact%20pages/rattlesnak e_timber/rattlesnake_timber.html [oplin.org]

In fact, that whole snake ID site is cool (has a wizard if you click on "Quick ID")

http://www.oplin.org/snake/ [oplin.org]

My experiences using offshore resources have been very similar to what you state, and in fact, I have not heard of an

Re:Snake, India

[glh]

Thanks for the links on snakes. Hopefully I won't need to use them any time soon... :)

Good points on the India development. I have a feeling we are going to run into the same issues. I think India will need to be involved to some degree, but I just don't see them doing projects that are extremely business critical, not well defined, etc. as you mentioned. That seems to be the common theme. I just hope that businesses realize this before they spend twice the amount on projects and get into more trouble and

Re:Snake, India

[jfollas]

Another alternative which is proving just as bad is onshore Indian resources. Basically, H1B's that are hired by an Indian company to live and work in the States, but otherwise would serve a similar purpose to off-shore equivalents (i.e., cheap labor).

You can get a taste for what it would be like to use offshore Indian resources by hiring from these staffing companies. IMHO, the end result is the same as described earlier, but at least you get to actually see the resource.

Backlash

[robi2106]

I might suggest to your company that branding the product as "made in the USA" could actually help your sales. Advertising where you engineers / IT staff works might rais your companies image from the "big software giant exploiting trade regulations to make more money by using offshore workers"..... to "Company sticking with its talented employees and developing higher quality vs higher profit margine products."

Just a thought. But if your CEO and / or Board of Directors just want to be shown the money, th

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

And I mean this sincerely...

[bethanie]

Nice snake, there, glh. ;-)

....Bethanie....

Re:And I mean this sincerely...

[glh]

Heh Heh... Thanks, I'll take that as a compliment!! :)