Good for Google
I’ve had this conversation a few times now with people in different businesses but all have experienced trying to outsource to China: It doesn’t work. It’s this bizarre Emporer-has-no-clothes scenerio; everyone on the ground knows it and only now is management getting it. Google finally stepped out, pointed and shouted “hey, they’re phony”.
I’ve worked at a few companies, not a lot, but a few; those that do PDM/PLM to Biotech to Medical Devices, always in SCM which means I always have to interface with remote developers; including offshore ones. Indian developers have some problems, but really, if you integrate them as equals, just remote, they perform quite well. My best collegues (and bosses) have been Indian (though highly American-ized). I have had some very positive experiences there and personally found that if you pay them right (you get what you pay for), you get really dedicated people.Now China is completely different… it’s like the wild west. At one employer i worked at, the China QA had been failing … they had 4 times the people (they offshored QA for the same price… getting 4 times as many people) but bugs, really nasty showstoppers, were getting through over and over and delaying the release. Their computer network, despite being pretty built up, was slower than molasses. Eventually two of the best people on our team; one architect one manager were put in charge. After about a month and a visit out there, the architect pulled me aside one day.
“This is political, understand” he cautioned. “They just surf and download movies and music all day. Nothing gets done. I walked around casually and could see bittorrent running on all their machines”. No matter what they tried, they couldn’t get a turn around. And I didn’t understand the politics but there is something unusual with the doing business in China; maybe it’s payoffs or something else. But when I read Google had their IP stolen, it didn’t surprise me in the least.The guy i mentioned eventually got canned; no manager wants to own the problem of their cheap offshore team failing and needing to hire back local QA, but the tide is changing. I’m now hearing stories from various collegues about software companies pulling back on China; either stopping growth or moving back to Singapore and India.Hopefully Google’s sounding bell will free other companies to step forward and admit what everyone knows: China is not good for offshoring technology development. You can spin it any way you like, but a culture lead from the top not to respect IP and allows piracy will also see piracy pervade legitimate enterprise.
I’ve worked at a few companies, not a lot, but a few; those that do PDM/PLM to Biotech to Medical Devices, always in SCM which means I always have to interface with remote developers; including offshore ones. Indian developers have some problems, but really, if you integrate them as equals, just remote, they perform quite well. My best collegues (and bosses) have been Indian (though highly American-ized). I have had some very positive experiences there and personally found that if you pay them right (you get what you pay for), you get really dedicated people.Now China is completely different… it’s like the wild west. At one employer i worked at, the China QA had been failing … they had 4 times the people (they offshored QA for the same price… getting 4 times as many people) but bugs, really nasty showstoppers, were getting through over and over and delaying the release. Their computer network, despite being pretty built up, was slower than molasses. Eventually two of the best people on our team; one architect one manager were put in charge. After about a month and a visit out there, the architect pulled me aside one day.
“This is political, understand” he cautioned. “They just surf and download movies and music all day. Nothing gets done. I walked around casually and could see bittorrent running on all their machines”. No matter what they tried, they couldn’t get a turn around. And I didn’t understand the politics but there is something unusual with the doing business in China; maybe it’s payoffs or something else. But when I read Google had their IP stolen, it didn’t surprise me in the least.The guy i mentioned eventually got canned; no manager wants to own the problem of their cheap offshore team failing and needing to hire back local QA, but the tide is changing. I’m now hearing stories from various collegues about software companies pulling back on China; either stopping growth or moving back to Singapore and India.Hopefully Google’s sounding bell will free other companies to step forward and admit what everyone knows: China is not good for offshoring technology development. You can spin it any way you like, but a culture lead from the top not to respect IP and allows piracy will also see piracy pervade legitimate enterprise.
