How do you feel about outsourcing jobs?

Perception of India being an outsourcing center?

• How does the rest of the world see India as being the outsourcing center of the high tech jobs ? What do people across the world feel about India in this regard ? Are they feeling that costs are being reduced by outsourcing to a cheaper place or feel that they are losing their jobs and their quality of life in their respective countries ? It would be interesting to hear opinions from different people across the globe.

• Answer:

  i have worked with technical teams in many locations over the years including significant interaction for > 6 years with teams from India. generally i find Indian team members to be well educated and very literal, low on the creative side in many cases. there are certain advantages if there is a lot of structure and documentation but as soon as you have one issue you have lost a day. for global business it is a reasonable fit for support. over the last few years India based resources are becoming much more expensive and i believe will soon be over priced should the trend continue. we pay very fair wages to our team members, have direct contact, incentives, etc., yet the typical employment duration is < 1year. it is very difficult to have a stable and productive team in those conditions. my sense is with the communication gap, overhead caused from detail documenting, turn-over due to over-heated economy, i think we will be seeing more work shifting back to the US and to other emerging technology centers.