I wish I could read the article, but it is asking me to log in, so I am skipping it.
But your comments remind me of what I hear for a lot of Americans (and Indian expatriates) who tend to be negative about Indian workers, when often the root cause of their complaints are cultural differences, and the ways that it impacts the work.
I have had great relationships with outsourced teams. But I did not get them just from hiring someone and expecting it to work. I spent a lot of time with my people, getting to know them, talking about how we wanted to work together, bringing them over here so the teams on both sides could know each other. I got to know a bit about their culture and how that impacted their work, and learned to work with where I could, and helped them make some changes to work better with us, where appropriate.
You would do that much for anyone on-site, so not doing it for remote workers is doing them a dis-service.
Personally, I got good results. And invitations to their weddings, which made me really feel like we were a team, and not just using them as a tool to get some work done.
Maybe I just had good luck. Maybe the rest of the industry is different. But I cannot support the comment that it "always ends bad". That does not have to be the case.
I certainly don't think the problems are cultural. I believe it's the inherent business model which is not aligned.
You are happy with your outsourced teams but I would love to know how do you compare your outsourced team with your US one? I believe that their are super quality engineers in Asia who can give you US standard of work but you will never get access to those guys as long as you are going through an outsourcing company. In a team of 10, maybe you'll have 1-2.
You may not think so but you can actually afford to hire 10 senior high quality US standard guys in your outsourced teams. And it would still be 20% of your US cost yet your partner company's interest is not in it. They'll always tell you it's hard to hire, market competitive or difficult to retain etc.
But your comments remind me of what I hear for a lot of Americans (and Indian expatriates) who tend to be negative about Indian workers, when often the root cause of their complaints are cultural differences, and the ways that it impacts the work.
I have had great relationships with outsourced teams. But I did not get them just from hiring someone and expecting it to work. I spent a lot of time with my people, getting to know them, talking about how we wanted to work together, bringing them over here so the teams on both sides could know each other. I got to know a bit about their culture and how that impacted their work, and learned to work with where I could, and helped them make some changes to work better with us, where appropriate.
You would do that much for anyone on-site, so not doing it for remote workers is doing them a dis-service.
Personally, I got good results. And invitations to their weddings, which made me really feel like we were a team, and not just using them as a tool to get some work done.
Maybe I just had good luck. Maybe the rest of the industry is different. But I cannot support the comment that it "always ends bad". That does not have to be the case.