I've seen this outsourcing problem in a old role I had. For me there were 3 main problems;
- Not adequate training of these guys. I tried to convince the powers to send someone local over there for 6+ months to get these guys up to speed and ship shape but the management feeling was a good set of written instruction will do the job. Sorry, it wont for work roles of any complexity.
- Being remote and in different timezones created lags in turning work over that had to be looked at at both ends. Also they didn't all see the bigger picture or side issues which are important to help understand motivations and then create solutions and value ad in many project as they just had the main brief.
- Cultural differences with Indians I found is they don't like to say they don't know how to do something. I think this is a loss of face not to know or perhaps they are just worried about keeping their jobs. So often if you give them a project and they don't know how to do, they will do something else they do know how to do just to show you they were working. I kid you not... it was really frustrating finding out a week later they didn't know how to do a job so decided to make a new database instead because they could do that. It created problems a bunch of times.
Overall in my experience I found outsourcing is good for jobs where you have clear "A,B,C,D" instructions but for jobs that had to go from A - D and they figure out B and C, your better off keeping this locally. But that said I'm not adverse to outsourcing more complex work as these guys are generally smart and highly motivated. I think the problems I had could have been fixed by rotating local people in a reasonable ratio to the Indian group to keep culture aligned and maintain personal contact.
- Not adequate training of these guys. I tried to convince the powers to send someone local over there for 6+ months to get these guys up to speed and ship shape but the management feeling was a good set of written instruction will do the job. Sorry, it wont for work roles of any complexity.
- Being remote and in different timezones created lags in turning work over that had to be looked at at both ends. Also they didn't all see the bigger picture or side issues which are important to help understand motivations and then create solutions and value ad in many project as they just had the main brief.
- Cultural differences with Indians I found is they don't like to say they don't know how to do something. I think this is a loss of face not to know or perhaps they are just worried about keeping their jobs. So often if you give them a project and they don't know how to do, they will do something else they do know how to do just to show you they were working. I kid you not... it was really frustrating finding out a week later they didn't know how to do a job so decided to make a new database instead because they could do that. It created problems a bunch of times.
Overall in my experience I found outsourcing is good for jobs where you have clear "A,B,C,D" instructions but for jobs that had to go from A - D and they figure out B and C, your better off keeping this locally. But that said I'm not adverse to outsourcing more complex work as these guys are generally smart and highly motivated. I think the problems I had could have been fixed by rotating local people in a reasonable ratio to the Indian group to keep culture aligned and maintain personal contact.