DISQUS

Neat. Is it possible for this gadget to actually add my tweets as emails into my gmail so that they get indexed and are searchable? If that is possible, then it becomes a killer app for me.

You are right. My comment was directed at the post that you referred to.

I did want to point out the fact that there are different models of engagement. This issue is a little orthogonal to your analysis. I meant it as something else to think about, in addition to what you said.

How the outsourcer and outsourcee interact makes a huge difference to the final outcome.

Do you send over detailed specs and just want them implemented, or do you send over a high level concept and outsource the architectural thinking too? Or do you also involve the outsourcee in roadmap evolution details?

What is the incentive structure in place? Bonus for delivery on deadline? By number of bugs fixed? At the other end of the spectrum is that the outsourcee has equity in the outsourcer!

Which side of Venkat's Impossibility Triangle are you playing in?

What are you really looking for? Junior programmers who can learn on the job? Or experienced and/or the best of the best? Like.com was looking for the latter and decided that in this case the cost advantage that India had was not enough to overcome the overheads.

If you were setting up a local (non-outsourced) team, you wouldn't evaluate it purely on economic terms. You would be worrying about all the above factors, and more. And the success of your team would depend upon which point you chose on each of those spectrums. Same is true of outsourcing too.

The different ways of outsourcing are different points (or technically, clusters of points) in a multi-dimensional space. Treating them all alike is over-simplification - good for headlines ("Outsourcing sucks"), but bad for understanding them and making best use of them. I guess, I am just elaborating another way in which "Outsourcing does not suck. Our understanding of it does."

"Outsourcing" is not really single phenomenon that can be given a blanket "sucks" or "rules" rating. Rather it is an umbrella term that actually encompasses a whole bunch of different ways in which a business in a "rich" location can leverage the cost differential between them and a "poor" location. There are many different models of engagement, and each will give you a different result. See for example the experience of New York based social|median and Pune-based True Sparrow Systems - they are extremely happy with their situation.

Saying "outsourcing" sucks is akin to saying, "software companies suck". The statement makes no sense - are you talking about Microsoft, or Apple, or Infosys, or HSBC software, or Xerox PARC, or AirTight networks, or the small budding startups in Pune?

Some models of outsourcing suck.
Some models are great.
And there is no reason to simplify it by attaching a single label.