[itsybitsycoder]

I remember having to work with a Croatian outsourcing company once, it was pretty much the same as the worst-case people talk about for India. You had to nail down the specs exactly, most of what you nailed down wouldn't get implemented anyway (despite being paid for it) and a lot of what we thought was nailed down was implemented incorrectly due to poor understanding of English. Conversely I've heard a lot of good things about the better Indian and Chinese outsourcing companies. It feels like one of the biggest problems with outsourcing is that when a company decides to outsource, they're already price-sensitive, so many of them go for the lowest bidder instead of paying the extra for a good outsourced team -- which would still usually come out cheaper than a good local team.

[MortenK]

Fully agree. Nationality alone isn't a sure fire indicator of quality. I find that on average there is a higher success rate with eastern europe / russia vendors, especially when the onshore personnel are inexperienced with outsourcing. But of course there is hits and misses no matter what country you choose. Finding a good vendor in any location is a discipline in itself.

And yes, if a company decides to outsource with low price being the overshadowing priority, they are likely to end up with the amazingly low price and amazingly low quality vendors.

[Zigurd]

Also agreed. Shopping on the basis of nationality misses the point. The problem with India is that small cheap outsourcing shops have zero chance of attracting top talent. In smaller markets, where big prestigious technology companies don't have offices, you are more likely to luck-in to exceptionally good overseas engineers at a good price.

But you sure can't count on this happening, and, by the very nature of this effect, it doesn't scale, and it isn't repeatable.