[LeBlanc]

Thanks for this perspective!

I recently had the opportunity to outsource some of my development to India. An Indian friend of mine had a team that was looking for a project. I ended up not working with them for two reasons.

1) the small size of my project meant that the time I would spend writing up extensive design docs and requirements, and meeting with them via skype, could be better spent just doing the coding myself. This is probably true for a lot of small companies.

2) I wanted to be able to learn for myself how to do some of the stuff I needed to do. Teaching myself has been very rewarding (it is difficult though, and not for everyone)

I think, as your said, outsourcing is best for really big companies who have the structure to manage it, and the size to benefit from it.

[aneshkesavan]

Big companies, means lot of zombie coders which means lots of meetings which means lots of hierarchy, which again means less of coding . Smaller teams lead to better quality code and faster delivery times. Which is what i have experienced and if you want to get into the theory of this.Read " The Mythical Man-Month"

[sandGorgon]

I run a boutique outsourcing company in India - we have been working (for some time actually) for 3 venture funded startups in silicon valley.

This has mostly worked because in all of these startups, we engaged through people whom we are linked to through our past professional lives - we dont do odesk or any of that stuff.

What has also helped is that we try to spend a couple of weeks at the client's site, which helps us to understand the culture as much as the technology.

But what was key, as I later learned, was to get the clients to interview and choose from among our employees themselves (or hire new one)

run your outsourcing team just as tightly knit as you would run an offshore development team - talk to developers (not just project managers) directly and you should be fine!