[TwoSheds]

In my experience (last 5 years in MegaCorporations) the problem is that the people who are actually hands-on managing the offshoring projects are different from those who make the decisions. The guys who decide to offshore are usually at least 2-3 layers of management above.

The urge to offshore software development at that level is strong, and the management sees it as a megatrend which "we'll have to follow because everyone else is doing it".

The feedback loop is broken, the decision maker who offshores a certain project is no longer there when a couple of years later it's clear that the whole thing was a disaster. He's busy offshoring some other project.

[gaius]

If you're a big shot exec, you might go to silicon valley and see these highly talented and ambitious Indians and say "I gotta get me some of those".

But the sort of Indian you find in Silicon Valley (or more generally, the sort of person from country X you find working in another country) is generally not representative of the average worker where they come from. As far as Indians go, there are the cream of the crop who can work anywhere, and you never see them on the open job market. There are the regular Joes like you and me who generally work for Indian companies in India, you only see them in the West when they're on holiday. Then there are "the rest" and those are the ones who do outsourcing gigs.

[slantyyz]

Those guys at the top also tend to be the ones who think Agile methodologies will solve their problems without checking to see if their existing culture is conducive to that work approach.

[kahawe]

Hey now, you just gotta slam that Agile sticker on your devs, mix it with lots of Scrum and voilà you got yourself the perfect coders!