[RBr]

This is a trend going through large Canadian businesses right now.

They seem to think that by outsourcing work to overseas mills that they can save money. Sales and support aside, it's the companies that are outsourcing engineering that are really hurting.

[jrockway]

I'm not sure I agree with this. I work for a "global organization", and the people we hire in the US are just as incompetent as the people we hire in India. (We have good people in all the locations too, of course... but living in the US or UK or Canada does not mean you are going to do a good job.)

I love it when someone emails support and gets an answer like "plz read wiki"... and then you realize the person that wrote that is a white dude from Chicago that speaks no languages other than English. I can forgive lazy writing if English is not your first language. But if it's your only language, please spell please correctly and use "the" when appropriate. A complete sentence would also be nice.

But I digress.

[bmelton]

The outsourcing of activities generally has less to do with quality than with cost. Of course, the cost is relative too.

A company I used to work for outsourced a large chunk of the work force to Poland. Poland was chosen because they were technically sound, generally, spoke above-average intelligible English and, most importantly, valued the American dollar about 6 times more than we do.

This meant, generally, that they could hire 6 Polish workers for every American worker we laid off (if you ignore the fact that many of the American workers were longer in the tooth, and hence higher on the salary scale, which made it even more profitable a deal.)

The main worry about moving somewhere with an economy that isn't horribly weak is that as our American dollars infuse their economy, and more Polish outsourcing companies are stood up to attract more American dollars, we inflate their economy. The cost of living goes up, the value of our dollar becomes less strong, and the benefits to having moved work there becomes less appealing. This could well lead to a tipping point when American companies pull out, which I worry could 'burst the bubble' and leave Krakow Poland in worse shape than if we'd never been there.