[vbtemp]

> why is programming difficult to offshore"

Lack of professionalism and absence of a professional engineering culture in many of the places you'd seek to outsource to save money.

Doesn't mean that professionalism doesn't exist, it's just that the ones that have it are already busy with their own thing and not interested in being low-cost labor

[pydry]

Or they've emigrated in search of those higher salaries already.

I used to work in a relatively "low salary programming culture" and it wasn't just the salary that sucked in that location, the programmers did too. Smart people either emigrated or ventured into a profession that made $$$ (typically real estate, management or finance). Eventually I left too.

[ChuckNorris89]

Out of curiosity if I may ask, in which country did this happen and to which profession did you move after?

[pydry]

Singapore. I'm still a software developer. Just not there.

It's ironic that the country had a serious case of silicon Valley envy and would try literally anything to clone some of that valley magic. They threw a lot of money around in pursuit of this goal.

They'd try anything, that is, other than decent, internationally competitive pay and working conditions.

[sireat]

Curious where did the money go then if it did not go into competitive salaries?

[pydry]

Grants for startups that were relocating from overseas, free office space for tech startups, grants for various kind of tech company masquerading as hot startups and funding for programming courses to train up more programmers.

If you ask a lot of tech founders what they really want the answer is usually going to be free money, free stuff or cheaper programmers. That's what the Singapore government attempted to deliver.

[redis_mlc]

Canada, Japan and Singapore are notorious for just refusing to pay competitive salaries for programmers.

I have a feeling it started off as lack of appreciation for software, then turned into intransigence at raising salaries since then "everybody would want a raise too."

The money goes to other parts of the business.

[JohnBooty]

    Lack of professionalism and absence of a 
    professional engineering culture in many 
    of the places you'd seek to outsource to 
    save money.

I think the "absence of a professional engineering culture in many of the places" results primarily from the nature of contracting itself. I see this in onshore contracting as well.

Contract-based engineering is nearly always a recipe for technical debt.

The team will nearly always focus on today's problems. Not tomorrow's. Because... why should they? They are judged solely on how well they're solving today's problem. And they likely won't be around in three months or three years to reap the true rewards of reduced technical debt anyway.

Contracted engineers also haven't simply been around your business long enough to truly understand it and anticipate what future needs will even exist.

All other things being roughly equal I'll take a full-time, permanent, offshore engineer over an onshore contractor any day of the week.

[vbtemp]

I think you're absolutely correct. The whole model of contracting in general is entirely based around perverse incentives. And all the more so when going offshore for it.

[JohnBooty]

If I can help it, I'll never everrrrrr consult again.

I had one positive consulting relationship. It was a longer-term project. I was the sole consultant and I was able to work closely with my client and explain tradeoffs between short-term deliverables and longer-term technical debt. My client was also instrumental of course and brought a very understanding approach to the table, and was able to understand the technical side of things.

But of course, that is almost never the case. Even with good intentions, that approach never seems to scale up. Not even a little bit.

Some consulting shops do try to bring a similar approach to the table in a scaled-up way. My current employer hired one of the better-known Ruby shops for a long-term engagement.

On the bright side, I would say that the consulting shop did try their best to manage technical debt and bring a good engineering approach. On the flip side, I would say that the end results were decidedly mixed.