[jplarson]

The author here, great conversation, gang.

To be clear, I don't mean to dump on India specifically, but rather offer up a narrative that counters the notion of overseas talent being an insurmountable threat. This missive applies equally well to any offshore outsourcing, but I agree that generality gets lost. andrewfelix's suggested title "Why I Will Never Feel Threatened by Bad Programmers" is good but doesn't quite hit it: "Why I Will Never Feel Threatened by Outsourced Programmers" perhaps captures my intended message the best.

This is about insights I've gained from "coming late to the party": projects that first went for implementation overseas, and which I subsequently got to clean up or improve upon. Much like many of you are saying, I found it refreshing [within the context of the "threat" of outsourcing] to experience that programming talent is indeed the primary factor in winning development jobs, with solid communication ability (aided by proximity) a close second.

I don't know that everyone has the benefit of that realization born of seeing firsthand how several such projects turn out (I didn't--out of school in '03 a popular narrative was that programming jobs are vanishing and there's nothing you can do about it). Calling out the myth of cheap overseas programming I reckon can be useful to both programmers (encouragement) and decision makers (insightful warning).

[idoh]

Re: coming late to the party, have you considered that maybe you are suffering from some kind of reverse-surviver bias? In other words, that you only get brought on to failed outsource projects. If the outsource project works well then you don't see it.

[jplarson]

Totally fair point--the fellow I recently talked to is completely an instance of that bias.

For sure, there's nothing statistically significant about my few experiences: I have only observations of some of the shortcomings that are quite real.