[rswail]

As someone that has dealt with local (Australia) and remote (Slovakia, Mumbai, Phillipines, Thailand) outsourcing, the problem is not the individual workers, or even language, time zones etc.

The problem is more about the company/organization that is doing the outsourcing than the outsourced work itself. You have to have a clear definition of what you are trying to outsource. Is it "just coding"? Is it "some design, but not analysis"? Is it "do everything below a certain level of management" (the worst)?

If you don't know what you want other than "cheap" then you won't get either of the other two qualities of "good" or "quick".

Developers aren't fungible, neither are designers, or analysts or architects. About the only people that are fungible and easily replaceable are project managers (sorry, buzzword compliant "product owners" and "SAFe scaled Agile practitioners").