[analog]

I heard a story from a friend who works in the oil industry. The Indian dev team had updated the software that controlled the oil flow from a field, but they'd introduced a bug that was losing $5000 (or barrels, memory fails me) a day somehow.

They couldn't roll back to the previous version because they weren't using version control for the software.

I've seen some balls ups from UK teams too fwiw, but nothing that approaches that level of wtf.

[neya]

You're pointing to a highly specific example about a particular instance, about a tiny sample from an entire lot, about something that shouldn't have been outsourced in the first place and then trying to conclude in general that "therefore X group of developers sucks". I would rather label this argument with 'wtf' instead of your (pointless) example.

[analog]

I'm not saying "they suck" at all. Just providing a piece of anecdata. So most of us on here work on the web and it would be standard for us to work with source control.

Software controlling an oil field is a step above the bog standard CRUD app that powers most of the web. I'm very surprised that such a mess up could happen, and so was my friend who was in charge of the project.

[bdcravens]

I'm as quick as anyone to bash low price outsourcers, but there's nothing about that situation specific to being Indians. I've worked on many projects here in the states with active codebases that had no source control, and all of their "talent" was home grown.

[analog]

But what kind of software? Controlling an oil field is a little more critical than a CMS.

[bdcravens]

You're diverting. Bad software teams are bad. The fact that they were Indians is irrelevant - using home grown talent doesn't guarantee a level of quality.

[analog]

I'd suggest that using a home grown team would reduce the risk of ending up with a bad team.

[vidarh]

The issue is experience and whether or not the company doing the outsourcing knows how to follow up the projects to verify that they are getting sufficiently experienced developers.

The problem is that markets like India is seeing such a crazy growth that the market is full of inexperienced developers being passed off by outsourcing companies as far more experienced than they are.

Actually identify sufficiently experienced developers, and you don't have bigger problems with Indian dev teams than UK team teams.

You see exactly the same in the UK, but I suspect on a much smaller scale simply because we don't have the same growth and so the supply of inexperienced newbies makes up a substantially smaller part of the overall pool of developers available.

[FraaJad]

If you think that all developers of $NATIONALITY use version control, I have a bridge to sell you.

[raverbashing]

Or worse, they use Clearcase

And before you ask me what's the big deal, I will teach you, for the price of the CC license

[mrgoldenbrown]

Check out thedailywtf.com if you want to see example upon example of major WTF perpetrated by non Indian dev teams.

[cpursley]

What moron outsourced mission critical software like this? I'm not sure I'm buying this story.

[analog]

It's fairly standard for big corps to outsource software development. They see software as a cost centre, and in some ways it is. Even at a loss of $5000 per day they may have still come out on top in the long run.

Edit: source, my brother has a senior position at one of the big four accountancy firms, they outsource a lot of dev work to India.