Start IT up

Ed Sim writes about “Successful offshore practices - let them work on your crown jewels“, I will be surprised if this has come as a discovery? One gentleman even points out his experience with Indian/Russian programmers, I believe its not about Indian, Russian or US developers, its about the environment you provide to your team. Its the kind of goals you set, its how you encourage them to think and innovate, whether you trust them or not. Its useless to debate or even point out which part of world produces best engineers.

Any team working in an environment which does not encourage creativity and thinking is bound to fail whether offshore or onsite. Your development team or any other team for that matter has to be part of the company’s vision, they should know that they are making a difference and contributing in a visible way. If you setup an offshore center thinking that you are going to “start” or give your “low” priority work and do not pay attention to building knowledge, how can one be upset if you are not getting great ideas back. Creating a successful team involves creating a work culture and environment which is best suitable to people in that region to outperform themselves. When the same people (whether Indian, Russian etc) design and innovate sitting in a US R&D office why cant these people be equally or even more productive in their own country?

I second CEO’s decision of letting offshore developers to work on core technology. Being in India’s silicon valley I know several such companies who are doing great by making such decisions. A typical offshore companies is always 50+ employees (in many cases even 100+) and if you are planning to keep hundreds of engineers only for non-core tasks, you are starting with a wrong decision.