>Pertti,
>
>In 2010 a cynical definition of developer is "can be outsourced abroad." Clearly you're not a developer. ;-)

Indeed, according to that definition I, sir, am no developer.

I had an interesting chat with a high level guy from Accenture, the huge global consulting firm. He is based in the U.S., and he said that Accenture has had a very mixed bag of experiences with outsourcing. According to him, it now boils down to this: "Do we want to get something done efficiently (fast) and pay a lot of money for it (on-shore development), or can we save SOME money while we wait for off-shore developers to take their time getting it done." The biggest problem with off-shore development for him is cultural: often times off-shore developers are used to strictly hierarchical, authoritative organizational structures, and therefore they don't take initiative or "think outside the box," which in turn leads to steeply increased management time on part of Accenture. And that's where the overall cost of the project goes up (and often out of control) very fast.

He also told me how he trained an "off-shore programmer" temporarily brought to work in the U.S. to question authority, voice his own opinions and get into intellectual scuffles about the best technical direction. This worked fine while the guy was stationed in the U.S., but when he eventually went back to his own country he was quickly labeled as a rebel, a trouble maker and a disloyal employee. In order to contain the damage caused by his new approach and to keep his job, he had to quickly unlearn what my friend had taught him.

But I digress. Must be the sociologist in me that just refuses to go away...