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Comment by cosmodisk | Hacker News Reader

Pretty much my experience re Indian outsourcing. What I used to find most annoying is that 'manager' mentality: I appreciate a lot of people like to boss people around and,as the author states, it's kind of safer (and better paid) step on a corporate ladder, but boy some of them are useless.. You talk to the guy, he agrees to pretty much anything,even If I'd ask to build a lift to mars.Then eventually he comes back with dev's questions.I provide very detail and explicit info on what I need(For anyone who has any knowledge in the tech they used it would almost be like asking to write a couple of loops).Again lots of yes,yes,yes.Then silence and again even more questions. Manager's function is absolutely useless in this case. Also, if the churn rate is low, the companies usually have very capable people who tend to know their shit.

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It's probably because engineers are not good at dealing with customers.

Edit: Apparently nobody gets this reference anymore, and I'm old.

Take my upvote fellow oldie. Office Space can't be mandatory school curriculum any more :-)

I'm a people person, damnit!

No, we're not.

And don't you even THINK of stealing my red stapler. ;)

I suspect many people here are old enough to get the reference, but HN discourages this kind of noisy comment.

Consultants, someone is going to get fired.

TIL: I'm old and didn't know it.

I think too they tend to give you their worst teams to start to see if they can get it done. We had a team from India yes, yes, yes us all the time, and then ask loads of questions 36 hours later that showed they had no idea of what was going on and had no hope of delivering. It would continue like this as it seemed like they always wanted to have the ball in your court and wait on you. The day + latency was killing us too and eventually we were a week from deadline and I thought they'd never get it done.

Then they must have brought in the SEAL team six of Indian devs and just got it done with no further questions asked. I was really surprised.

I have no experience with outsourcing development work, at least not much, but a lot with outsourcing logistics. And one thing I realized was, that providers are a lot like children. They try to push every limit to find out with what they can get away with. And once precendence is established, it is ny impossible to reign them back in. I remeber one provider, operating under a cost-plus model, that invoiced us the catering. Plus margin and overhead. Yet, another one conducted a full inventory count without any additional costs because he didn't like hs own inventory quality.

I can be a difficult customer work with, especially in the beginning, but I firmly belive that letting service providers run by themselves in the beginning, after having clrealy communictaed expectations and guidelines. And to step in really hard the first moment something goes wrong. Worked out pretty well in the long run as expectations became crytal clear early on. And any deviations have been addressed when they happened, so norisk of misunderstandings.

that being said, it's a people business. And just because one approach worked in one case doesn't mean its gona work in a different situation.

There just seem to be some cultures where saying "no" is difficult or taboo.

I've never worked with Indians, but I've had it happen to me with people in both Thailand and Austria. The Austrian one was particularly bad because it involved the movement of people and physical goods. Everything was "yes, yes, yes" until the day of execution, when it was radio silence.

I can highly recommend “The Culture Map” which I’m about half way through right now. Really helped me wrap my head around this, and other cross-cultural communication pitfalls.

I say "no" a lot, or at least "I don't recommend that", and it's usually not appreciated in the USA either, even if I carefully justify it.

For example, our org has been sued twice over ADA issues (accessibility), and my recommendations are still ignored because bosses want pretty eye-candy UI's. The org deserves to be sued again, but then there's no money for servers I need. Stupid humans follow the shiny red ball over the cliff (cue grumbling sounds). Can I try chimps instead?

I think that is different from what is being talked about. I think it is something called high context/low context culture. I'm no expert of this stuff but I was educated about it in many jobs. Its not like any one way is right.

http://www.culture-at-work.com/highlow.html

Okay, I can see that, but it's related in my opinion because even in low-context cultures, the average person is "medium context", using social interactions and concerns as their primary way to communicate and coordinate. Us "logic-striving" (LS) people are really the low-context people in that we wish to clarify and debate assumptions and choices instead of let "the flow of the group" determine that organically and/or socially. Medium context people may make a passing suggestion, but won't challenge it further if the boss says "no". Us LS-ers are more likely to ask for specifics regardless of rank. We believe the merit of an idea should trump rank.

High-context: don't challenge authority, except via subtle hints.

Medium-context: lightly challenge authority, and quickly back down if counter-challenged.

High-context: authority is secondary to idea merit.

I do realize a group can waste too much time debating, but even important/common issues often get flattened by social concerns in a typical US office.

Having direct exposure to low and high context cultures, I consider that approach to shallow at best. At worst, it reinforces stereotypes.

Change your understanding of “yes” to be “okay” . It will save you headaches a tons of money. Confirmation that they heard you doesn’t mean they understand or comprehend. You gotta jump right past the yes, to parrot it back to me or say it back differently to me.

#protips

This is the most actionable advice I’ve ever seen for dealing with outsourcing in India which can have a massive difference

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