> The coders from HCL were typically designing to specifications set by Boeing. Still, “it was controversial because it was far less efficient than Boeing engineers just writing the code,” Rabin said. Frequently, he recalled, “it took many rounds going back and forth because the code was not done correctly.”
Key attributes here are:
- The engineers at the external firm isn't necessarily incentivized to get it right the first time.
- Boeing still has to have engineers on staff to write the specs, and the evaluate the work product of the contractors _repeatedly_ to see whether it meets the specs.
- If it's wrong, it's really really costly.
In that context, I think it makes way more sense for this stuff to be built entirely by people on staff.
The article doesn't discuss it and I don't know to what degree this is still at play, but for years after the merger with McDonnell Douglas, a lot of the Boeing people were frustrated with how processes were changed to depend on many more outside firms. Most of what I have heard centered on other firms producing substantial components that previously would have been done by Boeing itself. Whenever there was an issue with some sub-assembly, the Boeing people felt that if the work hadn't been contracted out, the issue both wouldn't have happened, and would have been faster to resolve.
Back when I was a DS9 working in the ASL, we’d sometimes use a full software stack to try something out with pilots and airlines. But the result was a spec that went to Honeywell for implementation. And then when we got their output, we’d put those hardware boxes into our engineering sims and see if everything matched up.
I don't think it's cheap to get an offshore team to do because the engineers might be cheap but the whole team + mgmt + reviewers are expensive. I have heard stories (from a person who did work in such environments) that the managers would charge a ton and do nothing basically. The work was handled by engineers and was reviewed by offshore people. Not sure what the managers were managing.
There are 2 advantages of an offshore team, especially India,
- Round the clock work
- Contractors can be hired for a few months and don't cost as much in terms of benefits that the company needs to provide to full time employees. So when you know work is going to pour in for 2 quarters, hire a bunch of a contractors. That way you don't have to pay for the equivalent on-site staff all year.
But obviously, this only shows up in quarterly financials and it's hard to judge the quality of the product over multiple years and iterations which is abused.
See this a lot with sales also. Transactional client relationships promising the world to get the deal and hit commission multipliers. They then move to another company with "success stories" leaving implementation teams to reset client expectations.
If you bought some stock, and were forced to keep it for atleast 5 years, the CEOs would have to behave a lot more carefully (=good for the company in the long term), than they currently do. With millisecond stock tradings, noone cares about long term future, because the stocks are sold and rebought and resold again and again many times by many trading houses and their financial products.
It's all about the "sugar rush". Doesn't matter if the commodity is worth shit. The GameStop fiasco demonstrated that amply. It had no real viable plan, so it shouldn't have been worth a lot but you could artificially increase it's value.
https://www.equilar.com/reports/3-equity-vesting-schedules.h...
You do have a point to be considered I just don't think it's enough by itself.
What can you do if your bosses boss want everything cheap and fast. Or at least appearance of that.
It’s basically the same thing that led to the Volkswagen fiasco.
Unfortunately there’s so much code in these products, they start to believe they are SV style startups a fail whale situation has slim consequences when it’s completely opposite.
I've certainly done this for sprints. I suspect if you examined code quality by when a ticket was started in a sprint, you would find it plummets a few days before the end.
The biggest difference is distance, the time zone split, and cultural differences.
I say this as someone that thinks limiting insourcing raises wages in the short term.