Hiring cheap contractors can be frustrating too. I am on a project that is behind schedule. Management’s solution is to temporarily staff the project with several temporary, cheap offshore developers. I think a smaller team with competent folks can be much more product. There’s a lot of truth to the book, “The Mythical Man Month”. Now, we have far more meetings and communication chains. We also have to spend multiple cycles reviewing the contractor code and helping them learn software development.