Just to reword the sibling; none of those consultants ever created a best-selling piece of software.
They are not the people that create the software you install on your machine. That task is usually done by a lone developer at some random place.
They are not the people that create the software you install on your machine. That task is usually done by a lone developer at some random place.
Producing the best possible software doesn't produce the highest possible revenue. You'd want to produce something that works well enough that it's viable for the customer to keep hiring your consultants, but also makes it necessary to continuously keep hiring them.
So that translates to producing the worst possible software that barely works. So no, they're not $100B companies for nothing. They know exactly how to walk that line.
I have seen genuinely passable. And lots of "good enough until we fix the underlining issue".
What I have never seen is offshored developers doing really good work. And I'm convinced their incentive structure will always punish anybody that tries.