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Keetron
Sep 26, 2008

Check out my enormous testicles in my TFLC log!

Killmaster posted:

Hah, cubicles, that's a good one. We're still stuck with "high density seating" here. I wish I had that level of privacy. To make matters worse, all the meeting rooms are booked at least a week in advance and even the lunch room tables are taken for overflow meetings. You pretty much have to wander like a nomad to have a private phone conversation, or leave the building.

We have the same, many rooms are booked for recurring meeting weeks or months in advance and never cancelled when a meeting does not go through. So there is no room available ever unless you are weeks in advance but if you look around, there is empty rooms everywhere. Woe on you if you sit in one tho.

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Volmarias
Dec 31, 2002

EMAIL... THE INTERNET... SEARCH ENGINES...
It's worth noting that not every place has cubicles. A couple of jobs ago, everyone was in offices. Higher end employees had their own personal office, and at most there were 2-3 people in each shared office. Not always totally private, but you knew your neighbors and it generally worked well.

I will say that cubicles are cruddy, but it can totally beat the open office format since you get a little privacy. It really depends upon the setup and the employer.

EAT THE EGGS RICOLA
May 29, 2008

Incoming Chinchilla posted:

I have to ask. Do companies in the US really use cubicles?

I always thought that was a screen writing thing to give the character privacy.

Do your bosses think that you'll all stop working if you are able to talk to one another? How does working in a team happen?

I share a cubicle with 5 other people. If i stretch my arms out, I can hit two of them.

We are all developers making 6 figures. It's miserable.

sbaldrick
Jul 19, 2006
Driven by Hate

Tokyo Sex Whale posted:

Yes in the US there are cubicles. In a modern office the peons have walls about waist height, and the salarymen get full walls for privacy. Managers of peons will probably be in the corner of the cube farm with two full walls and two glass ones so they can easily view their charges. If there are any actual offices in the building they belong to either very important people, or to IT or HR, since they're the most likely to have sensitive stuff lying around.

Among the low-walled peons you can gauge status by the number of monitors they have.

One day to make cubicle peons cry I'm going to take a picture of my giant as gently caress office. I only just found out that in my organization we do have people that have cubes for some reason.

19 o'clock
Sep 9, 2004

Excelsior!!!

Longtiem posted:

Sometimes I have to check one list against another list so I asked for an excel doc so I could use a macro to find the discrepancies. He printed me out 3 pages with over 100 entries. And then added more to them with pen. He used a ruler and drew little rows and columns and added more that he "forgot."

Solidarity, bud. I like your story, better. Apparently "format" doesn't change with context and instead just refers to how something vaguely looks.

peter banana
Sep 2, 2008

Feminism is a socialist, anti-family, political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.

Tokyo Sex Whale posted:

Yes in the US there are cubicles. In a modern office the peons have walls about waist height, and the salarymen get full walls for privacy. Managers of peons will probably be in the corner of the cube farm with two full walls and two glass ones so they can easily view their charges. If there are any actual offices in the building they belong to either very important people, or to IT or HR, since they're the most likely to have sensitive stuff lying around.

Among the low-walled peons you can gauge status by the number of monitors they have.

actually until this morning I sat right behind the HR Business Partner. She didn't even get her own office. Having issues with harassment or want to inquire about benefits because you have some private or embarrassing health condition? Please sit in an open plan office and broadcast your issue so the whole floor can hear.

Open plan offices are THE ACTUAL WORST.

Io_
Oct 15, 2012

woo woo

Pillbug
I share an office with three other people and it's a big office, this is definitely the best arrangement I've worked in.

It's much better than the open plan office I was in until last week which had zero privacy and tiny cramped desks.

Which in turn was better than the 4 person shared cubicle of the office before that where you could stretch out your arms and tap your co-workers on the shoulder.

Io_ fucked around with this message at 17:26 on Sep 24, 2014

Jyrraeth
Aug 1, 2008

I love this dino
SOOOO MUCH

At my last job I was "upgraded" to a cubicle next to the person I worked with the most. It had a giant pillar in it so I couldn't use most of my desk and drawers, and my boss could watch my computer screen from where he sat. Since it was so cramped I couldn't move my monitors much.
Fortunately he was a contractor and never around so I could read about dinosaurs on Wikipedia when I finished my 3 hours of assigned work that was supposed to take a week.

ladyweapon
Nov 6, 2010

It reads all over his face,
like he's an Italian.
This is why I prefer e-mail over phone calls.

:geno: I need the price for Kalamazoo
:j: See below price for Kalamazoo (it says "Green Bay price $14.25")
:geno: We pay the same for Kalamazoo and Green Bay?
:j: No, that is the price for Green Bay. I will request the price for Kalamazoo.

BigFatFlyingBloke posted:

I share an office with three other people and it's a big office, this is definitely the best arrangement I've worked in
This is how my office is set up and it owns. I have a huge desk too. :smug:

KYOON GRIFFEY JR
Apr 12, 2010



Runner-up, TRP Sack Race 2021/22
I have my own office with an exterior window and a door and everything because I ain't no scrub.

I spend about... 30% of my time there. :(

ex post facho
Oct 25, 2007

peter banana posted:

Open plan offices are THE ACTUAL WORST.

This is the truth. Nothing like trying to concentrate on a project and do some writing or editing and being interrupted every 5 minutes by a coworker who casually strolls by your desk (or just leans over) to ask some random bullshit. I've solved it myself by just taking my laptop to an office and shutting the door.

My company decided to do it one better though, and place the development teams in the middle of the office floor between the kitchen, customer service area, and sales. Noticed on a whiteboard recently: "Why is developer productivity below expectations?" :downs:

defectivemonkey
Jun 5, 2012

a shameful boehner posted:

This is the truth. Nothing like trying to concentrate on a project and do some writing or editing and being interrupted every 5 minutes by a coworker who casually strolls by your desk (or just leans over) to ask some random bullshit. I've solved it myself by just taking my laptop to an office and shutting the door.

My company decided to do it one better though, and place the development teams in the middle of the office floor between the kitchen, customer service area, and sales. Noticed on a whiteboard recently: "Why is developer productivity below expectations?" :downs:

I have 3M headphones that are hardcore construction worker earplugs. I wouldn't get anything done otherwise.

ex post facho
Oct 25, 2007
You assume that your coworkers would see you wearing headphones and decide not to try and talk to you. This is not the case.

ItalicSquirrels
Feb 15, 2007

What?
Get more and more extreme. End up with headphones, horse-blinder goggles, and a large hat with the sign "I am working". Taze anyone who disturbs you for anything short of a fire alarm.

yoyomama
Dec 28, 2008
Everyone in my workplace has their own office. I'm lonely, but the hawks and ducks outside my window are my work friends at least :smith:

LGD
Sep 25, 2004

I like my cube actually- it's a little more social than having an office, but I still have sufficient personal/private space and can get work done easily. It definitely helps that the office culture tends towards everyone being quiet, and I have a window cube that looks out over a residential part of the city towards a mountain. The CEO of the company existed before the buyout that turned this office into a (major) satellite of the larger corporation for whom I work actually opted for a cube on the same row rather than one of the offices. Some of that may have been posturing, but the offices are on the interior of the building and the cubes are a genuinely nice enough work environment that I feel like the view trumps the additional privacy unless you're in a position where you need to be on the phone all the time.

Seat Safety Switch
May 27, 2008

MY RELIGION IS THE SMALL BLOCK V8 AND COMMANDMENTS ONE THROUGH TEN ARE NEVER LIFT.

Pillbug

a shameful boehner posted:

You assume that your coworkers would see you wearing headphones and decide not to try and talk to you. This is not the case.

I'm just gonna stand in your eyeline and wave repeatedly until you pay attention to me instead of sending a polite heads-up note before coming over.

Io_
Oct 15, 2012

woo woo

Pillbug

LGD posted:

I like my cube actually- it's a little more social than having an office, but I still have sufficient personal/private space and can get work done easily. It definitely helps that the office culture tends towards everyone being quiet, and I have a window cube that looks out over a residential part of the city towards a mountain. The CEO of the company existed before the buyout that turned this office into a (major) satellite of the larger corporation for whom I work actually opted for a cube on the same row rather than one of the offices. Some of that may have been posturing, but the offices are on the interior of the building and the cubes are a genuinely nice enough work environment that I feel like the view trumps the additional privacy unless you're in a position where you need to be on the phone all the time.

Having light that isn't coming from an overhead fluorescent tube is severely underrated.

Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003
I WILL CUT OFF BOTH OF MY ARMS BEFORE I VOTE FOR ANYONE THAT IS MORE POPULAR THAN BERNIE!!!!!

BigFatFlyingBloke posted:

Having light that isn't coming from an overhead fluorescent tube is severely underrated.
I disagree. I don't miss having a gigantic window behind me, so that my body was the only thing making my screen readable.

Jerome Louis
Nov 5, 2002
p
College Slice
I work with a team in the Netherlands and they are driving me crazy. They don't work as much as us Americans and it seems their workload is much smaller... so they actually have time to ask detailed questions and they try to understand extensively the background for our projects. This just leads to me getting insanely nit-picky questions relentlessly from them and if I took the time to answer them all in any detail I wouldn't have any time to get any work done. I'm jealous of them a bit but most of the time I just think they don't have enough work to do...

SubjectVerbObject
Jul 27, 2009

Jerome Louis posted:

I work with a team in the Netherlands and they are driving me crazy. They don't work as much as us Americans and it seems their workload is much smaller... so they actually have time to ask detailed questions and they try to understand extensively the background for our projects. This just leads to me getting insanely nit-picky questions relentlessly from them and if I took the time to answer them all in any detail I wouldn't have any time to get any work done. I'm jealous of them a bit but most of the time I just think they don't have enough work to do...

Or they can sit back and blame their lack of progress on you because you are not answering their questions.

Or eventually someone in the US will just do the work because it has to get done.

Or they are clueless and what you think of as nit-picky questions are really just them picking apart small pieces of the project because they can even grasp the whole of it.

Jerome Louis
Nov 5, 2002
p
College Slice

SubjectVerbObject posted:

Or they can sit back and blame their lack of progress on you because you are not answering their questions.

Or eventually someone in the US will just do the work because it has to get done.

Or they are clueless and what you think of as nit-picky questions are really just them picking apart small pieces of the project because they can even grasp the whole of it.

It's really not a matter of them not being able to do their job if they don't have the info. It's more of a matter of them trying to get their input into every aspect of the project, with no consideration if their concerns or input are adding value. An example, I work in personal care consumer goods -- a certain very small volume cleansing product in EU contained a small amount of colored wax beads, and for cost-saving purposes we decide to remove the wax beads as they have no consumer benefit other than looking cool. I then get a 5 paragraph email from the Netherlands team asking if we have consumer data showing that the target consumers do not perceive the beads, however if they perceive the beads, what sensory cue does it have in their mind? If they perceive the beads to be exfoliating, could we add another ingredient that would cue the same? Do we have sensory testing showing that the consumer would not tell the difference from the formula with wax beads to the formula without wax beads? We have concern that we would alienate consumers if we removed the wax beads and it could harm brand image. Personal care bloggers could latch onto this difference and cause great harm to our reputation. Could we put together a risk assessment for this decision?

Stuff like that. Non-stop, for everything. This is a technical team of regional formulators. I really think they just don't have enough to do.

Xibanya
Sep 17, 2012




Clever Betty
Our parent company contracted an outsourced Indian dev team to work on some stuff for our company as a means to cut costs. All of their stuff has been full of bugs and released behind schedule such that we have like 3 days to do QA before a release. The parent company will scream if we miss a release date. We had a patch on the last release due to this. The parent company has come down hard and implied that if there are more patches people might get laid off and replaced with outsourced Indians. The Indians served up the stuff 3 days before release and as usual it's glitchy as gently caress.

Corporate is bullshit.

ladyweapon
Nov 6, 2010

It reads all over his face,
like he's an Italian.
Vendor and their boss have a meeting with us asking why they're not getting more of our business. We joke about how closely I follow up on everything (because its what I'm paid to do) and that it isn't necessary at all because they're good at what they do! Today I find out they dropped the ball and didn't follow through on service A they provide us, which is a small portion of the full services they provide. This isn't the first time they've done this, but they continue to say I don't need to check up on them. Vendor swears up and down they are so much more on top of it once we have their full services. We've contracted them to provide full services for several of our orders, so should be no problem, yeah? Yeah!

I check the documentation for the first three orders we submitted and there's at least 2-3 things wrong on each and at least one of those things is a critical error. They also don't have any record of two orders that we've submitted. I e-mail vendor with copies, written notes on the copies, and a run down of whats wrong in the body. She then calls me, we go over it, and she asks me to email everything we went over & to CC her coworker. Coworker responds by sending me their confirmed order sheets (still with the same errors), ignores the part about the missing orders, and says he "hope this helps". I respond telling him to read my email and actually look at the attachments because they have very big errors on their documentation and they still can't tell me why orders are missing.

So much more on top of it, indeed. If it doesn't get fixed in time it will cost them tens of thousands of dollars :allears:


e: I italicized the word "wrong" when i responded, poo poo has officially gotten real :colbert:

ladyweapon fucked around with this message at 01:29 on Sep 25, 2014

Slow News Day
Jul 4, 2007

Over the past three years I've completely revolutionized employee training at my company. I did this by first overhauling the old and outdated training plans that were in .doc format (from like year 2003), creating a ton of new content, exercises and deliverables based on current product features and business practices, and then teaching myself web programming and putting everything on an interactive cloud-based training app that automates most tasks. All the while personally overseeing the training of every single employee both when they are first hired and when they are getting ready for a promotion. It used to take new hires up to six months to become fully productive and two and a half years to reach level 2. Now it takes them six weeks of intensive training and one year at most to reach level 2.

I received an email today from my boss saying that business objectives have changed and his boss now wants new hires to be able to reach level 2 in less than six months. Did my boss fight back? Of course not. He sheepishly agreed. In fact, he thinks that it seems "totally doable" even though he has zero clue as to how the previous improvements were made.

I get to fight with him about this tomorrow. If I don't post again, it's probably because :smithicide:

potee
Jul 23, 2007

Or, you know.

Not fine.
I'm probably going to get called into a meeting to argue for an hour about why I didn't respond to any of my boss' nine "urgent" emails demanding detailed status updates in any of a dozen unusable, macro-infested Excel workbooks, during a week when the only other person on my team was on vacation.

In related news one of my best coworkers quit after 6 months. My plan to be just enough of an rear end in a top hat to get a buyout has taken an unforeseen blow. Gonna have to step it up :mad:

Xandu
Feb 19, 2006


It's hard to be humble when you're as great as I am.

enraged_camel posted:

Over the past three years I've completely revolutionized employee training at my company. I did this by first overhauling the old and outdated training plans that were in .doc format (from like year 2003), creating a ton of new content, exercises and deliverables based on current product features and business practices, and then teaching myself web programming and putting everything on an interactive cloud-based training app that automates most tasks. All the while personally overseeing the training of every single employee both when they are first hired and when they are getting ready for a promotion. It used to take new hires up to six months to become fully productive and two and a half years to reach level 2. Now it takes them six weeks of intensive training and one year at most to reach level 2.

I received an email today from my boss saying that business objectives have changed and his boss now wants new hires to be able to reach level 2 in less than six months. Did my boss fight back? Of course not. He sheepishly agreed. In fact, he thinks that it seems "totally doable" even though he has zero clue as to how the previous improvements were made.

I get to fight with him about this tomorrow. If I don't post again, it's probably because :smithicide:

Sounds like you should just redefine Level 2.

Slow News Day
Jul 4, 2007

Xandu posted:

Sounds like you should just redefine Level 2.

I wish I could. It's pretty much set in stone, unfortunately.

Io_
Oct 15, 2012

woo woo

Pillbug

Xibanya posted:

Our parent company contracted an outsourced Indian dev team to work on some stuff for our company as a means to cut costs. All of their stuff has been full of bugs and released behind schedule such that we have like 3 days to do QA before a release. The parent company will scream if we miss a release date. We had a patch on the last release due to this. The parent company has come down hard and implied that if there are more patches people might get laid off and replaced with outsourced Indians. The Indians served up the stuff 3 days before release and as usual it's glitchy as gently caress.

Corporate is bullshit.

Otherwise known as a senior executive made the decision to outsource, realises it's a mess, but can't or won't lose face over admitting there are any problems so pins the blame elsewhere.

Christe Eleison
Feb 1, 2010

ladyweapon posted:

poo poo has officially gotten real :colbert:

I empathize with your plight. Keep fighting; I hope you score more than moral victories.

WindowLiquor
Feb 8, 2011

Oh no no, this simply will not do!

Jerome Louis posted:

I work with a team in the Netherlands and they are driving me crazy. They don't work as much as us Americans and it seems their workload is much smaller... so they actually have time to ask detailed questions and they try to understand extensively the background for our projects. This just leads to me getting insanely nit-picky questions relentlessly from them and if I took the time to answer them all in any detail I wouldn't have any time to get any work done. I'm jealous of them a bit but most of the time I just think they don't have enough work to do...

Trust me, this is not a normal thing here in the Netherlands.

Yesterday I learned, that after one of our full timers quitting this summer and another one being diagnosed with MS, we are about to lose 2 more full timers to another team, even though our team has been struggling to get work done since February.

I work in collections and this year our customer base has more than doubled in size. Part due to us gaining one really big customer, and part due to us taking over all the customers from a bankrupted competing agency. Did we also get more people to handle the extra work? No. Are the people we lost and are going to lose going to be replaced? Of course not! That would be silly. We've just been told that we should just make it work with what's left of the team and overtime, which we've been working way too much of since February, and not all of it paid... I think it's time to start looking around for something new.

Keetron
Sep 26, 2008

Check out my enormous testicles in my TFLC log!

Jerome Louis posted:

I work with a team in the Netherlands and they are driving me crazy. They don't work as much as us Americans and it seems their workload is much smaller... so they actually have time to ask detailed questions and they try to understand extensively the background for our projects. This just leads to me getting insanely nit-picky questions relentlessly from them and if I took the time to answer them all in any detail I wouldn't have any time to get any work done. I'm jealous of them a bit but most of the time I just think they don't have enough work to do...

It really depends on the company, as WindowLiquor indeed says but to me it sounds like a Dutch product owner with to much time on his/her hands so likely working for a very big company. Something else to understand is that the Dutch disrespect authority to a fault, so when you disagree with someone, whether it is your client, boss, your CEO or your vendor, you will let them know and tell them how to improve as well. In a way, you are expected to disagree with the disagreement and then talk about it for a while so you reach a mutual understanding and either agree to disagree or find some middle ground.
In your case, you can be blunt as well. Tell them the change was made based on a risk analysis done by your experts and after review by the production product owner and client support panel, the change was approved and made.


Jerome Louis posted:

It's really not a matter of them not being able to do their job if they don't have the info. It's more of a matter of them trying to get their input into every aspect of the project, with no consideration if their concerns or input are adding value. An example, I work in personal care consumer goods -- a certain very small volume cleansing product in EU contained a small amount of colored wax beads, and for cost-saving purposes we decide to remove the wax beads as they have no consumer benefit other than looking cool. I then get a 5 paragraph email from the Netherlands team asking if we have consumer data showing that the target consumers do not perceive the beads, however if they perceive the beads, what sensory cue does it have in their mind? If they perceive the beads to be exfoliating, could we add another ingredient that would cue the same? Do we have sensory testing showing that the consumer would not tell the difference from the formula with wax beads to the formula without wax beads? We have concern that we would alienate consumers if we removed the wax beads and it could harm brand image. Personal care bloggers could latch onto this difference and cause great harm to our reputation. Could we put together a risk assessment for this decision?

Stuff like that. Non-stop, for everything. This is a technical team of regional formulators. I really think they just don't have enough to do.

Ah, you already found that they deliver input without considering others. Sounds like the Dutch to me. Consider it a cultural thing and ignore anything that doesn't come from the decision makers, allowing you to send an invoice. When money comes into play, they tend to shut up. "I can answer all your questions but ran out of billable hours for your project. Do you want to file a CR?" works wonders.

SubjectVerbObject
Jul 27, 2009

Xibanya posted:

Our parent company contracted an outsourced Indian dev team to work on some stuff for our company as a means to cut costs. All of their stuff has been full of bugs and released behind schedule such that we have like 3 days to do QA before a release. The parent company will scream if we miss a release date. We had a patch on the last release due to this. The parent company has come down hard and implied that if there are more patches people might get laid off and replaced with outsourced Indians. The Indians served up the stuff 3 days before release and as usual it's glitchy as gently caress.

Corporate is bullshit.

From my time supporting software that was outsourced, I learned that money trumps everything. Whatever executive is sponsoring this is getting a huge bonus because of the cost savings, and the fact that they are talking about replacing QA with outsourced workers means that more cost savings will probably be coming.

The fun part comes when the Indian QA team passes all of the testing in half the time, making in house look inefficient and validating the decision. Once the release hits live it will be discovered that they were fast because they didn't actually do any testing and that serious bugs made it into production.

At this point... nothing will happen. The cost savings will be more important than having a working product, and the folks left in the US will be responsible for trying to clean up the mess and keep the customers from leaving.

sbaldrick
Jul 19, 2006
Driven by Hate

ladyweapon posted:

Vendor and their boss have a meeting with us asking why they're not getting more of our business. We joke about how closely I follow up on everything (because its what I'm paid to do) and that it isn't necessary at all because they're good at what they do! Today I find out they dropped the ball and didn't follow through on service A they provide us, which is a small portion of the full services they provide. This isn't the first time they've done this, but they continue to say I don't need to check up on them. Vendor swears up and down they are so much more on top of it once we have their full services. We've contracted them to provide full services for several of our orders, so should be no problem, yeah? Yeah!


Nothing is better then being able to tell a vendor to shove it after they have dropped the ball after a while. We have one of those that use to get a ton of business from us but have gotten to the point where it takes months to fulfill contracts that they get one thing from us anymore.

Cheesus
Oct 17, 2002

Let us retract the foreskin of ignorance and apply the wirebrush of enlightenment.
Yam Slacker

SubjectVerbObject posted:

At this point... nothing will happen. The cost savings will be more important than having a working product, and the folks left in the US will be responsible for trying to clean up the mess and keep the customers from leaving.
Are there any stories where a company outsourced all expertise (as Xibanya implied if the US employees would stop loving up...the outsourced work?), and a result of an awful product and resulting lack of dependent revenue, shut their doors as a result?

As much as I'd enjoy a tale of schadenfreude, I suspect the more common answer is along the lines of "No, not all expertise was let go; that single employee is now responsible for managing the outsourced teams and correcting all of their work. He works 100 hours a week."

Keetron
Sep 26, 2008

Check out my enormous testicles in my TFLC log!

SubjectVerbObject posted:

From my time supporting software that was outsourced, I learned that money trumps everything. Whatever executive is sponsoring this is getting a huge bonus because of the cost savings, and the fact that they are talking about replacing QA with outsourced workers means that more cost savings will probably be coming.

The fun part comes when the Indian QA team passes all of the testing in half the time, making in house look inefficient and validating the decision. Once the release hits live it will be discovered that they were fast because they didn't actually do any testing and that serious bugs made it into production.

At this point... nothing will happen. The cost savings will be more important than having a working product, and the folks left in the US will be responsible for trying to clean up the mess and keep the customers from leaving.

There are a few things to keep in mind here, one is the perceived cost of operation and the other is the overall cost of quality. I am not sure if it is in this thread that I argue that the amount of bugs while testing is unimportant, it is the amount of production incidents that are disrupting the normal process. These are what counts not only for your end user satisfaction but also drive up maintenance costs.

In theory, outsourcing is cheap, you get the same amount of hours for half amount of the money (or less). However, when poorly executed, it will drive companies into bankruptcy but when properly executed, it is only some 20% or less cheaper due to the added overhead, increased timelines and added complexity.

But anyway, it is quarterly figures that matter and when they look good, someone gets a bonus and when they look bad, the market is to blame.

gently caress, I hate ignorance when it comes to outsourcing.

Unrelated:
My boss: Your work is great, but sometimes your communication is overly direct and maybe even confrontational...
Me: Yes, I know I can be a jerk.
MB: I would not put it that way, but yeah, sometimes it seems like that...
Me: Why not, I know I am a jerk but at least my work makes up for it.
MB: *sigh*

This job is a huge rollercoaster ride.

Keetron
Sep 26, 2008

Check out my enormous testicles in my TFLC log!

Cheesus posted:

Are there any stories where a company outsourced all expertise (as Xibanya implied if the US employees would stop loving up...the outsourced work?), and a result of an awful product and resulting lack of dependent revenue, shut their doors as a result?

As much as I'd enjoy a tale of schadenfreude, I suspect the more common answer is along the lines of "No, not all expertise was let go; that single employee is now responsible for managing the outsourced teams and correcting all of their work. He works 100 hours a week."

Boeing's 787 Dreamliner is an outsourcing nightmare, not software but production parts, same problems tho:
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/jan/18/boeing-787-dreamliner-grounded

The Navy outsourcing their Voice and data stuff:
http://www.infoworld.com/article/2652801/outsourcing/painful-lessons-from-it-outsourcing-gone-bad.html

More horror:
http://www.pddnet.com/blogs/2014/01/how-outsourcing-went-horribly-wrong
http://www.rozinskiy.com/why-india-outsourcing-is-doomed/

KYOON GRIFFEY JR
Apr 12, 2010



Runner-up, TRP Sack Race 2021/22

Keetron posted:

There are a few things to keep in mind here, one is the perceived cost of operation and the other is the overall cost of quality. I am not sure if it is in this thread that I argue that the amount of bugs while testing is unimportant, it is the amount of production incidents that are disrupting the normal process. These are what counts not only for your end user satisfaction but also drive up maintenance costs.

In theory, outsourcing is cheap, you get the same amount of hours for half amount of the money (or less). However, when poorly executed, it will drive companies into bankruptcy but when properly executed, it is only some 20% or less cheaper due to the added overhead, increased timelines and added complexity.

But anyway, it is quarterly figures that matter and when they look good, someone gets a bonus and when they look bad, the market is to blame.

gently caress, I hate ignorance when it comes to outsourcing.


20% cost savings, if you do it correctly, is still huge, hence the draw.

ladyweapon
Nov 6, 2010

It reads all over his face,
like he's an Italian.

Keetron posted:

Me: Yes, I know I can be a jerk.

I'm actively encouraged to be more of a jerk :haw: With the increased hours I've all but completely lost my patience with people who don't deserve that patience in the first place.


e: Oh thank goodness, I was just reminded that our Chinese counterparts have their week long holiday starting October 1 which means my workload is cut in half for one, glorious, week. I am willfully ignoring the fact that its going to cause a backlog which will double my workload the following week(s).

ladyweapon fucked around with this message at 15:34 on Sep 25, 2014

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SubjectVerbObject
Jul 27, 2009
I am not sure about outsourcing causing doors to close, but I have seen the following:

Company hires Indian outsourcer to write new code for a product. The contract is extremely cheap, and they skimp out on some important things. Having to be a bit obscure here. They also push outsourcer to get the code done in 1/3 less time.

The reason for all of this push was margins. They wanted to start the new quarter selling a new product that was much cheaper to produce but at the same cost as before so they could show good profits and margins, and then IPO.

Product is delivered. It goes to QA. QA are Indian employees of the company that hired the outsourcer. The hiring company does not have a big Indian presence, and is a US company. The outsourcing company is huge in India and Indian owned. All tests pass on the first try, allowing the product to get shipped.

There are extreme problems with the product. Basic functionality did not work, much less advanced features. The company spends an enormous amount of time and resources (calculated later at >80 million based on time, product return, lost revenue and opportunity cost) trying to fix things. Eventually things get fixed and work properly, but the IPO is delayed and then withdrawn, a number of executives leave due to either firings or realizing they weren't going to get their IPO stock options, and company further outsources things in order meet margin goals.

Epilogue: The Indian QA team is fired and gets jobs at the outsourcing company.

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