NYCPHP Meetup

[Allen Shaw]

I see that before I can even finish my "immediate" reply, this is a hot
topic already.  :o) I'm a little new in this group (though I had a great
time at Outback last week's meeting) so I don't know if I'm risking
something here, but I will say that I myself have good experiences and no
philisophical problem with international (and sometimes domestic)
outsourcing.

In my work I am asked to do many things, from office network management and
tech support to application design and coding -- I use mostly PHP to get
done the job of managing and developing our online database, and I use lots
of time and attention taking care of tech support needs in our 30-person
office.  It's been frustrating for me in many cases when I see that the
non-profit I work for has needs in my area but no funds (and perhaps no
vision) to expand my "department" into more than just me.  Recently I've
realized that I can do a lot more in my area by securing a small budget and
then using it to get a lot of my coding done very cheaply.  The benefits are
several for me: 1) I get more good stuff done that I want to do; 2) I learn
more about managing multi-person projects; 3) my whole outlook at the
programming I do is becoming more broad, less home-grown, and less in-grown.
Without this resource, most of these things would probably never happen.

On the philisophical side, I have no problem with work going where it is
best done for the best price.  Of course it's important to know what work
needs to be done and the meaning of "best done" -- you can't outsource
everything because a coder a thousand miles away is not going to know the
ins and outs of your company culture and policy, and he won't have real
ownership of the whole picture.  Tim's got the point:
> ... whoops missed that gaping security
> hole. Maybe we should see if we can get back that
> 'useless' middleman to do code reviews and prevent
> security breaches in the future.

If I think of myself as a coder who writes PHP code to conform to somebody
else's orders, then I'm in danger when coding jobs start moving out of my
reach.  But if I think of myself as a problem-solver who sometimes (or most
of the time) writes code to fullfil a need, then I'm happy as a lark when
the coding jobs can be handed off and I get more time to focus on new
problems to solve or on improving existing solutions.

Alan Miller:
> Before you know it, the only work left is work helping people
> outsource, and eventually once everyone is in the outsourcing business, we
> can all run around like real estate agents chasing what little action is
> left.

There will always be lots of action left.  The Open Source ideology itself
was decried by some as the impending doom of programming-for-profit. But the
fact is that there are always jobs that require real ownership, real skill,
real creativity and thinking, and those jobs can't be handed off to an
outside bidder, and getting those jobs done well will always be worth enough
to put food on your family's table.

I don't mean to rant, but I hear and am bothered by the "protect our jobs"
idea in many industries, and I think we are probably doing more to hold
ourselves back with that philosophy than actually improve our real quality
of life.

My four cents, I guess.  Hope it's appropriate here.

- Allen


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jeff Loiselle" <jeff at newnewmedia.com>
To: <talk at lists.nyphp.org>
Sent: Tuesday, June 29, 2004 4:27 PM
Subject: [nycphp-talk] Off Topic: International Outsourcing


> Sorry guys. I read this and absolutely needed to hear some opinions on
> this subject.
>
> http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.07/view.html?pg=2
>
> -- 
> Jeff Loiselle - http://www.newnewmedia.com/~jeff
>
> _______________________________________________
> talk mailing list
> talk at lists.nyphp.org
> http://lists.nyphp.org/mailman/listinfo/talk