[dba-Tech] FYI: Friday technical reading: Hitting the high notes...

John W. Colby jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com
Fri Aug 5 16:37:13 CDT 2005


I think the answer in part lies in the fact that a lot of software is
written for "in house" applications, where the total number of seats is
fixed and rather low.  For example, my clients hire me to write custom apps
for small companies.  Anywhere from 3 to 40 or 50 users.    The "hope" is
that doing it in a "dirt cheap" market will lower the total cost.  From what
I have seen, this simply doesn't work as expected for software due to a host
of reasons.  Things like call centers can be quite easily sent overseas, but
programming is a lot of handholding, a lot of "face to face" meetings to
discuss how the thing REALLY works etc.  Unfortunately that does not bode
well for your "high priced overseas" idea either.

John W. Colby
www.ColbyConsulting.com 

Contribute your unused CPU cycles to a good cause:
http://folding.stanford.edu/

-----Original Message-----
From: dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Shamil
Salakhetdinov
Sent: Friday, August 05, 2005 5:13 PM
To: !dba-Tech
Subject: [dba-Tech] FYI: Friday technical reading: Hitting the high notes...


Hi All,

Do you agree with this article/statement?

"... So, why isn't there room in the software industry for a low cost
provider, someone who uses the cheapest programmers available? (Remind me to
ask Quark how that whole fire-everybody-and-hire-low-cost-replacements plan
is working.) Here's why: duplication of software is free. That means that
the cost of programmers is spread out over all the copies of the software
you sell. With software, you can improve quality without adding to the
incremental cost of each unit sold.

Essentially, design adds value faster than it adds cost...."

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/HighNotes.html

(I'm curios how you feel about that living there in rather well paid for
programmers' work countries as far as I have heard and seen because  I'm  a
kind of (alone) indirectly fighting with low cost programmers army here in
my country when I'm trying to get work here at rates, which allow to keep my
big family well and I'm also trying to stay straight  against "dirt cheap"
programmers from India, East Europe (yes, Russia too of course), China,
Latin America etc  competing for the projects on Internet sites like
RentACoder.  Not easy excersize I must say. Unfortunately I don't have
enough real samples of the code of my competitors to say that cheap
programmers can't be good by definition. With some rare exceptions, which
only prove this rule. Am I wrong that cheap programmers can't be good? - if
I'm wrong and if Joel is wrong then for me this means that programming
profession will soon die even there in your countries under the pressure of
"dirt cheap" Eastern and Latin America programmers' dumping rates forcing
most of software programming to go off-shore...)

This another article from Joel is also interesting I think:

"Rub a dub dub" http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000348.html

Shamil

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