True, but having high-end developers in-house is both handy, and good for the economy!
And as biased and prejudiced as this may sound, I've found that workers from India and China often have "shake-and-bake" qualifications.... can you imagine how frustrating it is to work with someone who apparently has a Masters in IT yet doesn't understand that "var1 = textfiedl1 + textfield2" is NOT something I want to see in proper VB.Net code? Nevermind that I swear I heard him utter "wow, that's genius" when I cobbled together a session-based auth script.... ugh.
Like I said above, outsourcing basic, labour-intensive stuff is OK as long as you can verify qualifications and get plenty of references. Personally, I would never, ever outsource anything mission-critical or "high-end" as I'd be more than a little afraid of having IP compromised (not to mention security).
All that aside, one golden rule I swear by is:
Real-world experience is more important than qualifications.
Always.
I do not care if you have a Masters degree in Information Superhighway Architecture Specialization and Awesomeness. If you have 3+ years of experience and can exhibit resourcefulness, experience and intelligence, I will hire you over Mr PhD/Masters/B.IT/B.EComm/Fresh-out-of-college.
Maybe slightly off-topic but pursuant to the whole "verify your resource first" mantra.
"And as biased and prejudiced as this may sound, I've found that workers from India and China often have "shake-and-bake" qualifications...."
I suspect that's due to the rapid growth of the software development industry there. Allegedly similar things happened during the dot boom here in the 90s, when there was so much demand for software that many unqualified and under-qualified people were hired.
On the other hand, there was a Wall Street Journal article recently (much discussed here, I think) about how the best developers in India can command salaries closer to their Silicon Valley counterparts than the typical Indian IT salary.
Perhaps "you get what you pay for" applies?
"someone who apparently has a Masters in IT yet doesn't understand that "var1 = textfiedl1 + textfield2" is NOT something I want to see in proper VB.Net code?"
I suspect you can find similar code from American developers. The only difference is that over here a lot of the less dedicated programmers have left the field and so now we have their Indian counterparts doing the same low quality work for less money.
"Nevermind that I swear I heard him utter "wow, that's genius" when I cobbled together a session-based auth script.... ugh."
If the article's portrayal of "Honey" is indicative, he may have been just trying to stroke your ego. :)
"Real-world experience is more important than qualifications."
And as biased and prejudiced as this may sound, I've found that workers from India and China often have "shake-and-bake" qualifications.... can you imagine how frustrating it is to work with someone who apparently has a Masters in IT yet doesn't understand that "var1 = textfiedl1 + textfield2" is NOT something I want to see in proper VB.Net code? Nevermind that I swear I heard him utter "wow, that's genius" when I cobbled together a session-based auth script.... ugh.
Like I said above, outsourcing basic, labour-intensive stuff is OK as long as you can verify qualifications and get plenty of references. Personally, I would never, ever outsource anything mission-critical or "high-end" as I'd be more than a little afraid of having IP compromised (not to mention security).
All that aside, one golden rule I swear by is:
Real-world experience is more important than qualifications.
Always.
I do not care if you have a Masters degree in Information Superhighway Architecture Specialization and Awesomeness. If you have 3+ years of experience and can exhibit resourcefulness, experience and intelligence, I will hire you over Mr PhD/Masters/B.IT/B.EComm/Fresh-out-of-college.
Maybe slightly off-topic but pursuant to the whole "verify your resource first" mantra.