Outsourcing (Off-shoring)

[ajtgarber]

I understand this is a touchy subject for some people, but I'd like to hear some other people's opinions on the subject.
What do you guys think about Outsourcing?

[pritam]

Outsorcing parts of a project, such as voice acting, tends to be a lot cheaper, hence it can be very usefull for commersial developers as well as independent developers. For larger portions of a project it's probably not the way to go, imho.

[wearymemory]

Outsorcing parts of a project, such as voice acting, tends to be a lot cheaper, hence it can be very usefull for commersial developers as well as independent developers. For larger portions of a project it's probably not the way to go, imho.

Perhaps I'm mistaken, but aren't we discussing the so-called "immoral" act of contracting third-(world)-party labor for prices which may seem unethical, rather than the subject you're talking about (this isn't necessarily a discussion about game development)?

I quite like the idea of a programming sweatshop, but due to the financial limitations, production code may be in some dead, untranslatable and incomprehensible language like Fortran, Lisp, or COBOL.

[pritam]

Outsorcing parts of a project, such as voice acting, tends to be a lot cheaper, hence it can be very usefull for commersial developers as well as independent developers. For larger portions of a project it's probably not the way to go, imho.

Perhaps I'm mistaken, but aren't we discussing the so-called "immoral" act of contracting third-(world)-party labor for prices which may seem unethical, rather than the subject you're talking about (this isn't necessarily a discussion about game development)?

I quite like the idea of a programming sweatshop, but due to the financial limitations, production code may be in some dead, untranslatable and incomprehensible language like Fortran, Lisp, or COBOL.

Ah yeah, you may be right. I don't know.

[ajtgarber]

COBOL isn't quite dead yet , the company that my friend works at has been taking whole departments over-seas, mainly to India. Relations between the old and new groups aren't really going so well. Anyone else's company doing something similar?

[Ginto8]

Outsorcing parts of a project, such as voice acting, tends to be a lot cheaper, hence it can be very usefull for commersial developers as well as independent developers. For larger portions of a project it's probably not the way to go, imho.

Perhaps I'm mistaken, but aren't we discussing the so-called "immoral" act of contracting third-(world)-party labor for prices which may seem unethical, rather than the subject you're talking about (this isn't necessarily a discussion about game development)?

I quite like the idea of a programming sweatshop, but due to the financial limitations, production code may be in some dead, untranslatable and incomprehensible language like Fortran, Lisp, or COBOL.

Lisp itself is not dead, and, even if it isn't used much commercially, it can be useful for learning how to program. Fortran is still used by some scientists as a quick method of calculating complex formulas (that's what FORmula TRANslation is for isn't it?). COBOL is still used by masochists, old people, and maintainers of monolithic systems that have been running (and probably haven't changed much) for at least 30 years.

[pritam]

Ah right "off-shoring" I get it haha.

[dandymcgee]

Pritam is from Sweden. As such, ES artwork responsibilities were being outsourced, on a small scale, while he was on the team (Pritam is not the only one). It really depends on particular circumstances, and isn't something that can be categorized as either "good" or "bad" as a whole.

[wearymemory]

COBOL isn't quite dead yet , the company that my friend works at has been taking whole departments over-seas, mainly to India. Relations between the old and new groups aren't really going so well. Anyone else's company doing something similar?

Of course, my last statement was made jokingly, but this only further conveys the correctness of it. Your friend's new "departments" in India have made so many budget cuts that they're now using COBOL? And they're not doing so well? Maybe your friend should enforce the use of an even deadlier language like Jawa, then your friend could take out life insurance policies for his "workers."

Pritam is from Sweden...

My condolences Pritam. If dandymcgee hadn't told me, then I wouldn't have known about your obstructive working conditions. I'm not holding ES responsible. It's actually Obama's fault.

[Ginto8]

My condolences Pritam. If dandymcgee hadn't told me, then I wouldn't have known about your obstructive working conditions. I'm not holding ES responsible. It's actually Obama's fault.

lolwut

[JaxDragon]

Eh I don't think that major commercial outsourcing is such a good idea. Yeah, hiring people at decent wages if you just need more staff is fine. But when they make people work in unbearable conditions just to save some money, thats aggravating. Instead of giving Americans(or, native countries I should say) jobs, they could care less as long as they're making more money.

[davidthefat]

Outsourcing has been part of human nature, slavery, that bully asking the nerd for the answers, modern outsourcing of programmers, sweatshops, workers working in the field for minuscule amount of money, prostitutes, simply asking someone else to do something for you is a form of outsourcing. I believe it is due to the laziness of humans. Its always been part of humans since beginning of time

[pritam]

Pritam is from Sweden...

My condolences Pritam. If dandymcgee hadn't told me, then I wouldn't have known about your obstructive working conditions. I'm not holding ES responsible. It's actually Obama's fault.

LOL

[mattheweston]

I think wholesale outsourcing is a bad thing; however, focused outsourcing can be a good thing. I consider wholesale outsourcing similar to moving a whole factory or division of a company overseas to avoid taxes and get cheaper labor. I consider focused outsourcing something that falls in line with what the ES team did farming out their artwork overseas or in the instance where a company hires a contractor or vendor to build some software for them because they are swamped with so much work they can't get to it themselves.

The current environment for business in the US is not in a state that is conducive to support keeping jobs in the US. As long as companies can make their products cheaper in foreign countries, they will continue to do so thus depriving Americans of those jobs. The way to solve this problem is to give these companies an incentive to keep the jobs stateside. I know it's not popular but, tax cuts for the wealthy would solve some of this but only if you had some kind of mechanism in place to make sure that the money was spent in the US to keep jobs here. Keeping the jobs here would in turn help unemployment thus helping the economy.

[dandymcgee]

Pritam is from Sweden...

My condolences Pritam. If dandymcgee hadn't told me, then I wouldn't have known about your obstructive working conditions. I'm not holding ES responsible. It's actually Obama's fault.

Haha.