I don’t like the term ‘outsourcing’. In fact, if you visit our company site, you’ll find no mention of ‘outsourcing’, ‘offshore’ and similar terms. Maybe I’m being unfair here, but there seem to be some sort of negative connotation associated with the term, and I prefer the term ‘custom development’ (or just ‘custom dev’) instead. The way I see it,

Outsourcing = hiring developers because they are cheap

Custom development = hiring developers because they are brilliant

The not-so-subtle difference has to do with the way people view software development generally, applying inappropriate measurement techniques when assessing the efficacy of software development. See, unlike mechanical engineering, where a part’s production time is fixed and predictable, software engineering is creative and non-linear, which implies that conventional economic models of ‘parts per hour’ are all but useless.

Now, it’s not just that. The quality of manufactured parts typically doesn’t vary much. With quality control, person A is roughly as good as person B in terms of making some part or other. The difference of 2× is not significant. In software development, the difference can be 100x, but while quality differs vastly, wages do not. This makes the idea of ‘cheap developers’ somewhat silly, because developers by and large distribute themselves evenly on the wage scale whatever the wages are.

Now, if projects succeeded regularly, you might argue that I’m wrong and it doesn’t matter. But projects fail. As in EPIC FAIL. Projects mess up due to a zillion reasons, making a truly shocking statistic for an industry that is supposed to be precise and ultra-efficient (hey, we have measurement tools and all that, right?). Somehow, I’m thinking, the idea of having brilliant developers (managers, qa engineers, etc.) actually fits into the larger idea of actually making the project on time and budget. Which is what this business is all about, last time I checked.

The moral of the story is this: custom development companies like mine will never be cheap, but will make every effort to product good software. Which is why we’re in this business altogether.