India Sucks!!

.... and I mean that in the nicest possible way. But I just got off of a 3 hr conference call with them (9pm-midnight on a Tuesday!!!), because it's their morning and it's the earliest we could meet.

Why am I talking to India, you ask? Well, I'm a project manager on a custom software development team, and of the 9 people on my team, 4 of them are based in India. They cost roughly 20% of an on-shore resource, and that's with a margin mark-up that's like 4 times the US resources. So not only is it cheaper for my company to use them, but it's far more profitable!!!! [Note: those numbers are very rough guesstimates; I don't know the exact ratios and would likely be crucified if I publicly stated them.]

Anyways... the offshore team's been staffed for the last 2 months on my project, but they've literally been 20% efficient. That means that in a given week, they work one of those days. What the hell are they doing the other 4 days?! No one knows. But it sounds like a sweet deal to me... maybe I should transfer. Mumbai's a great place, I hear.

So if you do the math... 20% efficiency means that they still cost about the same as an on-shore resource (20% efficient vs. 5x the work done per dollar). But then you factor in the fact that the margin's like 4 times higher... and wow. Per hour India costs the same, but ACN makes 4x as much from their work. No wonder I'm obsolete.

And an update... I just got off a 2nd call in a row. I actually really like the India team members... we've just been having communication problems across the 11.5-hour time difference (shocking, I know!). Hopefully this 3-hr ordeal will help correct those problems. But for me, I still have a couple hours of work to do before I can go to bed... and it's already midnight. Oy vey!!!! Or rather, as they would say in Bambaiya Hindi, Vaat lag gayi!!!