I Would Not Outsource My Projects

Apr 19

Have you heard of outsourcing?  Besides the TV show, there is much to the issue of outsourcing.  At the heart of it, outsourcing basically means getting someone else to do the work. When used in terms of software, it usually refers to having someone overseas in India or China write the code according to what the desired behavior is. For the past decade or so there has been talk (and more than talk) about how all of the software created is going to be outsourced rather than done in America.  In fact I remember during my undergraduate studies there was a survey taken of my class to find out whether talk of the outsourcing of our future careers scared us into going into other fields.  At the time it did not seem too pressing of an issue.  Maybe it is because we were not aware enough of what was really going on in the industry yet.  In any case, the reason that all of the outsourcing was talked about is basically because American computer programmers are much more expensive than those in other countries.

So what does this mean to me (or you) unless you are getting laid off as your work is being moved overseas?  I think it still is quite relevant.  Because it is not just losing a job that causes me to stop.  It is really the fact that I have seen people purposely choose to outsource their own projects!  In their new ventures they have opted to outsource the programming to some other group or country. As for me, though, I do not think that I would ever outsource my projects.

Reasons why I would not outsource my projects:

• I set out on a side project because I want to learn something. Maybe I want to learn a new programming language. Maybe I just want to go through the experience of building something in particular. After all, experience matters.  And I want that experience.

• Outsourcing something essentially tramples upon the lower state of others.  While I am sure that I do this in an indirect way (e.g., by buying anything made in China), it still seems worse to me to directly order other people to do things.

• When I do something myself, I get this odd satisfaction from doing something myself.  I do not imagine that everyone else feels the same way.  In fact I would guess that most other people just want whatever it is to work.  But I love being able to look at something (even if it is imperfect) and knowing that I had a huge hand in doing it.

• There seem to be a myriad of reasons why working with people in another country (or even other people in general) would be difficult.  This includes things like language, time difference, and general misunderstandings.  As the sayings goes: “If you want something done right you have got to do it yourself.”  Because trusting others to do things that you want to do is not ever going to work out just as you have planned.

While people can (obviously) do whatever they want with their projects, I am pretty sure that I would not do such a thing.  In fact it flies in the face of who I want to be.