Friday, April 28, 2006

Engineering Lies

My current "paying-the-bills"-strategy involves working with a company that is doing offshore development.  I've been burning the candle at both ends trying to keep this engagement running smoothly.  Shortly I will have to spend a significant amount of time overseas to handle this fiasco.

Kawasaki recently posted "The Top Ten Lies of Engineers".  It was humorous but definitely struck a chord with my situation.  Specifically #8:
We can do this faster, cheaper, and better with an offshore programming team in India.
Rank and file engineers usually don't tell this lie; it's the CTO who does. Somehow we've got it in our heads that every programmer in India is good, fast, and cheap, and every programmer in the United States is lousy, slow, and expensive. My theory is that for version 1.0 of  a product, the maximum allowable distance between the engineers and marketers is thirty feet.
Once again, funny and insightful all in one go.