Re: Offshore mistake = onshore pain
It was no grand plan, just jaw dropping mistakes, attempts to cover up and obfuscation and evasion by both the staff and management when trying to determine root cause.
They don't care about onshore management as they don't answer to them - completely different chain of command. All that can be done is escalate their management to get things sorted if the issue isn't high visibility/impact and in those cases it usually takes the customer escalating to get things done. I've lost count of the time that the handful of members of my onshore team have had a local manager push us to do work at short notice that had been with offshore for weeks or months with no traction and the demand for us to complete it because the customer has escalated to highest levels locally.
What is particularly galling is the same management who will push us hard to fix a project that has been stalled for months due to offshore pushbacks and roadblocks won't push the offshore management about the failure to deliver. The common refrain being "It's India, what can we do?" Last time I responded to what they can do I ended up with a warning and a note in my permanent record - no I wasn't suggesting anything offensive, I had merely suggested that he get some intestinal fortitude and push the offshore management and team as hard as they were pushing us.
Offshore teams know that IBM is entirely reliant on them now, it's one of the reasons why some things just don't get done. If they don't want to do it, they push back with excuses and roadblocks until the local manager gives up and goes away. Accountability and commitment is a problem for some members of offshore teams - we've been in the middle of high severity incident and the entire team has dropped off a call because they have 'gone for breakfast.'
There are some very good and dedicated offshore team members but they don't often stay long - IBM is seen as a company for a 'fresher' to get a few months experience working in an IT company, familiarity with processes etc. before they go to another outsourcer who pays more. Some of our more recent hires had been exceptional (onshore team did the final interviews) but they are on a band 3 times higher than the other team members which caused others to leave. These higher band hires have been well worthwhile but overall costs for offshore have gone up as a result as their team mates push to be made a higher band. So account management are looking to achieve cost savings from onshore staff...
Biting the hand that feeds IT
