[ale] An Indian perspective on Indian outsourcing

[Ronald Chmara]

On Fri, 2004-01-30 at 08:26, Vaidhy Mayilrangam wrote:
> I have kept away from the outsourcing threads till now..
>
> As a person who worked in US and then moved back to India, I consider
> myself having a fair idea as to how the market is on both sides.
>
> I have seen people complaining about how elite they are, how much they
> invested in their programming careers and all of it is now gone. 99% of
> what gets outsourced is either a maintenance project or YABS (Yet
> Another Billing System). IMHO, these do not require any great skill,
> simply grunt work.

YACMS... (Contact management system)
YAATS... (Asset tracking system)
YAAS... (Auction System)
YAODS... (Online document system, related to asset tracking)
YARPG... (Role playing game)
YADCS... (Document creation system, usually pdf)
YAFPS... (First person shooter)
YAFWS... (Fire Wall Server)
YATS... (Template system, often used in YAPS)
YAPS... (Portal System)
YALC... (Location system, using zip codes or other long/lat tools)

The list goes on and on, the longer you write software for others under 
contract, the bigger it gets....
None of it is very new, or innovative, and hasn't been innovative since 
the dot-bomb crash (or before!).

So, besides replicating what has come before, what's next?

Some free ideas (create at will, may already exist):

Cross the Sims-Online with EverCrack^H^H^H^H^HQuest.
Create a RSS feed system that uses Bayesian filtering to determine 
"important" news.
Invent a game engine that can be played as FPS, RTS, MMORPG, and 
MMORTS, at the same time.
Create a new mail server system to replace the existing spam-prone 
systems.
Devise a system to filter out unimportant (to the user) parts of 
documents.
Track online pirated content based on the user impressions of that 
content, not MD5, or key bits (see facial recognition).
Invisible biometrics...
Data mining agents...
User-choice based OS's (do they prefer menus? Icons? word based 
interactions? Make the OS act that way)...

That's just off the top of my head. I'm sure there's tons more (why 
can't I drive from one city to another and have my talk channel, my 
retro channel, and my rock channel stay the same buttons? Why don't my 
windshield wipers tell me when to replace them? Why isn't my laundry 
auto-sorted?)...

New innovation beats factory work. So, innovate, rather than complain 
about code factories. Innovate, and let the factories do the heavy 
lifting once there is a viable product. Edison didn't bitch about not 
creating light bulbs on the assembly line. Ford didn't bitch about not 
working on the line.

-Bop