RE: World's Cheapest Consultants

| [mailto:midrange-l-admin@midrange.com]On Behalf Of Nathan M. Andelin


| Code shops in India and other countries won't be limiting their skill sets
| to "mature technology" for long, if at all.  Based on several years
| experience with foreign exchange students, and many associates
| from foreign
| countries, I believe these people generally have a hunger for
| knowledge that
| exceeds our own.
|

Just had time to skim a few of the posts in this thread.  Don't know how
much this applies, but it did just happen recently.

Client got 2 bids from big consulting shops on a massive program change,
both of whom farmed out a lot of the coding overseas.  Nothing fancy.. just
vanilla RPG changes... The bids came in at 6 figures from both.

They ended up having a buddy of mine, who's been contracting with them for
years, do the job at 3-digits dollars per hour.  They figured the time
explaining the project and final QA would be about the same either way they
did the project.  And because he was intimately familiar with the systems
that needed changed, he could do it in a fraction of the time and money.
Plus he wrote conversion programs to automate a lotta program changes
(similar to what he'd done before, converting S/36 code to 38).


Knowing what you're doing isn't as easy as it sometimes looks, and I believe
in keeping skills updated about as much as the next fellow...  I also
believe that knowing a smattering of a whole bunch-a stuff is fashionable,
but knowing at least a few things REAL well is a better asset in the
long-term...  That includes how the business and industry you work in
functions, as much or more than the dweeb stuff, imo.

As others mentioned, times are tough all around, but I wonder if folks are
blaming the PLATFORM, in the Windoze and *nix world, as much as in the 400
world...?


jt