"Competence is inversely proportional to distance." Or perhaps, /perceived/ competence is.
Offshore could imply a number of things. Let's be nice at first and pretend that this means "across the Bay," or maybe on Alcatraz.
My best guess: The offshore person does not have the development culture present in the "mother ship". Best practices are often stuff that you learn in the hallway, from casual conversation, or watching over someone's shoulder. Attachment to the product's quality is probably lessened, too -- distance does this, even in the days of ten-millisecond-scale pings to the other side of the planet -- and it's easier to "go to lunch" on a problem and worry about it later when a floor-full of engineers aren't actively crowding your cubical about a lame checkin.
Hell, I have enough problems getting two /adjacent buildings/ to talk to each other.
Now, add a time-zone difference that further impedes communication. Add siestas, and mismatching holidays, and language barriers. There are more.
Even before we add in a different country's culture, we have severe issues with the average offshore developer's perception of what's important and how to work effectively.
I'm not going to say "Indian / Pakistani / Kiwi programmers can't code their way out of a paper bag", but when you add the stereotypical stuff to all of this (bad management, poor hiring practices, general slap-it-together attitude), it's /bad/, and not unwarranted to mention, even in passing.
Offshore could imply a number of things. Let's be nice at first and pretend that this means "across the Bay," or maybe on Alcatraz.
My best guess: The offshore person does not have the development culture present in the "mother ship". Best practices are often stuff that you learn in the hallway, from casual conversation, or watching over someone's shoulder. Attachment to the product's quality is probably lessened, too -- distance does this, even in the days of ten-millisecond-scale pings to the other side of the planet -- and it's easier to "go to lunch" on a problem and worry about it later when a floor-full of engineers aren't actively crowding your cubical about a lame checkin.
Hell, I have enough problems getting two /adjacent buildings/ to talk to each other.
Now, add a time-zone difference that further impedes communication. Add siestas, and mismatching holidays, and language barriers. There are more.
Even before we add in a different country's culture, we have severe issues with the average offshore developer's perception of what's important and how to work effectively.
I'm not going to say "Indian / Pakistani / Kiwi programmers can't code their way out of a paper bag", but when you add the stereotypical stuff to all of this (bad management, poor hiring practices, general slap-it-together attitude), it's /bad/, and not unwarranted to mention, even in passing.