Economic pain train's a coming (Boston, Springfield: bankruptcy, calculating, to live in)

[yesmaybe]

Originally Posted by BosYuppie

Ive been in the tech industry for 15 years now, I've worked with several outsourced development teams and to be honest not one of them provided good, timely results. The time zone delay is too big of a problem to overcome (if they mess something up, you have to wait a day to see it then another day to fix and test). You just end up shifting the burden and expense to project managers who by and large don’t know software. Even though onshore local developers are more expensive, the results are 100x better.

A lot of that is really the pitfalls of managing people remotely though.

[brightdoglover]

Originally Posted by BostonMike7

...

Given our IP, and some of the regulations we are under in terms of keeping our IP in the US, I don't think we will be outsourcing much more than that.

When I lived in the area, I remember a lot of talk about outsourcing anything that could be done on screen. Was that more specifically for "code monkey" work for Y2K or some such?

[AtkinsonDan]

One of my former employers in Massachusetts was part of a German owned multi-national corporation. They moved the basic accounting and finance functions to low cost countries in central America and southeast Asia. The turnover in the central American office was roughly every six months as there were a bunch of multi-nationals with offices there competing for the same cheap semi-skilled labor. The turnover in southeast Asia was even worse (every 3 months) because they had to work night shifts to be on-line when we were online. There has to be a significant cost of all that hiring, on-boarding and training even in a low wage country.

[BostonMike7]

Originally Posted by brightdoglover

When I lived in the area, I remember a lot of talk about outsourcing anything that could be done on screen. Was that more specifically for "code monkey" work for Y2K or some such?

I assume computer engineering in general. No need for that to be physically located anywhere specific.

I do more physical device design. Due to ITAR, some of the materials need to be kept in the US so design stays in the US as well.

The only area that my company does outsource completely is our IT helpdesk. If I lock myself out of my computer, i'm talking to someone in Asia at 3AM their time. We do have manufacturing sites around the world, and some local engineering support there. That's less about outsourcing though and more about being able to locally support supply chain issues.

[mdovell]

Some colleges have announced they are going online for the fall. Holyoke Community College and Greenfield Community College. Granted these are small two year community colleges.

http://www.masslive.com/coronavirus/...this-fall.html

The other part is if public schools are still online this fall it might not make sense to have in class content and leave kids at home alone. Unless there's some form of daycare on campus but I highly doubt schools would do that (unless there's an early ed portion)

I don't think anyplace would have summer classes in higher ed or high schools at this point. This summer *MUST* be used for any building adjustments. There's no way that we can pretend that buildings and workplaces would remain the same. I had a nook for copiers/scanners/printers in an office where the windows don't open (only a few floors). I doubt we going to the same again.

[GeoffD]

Originally Posted by BostonMike7

Same observation here. We do have a remote engineering team now, but they do the "easy" stuff. But we found it to be a burden to give major projects to that team. The time delay was one thing, but project quality was poor. We ended up keeping all major dev work in the US and just giving the outsourced team the easy bread-and-butter stuff to free up our plate for more projects.

Given our IP, and some of the regulations we are under in terms of keeping our IP in the US, I don't think we will be outsourcing much more than that.

I've worked with a number of Taiwanese, South Korean, and Chinese development groups over the last decade who were stronger than any Boston tech startup I've been in. Of course, that's not outsourcing. That's an Asian-owned company and their in-house product development group. I've also worked with some that were awful. The Asian companies have had 30 years to create the institutional knowledge to do good product development. It's no longer 1990 when they had no clue what they were doing and the big guys were ripping off IP from US companies because they were incapable of rolling their own.


I don't see many Indian offshoring projects that end well.

[mdovell]

https://www.wcvb.com/article/rent-fo...demic/32399627

I can see this drop easily if not more but the other thing though is if towns are looking to get this they're going to have to realize how their Zone. Not all towns even have commercially available land. Add in the cost for water lines sewer lines electrical and telecommunication as well as energy and this is why I think smaller cities are going to see more of an influx.

[Dm84]

Originally Posted by mdovell

https://www.wcvb.com/article/rent-fo...demic/32399627

I can see this drop easily if not more but the other thing though is if towns are looking to get this they're going to have to realize how their Zone. Not all towns even have commercially available land. Add in the cost for water lines sewer lines electrical and telecommunication as well as energy and this is why I think smaller cities are going to see more of an influx.

No one is going to relocate their offices to Springfield because of this lol.

What's more likely IMO is companies lease several small office space in suburbs for people who genuinely need to come into the office, so that employees can easily drive there since most people aren't going to want to ride the T for a while.

[mdovell]

Originally Posted by Dm84

No one is going to relocate their offices to Springfield because of this lol.

What's more likely IMO is companies lease several small office space in suburbs for people who genuinely need to come into the office, so that employees can easily drive there since most people aren't going to want to ride the T for a while.

but that's if they have office space. I know towns that have very little if any empty commercial properties. Maybe this could be a good example for Mall Redevelopment but for the most part I know of many communities that flat-out do not want businesses the commercial properties in their town.

Before this happened the high cost of rent. Something move to Brockton but I doubt that's going to continue because of the rate that exist there. I don't think it's out of the question to see people go to Lowell or Lynn or Worcester.

There's already some that have come back to Springfield. The MassMutual deal they made to get an office and Boston is pretty much gone at this point. Nobody's going to drive into Boston if they can telecommute from Springfield especially if you're not paying the more money to go into Boston.

[timberline742]

If people have the job and skills that enable them to telecommute, its really unlikely they'll choose Springfield to live in. Highly unlikely.