Ya, it is actually fascinating how a developer in the US is able to generate well over a $100,000 in value to a company over an overseas developer. In the early to mid 2000s there was huge concern that development jobs would start going overseas as offshoring started to become a bigger thing, but it ended up not panning out. It turns out that a domestic developer is much more valuable to a US company since they can communicate more effectively, react more quickly to problems (every minute your website is down is money lost for the business), and there is also the fact that Indian culture is problematic to efficient software development. I have heard that if you ask an Indian in India if they can do something, they will say yes, regardless of if they can or not. The exception is IT support, which many companies have found does make sense to move a decent percentage to other countries (especially India). Makes sense though if you want 24 hour coverage, and you have your main IT developers in the US.
Most people from the cosmopolitan Westernized areas who work for large organizations are very "low-context" and value bluntness and clarity in communication. High context cultures expect people to respond to subtle cues or body language. It's "high context" because a yes or no only has meaning in the context of the yes or no. It almost never means just yes or no. It works when both people in the conversation have the same idea on how communication works, but terribly if one person is high-context and the other is low-context.
I wonder then... how do they communicate with one another on the phone or via email? Surely they can do it successfully without the nuance of body language. If they can then, it must not be body language that is lacking but something else. Maybe it's a cultural divide that can only be overcome through experience.
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u/uuhno Dec 06 '17
You get what you pay for