Originally Posted by
Nialler
I've refused contracts where one particular outsourcer was involved. No names, obviously. The practice has been in the very large systems I've worked on to keep the crown jewels at home. Functions such as security, systems design and management remain in the home territory while some application development and support can more easily be taken on by an appropriate outsourcer with the right skills. The problem is that the skills required for very high-end computing are relatively new to India. It's also a mindset. You've or, worse, caused a problem on of these machines? First step, push way from the keyboard ; second step beginning ring teammates and the boss. Deliberate. Running at the problem almost always makes it worse. Declare a disaster if needed. The latter is the problem. Everyone is afraid of that word. In decades I've seen that anything short of 737 crashing into a data center will not be treated as a disaster. Surely it can be fixed?
It isn't like that. That single message about a pointer error can proliferate rapidly and be compounded by errant efforts to airbrush it away.
Sorry for using a flight forum for going on about this, but I so enjoy reading what the flight jocks have to say that I can't help contributing from inside the climate rooms I haunt.
This kind of crash after outsourcing and losing experienced staff has happened before. You would think that CEOs would learn from other's disasters but apparently not.
It was precisely the reason that the patched and kludged together RBS/Nat West banking system fell over...and the 'inexperienced' operatives in Hyderabad were the likely culprits in screwing up an upgrade backout.
RBS computer failure 'caused by inexperienced operative in India' - Telegraph
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/0...at_went_wrong/
This kind of thing should never ever happen, but if you are unaware of the particular foibles of what is otherwise a fully fault tolerant system it can be surprisingly easy to break the system when you have full SysAdmin privileges and have finger trouble trying to stop the system going down.