Submit captions for this cartoon of “Offshore” in this post’s comments. And don’t forget to submit captions for the other Software Engineer Types as well…
Offshore
Where are these guys, anyway, and what time is it there? Who knows; you always have to count the time difference on your fingers.
But anyway, they seem very nice, and they do try to read the documentation. They just don’t always understand it and it’s not their fault that they were home sleeping when those critical changes were decided last week.
Distinguishing Characteristics:
- Located in Malaysia, China, or a former Eastern Bloc country. (Ukraine is the new India).
- Their proper English is downright charming.
- Sometimes they say they understand when you know they don’t.
- They make a lot more work for you, including having to attend 9PM meetings. On the upside, it is nice to have a glass of wine in your PJs while discussing the desired behavior of wildly far-flung corner cases for no other benefit than that of QA.
- Will often do the needful.
- Sometimes their code isn’t great. But, as I have mentioned, they are generally quite polite.
- ARE ULTIMATELY NOT CHEAPER. But we’ll let CPM cover that topic separately.
Project Pitfalls:
Too many to count on your hands.
Achilles heel:
Communications.
Best Bet:
- Document the hell out of your requirements and functional specs.
- Provide completed mock sets,including exception scenarios.
- Keep up with change requests.
- Meet with them often, and for God’s sake speak slowly (but not louder, because duh) and speak clearly
- Stop the meeting conversation often to see if they have any questions.
- Also, I know you don’t want to hear this, but for best results, you really should just go there for a week or so.
Also in 7 Types of Engineers
- Caption Contest! (7 Types of Engineers)
- Caption Contest: The Veteran (The Seven Types of Software Engineers)
- Caption Contest: The Hotshot (The Seven Types of Software Engineers)
- Caption Contest: The Great One (The Seven Types of Software Engineers)
- Caption Contest: The Teflon-gineer (The Seven Types of Software Engineers)
- Caption Contest: Offshore (The Seven Types of Software Engineers)
- Caption Contest: The Maverick (The Seven Types of Software Engineers)
- Caption Contest: The Clockwork Mouse (The Seven Types of Software Engineers)
(1 votes, average: 5 out of 5)
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To get things rolling:
“Hello??? …. Can you hear us? Would it be possible for you to please repeat your previous statement?”
(thought bubble: “Huh?”)
Here are a couple:
“The upcoming 3 day national holiday is going to disrupt our schedule by at least 2 weeks”
“So, for requirement 10, we’ve created 5 prototypes we need you to evaluate”
“Half our team quit this week. Microsoft hired them at twice the pay they were getting here.”
We c…CLICK…y imple…BUZZ…ust tel…UNINTELLIGIBLE…you want …HISS… it.
No problem, we certainly understand your requirements!
“We ever did that feature.” (no spelling mistake here)
If you know your party’s extension in binary, please enter it now…
(delivered via email, of course):
“Dear PM,
I examine even us again.
I arrive at the office and confirm a script now.
If you are ready, please tell it.”
We can build that, tell us what to do.
(coded into a user-facing message - discovered during QA)
“Wait some number of minutes while this process completes.”
“All your base are belong to us.”