You outsource to India to save money. You wont outsource to India if a developer/company charges the same as its US counterpart. So you end up outsourcing to mediocre companies eventually
Let me say that I've worked with some amazing Indian programmers, but this comment aligns with a realization that I came to a while ago. Some organizations see software development as a competitive advantage and while others see software development as a necessary evil. The "necessary evil" shops are the ones most likely to outsource based solely on cost.
It's said that more than half of all software projects fail, in that they're canceled, fail hard, or severely under-preform/under-deliver but victory must be declared. Many organizations can get by for years mostly failing in software development.
For a while I've wondered if the true attraction of this sort of outsourcing is that it's a cheaper way to fail.
Absolutely. If you're convinced that software development is going to be expensive, painful, and probably-doomed, you might as well pay as little as possible for it.
Long back, my very first project in a big Indian IT firm involved an Australian client. He was here, and we went for lunch together.
In a casual chat we asked him how difficult it was to hire in Australia. He didn't even hesitate for a second to reply, they had done everything thing they wanted to in Australia, and the projects failed. They are doing the same in India with nearly the same failure rates- at the end he said, he rather preferred doing that at a lower price.
Let me say that I've worked with some amazing Indian programmers, but this comment aligns with a realization that I came to a while ago. Some organizations see software development as a competitive advantage and while others see software development as a necessary evil. The "necessary evil" shops are the ones most likely to outsource based solely on cost.