As a enterprise software developer, I’ve heard many complaints about offshore development teams and I’ve enjoyed a few conversations with our corporate help desk in India. Mostly the experience hasn’t been great.
At the forefront of the issue is language, American english is different to English english; both are different to New Zealand english and I’m afraid it takes me a while to tune my ear to any other sort of english.
There was recently a slashdot article published about getting your ideas live.
I have difficulty communicating with them face to face. Its the way they use their grammes, direct translation from their native tongue. So it seems like they are speaking backwards.
Where would you be outsourcing to? A lot of corporate offshoring from New Zealand is done in India and China, I’ve sent some work to Viet Nam and Egypt been very happy with the results. New Zealand in turns does some work for other regions, including USA and Australia. Personally, I think language can be an issue but you develop an understanding if you spend enough time communicating.