Thread regarding Bose layoffs

Many years ago IBM analysed the results of multi-nation development of the OS/2 operating system.

They found that working on multiple sites reduced productivity by IIRC 23%.

You guys are just training your replacements. Sorry

If Bose is doing it you can rest assured it's counterproductive and the absolute wrong tactic and strategy at the absolute wrong time.

Replying to postID: @pps+1sSeXENG

I agree. There really isn't any hand off, as developers work on their own thing for days or weeks at a time for the most part by themselves. Moreover, the different levels of knowledge of particular areas of code or particular tools and technologies prevent work from being effectively transferred between developers.

The only potential beneficial thing I can see for this concept is in handling bugs coming in from the field. Bugs that are so serious they require a release are not that common, and the time between triage and creating a patch release is so long that it negates any potential benefit of having 24 hours of coverage.

Still waiting on new features on that Bose music app, last major update was 2018? Seems like it’s going well!

Worked at Bose a while ago, when they were successful, they started to use the term "Right Shore" instead of "Off Shore" because they needed to make sure they found talent anywhere or something like that.
That place has been a clown show since they hire Brian from EMC back in the early 2000's.

The most charitable way to view this is probably outlined on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Follow-the-sun. On paper, you could probably draw the conclusion that this allows work to continue around the clock. This probably looks amazing at the highest levels of management. Lower cost and faster development--how can you say no??

About 10 years ago McKinsey was pushing this Follow The Sun mantra fairly heavily. It may still be, for all I know. I'd put money on them/Accenture being heavily involved in this transition. Lord knows they have the case studies to impress executives.

In practice, this will be a disaster. Reality is never as clean as the Power Point/spreadsheet looks. The Wiki page also calls this out: "The main reason why FTS is difficult to implement is because the handoffs are an essential element that is hard to get right. The largest factor causing this difficulty is poor communication." Bose can't manage several internal teams, keeping them in sync and productive, so spreading the work out across the globe will be an unmitigated disaster and money sink. The overhead will be several times more expensive than the cost savings, and will cause one of two things: delayed products, or (more) buggy products. Bose can afford neither.

Bose software has been something of a clown show for a long time; this is just the latest instantiation of it.

The real mantra is “we can only afford offshore labor”