Comment by Brajeshwar

I have been on the dark side of that world but let's keep the stories for another day. Here is a different mini-story on how big companies save money and fatten their margin.

In the early to mid-00s, a popular scripting language called ActionScript (sister of ECMAScript) powers Flash. A large Outsourcing company contacted me to ramp up a development team for a high triple-digit thousand dollars project. They had bought/inherited a code library, one of the most beautifully written codebases -- Object Oriented Java-Styled code with well-documented comments. I emailed the original programmer (part of the same forum group, I think), and he replied that if I need help, he is there.

The company was trying to set up a team to start with the code and build an entire application. When asked, why not just talk to the original author of the code, and he will do it easily instead of struggling for many months. It will take ages for the team to understand how things are written and why.

Well, the idea is all about cost and margins. They seriously don't care how good or even if the project completes. Their only motive was the number of hours and code volume (number of lines). They even factored in attrition from the team and the replacement cost in money and time.

So, the original programmer cost them $100 /hr (a good amount during that time), so the company spent a set budget to get just the needed framework. Then, they got a trainer (me) at about $20 /hr, which was costly (but had to) at that time (and geographic location). Finally, they cut and save by training those "engineers" who thought they could write ActionScript by clicking on the timeline on Flash.

There are excellent Services/Consulting companies and even brilliant teams inside these big companies. However, most people are just optimizing on volume and billable hours and have no care in the world about pride, dignity, or what the final product will be.