Quote one of my past Indian coworkers: "If you pay peanuts, you hire monkeys.". Which is the chuckle worthy way of saying that eventually the markets are, all else equal, fairly efficient, and that the labor pool available at $4 an hour to bill to you at $12 an hour has systemic, pervasive competence issues which will prevent the successful completion of many projects.
Anyhow, beating the usual drum: don't be a cost center. Figure out how the business works and nobody will even consider outsourcing the projects you'll work on.
If you want to outsource to India, you need to find a company that hires super stars. Super stars in India demand a salary of Rs50,000 to Rs 100,000 a month. Which is still quite less from international point of view: its about $1000 to $2000 a month. A company hiring them will bill you a minimum of $20-30 per hour. Usually more like $40-45 per hour.
If you go with a company that is billing you less than that from India, you should know that your work will suffer because that company does not hire the best skilled coders.
It is less from Western point of view not from international. I'm sure that in Latin America and Eastern Europe prices are quite similar and time zone differences are more acceptable. India lose in this price range because of cultural differences as well. Usually those are small details like matching Christian and/or international holidays (therefore no conflicting days off) but sum of those details are really significant.
Again your point just confirms fact that Western developers shouldn't worry about competition from India.
I'm in Uruguay, and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) opened a huge facility here to address just that (the time zone differences) as we're in the GMT -3 timezone.
But they're having trouble filling positions at their salaries, most decent programmers here earn more than U$ 1.000 (I make U$ 1.500 myself, and want to make at least twice that, so I'm about to start my own company).
An acquaintance had good experience with Bulgaria. It was a small outfit, just 5 people to match another 4 people working in US. American company was their only customer.
Not sure which Indian superstars you'll get for Rs.50,000 today. This may have been true in 2001, but no one I know today will go below 1.5L-2L a month.
Can you name a few companies in India that hire "superstars" for that amount? Every "superstar" I know gets close to $4500 in India. Maybe, your definition of superstar differs from mine.
Figure out how the business works and nobody will even consider outsourcing the projects you'll work on.
Exactly. It's easy for a tech person to get lost on the tech side of things. We have to remember that the business people really don't care how cool the algorithm was that we used to solve their problem. All they care about is that a) their problem was solved and b) it saved/made the company more money. In reality a tech person is going to be a stronger position than the pure business person because the tech person should also have the skills to implement. The business/tech hybrid who can see the business problems early on and has the tech skills to solve them will always be an invaluable asset.
You must have great communication/presentation skills. Sometimes you can present poor judgement as an excellent solution and if you don't you might not be able to present you work in a very favourable light.
Anyhow, beating the usual drum: don't be a cost center. Figure out how the business works and nobody will even consider outsourcing the projects you'll work on.