This article really, really rings true for my experience with outsourcing.  It's also totally ignored by anyone above bottom-manager in Giant Immoral MegaCorps.  And by "ignored" I mean "taboo to speak of".<p>One problem with outsourcing maintenance to folks from societies that, ah, <i>respect authority</i> to a great deal is that doing maintenance on any large code base will mean deciding that whoever did this the first time around Just Wasn't Thinking, and that you have to rip out and replace large hunks of barely-working, or slowly-working, or maybe non-working code.  You just can't have any respect for the egos of those fools who came before you and wrote this drek.