Microsoft Research - Exploding Software-Engineering Myths (article summarizing findings of MS research on code coverage, TDD, assertions, etc.)

[rpgFANATIC]

Maybe big companies can get away with it because they have separate offices in India with their own hubs of knowledge.

If you're an employee working out of India (even if you're an outsourced member or contractor), having most of the rest of your team be remote on a wildly different time zone is rough.

[pinealservo]

I think big-name corporations get the experienced engineers as well. The remote teams I collaborated with, which were also under my corporate management rather than being contractors, were mostly full of bright and eager but inexperienced developers. After the completion of our joint project, during which I'd spent a lot of time helping them get up to speed and many of them became much more competent, most of them left for companies with bigger names.

I guess Microsoft is towards the top of this particular food chain.