Thank you Nick for your insightful article. It's a shame that most companies don't understand that fact. GE and a minority of other companies do understand that and grow, not only their managers from inside, but their entire company. Companies have known for a long time that outsourcing will give an instant 10% boost to the bottom line, but I have heard stories of a single programmer that was promoted to VP and the rest were let go, who now spends his time fixing the code that come in from their outsource partner. He gets paid a lot of money as a VP, but he is not doing his job and the outsourcers theirs. If you want the quality of service, then training (even for the oursourcing company) is necessary, or the quality of service will not be there.