Relationships and distance
Sometimes I read girly magazines. Glamour, Elle… Ahem, read. The few articles that can be found among all the commercials, are mostly about makeup, fashion and relationships.
In those magazines I’ve read, more than once, about people who claim that one of the biggest obstacles that work against a healthy relationship is distance. Being physically apart is hard enough, and sometimes your beloved one may be in another country, on another continent, with thousands of kilometers between you.
Distance can cause some serious problems for us humans, since we need closeness, good communication, care and affection in order to maintain a relationship.
But, if love can move mountains, make the impossible possible and all that, then – what can a little bit of distance do? Not much, right?
Recipe
The experience says that it actually is very hard to make long distance relationships work. The wise people from my magazines say that in order to stand a chance to succeed in that, you will need:
- mutual trust
- honesty
- loads and loads of communication
- fixed dates when you will meet
- little special things you do for each other quite often (like sending presents or similar).
And of course – a lot of love to start with.
The comparison
Sailing the ocean is scary
Which is why ‘Offshore’ has been defined:
Out of:
(a) Sight of land
(b) Your mind
borrowed from A Storm In Any Port, by j guevara
Offshoring your business is quite like having a long-distance relationship.
When offshoring you’ll face the same problems that lovers in a long-distance relationship face, plus one more – there was no love to begin with, except for the love of money (the most common reason for offshoring is lowering the cost of development).
Does love of money (or, poetry aside – a common business interest) conquer everything?
Even if it does, does it pay off? And I mean – in money, since that is what we were after in the first place (because for sure you will be enriched through contacts with people from another country, another culture etc).
A short survey
Maybe you worked with offshoring in several projects. If that is the case, please answer once per experience, since they may differ (if you wish to answer at all, that is :)).
Mini lions in our house 
Wonderful article on a very important subject. I think that if lowering the cost is the main reason for offshoring then it is bound to fail. Two better reasons are:
Access to skill, talent and will to achieve.
Enrichment from where two cultures meet.
Offshoring done right is a great experience. I would not want to have been without current offshoring I’m participating in. That said, I’ll take the advice from your girly magazines. Love on a distance really needs even more attention than love in general.