I was doing Smalltalk at Time Warner in 1997. The VP (business unit CIO) was a Pakistani named Fahim. There were an astonishing number of people of similar ethnicity (especially for Denver which has a nearly non-existent middle eastern contingent). This particluar region of cubicles came to be known as "Uncle Fahim's Cabin". More interestingly, TW was using an offshore development outfit for certain modules. The company was owned by Fahim's brother. Everything we ever got from them was late, was crap, and was rewritten in the small hours by top developers (the only ones who could make sense of the mess). No I wasn't one of them - I was still learning ST at the time.
Projects continued to go there though. So I got my taste of outsourcing pretty early. I know how it really goes.