One of my favorite ones was a fellow who wanted an iPhone and iPad game done. He proclaimed that it had to be done for $10K. This game easily required six months of work. It also required server-side development and support. He also had no idea that every so often you need to fix, I mean, update, your apps because new iOS releases might break them.
I was open-minded and decided to invest some time educating him on the process and the needs of the platform. Once he had enough information he networked and hired someone out of India to build him the game. I was not happy about that at all. Then I learned that he was having all kinds of problems with the process (and the app) being a total mess. He's learning his lesson.
Come on now. Don't blame the programmer being Indian for the problems your friend is having. Good programmers anywhere cost almost as much as they do in the US now. Globalization means that an Indian programmer has the same access to salary information in the west. He/she might knock off 10% to be competitive.
You're friend could have easily got a cheap, inexperienced programmer anywhere else in the world, including the US, and still had the same problems. He had a budget, you knew it wasn't enough for what he needed, and he came up snake eyes.
Who says I am blaming the programmer for being Indian? I'm not. Excellent work being done out of India. Here's the problem, lots of people like this fellow look at India and China to find the lowest possible bidder out of complete ignorance. And, when they find the lowest possible bidder they get exactly that: crappy inexperienced programmers.
If they searched for the lowest possible bidder in the US or Europe they'd get exactly the same thing.
I did not intend to imply that Indian programmers are not good. An ignorant fool looking for rock bottom prices will, more than likely, find them in India rather than the US or Europe.
If an unsophisticated client looks to another hemisphere to get a one-off iOS app built I wouldn't bet "world-class talent at a 10% discount" was their hiring strategy. More likely "I can get this done for 1/3 of what this guy is quoting me? What could possibly go wrong?"
I was open-minded and decided to invest some time educating him on the process and the needs of the platform. Once he had enough information he networked and hired someone out of India to build him the game. I was not happy about that at all. Then I learned that he was having all kinds of problems with the process (and the app) being a total mess. He's learning his lesson.