Market wages are currently dramatically lower. Potential hires seem to speak really good English considering it's their second language. I still want to make sure there isn't some kind of catch!
Ask HN: Is setting up a remote team of developers in India worth it?
1–10 of 45 posts
Re: Ask HN: Is setting up a remote team of developers in India worth it?
#2What I know is that the quality of their code is very outdated and even being cheaper to hire you are going to spend lots of money fixing the code.
Nothing like having quality code!
Re: Ask HN: Is setting up a remote team of developers in India worth it?
#3What I know is that the quality of their code is very outdated and even being cheaper to hire you are going to spend lots of money fixing the code. Nothing like having quality code!
Thanks, are you saying they tend to be lower quality coders or just outdated coders? Maybe you're saying both. We're talking as more or more than 80% worth of discounts in compensation packages when compared to American programmers.
Re: Ask HN: Is setting up a remote team of developers in India worth it?
#4Assuming you aren't trolling: No, absolutely not.
My experience, at two companies, is that what you save in development costs, you quickly pay for (and then some) in management overhead, and low code quality. Some of the code we got was simply not salvageable. (And of course, it consumed time on our side to review the code, reach this conclusion, and document the suckage.)
If outsourcing has any chance of working it is for rigorously specified requirements. If there is any wiggle room, or even if you expect common sense to apply to fill in the gaps, you will be disappointed.
Why is the reality so bad?
- You have little choice about the actual developers you work with. Would you hire your own development team by phoning up a headhunter, asking for a half dozen developers, and then taking whatever the guy sends over? Of course not. Why should this work any better from an outsource agency?
- Any marginally competent developer at an outsource firm gets moved into management quickly. (At least in the companies we worked with.)
- Distance sucks. Do you really want to schedule meetings with 10-13 hour time differences? Deal with any required travel to and from India? Really?
Outsourcing is a clueless executive's idea of how to get software written. It was a new business trend in the early 2000s, (so long ago that I wonder whether you're trolling), and it was weird: I kept challenging the decision to outsource, and the rationale kept changing. Basically, it was a trend, so the executive making the decision wanted to do it, reasons be damned.
Re: Ask HN: Is setting up a remote team of developers in India worth it?
#5Having worked with a number of Indian firms since 1998 and having friends there this is my take.
It is no different then the US, some suck, some are good, some are awesome.
The problem isn't India vs US, it is distance, communication and numbers. And the reality is it truly boils down to a numbers game, if you don't know someone, you are more likely to have nothing but headaches. Also the time difference seems minor to manage at first, or even an advantage, but you soon find out it is a pain in the ass.
Overall, even knowing there are great people in India, I won't use it as a primary source of development for anything. Too many times I have had issues, so I just won't do it. If a friend that lives there has some spare cycles, I will do that in a heartbeat because I know they can/will deliver.
Also, as a whole, we pick up more failed projects from eastern areas than anywhere else. My 2 cents is this isn't because they aren't capable, but the communication isn't clear, and people are trying to seek out the lowest cost person/firm. Seeking the lowest cost to me, means no matter where you are at you are not getting quality, but what you paid for.
Re: Ask HN: Is setting up a remote team of developers in India worth it?
#6Setting up a remote team of developers anywhere in the world purely to save on costs isn't worth it.
You should hire remote because you simply don't have access to the talent locally, or can't assemble a local team quickly enough. And you should have at least one seasoned technical leader who's worked with a distributed team before to guide you through the process.
Hiring remote devs halfway around the world because you can save 80% on wages is a pennywise and pound foolish decision.
Re: Ask HN: Is setting up a remote team of developers in India worth it?
#7My 2 cents, from what I've been able to gather, the best resources in other countries are being paid comparably to US, or they've already migrated or set up a work visa with a US company. Talented developers know they're talented and will seek out other people who can weed them out from the group. It is a rare case that you run into a highly qualified developer in any country who is working for pennies on the dollar.
Re: Ask HN: Is setting up a remote team of developers in India worth it?
#8I've never worked with a team in India, but I do have experience with outsourcing to eastern Europe. I don't doubt the other comments that say it can be done, but in my experience it's tough.
The development cycle goes roughly like this: - Early morning call to discuss requirements - E-mails over the course of the morning covering parts of the same requirements - Next morning call to discuss the same requirements (seems like we've got it this time) - Code review uncovers missing requirements...
Between the time difference, the multiple hand-offs and the communication problems we would spend an order of magnitude more time on a task than it would take an in-house resource.
I don't think it's completely impossible to get the formula right, but you need to be explicit about everything, which doesn't really work in an agile development cycle made of tight feedback loops. However, if you're operating a more waterfall process and are able to code up a suite of acceptance tests, it could be workable.
Re: Ask HN: Is setting up a remote team of developers in India worth it?
#9I've worked with teams in India (and Poland, US, UK, Australia, Spain) for several years and quality depends on how well you manage the hiring and how well you manage the communication - remembering that communication is harder with anyone the farther you are away from being in the same room with someone. You may need to hire someone local to you to do this for you as communication is a full time job (a solution architect is the sort of role you'll need).
Don't expect miracles, 'cause miracles cost money - but it's got a 50/50 chance of working out OK.
Re: Ask HN: Is setting up a remote team of developers in India worth it?
#10I've never worked with a team in India, but I do have experience with outsourcing to eastern Europe. I don't doubt the other comments that say it can be done, but in my experience it's tough. The development cycle goes roughly like this: - Early morning call to discuss requirements - E-mails over the course of the morning covering parts of the same requirements - Next morning call to discuss the same requirements (se…
> but you need to be explicit about everything, which doesn't really work in an agile development cycle made of tight feedback loops.
We're a scrum team based in Oceania working for a German firm, and we have had similar issues which we've resolved by usage of proxy product owners and regular backlog groomings.
It'd doable, but it takes some investment in relationships and knowledge.