Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: What are your views on India based development agencies?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 97 posts

Re: Ask HN: What are your views on India based development agencies?

#21

Post by laci27 »

NicoJuicy wrote: post #15

Have tried a lot of times ( 8 times to be exact), the only one that worked is now doing his own projects and launches a SAAS. The CEO was involved in every project. Every project took a very long time though and deadlines were not met. Other experience, estimates are wrong, filling in more hours than actually worked and they always say yes. But what they mean is we can't or don't understand what your mean and we will…

"they always say yes." OMG this is by FAR the most annoying thing with them. But I think It's a cultural thing.. They say yes, not because they know how to actually do it, but rather that they understood what you said (English is a second language for them so I think they just mean "yes, I understood that part").

Re: Ask HN: What are your views on India based development agencies?

#22

Post by intellectronica »

Focus on something in demand and sell yourself as experts in it. The problem of many agencies is that they offer to do everything and anything and because of that appear desperate and not serious. When you're one of the best in a specific area it's much easier to sell your services, and also easier to expand your focus later when you're established and recognised.

Re: Ask HN: What are your views on India based development agencies?

#23

Post by occultist_throw »

Spooky23 wrote: post #11

You need to compete and market based on quality and knowledge, by just price. I have a competitor of yours trying to get a meeting with me. Their pitch is that I can have 10 programmers at $20/hr each, a 75% savings based on US programmers! The problem is I want solutions, not man-hours!

What you said reminds me of that old comment: "If one woman takes 9 months to have a child, how long is it for 9 women?"

Re: Ask HN: What are your views on India based development agencies?

#24

Post by securingsincity »

it's a little different but when I look at my experience with developers from Xteam or TopTal (very positive experiences) vs other agencies (some in India) that I've worked with I see a set of clear differences. One is quality in code. I'm very rarely having to correct work, whereas other agencies we will receive a project and it often way off base. The work might meet the spec but not of quality and certainly can't be built upon. In another post, you mention team augmentation and I think that is a great idea. I would also echo concerns about autonomy and ability to innovate. Again with X-teamers/TopTal devs they usually want to help drive technology decisions and want to help to own a project. They then build trust by executing successfully on those ideas. I think if you differentiate on quality, augmenting teams, and autonomy, you will be able to rise above stereotypes that have been built up. That likely means charging more and spending more time screening potential hires. Smart companies will recognize that it's worth paying more so they don't have to pay several times over to fix what was done by a lower quality team.

Re: Ask HN: What are your views on India based development agencies?

#26

Post by tmbsundar »

>> How do we work on changing customer's perspective?

What perspective are you trying to change here? This question is broad.

Rather if you are more specific and give one or two broad examples of what exactly happened vs what was expected by your clients and how to address them etc., you might get more useful answers.

Remember Indian IT companies vary from small boutique shops to mid-size to giants like Tatas. Company culture/ operating practices vary based on size and skill base.

The industry is quite mature and you may want to provide a little bit more information about your size/ context /problems faced, to get specific answers or recommendations.

Re: Ask HN: What are your views on India based development agencies?

#28

Post by maxxxxx »

From the US the time difference is a major problem. You can never discuss anything during normal work hours and any issue will have a one day turnaround. Or you stay up late all the time and then it takes over your personal life. We have some devs now in Costa Rica which is much easier to manage because you can discuss things on the phone during the day.

Re: Ask HN: What are your views on India based development agencies?

#29

Post by Chris2048 »

jasonlfunk wrote: post #16
voltooid wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by over communication? Do you mean that essential communication is repeated without additional effect? Or that unnecessary details are relayed?

Yeah, it's a little hard to explain. Unnecessary details are relayed, very detailed descriptions of even minor things that were accomplished, etc.

To expand on this:

detailed descriptions of even minor things; to distract from the fact of very little being achieved.

Unnecessary details are relayed; implying little comprehension of task meaning and/or importance.

Re: Ask HN: What are your views on India based development agencies?

#30

Post by Chris2048 »

OnlineCourage wrote: post #4

India is a big place. To me that is like saying, "what are your views on development agencies based in the world?"

But you can answer that, by giving an opinion on development agencies in general.

It's only a problem if agencies in India are highly variable. If there is little deviation from the norm, it's not a problem. As such, the potential that this kind of question might be hard to answer is conditional itself.

Post reply on HN