We are a small Design + Dev shop in NYC. We charge around $30k to build an MVP. One recent client said she found an outsource company who can build her site / web app for $1k. Im like ok so you don't like the work? whats the problem. Our rate is $125/hr PP. I told you that from the get-go. She said, no but i paid $30k for a site / web app and i see a bunch of other companies paid way less. Im like you drive a range rover ( top of the line) Why don't you goto range rover and say to them, I can find an indian company to build me a range rover and why the F*%K should i pay $150k+ for yours? See what they say and that is my answer. It seems to be the case its hard for "some" customers / people to understand the value of what you are offering. That is why you cannot compete on PRICE. Inevitably these people with an idea want to build an app or have an idea ( its like a disease here in NYC) and have NO CONCEPT or CLUE and when they goto upwork ( name your third world provider here) they get ruined. So now off the jump i say to new customers / clients this is HOW MUCH we charge and you can go F#!K yo-self if you can't pay ( well not like that its in my mind, but you get what i mean) i keep it professional. I have changed my approach to getting customers. The first thing i do is explain that we do not outsource to 3rd world. We live and work here in NYC. This is what we charge so we can eat and if you do not value our work, no one is forcing you to work with us and you can go outsource your work to a 3rd world country ( outsource) and find out for yourself. After educating the client , they now want us to build new features AND even gave us another gig. We live in NYC where everyone is a gangsta. Ha ha! Real-talk.
Ask HN: Do you have a software consultant or outsourcing horror story?
51–60 of 81 posts
Re: Ask HN: Do you have a software consultant or outsourcing horror story?
#52I've been on the other end of this a fair few times (hence the anonymous account). The first time I was working on an app, most of our pair programming with a much more experienced dev. I needed to keep the job to keep my visa. When the more experienced developers quit I couldn't get anything done. I strung things out as long as possible but eventually people cottoned on to the fact that I wasn't productive. The next…
That's entirely your fault. If you had no idea what you were doing the correct play would be to raise your hand and ask for help. Find seniors that could help out. Stop pretending (lying) and start being a professional.
Re: Ask HN: Do you have a software consultant or outsourcing horror story?
#53Tale from the other side, I used to run a Linux consultancy and we once had someone engage us to develop a custom Linux distribution. This guy's father was a patent attorney, and after spending significant time developing this distribution for him he couldn't pay because he had spent his budget on patenting it. But he needed some changes beyond the initial scope of work to get it to a viable product, so he was trying…
I've been on the other side of that argument. In my case, a client had spent $50,000 on a pretty plain static brochure website. They're not tech-savvy, so they wanted to move to a CMS they could manage on their own. When I told them it'd be $2,500 to put their existing site into a new WordPress site, they thought I was joking. That was the day that I realized value pricing is a real thing. In your situation (with mon…
u "Should be able to do all this for about $2,500"
dem "really? You must be joking"
u "hehe, yea I have a funny sense of humor. I meant $25 thousand, not 25 hundred, har har"
dem "oh ok, heres your money"
u "thank you"
Re: Ask HN: Do you have a software consultant or outsourcing horror story?
#54We are a small Design + Dev shop in NYC. We charge around $30k to build an MVP. One recent client said she found an outsource company who can build her site / web app for $1k. Im like ok so you don't like the work? whats the problem. Our rate is $125/hr PP. I told you that from the get-go. She said, no but i paid $30k for a site / web app and i see a bunch of other companies paid way less. Im like you drive a range r…
Damn, those rates seem low to be honest. I live in a way cheaper city and my firm's rate ranges from $155 to $225 an hour. USD
Re: Ask HN: Do you have a software consultant or outsourcing horror story?
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have seen permutations of this scenario multiple times. I have some sympathy for organizations in this situation, but it is entirely self-inflicted.
At one point, a lot of my consulting business was figuring out code like that, that others have written.
We have a term for it. We call it code refurbishment!
Re: Ask HN: Do you have a software consultant or outsourcing horror story?
#56I've done a lot of work for clients, most of the work I get is cleaning up after incompetent outsourced (overseas) developers. I know there are competent developers overseas, but a lot of companies go for the low bidder and get burned, then have to spend twice the amount (or more) than they would have if they'd just done it right the first time.
Re: Ask HN: Do you have a software consultant or outsourcing horror story?
#57Ooooh yes! A few years ago I was working for a large company. We needed some help building an app and a back-end service. Our team could have built this - but we were stretched a bit thin with other work. So we found a great technology partner. They'd helped us in the past, and they could take care of everything. After a few weeks, it turns out that they'd over-sold their abilities as a back-end provider. They could…
Excellent story, I wish I could have been in that meeting!
Re: Ask HN: Do you have a software consultant or outsourcing horror story?
#58I have one in the context of an academic lab. I was in the process of refactoring a project a coworker had left behind which was basically spaghetti code. Our lab had a collaboration with another lab, and that lab offered to extend the functionality of our code base for mutual gain. They assigned this project to a Ph.D. student who picked it up as part of their Ph.D. thesis. I hooked this researcher up on our Github…
And people wonder why trust in academia is being eroded...sad.
Re: Ask HN: Do you have a software consultant or outsourcing horror story?
#59Not my ass on the line and not a major burn, but still: I got an email many years ago from a guy who said essentially 'I got your email address from , are you interested in picking up some side work and if so, can we meet'. I say okay and when we meet, he explains that they had this SaaS idea (an industry-specific collaboration/data sharing tool essentially; this company did other work in this industry, they weren't…
I have seen permutations of this scenario multiple times. I have some sympathy for organizations in this situation, but it is entirely self-inflicted.
Sadly I have a similar background; data analytic company where the entirety of the MVP was built and maintained by a two person shop in Detroit. Our company had become so dependent that when the initial contract was up, they wanted a renewal of $1mil... and we gave it to them...
On the bright side, I learned a lot about building and working on RESTful APIs during the re-negotiation period where I might become the new developer
Re: Ask HN: Do you have a software consultant or outsourcing horror story?
#60Similarly, I was running a digital agency and the performance of one of my first employees took a nose dive. After trying everything I could think of to help him turn things around I had to let him go. Shortly after, I got an Email from an unknown individual who said he knew the employee and asked if I could chat. Turns out, my employee was subbing out all of his work and stopped paying his sub, who then stopped deli…
Somewhat similarly, I once hired an employee who didn't have the skills we needed but said he was motivated to learn, seemed like a good fit from a personality standpoint, and had really great communication during the interview process. We spent a year trying to bring him up to speed, waiting through all sorts of excuses, and worse, all of his communications were terrible (bad spelling, inability or unwillingness to…
Oh wow. Yeah, there's a difference between helping and doing. Teach a man to fish...