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

Why I Will Never Feel Threatened by Programmers in India

blog.jpl-consulting.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 143 posts

Re: Why I Will Never Feel Threatened by Programmers in India

#21

Post by compay »

johnbender wrote: post #19
compay wrote: post #15

I'm a partner at a Ruby outsourcing company in Argentina. I sympathize with the author, but I think the conclusion that outsourcing doesn't work is overly broad. The crux of the problem is that working with a remote team is a very different proposition than working with people onsite - a fact that is obvious but that people generally fail to act on. Quite often at my company we're contacted by clients want to hire fo…

> Have a crystal clear idea of what you want built. > Have frequent and early deliverable dates. Both of these things are extremely difficult (if not impossible) for experienced software consultancies to know up front, let alone the crowd looking to outsource. More importantly both figuring out what to build and knowing when those things are deliverable have, in my experience, required the involvement and input of th…

A lot of companies are looking to build simple, mainstream projects. For example "add a shopping cart to my site." Those are easy projects for outsourcing. If the client is looking to do something that has never been done before, then outsourcing may not be the best idea.

Re: Why I Will Never Feel Threatened by Programmers in India

#23

Post by rorrr »

andrewfelix wrote: post #10

Why I Will Never Feel Threatened by Bad Programmers I fixed the title for you. Next time try and avoid generalizing entire countries.

There are good Indian programmers, but they are so diluted by complete amateurs who decided to go into programming just because it pays well. I've worked at a huge corporation that outsourced a few projects, and even brought some of the best developers on site. Even those guys took days for some silly things that took me a couple of hours to implement. One of them just sucked so bad, he was sent back to India. In the end, my hourly rate made more sense for the corporation, since I produced cleaner code, which often costed them less.

Re: Why I Will Never Feel Threatened by Programmers in India

#24

Post by tryitnow »

I don't think the problem is "overpriced" programmers in the US or "bad" programmers in India. The problem may not even be programmers at all.

My guess is that a big problem is "business people"(1) deciding to get their idea implemented on the cheap without knowing the technical challenges involved or even how to clearly communicate with programmers.

This just demonstrates that a founding team needs to have some sort of technical expertise, preferably from everyone on the team. There's no need to be a genius, but at least have a little, tiny bit of experience making a computer do what you want it to do. That makes communicating with programmers a lot easier.

I don't work for a startup, just the opposite, a huge multinational. I see the consequences of relying on people with zero programming experience making decisions about managing software development. There is definitely an attitude of "just ship it to India" without really thinking through the details of what that means. Tsk, tsk, the consequences will not be pretty.

(1) I am not bashing business people here, I am one myself, I am just saying this is often the root cause of the problem.

Re: Why I Will Never Feel Threatened by Programmers in India

#27

Post by bguthrie »

andrewfelix wrote: post #10

Why I Will Never Feel Threatened by Bad Programmers I fixed the title for you. Next time try and avoid generalizing entire countries.

This is correct.

Good programmers in India, like good programmers everywhere, cost more than bad programmers. If you would like to hire a decent shop, there are boutiques and larger firms available, but they will charge $40-50/hour, not $15. The problem isn't in the outsourcing, it's treating development like a $15/hour commodity. We all know that it doesn't work that way.

The author described paying an hourly rate for their offshore developers that was 10% of the local rate. If you compare the salaries of good developers in places like Bangalore to developers in more wealthy countries like the US, you will find that the difference is not that vast--maybe 25-40%, not 10%. If you would like to hire these people, expect to pay corresponding rates and receive good-quality work.

And don't let anyone tell you that you need crystal-clear requirements; pay for a qualified local business analyst and expect to spend a lot of time on the phone with them.

Re: Why I Will Never Feel Threatened by Programmers in India

#28

Post by matwood »

patio11 wrote: post #18

Quote one of my past Indian coworkers: "If you pay peanuts, you hire monkeys.". Which is the chuckle worthy way of saying that eventually the markets are, all else equal, fairly efficient, and that the labor pool available at $4 an hour to bill to you at $12 an hour has systemic, pervasive competence issues which will prevent the successful completion of many projects. Anyhow, beating the usual drum: don't be a cost…

Figure out how the business works and nobody will even consider outsourcing the projects you'll work on.

Exactly. It's easy for a tech person to get lost on the tech side of things. We have to remember that the business people really don't care how cool the algorithm was that we used to solve their problem. All they care about is that a) their problem was solved and b) it saved/made the company more money. In reality a tech person is going to be a stronger position than the pure business person because the tech person should also have the skills to implement. The business/tech hybrid who can see the business problems early on and has the tech skills to solve them will always be an invaluable asset.

Re: Why I Will Never Feel Threatened by Programmers in India

#29

Post by matwood »

compay wrote: post #15

I'm a partner at a Ruby outsourcing company in Argentina. I sympathize with the author, but I think the conclusion that outsourcing doesn't work is overly broad. The crux of the problem is that working with a remote team is a very different proposition than working with people onsite - a fact that is obvious but that people generally fail to act on. Quite often at my company we're contacted by clients want to hire fo…

Have a crystal clear idea of what you want built.

This is why I am not too concerned about outsourcing [1]. Most of my projects start with a 'this would be neat' sentence and then it's left for me run with. I know the business and the people so that's usually enough for my team to get a first iteration completed. From there we add users, get feedback and iterate again.

If businesses have a crystal clear idea of what they want then chances are there is already COTS to satisfy that need.

[1] Jobs are never promised and a PHB at anytime could decide that the company doesn't need tech, but that's not really an outsource problem.

Re: Why I Will Never Feel Threatened by Programmers in India

#30

Post by king_magic »

compay wrote: post #21
johnbender wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Have a crystal clear idea of what you want built. > Have frequent and early deliverable dates. Both of these things are extremely difficult (if not impossible) for experienced software consultancies to know up front, let alone the crowd looking to outsource. More importantly both figuring out what to build and knowing when those things are deliverable have, in my experience, required the involvement and input of th…

A lot of companies are looking to build simple, mainstream projects. For example "add a shopping cart to my site." Those are easy projects for outsourcing. If the client is looking to do something that has never been done before, then outsourcing may not be the best idea.

Except rarely do projects like "add a shopping cart to my site" turn out to be that simple. Each project has unique circumstances, and applying a one-size-fits-all attitude to the problem is never the right solution.
Post reply on HN