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I am a developer, yet I outsource the development of my startup

aymeric.gaurat.net

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Re: I am a developer, yet I outsource the development of my startup

#81

Post by aymeric »

balloot wrote: post #67
oz wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm really wondering if your post is sarcasm. But I'll bite. To wit: >A real developer who loves his project would never outsource major aspects of the project. Excuse me, but that's just the 'No True Scotsman' fallacy. You don't get to decide what makes someone a 'real developer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman >while dealing with IMPORTANT issues such as database architecture, setting up the server, e…

None of this addresses the fact that the author has set up his company such that the person doing the marketing/blogging/sales/etc has zero experience doing any of those things. By attempting to do them himself the author is completely disregarding their value!

I find harder to outsource marketing and blogging than outsourcing software development. This is why it made sense for me to do it myself. For example, I don't know if I could have found a writer that could have written an article that has brought 16000 readers so far.

Re: I am a developer, yet I outsource the development of my startup

#82

Post by aymeric »

skrish wrote: post #76
balloot wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, you are repeating this idea that all these other non-coding skills can be mastered on a whim. If you truly need an MBA type doing MBA things for your company, then you should go get one. Lord knows there's a zillion of them out there, almost all of which have a better resume than "I read MBA for dummies". Or to put this differently. If I was working for some larger company as a developer, and I went to managem…

I disagree. IMHO, there is no better person than the founder to market your startup passionately. I am not saying MBA skills are not valuable. But what is more important is ability to write pithy blogs, write tons of emails to your potential customers, investors and do lot of other routine activities to keep your startup afloat. None of this requires MBA as such in the initial days. Your passion, reading some of the…

> IMHO, there is no better person than the founder to market your startup passionately.

Exactly my feelings.

Re: I am a developer, yet I outsource the development of my startup

#83

Post by aymeric »

damian2000 wrote: post #68

Part of me thinks this guy is a bit of a tight ass for choosing the absolute cheapest places to outsource, i.e. Philippines* then Ukraine, but then, that's just how global manufacturers work anyway, and why should coding be any different. According to this infographic: https://www.staff.com/blog/web-developer-salaries-infographi... Philippines has the cheapest web developer salary in the world at an average of US$687…

Knowing that the talent are equivalent, why would you pay $60/hour when you can pay $15/hour?

Re: I am a developer, yet I outsource the development of my startup

#84

Post by aymeric »

jzukoff wrote: post #46
TheBiv wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The quality of the code is up to your requirements as a developer. Have the outsourced developer code exactly to the requirement and accept nothing less.

sure to a certain extent, but you could have all the requirements in the world and not have the outsourced developer ever turn in "quality" code, or if anything take way longer than it should take.

You can regularly do code reviews, and educate the developer to write the code using your conventions.

Re: I am a developer, yet I outsource the development of my startup

#86

Post by SudarshanP »

This guy is dogfooding outsourcing. He is outsourcing Taskarmy.com which is related to outsourcing itself. So on the one hand it is an awesome exercise... On the other, he is saying "nice things" about a concept he needs to "sell".

But as he himself says, certain things are hard to outsource. For Example the particular blog post itself. Outsourcing the webdesign and the code behind the site would have been a lot more easier. So in a strange sense, even a skeptic has to agree with his point... A site like Taskarmy can fail due to bad technology but will not succeed due to its technical prowess. What he needs to figure out is how to connect the buyers and the sellers and make them stick around. All the CRUD that goes into his site will not be the secret sauce. The only possible real secret sauce is probably a method to connect the buyers and sellers using an algorithm that beats the competition heads down. In such a case it makes sense for him to keep the "secret sauce" to himself. Everything else is a commodity until he becomes a huge player. If one is at twitter scale, even status messages become "rocket science" and cannot be outsourced.

Re: I am a developer, yet I outsource the development of my startup

#87

Post by [deleted] »

maratd wrote: post #36
nlh wrote: post #21

I'll share a similar (positive) experience I had a few years ago. I'm not quite what I'd call a developer, but I'm a company founder who's "code savvy". I made the decision to outsource the development of a moderately big PHP project a few years ago -- I went through a LOT of profiles on oDesk and finally settled on a guy (who billed about $30/hr, which was on the high end for non-US guys on oDesk). He was _terrific_…

> My only frustrations were things that, unfortunately, can happen with outsourced work -- timing. My guy was an A developer, but a B/C time manager. So the project took about 2x as long as it should have. So technically, he billed at $60 an hour. And that is the issue with outsourcing. A local guy in your office might have gotten things done in half the time and cost you just as much. There is another issue with tim…

[deleted]

Re: I am a developer, yet I outsource the development of my startup

#88

Post by pjmlp »

Being forced to work on a big consultancy company, specialized in outsourcing, makes me sad reading this type of blogs.

If you want to outsource development, at least keep it inside your country.

Outsourcing to countries were cheap work and poor working conditions rule, just leads to exploitation of people. Sadly very few, get to improve their life conditions.

I for one, wouldn't like to have my company's success tied to such situations.

Re: I am a developer, yet I outsource the development of my startup

#89

Post by arn »

oz wrote: post #72
arn wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems ridiculous. This belief doesn't scale past a few programmers/employees. If you are "doing it right", your time should be worth far more than a programmer's salary. I run several websites/businesses. At one point I was doing all the coding, marketing, blogging, customer support, etc... I was crazy busy. Over time I've managed to hire for most of this, so I can work on bigger picture, managing what is to be…

You're doing it right, and that's exactly where I'm headed. Mind if I email you?

sure!

Re: I am a developer, yet I outsource the development of my startup

#90

Post by bad_user »

maratd wrote: post #36
nlh wrote: post #21

I'll share a similar (positive) experience I had a few years ago. I'm not quite what I'd call a developer, but I'm a company founder who's "code savvy". I made the decision to outsource the development of a moderately big PHP project a few years ago -- I went through a LOT of profiles on oDesk and finally settled on a guy (who billed about $30/hr, which was on the high end for non-US guys on oDesk). He was _terrific_…

> My only frustrations were things that, unfortunately, can happen with outsourced work -- timing. My guy was an A developer, but a B/C time manager. So the project took about 2x as long as it should have. So technically, he billed at $60 an hour. And that is the issue with outsourcing. A local guy in your office might have gotten things done in half the time and cost you just as much. There is another issue with tim…

I work remotely, and I have to disagree with your points:

     So technically, he billed at $60 an hour
Remote developers often do not have the same benefits as local employees. They do not have the same protections found in employment contracts, they do not have healthcare benefits, they must also buy their own hardware and office equipment and other requirements. Not to mention that if the work is contract-based, they must also do a little marketing.

Even if your assertion is true, $60 is dirt cheap.

     A local guy in your office might have gotten things 
     done in half the time and cost you just as much.
While it is possible to find local talent, the pool of good developers is limited, while the demand is really high. Indeed, local talent has the advantage of being local. However, I would rather work with a remote developer that can get problems solved, than with a hypothetical good local developer that I don't have, or with a local developer that creates more problems than it solves.

     There will always be a delay between a request and 
     the work actually starting
Yes, but in my view, that's a really good thing. As a side effect: (1) management is forced to cut the crap and make specifications as clear as possible + (2) it means that I have a lot of time in which I can concentrate on solving the hard problems, instead of lamenting about the color of a link or have meetings about the next meetings we'll have.

Even when working with local developers, it's always a good idea to NOT interrupt the workflow of developers, unless it is an emergency. If you have to fix the specs, or set out new directions, and you need to do that often, that means you suck at being a manager. That's why Scrum sprints take 1 or 2 weeks during which the developers manage their own schedule, and if something happens that changes the priorities / specs, then the sprint must be restarted (throwing away unfinished stuff, starting from scratch later) ... that's a little extreme from my point of view, but there are good reasons for why some people prefer this.

There are also good tools for managing remote developers, tools such as bug and feature trackers, tools such as Git or ReviewBoard, etc... Really big open-source projects, such as Linux, scaled like crazy with contributers from all over the world. So I really can't see your point.

     If there's an emergency, well, you get the picture.
Personally I'm on call 24/7.
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