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The Risk in Sending Your Startup’s Technology Offshore

karllhughes.com

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Re: The Risk in Sending Your Startup’s Technology Offshore

#41

Post by Pxtl »

jacquesm wrote: post #37
notacoward wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many offshore teams don't have anywhere to put that teleconferencing equipment. They're often totally slammed for space as it is, they have relatively poor IP connectivity, sometimes they don't even have reliable power. So the cost is really the equipment plus the infrastructure upgrades, to solve only one part of the problem. It might still be worth it, but it's not a slam-dunk by any means.

And that assumes overlap between office hours.

I know that one. I work with a data-collection team in the Philippines. Lots of after-work Skype calls.

There is an upside - anything I can fix and deploy for them during my work-day is effectively zero-downtime for them.

Re: The Risk in Sending Your Startup’s Technology Offshore

#42

Post by adamc »

syntern wrote: post #34
kcmarshall wrote: post #18

I don't think you can over-emphasize the challenges in communication with off-shore teams. I have worked with several in corporate IT and just reaching a minimal baseline of understanding has proven difficult. Some of this is basic talking and listening; phone conferences will suck! Think about your typical (dysfunctional) phone conf and then slash the quality of the phone line/Skype connection. Add in the variable a…

Working with offshore teams is no different than working with . You need to learn it. It is not the same as working with an in-house team. Different tradeoffs, gotchas and benefits.

Like what? Seriously, if you have experience with this, giving more detail would be appreciated.

Re: The Risk in Sending Your Startup’s Technology Offshore

#43

Post by retrogradeMT »

dave_sullivan wrote: post #11

Non-technical founder is a weird catch all. You never really hear about non technical founders in other industries, right? You don't start a construction company and say "Well, I don't know anything about construction but I can draw pictures of buildings, so I'll just hire someone that does (barring for a moment that I lack the knowledge about the profession that would allow me to judge talent in the first place)." T…

This happens in construction way more than you might think. From 2005 - 2008 there were thousands of "paper generals" building houses as a way to make a quick $50 - $100k. Most of them subcontracted every aspect of the job and knew little to nothing about construction. Industries that experience a boom attract people that are looking to strike it rich.

The key to being successful for a non-tech founder is to have solid domain experience. A Realtor acting as a "paper general" stands a much better chance than a dentist.

Re: The Risk in Sending Your Startup’s Technology Offshore

#44

Post by adamc »

fat0wl wrote: post #9
michaelochurch wrote: post #3

Nontechs like outsourcing because they think it's cheap. This makes them bad at playing the outsourcing game to win. If you go for the cheap, you lose. If you optimize for cheapness, you get poor work, abroad just as here. It's not that the talent level is the problem. There's plenty of underemployed talent overseas. It's engagement. There are a zillion sleazy outsourcing shops that charge U.S. clients $30/hour and p…

yea i think this is the point that shadeless's comment misses. it's not like there is no talent in the world at large, but businesses have a hard enough time deciphering talent when they have 2 in-house developers and can read their entire code portfolio... these rubes are doomed as soon as they descend into no-man's-land. Personally I'd much rather have 1 ace developer than 10 of questionable value. at the corp I wo…

1 ace developer will have no communication overhead (internally), whereas 10 will have a ton... no contest if they are of "questionable value". Big companies/organizations do otherwise because of politics (hiring a better developer might cost more than the business manager) and incompetence (if business people are picking, they usually can't tell the difference). But smaller, stronger teams are ALWAYS better, outsourcing or not.

Re: The Risk in Sending Your Startup’s Technology Offshore

#45

Post by McDoku »

onion2k wrote: post #8

Nobody wants to come into a team with five overseas developers, two servers, and no version control, but I’ve been there before. If the article author has been there before, wouldn't that mean someone does want to come in to a team like that?

He did it and learned. That is my guess.

Re: The Risk in Sending Your Startup’s Technology Offshore

#46

Post by retrogradeMT »

kcmarshall wrote: post #18

I don't think you can over-emphasize the challenges in communication with off-shore teams. I have worked with several in corporate IT and just reaching a minimal baseline of understanding has proven difficult. Some of this is basic talking and listening; phone conferences will suck! Think about your typical (dysfunctional) phone conf and then slash the quality of the phone line/Skype connection. Add in the variable a…

I have used an offshore developer to help with some specific projects on my startup that is entering our friends and family launch this week. My experience has been fantastic.

I learned to code last fall and consider myself to be a semi-technical founder (php - laravel, jquery). I live in a small town in Montana and I knew I could not complete my MVP entirely by myself. With nearly no developers in my town I knew I would be working with someone over the internet to complete some of the project features.

I talked with roughly 10 freelance developers (half in U.S, one in Denmark, one in Belgium and a few in India).

I chose one of the developers in India because he seemed like the most capable of the group and immediately understood the project. He has been fantastic to work with and taken "ownership" in the project. I wouldn't hesitate to hire him full time if the project gains steam and he was willing to move to the U.S.

A couple of things to note: I would have much rather had an in house developer, but that just wasn't an option in my rural location. Also, my project is a marketplace of sorts, so it isn't a very complicated project from a coding standpoint. Going into this project with no sense of what I was after or how it would get done would have been a horrible idea, regardless of where the developer was located.

I had the offshore developer work on very specific modules that were organized through a shared trello board. Before I talked with him, I knew exactly what I wanted him to work on and the timeline for each project. He works some odd hours, so our usual schedule of talking was around 10am - noon and 9pm - 11pm.

He spent about 110 hours total on the project.

Re: The Risk in Sending Your Startup’s Technology Offshore

#47

Post by yoran »

pm90 wrote: post #25
ivanhoe wrote: post #21

Main problem is that someone in US just can't get the relevant info on 99% of the overseas teams out there. The ones that you first google out are usually the ones who advertise the most and who generally always oversell their resources, and thus produce really bad results. Experienced small teams usually already have a number of clients, work hard and are not that visible or fast growing. So try playing smarter and…

Completely agree! Please watch out for some of these companies that will email/call you repeatedly and say "we can do Java, Python, C, COBOL anything ANYTHING!" usually they can't. With the prices they offer, it's often pretty tempting but don't be fooled that easily. Do some research into finding good shops.

Reminds of this email I got a couple of months ago from this offshoring company in India. They were claiming they could develop an Android app, no matter how big, for a flat fee of $1000. Sure.

Re: The Risk in Sending Your Startup’s Technology Offshore

#48

Post by prawks »

kcmarshall wrote: post #18

I don't think you can over-emphasize the challenges in communication with off-shore teams. I have worked with several in corporate IT and just reaching a minimal baseline of understanding has proven difficult. Some of this is basic talking and listening; phone conferences will suck! Think about your typical (dysfunctional) phone conf and then slash the quality of the phone line/Skype connection. Add in the variable a…

This has been my experience as well, very well summarized.

Communication is huge in technical organizations, and small stumbling blocks like accents over shoddy conference line quality can have long-lasting impacts when (as you've stated) incorrect assumptions are solidified in implementations. In a lean atmosphere those can be often be corrected but it's costly. When you're looking to offshore you're looking to save money and it's not always easy justifying re-writes purely from a monetary standpoint.

Re: The Risk in Sending Your Startup’s Technology Offshore

#49

Post by prawks »

retrogradeMT wrote: post #46
kcmarshall wrote: post #18

I don't think you can over-emphasize the challenges in communication with off-shore teams. I have worked with several in corporate IT and just reaching a minimal baseline of understanding has proven difficult. Some of this is basic talking and listening; phone conferences will suck! Think about your typical (dysfunctional) phone conf and then slash the quality of the phone line/Skype connection. Add in the variable a…

I have used an offshore developer to help with some specific projects on my startup that is entering our friends and family launch this week. My experience has been fantastic. I learned to code last fall and consider myself to be a semi-technical founder (php - laravel, jquery). I live in a small town in Montana and I knew I could not complete my MVP entirely by myself. With nearly no developers in my town I knew I w…

I think looking for an offshore developer is a bit different than looking for an offshore team. You likely have a more intimate relationship with your developer than someone contracting out to a team does with each of that team's members. You also talk directly with him, rather than through an intermediate team leader.

Just something to consider, these are all different cases, and as with anything it's never a one-size-fits-all.

Re: The Risk in Sending Your Startup’s Technology Offshore

#50

Post by McDoku »

jacquesm wrote: post #13
dave_sullivan wrote: post #11

Non-technical founder is a weird catch all. You never really hear about non technical founders in other industries, right? You don't start a construction company and say "Well, I don't know anything about construction but I can draw pictures of buildings, so I'll just hire someone that does (barring for a moment that I lack the knowledge about the profession that would allow me to judge talent in the first place)." T…

It's mostly a reflection of the ability of the non-technical people to evaluate their prospective partners. Good non-technical people will be able to compensate with effort what they lack in initial ability. You don't need to know enough to do the job, you need to know enough to evaluate whether the other party is able to do the job (and to check up on them as things progress). Almost by definition this means that th…

It is helpful if they (non-technical) are willing to learn and you (technical) need to be willing to devote the time to help them understand.

Its important to make sure that is in your estimate. It can eat up a fair bit of time but it makes the relationship stronger.

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