11–20 of 68 posts
If you're looking to get more done for close to the same amount of cash then you're more likely to succeed than someone who wants to reduce costs as much as possible. There's no trick to getting it right, but it's really easy to slip up and get it wrong.
As someone who managed off-shore projects, I think this model can be made to work only if the coding part is offshore. The design part would have to be done on-shore in a majority of cases. The problem with outsourcing design is that you may not have people who understand the business or the dynamics of the environment they are designing for.
(much lower day rate) IMHO This is a key wrong assumption here. After many yrs in this business i am still surprised how many ppl fail to realize this simple fact. Project is doomed when they hire Indian Developers for $5/hour Good developers charge premium anywhere! Local market of talents! Great developers are always busy and if you are happy to find someone cheap and available right now you are under serious risk.…
A friend of mine tried outsourcing an e-commerce site to somewhere in India from freelance.com or one of those sites to save a little time and money for a project he said he could do for someone. He had absolutely no programming experience and didn't believe my "you get what you pay for" type attitude. A week or two and a few hundred dollars later he was all excited about how he was able to "manage" the developer and get everything done. Within a week the site was offline, completely destroyed by a script hacker exploiting some weakness in an out of date version of osCommerce. I think he just had to learn that lesson for himself though.
As someone who managed off-shore projects, I think this model can be made to work only if the coding part is offshore. The design part would have to be done on-shore in a majority of cases. The problem with outsourcing design is that you may not have people who understand the business or the dynamics of the environment they are designing for.
Add in the fact that we speak English (even if our spelling has idiosyncrasies like "cheque," "colour," and "centre"), the ease of flying back and forth, and the fact that we work in the same bloody time zone...
And one more thing: Major Canadian cities like Toronto and Vancouver are an incredible melting pot of cultures, so you can find people who speak English and French, Hindi, Mandarin, Cantonese, Greek, Spanish, or whatever else you may need as you build out your Global empire.
If you must go remote or outsource, I suggest looking North of the 49th before you look in South-East Asia.
The only way it can work is if the person managing the source of work knows exactly what they're looking for. If the project manager can read and recognize what a well coded project looks like, then the model can work. But often the only thing that matters (especially to the type who would immediately want to outsource) is the end result. A friend of mine tried outsourcing an e-commerce site to somewhere in India fro…
Blatant plug: What you want is near -shoring. Canadian development shops and remote Canadian developers are like "Mexicans with sweaters." Lower cost-of-living, we have our family's health care taken care of while we work on your start-up, and our subsidized universities churn out a steady stream of new grads. Add in the fact that we speak English (even if our spelling has idiosyncrasies like "cheque," "colour," and…
Someone said on this thread that offshore works only when you give a very detailed specification of the project.
The biggest problem problem I'm facing every day is not having a way to get answers to my questions. There are many layers of intermediaries that filter out information and delay the answers. I do have to deliver the project and I can't always wait days or weeks every time I have a question. Most of the times I have to assume that you want a certain solution and implement it my way. Unfortunately, it's not always the desired one.
I can give you an example: someone wanted a payment system implemented but they missed giving me the library used by the payment processor. I had to wait few days to be able to get the library from them, only to find out that they gave me the wrong one (32bit instead of 64 bit)... and so on. There are many many little things like this that take time and could have been solved very easily through a phone call (or even an e-mail).
I'm not a junior, a have 10 years of experience (not all of the working offshore) and I can do your job pretty well... I know how to do it, but I have to know what you want. That's a part of the reason why you sometimes have to give very detailed specifications, not because of me but because of the people between you and me that don't do their job.
Not all companies do this though, some of them get it right. Daily scrums with everybody involved speaking on the phone help a lot. Giving me a way to talk directly to a competent person, also helps. Sometimes a simple yes/no answer makes a huge difference. When we start a new big project it helps to work on the same office, even for a few days. Don't be cheap, it may be cheaper to work with me but it's not that cheap, remember that I can very easily move to a different company or even country (and I'm not talking about the salary, but about everything else).