Crazyness!

[tony84]

I spoke to a few people about getting a design done and it being coded for prestashop. I was quoting prices ranging from £250 to £600.

Ive just gone on some forums which is aimed at anyone not just the UK. I have been quoted $75 which is probably around $40-45. Admittedly his design isnt upto that of the people quoting £600 but its definately in line with the ones quoting £250-350.

He speaks pretty good english and has over 15 years experience. Looking at his code (im no expert) but it looks pretty decent to me. How mad is this though. Obviously differnet countries have different standards of living but I could quite easily take on work, outsource it to this guy for double or treble his price and still undercut the UK market.

That price was just his initial quote, im sure if i tried to bargain i could probably get it down not that i would as i think that would be taking the proverbial.

[liams7]

You could pay that but you wouldnt see the design work for about 3 months and if you wanted changes it would take another 3 months. The level of work is normally poor and its hard to communicate some times.

It is mad and alot of people do what you are talking about but the level of work is normally really poor.

[Dawg]

I've had a reasonable amount of work done by Johnny Foreigner; design, small bits of coding, vectors, number crunching and data collation. Done in India, China and Russia mostly, and it has always been quick, good and cheap.

There are strong arguments about whether it is a good or bad idea, but I can't see that globally slagging off the quality is amongst them.

[P4D | Parcels4Delivery]

In my experience a small piece of work with a clear brief can easily be farmed out to a foreign programmer. They are usually keen to get paid quickly so generally finish the work to a good quality in a day or two. The problem comes if you want to build a relationship and start to rely on them. If all you have is a Yahoo email address then they can easily disappear. I have had this problem with UK based freelancers as well - my advice, if you want an on-going relationship then get as much contact information as you can up front.

[Comspec]

I agree with Dawg tbh, it is a little harsh to tar everyone from these places with the same brush.

I use a couple of guys in India for some small graphical work from time to time and they are excellent value and the work is top notch. It did take a while to get these two I must admit, but they are there if you look deep enough.

[OldWelshGuy]

I have 2 people who now work exclusively for me. OK they need 100% clear instruction, but their work is superb.

The only concern you have wth offshore is the trustworthiness. After all, you are giving your site to them. what if they set up rogue code to use as link farms etc?

[tony84]

Ive always had good service when ive used foreigners but it has always been for small code problems or psd's.

Last month i had a Chinese lad make me a whole website for $80 with an admin back end system, and then this prestashop will be the biggest project eventually. Ive recently gone for bigger projects so far so good.

I used to believe the hype about second class service but now i would in the majority of cases look abroad initially. Its a shame as i would prefer to keep the work over here but what do you do? Keep costs low or not get the work done at all so nobody benefits.

[Kev Jaques]

It's quite saddening really, you have 2+million unemployed looking for jobs, a lot of them looking full-time to get a job (ironic) and then look to outsource to a foreign country.
It's just not british ;)

[MH1]

It's quite saddening really, you have 2+million unemployed looking for jobs, a lot of them looking full-time to get a job (ironic) and then look to outsource to a foreign country.
It's just not british

Then again the same designers in this country wanting to charge their rate probably then go out and buy chinese goods, thing is, most swords are double edged. ;)

[Dawg]

Then again the same designers in this country wanting to charge their rate probably then go out and buy chinese goods, thing is, most swords are double edged. ;)

Exactly. How many designers in this country are using 'puters assembled in the UK? Wearing British made clothing, not using that filthy foreign Adobe software muck? :)
Like it or not we all, not just designers, compete globally, and as we can't usually do it on price it'll have to be on quality or service. (Which makes the thread on bad service depressing..)

[MartCactus]

He speaks pretty good english and has over 15 years experience. Looking at his code (im no expert) but it looks pretty decent to me. How mad is this though. Obviously differnet countries have different standards of living but I could quite easily take on work, outsource it to this guy for double or treble his price and still undercut the UK market.


I think as others have said, this works fine for small jobs. Its more complex if you have a very big job, eg designing an online application from scratch. Its also problematic if you have critical problems you want them to sort out with very short notice (eg emergencies).

This is no different to if you use someone in the UK who is a one man band, or working on the side from their day job. We've had clients who've hired a developer and then when there are problems they are back to calling us as the cheaper guy is at his day job, or on holiday, and therefore too busy to help out.

Some customers (especially bigger corporations) will pay a premium to ensure they are dealing with a company that has a UK based office with staff there during UK office hours (at the very least). Others will prefer the cost saving of hiring someone in another timezone, as they don't require such levels of support.

But for smaller jobs, where you can fully verify its all working fine, then there are big cost savings to be made. I guess as with everything in life you'll find bad ones and good ones... if you get a good one, try to hold onto them!

In some cases the time difference can work in your favour - we do quite a bit of development in United Arab Emirates (in house). We can work on something during our day, put the changes to the staging server for client to review and he (at middle or start of his day in Europe and USA) can then review and flag and problems, and then we work on them the next day... so the entire day is used... whereas if the development is done in UK we work during the day, upload changes at end of day, client then won't check overnight, so we have to wait for them to review the next day, and then send changes etc... so we miss a day, and everything takes twice as long. So developing in India has some advantages.

I'd always be wary about reselling outsourcing services like this to UK clients. Couple of things would concern me
1) can the third party deliver on time? I'd hate to oursource one months work, and then find that I get let down by my third party 2 or 3 days before delivery is due (at least if project inhouse is delayed, you'll know about it)
2) what happens if you pay the chap, and then the customer gets it and finds lots of bugs. To avoid this you need to throughly test when you receive it, which can be a lot of work... so its not simply rebadging cheap work and selling it on, you're effectively earning your money by speccing the job out, and then checking the finished product against the spec.

Mart

[tony84]

Nice to get a bit of debate going :-)

[brownie]

I've had more problems with UK based workers, choose carefully and you will have no problems with workers from abroad.

I'd say go for it Tony, I've had nothing but positive experiences and it does make me laugh those UK based workers who instantly slate foreign workers. Where do they think most larger companies are sending their work out too?

If you want to have a longstanding career in the technology industry you have to learn to adapt.

[Place of design]

I spoke to a few people about getting a design done and it being coded for prestashop. I was quoting prices ranging from £250 to £600.

Ive just gone on some forums which is aimed at anyone not just the UK. I have been quoted $75 which is probably around $40-45. Admittedly his design isnt upto that of the people quoting £600 but its definately in line with the ones quoting £250-350.

He speaks pretty good english and has over 15 years experience. Looking at his code (im no expert) but it looks pretty decent to me. How mad is this though. Obviously differnet countries have different standards of living but I could quite easily take on work, outsource it to this guy for double or treble his price and still undercut the UK market.

That price was just his initial quote, im sure if i tried to bargain i could probably get it down not that i would as i think that would be taking the proverbial.

200 - 600 to design and code a template is very reasonable when you consider the work involved

lets just say it is 1 weeks work - thats not bad - the equivelent of £28800 a year

Sounds good.. untill you get the bill for the computers I just ordered just under £4000, and the software that goes with it £1600

Thats before the electric, the marketing, the accountant, the bank charges, the time I cant work, because I am in a meeting with prospective customers etc..