Outsourcing web development to India

[appletree]

I am thinking about outsourcing web development work to India. Has anyone had any experience of doing this? Are there any tax implications? Can anybody comment on the quality of work or recommend an outsourcing company. Any feedback will be much appreciated.

 

[FreelanceSoftwareDeveloper]

I don't have any experience of this other than as a developer I see some of the bids they place on the freelance sites. If you can find someone reliable with good skills you might be ok but there are a lot of bad ones!

Some of the freelance sites have open bidding and you regularly see bids for impossible tasks or where the bidder clearly has no understanding of what the task is. I get the impression there are a lot of middle-men too, bidding for jobs then sub contracting the work out to someone else trying to skim a few dollars off the top.

What kind of work do you require, is it just some simple tools or a complex system? Do you have any programming skills to be able to review the quality and security of the code your paying for?

 

[David Mac]

Is it for your own company website(s), or are you a web development company?

 

[Edd_Smith]

Ive picked up a few jobs off freelance websites where people have first outsourced to india and then decided to bring it back to the UK. In most cases the reasons for doing so is just not being able to get quite what they wanted.

If your budget can only stretch to outsourcing to india then i guess go for it, but in the long run id conjecture you would be better off hiring UK developer who is governed by UK trading laws and able to meet you to discuss your needs further. It also removed the potential difficulty of the language barrier.

 

[appletree]

I work for a web development company. We have a lot of experience and so will be able to check the code. We just don't know if it is worth outsourcing to free up time for other projects. Reliability is one of our main concerns and we would rather go with a recommended outsourcing company, as there are so many to choose from.

 

[David Mac]

India is definitely one of the cheaper countries to outsource to. The main drawbacks are communication and the timezone difference. By midday (our time), they have finished for the day, so you really do have to be on the ball in this respect. It's no good sending them a list of feedback at 10am your time, as by the time they have 'evaluated' it, they are going home for the day. Another issue is that the salespeople will say 'yes' to everything, often with the end result being that the developers are either unable to complete the task, or at best unable to complete the project within the timescale.

Rule 1. Take up several references
Rule 2. Expect to lose some money and time. There are good companies out there, but there are many more that are really difficult to work with. It takes time to get a good few companies you can rely on.

If you want even cheaper, consider Egypt. The same issues as above apply, and there is less choice, but the prices can be rock bottom.

I personally prefer Eastern European countries, particularly Romania and Ukraine. Expect to pay twice as much as you would for an Indian company, but work is generally done to an excellent standard, and on time. The timezone is GMT+2 which is pretty good too.

A final option is to outsource to a UK based project manager. This gives you a single, English speaking contact who will project manage the entire job, and will pick up the slack if something goes wrong.

Ultimately, it's all about risk. The bigger the risk you are prepared to take, the bigger the potential profit.

 

[Astaroth]

We don't outsource but have plenty of experience with clients who do.

Generally for straight forward stuff that is more about quantity than complexity the work is done to a reasonable standard and quickly.

Where your wanting them to add interlectual capital then things tend to go worse. Have seen some very very poor solutions created by them... they worked in test but were so inefficient that the code would have ground to a halt after a couple of months of data.

With one client they did a test between outsourcing to a UK company and an Indian one (which had both onshore and offshore resources). After a code review and a reasonable amount of estimation to upscale the piece they had done to the whole project it was decided that the indian company would have been about 5-10% more expensive than the UK one (despite the per manday price being less than a 5th) but more importantly that the timescales would have been 20-25% more because of the additional checking and rework.

If you do use them then you really want to be giving them something at least between a HLD & LLD (if not a LLD) and you need to factor in more time for code review and test.

Naturally others comments on getting references etc is key. Also good to get those from people who will have done technical reviews of the code rather than just end users who only checked that the site appeared to do what it said.

 

[appletree]

India is definitely one of the cheaper countries to outsource to. The main drawbacks are communication and the timezone difference. By midday (our time), they have finished for the day, so you really do have to be on the ball in this respect. It's no good sending them a list of feedback at 10am your time, as by the time they have 'evaluated' it, they are going home for the day. Another issue is that the salespeople will say 'yes' to everything, often with the end result being that the developers are either unable to complete the task, or at best unable to complete the project within the timescale.

Rule 1. Take up several references
Rule 2. Expect to lose some money and time. There are good companies out there, but there are many more that are really difficult to work with. It takes time to get a good few companies you can rely on.

If you want even cheaper, consider Egypt. The same issues as above apply, and there is less choice, but the prices can be rock bottom.

I personally prefer Eastern European countries, particularly Romania and Ukraine. Expect to pay twice as much as you would for an Indian company, but work is generally done to an excellent standard, and on time. The timezone is GMT+2 which is pretty good too.

A final option is to outsource to a UK based project manager. This gives you a single, English speaking contact who will project manage the entire job, and will pick up the slack if something goes wrong.

Ultimately, it's all about risk. The bigger the risk you are prepared to take, the bigger the potential profit.

Thanks for the information. Would you recommend any outsourcing companies?

 

[David Mac]

I hope this doesn't sound mean spirited (probably does!), but the ones I work with, I don't wish to overload them with work, as at the moment the turnaround times on my projects are very good, and it has taken me a long time to get to this stage. New companies sending them bulk work is bound to have a detrimental effect on the timescales of my projects.

However, I will send you a PM with the details of 2 Ukranian companies. One I have worked with previously, the other I am yet to work with, but have them on a shortlist of companies to try out, and their understanding of projects when providing quotes has been impressive.

 

[unet]

try outsourcing via SCRIPTLANCE

its one of the better sites, you pay some money upfront into escrow and scriptlance looks after it until the job is complete etc.

people bid to do you work via the site. i have used it 20 or so times over the past year

 

[pickaweb]

It is hard finding good people but possible.
Try odesk.com

 

[vepro]

Virtual Employee provides a tailor made service for their clients, therefore whatever your requirement is we will search for candidates locally who match your requirements.
Once we have found a selection of candidates for you we will send these to you via email for you to review. If you are happy with the resumes, we will then arrange an interview to take place between you and the candidate directly over the telephone or skype. If you are happy with any of the candidates after the interview, you can then hire the candidate and we will forward you the contract and invoice. Please note that we are a monthly pre-paid service.
Virtual Employee provides you with a candidate who you will be in direct contact with and you will allocate the work and provide them with deadlines etc. It is to assume that this candidate would be hired for you but would not be working in your invoice.
I would like to speak to you in more detail about our business model and recruitment process, and to discuss your requirements. If you could please email us with a detailed job description, if you are looking to use our services, along with a convenient time to contact you.

 

[bdw]

Never miss a trick!

 

[bdw]

Here's the Australian view ...
http://www.passioncomputing.com.au/Articles/Disadvantages-of-Indian-Outsourcing.aspx

 

[Marlay]

Ask any Ukrainian software development company which has been around for at least a couple years and you will find that they’ve inherited at least one project from an Indian firm that had complete and utter horrific code.

Also, you can go to any tech conference and ask everybody there with outsourcing experience whether they’ve had bad experiences with Indian and Ukrainian outsourcing companies - I guarantee that you’ll hear a lot more positive about Eastern Europe devs than Indian ones.

There are many good developers in India, without a doubt… but there are so, so many more terrible ones. Plus the cultural differences between Western countries and India are quite a bit more noticeable than between Ukraine and the West (That isn’t to say Ukrainians don’t have their own cultural nuances compared to Westerners - but they’re a lot closer in terms of mentality). However, I think the biggest problem isn’t with culture, it’s with simple rules of economics.

Indians and Southeast Asians in general tend to compete on price - which is a losing man’s game, really. A good developer is worth their weight in gold, which the developers themselves know, and although Ukrainian developers are cheaper than Western ones, they definitely earn a good salary in their home countries and can afford a comfortable life in Ukraine. Whereas the Indian “sweatshop” dev studios which I’ve seen aren’t going to attract any sort of reasonable talent. Yet those are the guys who are offering you $5–10 an hour development rates.

 

[Gecko001]

Old thread from 20111