To use an offshore development team or not??

[Richbdevs]

Hi all.

I am just looking for some advice, points and hopefully some previous experiences please when it comes to using offshore ( non UK ) software development companies or developers for hire? I have heard good and bad things and would love some advice. Are they any good, are they safe, what are your particular concerns etc.

I agree that their pricing is great compared to purely UK companies but is that at a cost and if so what?

Thanks in advance all

 

[zigojacko]

In my experience, the savings in service rates often don't outweigh the additional time required micro-managing them directly, communicating with them over absolutely everything and coming along behind them cleaning up.

Their only skill is usually coding, and this is normally limited to PHP and basic JavaScript along with some database experience. They normally lack any real knowledge of project management, web development workflows or even best practices so as soon as a complexity crops up such as configuring a website to run on Linux web server with Nginx caching or something, you end up having to deal with it yourself as they become quickly out of their depth. Their code is often inconsistent, messy and uncommented and they have absolutely zero frontend design or graphic skills.

You might think that is quite specific or even stereotyped but it has been the exact experience with every single offshore developer I have ever worked with (and I've probably worked with a fair few hundred in the past on various projects).

So really, I would say it largely depends on the project you want to hire them for and the specifics of what you need them to take care of.

Be prepared for quite a painful and exasperating time though.

 

[Deleted member 325090]

Offshore is very much hit & miss.

I've never seen it work well for larger projects(multi million), and I've personally got a lot of work from cleaning up the mess that an offshore team has left, when a client has realised that it wasn't working.

I've seen many larger clients onshore a previously offshore team, to keep an eye on them and monitor quality, and this is when you see the real mix of ability that you're getting for your money.

What you often find is that in any given offshore team there will be a handful of decent devs, but the majority are often poor quality engineers who may also not speak any/much English. Not surprising when you consider that anyone who is decent is likely to move abroad where there is plenty of work, working conditions are much better and pay rates are much higher.

People often focus on the technical deficiencies, but personally I think one of the biggest issues in IT(in general) is comms related. It's bad enough if everyone speaks the same language and is in the same room, never mind if there is a language barrier and/or if people are physically separate.

Personally, I'd be happy to use offshore, but only if the requirements are completely nailed down. And even then I'd insist on staggered deliverables and monitor the quality regularly. But I can only do that because I'm also technically proficient and able to assess what they've produced. If it was the first time using them, I'd probably give them something small/cheap to test them out with.

Opting for someone in the UK is no guarantee of success either; plenty of poor quality UK devs out there. It's just less risky due to no language barrier and the timezone making comms a bit more efficient.

 

[Richbdevs]

In my experience, the savings in service rates often don't outweigh the additional time required micro-managing them directly, communicating with them over absolutely everything and coming along behind them cleaning up.

Their only skill is usually coding, and this is normally limited to PHP and basic JavaScript along with some database experience. They normally lack any real knowledge of project management, web development workflows or even best practices so as soon as a complexity crops up such as configuring a website to run on Linux web server with Nginx caching or something, you end up having to deal with it yourself as they become quickly out of their depth. Their code is often inconsistent, messy and uncommented and they have absolutely zero frontend design or graphic skills.

You might think that is quite specific or even stereotyped but it has been the exact experience with every single offshore developer I have ever worked with (and I've probably worked with a fair few hundred in the past on various projects).

So really, I would say it largely depends on the project you want to hire them for and the specifics of what you need them to take care of.

Be prepared for quite a painful and exasperating time though.

Thanks man, great answer. So if a good local project lead was to be used, or the offshore company was to offer a UK local project manager that did all the liaising and communication, do you think this would be viable?

 

[zigojacko]

Thanks man, great answer. So if a good local project lead was to be used, or the offshore company was to offer a UK local project manager that did all the liaising and communication, do you think this would be viable?

Yes. Providing that the UK project manager was also a web developer as well and knew everything needed for the offshore developer to be able to carry out their tasks (big ask).

If not, then they just end up being a go-between yourself and the offshore developer because they can't accurately relay the instructions or answer any queries that may arise.

 

[Richbdevs]

Offshore is very much hit & miss.

I've never seen it work well for larger projects(multi million), and I've personally got a lot of work from cleaning up the mess that an offshore team has left, when a client has realised that it wasn't working.

I've seen many larger clients onshore a previously offshore team, to keep an eye on them and monitor quality, and this is when you see the real mix of ability that you're getting for your money.

What you often find is that in any given offshore team there will be a handful of decent devs, but the majority are often poor quality engineers who may also not speak any/much English. Not surprising when you consider that anyone who is decent is likely to move abroad where there is plenty of work, working conditions are much better and pay rates are much higher.

People often focus on the technical deficiencies, but personally I think one of the biggest issues in IT(in general) is comms related. It's bad enough if everyone speaks the same language and is in the same room, never mind if there is a language barrier and/or if people are physically separate.

Personally, I'd be happy to use offshore, but only if the requirements are completely nailed down. And even then I'd insist on staggered deliverables and monitor the quality regularly. But I can only do that because I'm also technically proficient and able to assess what they've produced. If it was the first time using them, I'd probably give them something small/cheap to test them out with.

Opting for someone in the UK is no guarantee of success either; plenty of poor quality UK devs out there. It's just less risky due to no language barrier and the timezone making comms a bit more efficient.

Thank you. What are your thoughts on the security and integrity of the projects please? Are there issues with stolen source code / IP, data leaks, personal data and business data leaks etc also? Not be UK or Europe based, they dont need to adhere to GDPR etc.

 

[WebDesires]

Thank you. What are your thoughts on the security and integrity of the projects please? Are there issues with stolen source code / IP, data leaks, personal data and business data leaks etc also? Not be UK or Europe based, they dont need to adhere to GDPR etc.

Another big problem, how would you ever hold them responsible for anything? Like quite a few above have said, they are cheap and there are reasons, they usually lack responsibility, rush code (messy un-commented un-thought out) and from what I find when clients come to us and need help is they quite often lack even the basic security knowledge when it comes to code leaving websites in particular open to easy exploits.

 

[Deleted member 325090]

Thank you. What are your thoughts on the security and integrity of the projects please? Are there issues with stolen source code / IP, data leaks, personal data and business data leaks etc also? Not be UK or Europe based, they dont need to adhere to GDPR etc.

Honestly, I've never personally seen offshore projects succeed to the point where any of those things have become an issue. All the ones I've been aware of have been brought in-house fairly quickly.

I would expect that anything that they write for you would be re-used on other projects if they can do, regardless of any contract clauses, as they'll know it's not something you could easily police. I've seen this happen with UK dev's too.

I'd certainly be a lot more reluctant to allow them to run your live system and maintain sensitive data, than I would be with allowing them to develop you a piece of software, for the reasons you mention.

I would say if you're technically competent and able to assess their work, then use them but keep a close eye on them. If you're not technical, I'd find a local company who you can meet with and vet for the dev work and the ongoing maintenance.

I wouldn't trust a UK based PM/contact for an offshore team. It certainly makes comms easier, but ultimately they're marking their own homework and they will cover anything up which makes them look bad.

 

[Chris Ashdown]

It would seem that your asking UK developers to tell you the offshore guys are great, so use them instead of ME

This forum and many others are full of bad news about some UK developers and some good ones

If you are using UK designers and working with UK contracts then you have a certain amount of comeback and can visit them to check on their work process

Using a offshore guy for some rather basic software then if you go by good recommendations it may well be fine and much lower cost with a strong contract and payment in stages

On the other hand you may get burned just like the uk

A cheap flight may be money well spent to visit a few potential guys in their home country to check out their previous work Mumbai is for instance £700 for a week return not a killer price

 

[gpietersz]

Having been on a few different sides on this.

I have worked for an offshore software company in Sri Lanka that had good developers (a few outright brilliant) who spoke good English (there are a good many people in South Asia whose first language is English), but it was a company that had an excellent image (even better now its owned by the London Stock Exchange Group). The problem is that people there are very sensitive to how prestigious an employer they work there (I imagine its the same across the region as the economic and cultural factors are similar) and very few people will be able to attract that level of people.

Obviously they only do big projects in a specialist area, mostly doing customised installs of their platform. £1m is a small contract in that world.

I also know people at another good developer over there, less specialist than my former employer, but again I am pretty sure they only do big projects.

Speaking good English is a critical skill for a lot of jobs and, as @Wayne Smyth pointed out anyone with both technical skills and good English also has the option of emigrating somewhere better paying.

Small offshore developers are going get people from the bottom of the barrel.

I have managed to find good individual offshore subcontractors, but its been a lot of work to sift them out, and I hired a few less good ones in the meantime. My clients who have hired offshore developers themselves have had worse luck (in many cases that is why they hired me) and this applies to Easter Euopean as well as Asian developers.

The biggest problem is code quality - rushed, copy and paste, uncommented code that is hard to maintain. Its also the biggest problem with UK developers too, but its much worse off-shore.

Also, beware UK companies that actually have UK sales and off-shore developers!

Not be UK or Europe based, they dont need to adhere to GDPR etc.

No, but if they have access to your data, you are responsible for ensuring that they do. It should be in your contract whether they are offshore or not.

You should also insist on a UK jurisdiction clause in contracts, but its still a lot easier to enforce a judgement against someone here.

Their code is often inconsistent, messy and uncommented and they have absolutely zero frontend design or graphic skills.

One of my clients recently found a front end developer with good design as well as technical skills. Unfortunately he turned out to be completely unreliable.

 

[Nighthawk Software]

Outsourcing work is always going to be tricky, regardless of whether its a UK based or foreign company. There's always going to be a handful of great companies, and a handful of awful companies. Whether the ratio is worse in certain areas or not, it's difficult to say.

As always though, the general rule of "you get what you pay for" always holds true. As someone else alluded to earlier, any good developer will be able to walk in to a job in the western world for a hell of a lot more than what they will make at home, so you end up being left with the dregs from the barrel.

Do your research first and make sure you are dealing with companies that have a strong reputation and a proven track record of delivering projects of a similar scale and complexity to yours.

Working with a UK based Project Manager wont make much difference - you're still working with the same people doing the actual work, to the same standards. All you're doing is moving the responsibility for dealing with them from yourself to someone else. If anything this may lead to more issues due to more people being involved, and information not getting passed on to the developers properly.

 

[gpietersz]

On top of everything else cheap country developers can get good rates at home if they are good. Apart from better jobs (which I mentioned earlier), they can get better rates. I do not know whether that is on the basis of good technical skills, but I suspect its sales skills.

I recently came across one (using a social contact to look for business) who said their standard rates approx £1,000 for a site using an existing theme and about £3,000 for a customised site, and their client list was entirely in their country.

 

[Aleksander_Gramm]

It depends on communication and Project Management skills of a team.

I know that some people will criticize my opinion but it's just an opinion.

The rate of developer depends on a location. If a JAVA developer live in SF CA, he earn 200k USD. If a JAVA developer live in Kyiv, he make 60-70k USD. Because to live in California or in Birmingham more expencive than in Kyiv. That is why many Ukranian developers won't relocate and prefer stay in Ukraine. If you earn 20-30k USD in Ukraine, you will be in the premier league. It isn't a big money for Birmingham.

Certainly we can say as much as we like about bad developers or cultury... but if you search a good developers, you will find good developers. The main mistake of many busineesmen from UK (USA, France or other West countries people) is to search a 'cheapest team'.

 

[altteam]

I totally agree with Aleksander_Gramm(previous post).
Many clients are looking for the cheapest developers and of course, they can find them. Usually, it's students who have started to code several months ago and they have no knowledge of any code standards or developers who have no loyal clients because of their bad qualifications. Talented and experienced developers definitely know the world rates for their work and they won't agree to work for peanuts as they have a lot of loyal clients who are satisfied with their work and can recommend them to others. But as they live in counties where life is cheaper (India, Turkey, Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, Latvia and etc.) they can keep up with UK developers and can even be more profitable for the end client.
To say the truth, our company is always working as an offshore development team with USA and UK clients. We have been even working with UK developers who

 

[Alison Moore]

I think it depends how technical you are yourself. You can hire offshore developers and that can save money, but unless your spec if 100% accurate and not at all ambiguous or subject to different interpretations, you can't guarantee that you'll receive what you think you have contracted.

 

[Aleksander_Gramm]

I think it depends how technical you are yourself. You can hire offshore developers and that can save money, but unless your spec if 100% accurate and not at all ambiguous or subject to different interpretations, you can't guarantee that you'll receive what you think you have contracted.

Nobody guarantee that you'll receive what you think you have contracted. I know it as client.

UK agencies hire freelancers or offshore agencies. It is a common practice. And it is a good practice because UK agency solve problems in this approach (affordable price, no cultural difference).

 

[gpietersz]

Common language and culture help a lot.

UK agencies who hire offshore developers will add a substantial markup, and often charge the client at UK rates anyway, so the cost advantage can disappear or even reverse.

There is also a big advantage in dealing with someone in the same legal jurisdiction. What would you do in the circumstances in this thread https://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/threads/new-website-crm-£15-800-lost.403594/ if it was an offshore developer?

 

[Aleksander_Gramm]

Common language and culture help a lot.

UK agencies who hire offshore developers will add a substantial markup, and often charge the client at UK rates anyway, so the cost advantage can disappear or even reverse.

There is also a big advantage in dealing with someone in the same legal jurisdiction. What would you do in the circumstances in this thread https://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/threads/new-website-crm-£15-800-lost.403594/ if it was an offshore developer?

Several months later and after asking several times about the actual design of the site, I was told it was ready to test. This had taken well over 12 months
Well, I think that explains it. Project plan, agile development and other ways to reduce risks.

As I wrote "Nobody guarantee that you'll receive what you think you have contracted. I know it as client".

I imagined this situation for our projects... it is impossible. That would be a very big blow to our agency. One such case has the power to ruin us.

 

[altteam]

There is also a big advantage in dealing with someone in the same legal jurisdiction. What would you do in the circumstances in this thread if it was an offshore developer?

Yes. On the one hand, it is a plus. In case there are any conflicts with the agency, you can go to court and it will be easier to go into litigation with the company that placed in your country. But how often do you have to use your right of the court?

Also, bad reviews and official complaints to the company's partners are a powerful tool of penalty. I know one web agency that had been lowered in all partner's ratings, had lost their golden status and big discounts for partner's products because of one client complaint. And the client was absolutely right in that situation! The web agency was almost ruined.

Usually, the reputation takes a lifetime to build and it costs more expensive than 1 client project.
Such companies choose to make a refund than to get a bad review.

 

[Chris Ashdown]

Lets not get carried away by being very clever British people, Do not British firms not deliver, screw up completely and close down when awarded costs to their clients for being useless

Its easy to knock the competition to make ourselves look great and perfect

 

[Harsumeet Singh]

Nobody guarantee that you'll receive what you think you have contracted. There are some pros and cons too.
Pros
Low cost
A vast pool of talent
Overcoming language barriers
Cons
You can’t be there!
Language barrier
Trust and Reliability

 

[Sanjay Patoliya]

Advantages of Hiring an Offshore Development Team:

Time and Productivity: A team of offshore developers can not only reduce costs but also speed up the development process and thus save your precious time. As you already know, time is crucial for any startup because each startup is born in a competitive setting. With a dedicated development team, you will not spend any time on training new employees, as each outsourced developer has their skills already in place.

Cost efficiency: You will not be spending your funds on overhead costs such as office rent, payroll, insurance benefits, vacations, recruitment fees, etc. Instead, you will be directing the funds to the most important domain – a creation of an MVP. Moreover, due to the lower cost of living, the rates of developers in offshore countries are typically much more reasonable comp[are to local developers.

Fewer conflicts: Startups typically result from personal relationships between the co-founders that eventually evolve into business relationships. Business interactions may differ from personal ones, so this can cause conflicts and misunderstandings. A guy whom you have known for ages may show a dark side of their personality while in business. However, an offshore team can help you avoid such conflicts at the MVP building stage.

Flexibility: With an in-house team, it will be very difficult to scale your team or change the technology stack conforming to the project stage and scope. However, such changes are very common for startup environments, so flexibility is crucial here. Outsourcing developers are flexible and can be easily moved between the projects.

Challenges with Offshore Software Development Team:

Lack of Face-to-Face Communication: Obviously offshore team is from another country so you can't able to meet them face to face every day. However, there’s a solution: you can visit the offshore team location from time to time, personally meet your remote colleagues, spend some time together and break the ice. Believe it or not – such travels would cost you less than a startup failed because of hiring mistakes.

Time Zone Differences: If your offshore team is located in a time zone that’s different from yours, it may be hard for you to synchronize the time when both the in-house and offshore guys are online. However, you can turn this challenge into an advantage by choosing the correct time zone.

Cultural Differences: When working with offshore teams, it’s important that you understand the difference between the low context culture and the high context culture. If possible, I recommend that you select an offshore team whose culture is closer to yours. As a result, you will not have to spend extra time on understanding the new culture and getting used to it.

Too Many Vendors: The abundance of software development vendors on the offshore market can bring you not only benefits but also confusion. It’s hard to choose between thousands of agencies as well as build trust with them.

 

[Deleted member 325090]

Sanjay, in my personal experience of where offshore teams have been used, costs have been increased, either because what was promised was not delivered(quality or functionality wise) leading to the project having to be restarted by a competent onshore team, or because companies can use an initial low price to get their foot in the door then jack up the prices/timescales once the customer is snared. This is a typical tactic used by the large agencies like WiPro, offering 100k of work for free to councils and the like.

You will save money IF what you were promised is delivered to an acceptable quality, but I've only ever seen that once in my life and in that case the offshore company jacked the prices up for the next round of changes and they also tried to sell additional unnecessary expensive features to the client, who was not tech savvy.

On that same project, the offshore teams code had to interface with a system produced by the in-house team and they leeched so much of our time trying to explain very simple things to them, multiple times. All this 'cost' was hidden from the client as it was never measured because it was a half hour here, an hour there.

So, although it's true the advertised day rates are lower, the final cost of the projects I've seen is probably higher than it would've been if it was done on-shore.

With regard to flexibility, the same is true for on-shore developers. You can hire a consultancy in your own country who will have a range of staff who can be deployed to add certain skills, or you can employ temporary staff to bring in the specific talent you need.

If you have the technical ability and the time to review what is delivered and good contracts in place, you should be fine, but otherwise it's a big risk.

Ultimately the location of the devs doesn't matter a massive amount. What matters most is the integrity and honesty of the company doing the work. I've just personally witnessed a lot of bad ones from Vietnam, China and India, but I am sure there are poor companies in this country too.

 

[arnydnxluk]

I have never hired a developer (I am a software developer myself and haven't needed an extra pair of technical hands in any of my businesses thus far)

My concern with hiring anyone abroad for anything but the smallest jobs would be the legal aspect - is there a means to easily enforce your contract and collect payment if required? Is their insurance suitable for working with clients in the UK? I have no idea what the answer is, that would just be my concern if hiring someone for a large or long term project. Perhaps the possible risks can be lowered by paying incrementally and receiving the work incrementally.

 

[gpietersz]

Perhaps the possible risks can be lowered by paying incrementally and receiving the work incrementally.

Paying incrementally helps with failures to deliver, but it does not help with enforcing non-disclosure agreements, misuse of confidential data, security issues, and similar risks.

 

[Charlie Gr]

We do offer similar IT services based out of India, and I don't need to repeat the large number of advantages of such a model. Telling you by experience, this model does pay off for busineses - esp if you are in need for good large team members.

Scale - is the best reason, what you can get it done in UK in 2 yrs, it might happen in 3 months or less .... so you can make your decisions in life much faster than just waiting, by which time the market would have moved.

Again, its just efficient execution, and having choice in execution helps.

 

[gpietersz]

Scale - is the best reason, what you can get it done in UK in 2 yrs, it might happen in 3 months or less

The only way you can deliver a lot faster is:

1. by having better developers
2. by skimping on quality (reliability and maintainability)

I am pretty sure about which is more likely when offshoring to a lower cost country.

 

[fc-ramon]

Cost goes up or quality goes down. Can't have high quality when cost is low.

You saved a few bucks now by outsourcing but don't come complaining when your poorly made web app / website / etc gets hacked in a year or two cause of poor coding standards and unpatched systems and causes you to lose money and reputation.....

Buy cheap get cheap. Buy quality get quality.

If your business is reliant on IT (which most are!) you should be looking for a quality product, not a cheap one.

 

[fisicx]

We do offer similar IT services based out of India...

Indeed you do. But the few good companies are largely outweighed by the dross. I’ve lost count of the number of times they promise to do as requested but what gets delivered falls far short.

And before anyone’s comments, it’s not just Indian developers. Happens in many countries.

 

[Deleted member 325090]

Agreed fc-ramon.

In my experience I've never seen it work well, and certainly not for a sustained period.

One client of ours outsourced a mobile app offshore, and are now asking us to take it over. The price and quality was good initially, but after a while costs for changes started to creep up and the offshore team was trying to sell unnecessary services and gold-plate solutions to make extra money.

I had another client come to us because they'd also gone the offshore route, they'd been delivered a web app which was buggy. I could see it had been created by cannibalising another app(which was probably someone else's IP), because it had loads of code in it that was for a different product entirely, but which they were too lazy to comment out.

Apparently on that one things started out ok, but after a while the dev team stopped responding to requests, so the client wanted to bring it back to the UK to someone with more integrity.

Offshore can work, you just need to have a watertight contract, be able to specify requirements to within a gnats whisker and be willing and have the technical skill to assess the quality of the deliverables like a hawk.

In many respects due to the amount of business I've had over the years picking up the pieces for failed offshore projects, I should be grateful, but it's frustrating to end up having to deal with other peoples mess so often, because it's frequently too expensive to re-engineer all the poor work they've done.

 

[fc-ramon]

Yep, exactly that......

"Oh no my WordPress site or web app has been hacked.....Can you fix it for me?"

You see the shoddy development like using old / cracked plug-ins, using code from GitHub but not actually taking out the parts you don't need...... Just a mess to be honest.

 

[Aleksander_Gramm]

Here, I wish to express a note of caution. There is no clear link between the quality and cost. I have many friends who are developers and earn about $150-200 k per year. Sometimes they do a poor job, copy-paste code from StackOverflow. Just try to use any banking app. Why somebody pay them a lot of money... I don't know. Also, any agency from the UK or US never going to admit that they hire the agency or freelancer from India, Pakistan, Belarus or Ukraine.
@Wayne Smyth I can say the same thing. Our agency has had over the years picking up the pieces for failed offshore projects and UK/US projects. It is a fact. Many business owners from the US and UK entrust projects to our agency because we can re-engineer all the poor work. Now our agency want to make a little bit more money, so we reject some of proposed offers.
But there are the same reasons. Developers do a poor work, because:
- very few people thinks about scaling up of projects
- some developers are lazy lads
- lack of experience
- poor project management
- agencies hire offshore developers.
I can agree with you only on the assumption that offshore agencies do a poor job slightly more often. So, it's a cultural thing or business ethic.

I'm sorry if I've offended somebody. I've fixed some things these last few days that have been terrible.

 

[Deleted member 325090]

@Aleksander_Gramm yes you're correct that it happens everywhere and you certainly don't always get what you pay for, but I think paying a decent rate certainly stacks the deck a bit in your favour.

However in my experience there are more cowboys offshore and lower quality work, for a whole variety of reasons.

For example,

1) many of the best developers move abroad to follow the money. What you're left with 'offshore' is often a mixed bag.

2) people are less likely to make a mess in their own backyard. They're easier to track down and sue, and if they get known in their locality as doing poor quality work and they get a lot of their custom locally, then they're screwed. Agencies that operate globally are often less fussed.

3) In my experience many IT issues are often down to poorly communicated requirements, something which is exacerbated when you're dealing with someone who doesn't have a fluent command of the same language that you speak and doesn't understand the nuances with certain phrases or words.

4) There are also cultural issues. I know that in many parts of Asia at least, developers are less likely to question requirements, or raise issues. When you're being paid a pittance and there are 50 people after your job, the last thing you probably want to do is rock the boat or risk giving the customer news they don't want to hear. Your job is to do precisely what you're told, no questions asked.

A decent engineer will always question requirements and push back against their superiors and the client to ensure everyone is making well informed decisions. You then get a chance of the client getting the best outcome and any potential issues are caught before they become expensive problems.

So, all of the above can happen with more local dev teams, but it's less likely to.

P.S. I didn't read anything in your post which was remotely offensive. I think we're mostly in agreement, but even if not it's all just opinions and we each have different life experiences and perspectives on these things.

 

[gpietersz]

@Wayne Smyth I have worked for a software company in Asia which does not suffer from the problems you list - but it was a software company, not an offshore subcontractor. It paid better than cheap offshore developers did, was a great place to work in many ways, and really did produce software as good as any in its market - or better.

The sort of people who worked there are very different from those writing cheap web apps which is what most people here are talking about. The good developers do not work for the sort of contractors anyone here is likely to be able to hire.

 

[Aleksander_Gramm]

@Wayne Smyth I agree with everything you've written.

But allow me to comment on a specific situation "many of the best developers move abroad to follow the money". This was the case for many years after some things were changed. Many good developers from India migrate to Bengaluru (Indian Silicon Valley).
Many Ukrainian developers prefer to work in Ukraine, because $120k/year in Ukraine is better than $200k/year in San Francisco. Now developers can migrate to start their own business.

A decent engineer will always question requirements and push back against their superiors and the client to ensure everyone is making well informed decisions. You then get a chance of the client getting the best outcome and any potential issues are caught before they become expensive problems.
Yes, that's right. I have to add it in our documentation.

So, as you wrote
Offshore can work, you just need to have a watertight contract, be able to specify requirements to within a gnats whisker and be willing and have the technical skill to assess the quality of the deliverables like a hawk.

 

[gpietersz]

We do offer similar IT services based out of India

Your profile says you are you are in the UK and in logistics: "UK based Logistics svc for imports/ exports."

 

[Charlie Gr]

Well...
Firstly, I would want to second the statement by Aleksander, " ... There is no clear link between the quality and cost...." at least not in IT, and thats coming directly from my many years of experience.

As I had mentioned before, " ... its just efficient execution, and having choice in execution helps."

Just because someone is placed somewhere in the world, doesnt guarantee anything, neither lower cost or better quality.

If you choose the vendor after the right amount of due deligence, risk gets lower.
Given that choosing an IT vendor has a bigger impact on Business, than buying something off the shelf from Boots, its obvious that more due deligence is needed, and choice helps.

In my experience, its sometimes a bit unfair on the original developers when things do go messy. As mentioned by others, issues don't happen first day, but creep up over time. What happens in most cases is, Clients are not aware of complete requirement initially and they change requirement considerably, again and again, with different team members in the business detailing requirements, and with new developers picking it up after a break of every few months - in 2-3 years time, the final product looks very different from the original requirements, so all the base assumptions that the original build had, goes wrong.

Think of it as starting off with a design for a 2 storey house imagined with a personal touch to finally ending up with a 10 storey commercial building.

Then, the client complains that the product is not performing well, and "messy" to maintain, and then find another vendor - again as mentioned by others here - who get an unfair advantage of designing the entire 10 storey building the first time and taking credit, as the client now has clear visibility of what they want.

I am not saying that this is what happens everytime, but those who have picked up peices, must have seen this happening multiple times. During this time of transition, there can, of course be, bad experiences on both sides.

So my suggestion would be -

• to not just do the due deligence on IT vendor, but also on yourself / your business model and requirements - to find out what exactly you need in the long run, spend a couple of months doign market research, finding out how the competetors have done in their lifetime, just trying to figure out what the future might look like - at least 2-3 yrs ahead.
• then mention the future path to the selected IT vendor, but just dont build it all on day one (so no investment), but just what is needed for now. Once you tell them the future pipeline, a good vendor will be able to make provisions for those requirements - sometimes, it might take a bit more initially.
• In many cases, if its a "One time job" the IT vendor doesnt see the future money, and so they just get the things done and move on, remember, they need to buy bread tomorrow as well. Instead, give them a pipeline and show them that you can pay them in future as well if your business grows, and set the expectations right.

Also, some amount of in-house IT capability, at least one guy in the Client's team who is at least quarter IT aware - helps, rather than blindly handing over everything to a third party and expecting magic fairy to sort out everything for you.

Life is no dream, and there are no IT fairies.

Re: gpietersz (as you might have guessed) we have multiple businesses, IT consultancy is one of them. Logistics Digital SaaS Platform, Logistics Exchange and Logistics Operations being others.

 

[Thomas Schneider]

Nothing bad in outsourcing tasks for a foreigner team. But keep in mind two things: time zones and cultural differences (say, if you outsource design it's better then stick with European or American team [it's not about quality of work, don't get me wrong] if your potential customers are from these regions)

 

[Henry Cavill]

Demand for off-shore developers is increasing at a rapid pace. As per the survey conducted by Deloitte Global Outsourcing, 72% of the companies choose off-shore developers for software development rather than choosing their in-house teams. The reason behind this figure is the benefits that Offshore development companies provide to their clients. Below are the reasons listed:

• Offers flexibility
• Greater productivity
• Less development time
• Better access to talented developers

Hence you can hire an Offshore development company for building robust applications for your business.

 

[Mr D]

Well...
Firstly, I would want to second the statement by Aleksander, " ... There is no clear link between the quality and cost...." at least not in IT, and thats coming directly from my many years of experience.

As I had mentioned before, " ... its just efficient execution, and having choice in execution helps."

Just because someone is placed somewhere in the world, doesnt guarantee anything, neither lower cost or better quality.

If you choose the vendor after the right amount of due deligence, risk gets lower.
Given that choosing an IT vendor has a bigger impact on Business, than buying something off the shelf from Boots, its obvious that more due deligence is needed, and choice helps.

In my experience, its sometimes a bit unfair on the original developers when things do go messy. As mentioned by others, issues don't happen first day, but creep up over time. What happens in most cases is, Clients are not aware of complete requirement initially and they change requirement considerably, again and again, with different team members in the business detailing requirements, and with new developers picking it up after a break of every few months - in 2-3 years time, the final product looks very different from the original requirements, so all the base assumptions that the original build had, goes wrong.

Think of it as starting off with a design for a 2 storey house imagined with a personal touch to finally ending up with a 10 storey commercial building.

Then, the client complains that the product is not performing well, and "messy" to maintain, and then find another vendor - again as mentioned by others here - who get an unfair advantage of designing the entire 10 storey building the first time and taking credit, as the client now has clear visibility of what they want.

I am not saying that this is what happens everytime, but those who have picked up peices, must have seen this happening multiple times. During this time of transition, there can, of course be, bad experiences on both sides.

So my suggestion would be -

• 
  
  
  • to not just do the due deligence on IT vendor, but also on yourself / your business model and requirements - to find out what exactly you need in the long run, spend a couple of months doign market research, finding out how the competetors have done in their lifetime, just trying to figure out what the future might look like - at least 2-3 yrs ahead.
  • then mention the future path to the selected IT vendor, but just dont build it all on day one (so no investment), but just what is needed for now. Once you tell them the future pipeline, a good vendor will be able to make provisions for those requirements - sometimes, it might take a bit more initially.
  • In many cases, if its a "One time job" the IT vendor doesnt see the future money, and so they just get the things done and move on, remember, they need to buy bread tomorrow as well. Instead, give them a pipeline and show them that you can pay them in future as well if your business grows, and set the expectations right.

Also, some amount of in-house IT capability, at least one guy in the Client's team who is at least quarter IT aware - helps, rather than blindly handing over everything to a third party and expecting magic fairy to sort out everything for you.

Life is no dream, and there are no IT fairies.

Re: gpietersz (as you might have guessed) we have multiple businesses, IT consultancy is one of them. Logistics Digital SaaS Platform, Logistics Exchange and Logistics Operations being others.

Some of the worst clients can be politicians.

Cannot resist meddling. Even if it means project cost skyrockets and no way in hell going to hit target date.