There's a whole art to outsourcing programming and other IT abroad. I got a degree in information management, and outsourcing was a study unto itself. If you're going to do it, you need a cultural liaison/contract manager and that person damn well better be bicultural--either a first generation American or an immigrant who has been here a long time. On Wed, Nov 9, 2016 at 1:49 AM David Schwartz wrote: > The issue isn’t who you hire, it’s what kind of results you get for your > money. > > I’ve tried hiring a half dozen off-shore people from a couple of sites, > and the results were horrible. This was just for me, not clients. > > I published an article on Medium last week from which I’ll write some > follow-up articles that address this a bit. > > https://medium.com/p/perspectives-on-programming-6997e9144213 > > > Here’s a summary of something I discovered recently from a dance with a > couple of local prospects: > > Somebody has an idea, and they want to see it implemented in software. > > This process is a lot like getting a patent — you cannot patent an idea, > you can only patent an invention. > > I had some prospective clients want to pay me a fixed fee to write some > software based on their idea. They did not offer me an invention, just an > idea; nor did they want to pay me to invent a solution. However, their > offer was probably fair to take a detailed description of an invention and > implement it in software. (I’ve run into this many, many times in the past.) > > In software terms, an “invention” is represented by either a functional > prototype or a detailed spec. Most of the time, people have little more > than chicken scratch on a napkin or back of an envelope as their “spec”. > It’s really not much more than an idea at that stage. > > You cannot hand this to anybody and expect to get a satisfying result most > of the time, especially if it’s something nontrivial. It’s ok if you want > to use it to build a prototype, tho. > > This is particularly problematic if you try employing foreigners from > several countries known for their cheap software labor, like India, Korea, > and the Philippines. > > These people do not ask questions. You can hand them a flowchart or > detailed spec, and they’ll implement it in software. The problem is, they > assume that whatever you’ve given them is sufficient; worse, they also > assume that anything missing is not important to you, and they’ll fill in > the blanks themselves. You won’t know until you review the code (the UX > perspective) and can’t figure out why so much stuff they’re showing you > looks totally random — that’s because it is. > > (There was an analysis about a Korean Air Lines jet that flew into a > mountain many years ago. The copilot knew something was amiss, but their > culture has a rule that says you never question a superior. He made some > statements to the pilot that he hoped would indicate there might be a > navigtaional issue, but the pilot didn’t interpret them as expected. The > same issues exist in various forms among many Asian cultures.) > > Anyway, trying to practice arbitrage by leveraging labor costs is fine — > just make sure that the cultural values are similar enough that the people > you hire think and act the way you expect. Otherwise, these guys will be > saying odd things as a way of suggesting the project is on a collision > course for the side of a mountain, mainly because the specs were inadequate > and/or insufficient. (And who pays for specs to be written these days?) > > -David Schwartz > > > > On Nov 8, 2016, at 1:19 PM, Keith Smith wrote: > > > > Hi, > > I am a PHP programmer and I have a knack for Internet marketing. > > Say I decide to build a lead site or cultivate leads from the greater > phoenix area. Projects you may qualify for. Then I hire an off shore > developer. I pay this off shore developer $12 - $15 an hour while charging > my client $100 or more an hour. I line my pockets with $85 plus and hour. > > Does this course of action help my community? > > What if my choice was to pay you a fair wage (or consulting fee) to work > the project or hire that off shore developer for 25% of what your willing > to work for? I would make much less as well. > > I'd like you to tell me what to do. Hire you or someone off shore. > Please tell me what to do. > > Keith > > > --------------------------------------------------- > PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org > To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: > http://lists.phxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss