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 <
newsletters@thetoolwiz.com>
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
> <https://u2206659.ct.sendgrid.net/wf/click?upn=3cK2FVJjyu2N-2Bxco034fZmj4gyB1R1JR8JEI3RAtiMO0SLqkTN3l6o-2FQLIaTE2wxELoPgHAU7Hr1qBl-2FKRQZgrAPvzQemiZFfCsZUQtbaFM-3D_6lpMB7VLnN-2Fj9-2FEErg8-2F-2BMBpb5QxlByTgv2M3fbWD9ebvC-2BWrN3h7jImK8EVWYBe9zWTMXeEc0cWtHUKkxssDFKspDdJBVursBH9CJEgIiOQHEmCBB6n8yDW3Z6taYr-2B1tewrNoN5dVhqgdEgdcx1qWx2RDma86LGq-2FkUy8riLsZq9h3l8hcuU6dfC7JpChfYu-2B0h0ZkynjSRsGRXYaIlb9-2BeUI5Ml-2B74q7YjP9aFcg-3D>
>
> 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 <techlists@phpcoderusa.com> 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
>
>
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