Funny, I just came back from visiting two companies that do excellent outsourcing work for us, one in India, eternussolutions.com and one in Poland, www.soldeve

Funny, I just came back from visiting two companies that do excellent outsourcing work for us, one in India, eternussolutions.com and one in Poland, www.soldevelo.com. The secret? We've built a long term relationships with them, have reasonable expectations and communicate continuously. I've worked with offshore teams since 2005 and there are major benefits: prices that are roughly 1/3 of what it costs to hire the equivalent person locally, availability of talent (everyone's scrambling these days in the Bay Area), and the ability to quickly scale up or down your team. There's also a price. You need to deal with the time difference; I have calls at 11 PM. There are cultural differences that you need to be aware of. The Holidays are different and usually more frequent, they won't be familiar with certain segments of the US business environment such as health care, HR, etc. And they won't work the same long hours. They have better work/life balance. On the other hand, you're not giving them options, so that's totally understandable. In summary, have reasonable expectations, expect that there'll be a ramp up period, and be willing to learn from the other side.