4 ms·

> It really helps to have R&D office in Europe, India or Philippines, you definitely should consider this if you want to keep your dev costs down. I'm sorry bu

> It really helps to have R&D office in Europe, India or Philippines, you definitely should consider this if you want to keep your dev costs down. I'm sorry but my anecdotal experience totally disagrees with this. The problem really isn't developer quality -- which I believe is quite high in a lot of places, my problem is that it's so hard to work across time zones and countries. Your costs are cheaper but your productivity sucks.

gohrt 11y ago
Move the whole team to Romania, no need work across timezones.
- michaelmrose 11y ago
  Quick before anyone else thinks of this! Realistically information technology has the potential to be a force multiplier and good developers seem to be in sufficiently short supply that there is room for the Romanians and the Americans.
- guelo 11y ago
  Well, how come the teams that are already fully in Romania not out-competing Silicon Valley?
  - dave2000 11y ago
    Same answer as for India and all the other cheaper locations; it's easy to get simple development done thanks to all the (chiefly American!) tools for drag and drop development, testing etc available nowadays, but having a team of people with the vision to come up with something new (and therefore difficult; you're not just doing a cheap shitty version of something which somebody else already invented), functional (bug free - yes, the code compiles and passes the tests you knocked together but does it actually work in the real world), scalable and competitive with the systems it attempts to disrupt isn't quite the same thing, is it. On the positive side, I do get a lot of phone calls from Microsoft in India offering to fix my computer problems if only I'd let them use remote desktop to connect to it.
    - matt_wulfeck 11y ago
      That's true. Also the good engineers make it to the US where they make 10x what they would at home. Isn't that what anyone would do??
  - sangnoir 11y ago
    > Well, how come the teams that are already fully in Romania not out-competing Silicon Valley? Recent-History is littered with American companies acquiring European tech companies that out-compete Silicon Valley for : Skype and MySQL come to mind.
    - tim333 11y ago
      Skype and MySQL were Swedish. Not a place known for cheap labour.
      - sangnoir 11y ago
        > Skype and MySQL were Swedish I never suggested that Skype or MySQL were Romanian - only European. Correction: Skype is definitely not Swedish. Skype's founders are pan-European - 1 Swede, 1 Dane and 3 Estonians. The company itself was widely considered to be Estonian[1]. I frequently I confuse Estonia and Romania and I was thinking Skype was Romanian. 1. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/stories/skype/skype-chapter-2-welcome-to-estonia.aspx https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/stories/skype/skype-chapter-...
saint_fiasco 11y ago
Have you considered South America? That should fix the timezone differences. It's also physically closer so the occasional meeting won't be so painful to organize.

gohrt 11y ago

Move the whole team to Romania, no need work across timezones.

michaelmrose 11y ago
Quick before anyone else thinks of this! Realistically information technology has the potential to be a force multiplier and good developers seem to be in sufficiently short supply that there is room for the Romanians and the Americans.
guelo 11y ago
Well, how come the teams that are already fully in Romania not out-competing Silicon Valley?
- dave2000 11y ago
  Same answer as for India and all the other cheaper locations; it's easy to get simple development done thanks to all the (chiefly American!) tools for drag and drop development, testing etc available nowadays, but having a team of people with the vision to come up with something new (and therefore difficult; you're not just doing a cheap shitty version of something which somebody else already invented), functional (bug free - yes, the code compiles and passes the tests you knocked together but does it actually work in the real world), scalable and competitive with the systems it attempts to disrupt isn't quite the same thing, is it. On the positive side, I do get a lot of phone calls from Microsoft in India offering to fix my computer problems if only I'd let them use remote desktop to connect to it.
  - matt_wulfeck 11y ago
    That's true. Also the good engineers make it to the US where they make 10x what they would at home. Isn't that what anyone would do??
- sangnoir 11y ago
  > Well, how come the teams that are already fully in Romania not out-competing Silicon Valley? Recent-History is littered with American companies acquiring European tech companies that out-compete Silicon Valley for : Skype and MySQL come to mind.
  - tim333 11y ago
    Skype and MySQL were Swedish. Not a place known for cheap labour.
    - sangnoir 11y ago
      > Skype and MySQL were Swedish I never suggested that Skype or MySQL were Romanian - only European. Correction: Skype is definitely not Swedish. Skype's founders are pan-European - 1 Swede, 1 Dane and 3 Estonians. The company itself was widely considered to be Estonian[1]. I frequently I confuse Estonia and Romania and I was thinking Skype was Romanian. 1. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/stories/skype/skype-chapter-2-welcome-to-estonia.aspx https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/stories/skype/skype-chapter-...

saint_fiasco 11y ago

Have you considered South America? That should fix the timezone differences. It's also physically closer so the occasional meeting won't be so painful to organize.