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I worked for a couple of companies who outsourced some heavy lifting low-level dev tasks to Ukrainian-based teams. Hands down the best experience dealing with

I worked for a couple of companies who outsourced some heavy lifting low-level dev tasks to Ukrainian-based teams. Hands down the best experience dealing with outsourced devs ever. Very strong technically, delivering on time with the highest quality I've ever seen from outsourced teams. Communication-wise always eager to jump on a Skype or Google Hangout call to talk sh*t over instead of emailing into the void and waiting for answers for days.

mercer 10y ago
That's very interesting. Can you contrast that with other experiences? Or maybe elaborate more on how this worked? Potential pitfalls? I'm running an Amsterdam-based company that currently is fully focused on helping local twenty-somethings get going as programmers, because even here in Holland it can be slim pickings for smart, driven people. But long-term I'm more interested in working with people who often have it even worse, just because of geography, which seems arbitrary and unfair to me. My eyes are currently on the Southern nations - Greece, Albania, Spain, etc., but mostly because it's generally less of a headache what with the EU and my personal knowledge of some of their cultures. Ultimately I don't really care who I work with, I just want to channel some of the money we have here to people who don't have it.
- ChemicalWarfare 10y ago
  Sure. One company I worked with was actually US-based with PMs and high level architects scattered all over the Midwest and the actual dev team in Ukraine. They were very up front about it from the get go and once they realized we don't beat around the bush too much once the SOW was signed they started inviting the dev team to our status meetings and offered that we get hold of the devs directly if we would like to when needed. Which was awesome since most of the outsourced shops I've dealt with in the past would only have us deal with the PM and a couple of high-level SAs. And then if you do manage to get hold of their tech team they won't be overly responsive and typically you'd need 3 or 4 of the devs to get a complete picture of what's going on or to solve the issue you're having. Another company was based in Ukraine altogether with no US presence. Same deal basically, little rougher English-wise but not too bad, their chief SA worked in the States in the past so he would jump in to clarify things if need be. Where those guys really shine is understanding things end-to-end no matter what the role on the particular project entails. I'd be talking to a front-end developer about some symptoms I'm seeing and he'd be troubleshooting down to the wire basically - dumping proxy logs, generating wireshark captures etc etc.

mercer 10y ago

That's very interesting. Can you contrast that with other experiences? Or maybe elaborate more on how this worked? Potential pitfalls? I'm running an Amsterdam-based company that currently is fully focused on helping local twenty-somethings get going as programmers, because even here in Holland it can be slim pickings for smart, driven people. But long-term I'm more interested in working with people who often have it even worse, just because of geography, which seems arbitrary and unfair to me. My eyes are currently on the Southern nations - Greece, Albania, Spain, etc., but mostly because it's generally less of a headache what with the EU and my personal knowledge of some of their cultures. Ultimately I don't really care who I work with, I just want to channel some of the money we have here to people who don't have it.

ChemicalWarfare 10y ago
Sure. One company I worked with was actually US-based with PMs and high level architects scattered all over the Midwest and the actual dev team in Ukraine. They were very up front about it from the get go and once they realized we don't beat around the bush too much once the SOW was signed they started inviting the dev team to our status meetings and offered that we get hold of the devs directly if we would like to when needed. Which was awesome since most of the outsourced shops I've dealt with in the past would only have us deal with the PM and a couple of high-level SAs. And then if you do manage to get hold of their tech team they won't be overly responsive and typically you'd need 3 or 4 of the devs to get a complete picture of what's going on or to solve the issue you're having. Another company was based in Ukraine altogether with no US presence. Same deal basically, little rougher English-wise but not too bad, their chief SA worked in the States in the past so he would jump in to clarify things if need be. Where those guys really shine is understanding things end-to-end no matter what the role on the particular project entails. I'd be talking to a front-end developer about some symptoms I'm seeing and he'd be troubleshooting down to the wire basically - dumping proxy logs, generating wireshark captures etc etc.