5 ms·

don't hire Americans to do commodity work (i.e. PHP CRUD) This is why Americans are saying they are from overseas to get the jobs. If the price is the same, w

by fnid2 17y ago

don't hire Americans to do commodity work (i.e. PHP CRUD) This is why Americans are saying they are from overseas to get the jobs. If the price is the same, what does it matter where they are from? Speaking a common primary language and being in the same time zone has value. When I offshore work, I send an email and have to wait until the next day to get a response. When the worker is in my timezone and I get quick responses, the project success rate improves. I agree with the other points and have been on both sides of the payer/worker transaction.

andreshb 17y ago
You should try outsourcing to Latin America then, responses in realtime during office hours.
- fnid2 17y ago
  I've worked with some from Mexico and Argentina. Both are good places to look, so yes, that's a good alternative to distant time zones.
mrkurt 17y ago
If the prices are the same, the American probably isn't as skilled/experienced.
- lsc 17y ago
  have you hired anyone from overseas? have you hired an American for overseas wages? I've done both, and the amount of money a person can charge has a lot less to do with skill and experience than you think. Several people who worked for me for sustenance wages now make more money than I do because other people noticed that they are pretty good. Selling yourself is a skill, and it has very little overlap with the skills required to be a good Engineer.
  - patio11 17y ago
    Amen to this comment. I have three engineers who I'm personally awed by. One of them was a graduate student at my university, two of them work for my current employer. You could hire all three for the cost of one definitionally average engineering employee at Google or MS. All three are well-educated, well-credentialed, experienced engineers from two nations that virtually define Rich First World Country. I'd be honestly embarrassed to tell you what I make at the day job. When I told my bosses I was quitting to pursue other opportunities, they tried to convince me to stay, and the insanity that is salary negotiation reared its ugly head: the value of my labor has increased by easily a factor of ten in the last three years, the best offer they could possibly give was +N%. This follows standard economy-wide employment practices where we pretend that almost everyone (with the exception of salesmen, finance professionals, and very few other white-collar jobs) is an 18th century water loom operator and pay them in, essentially, the same matter as we paid 18th century water loom operators. I think one of the major Big Ideas of this century is that the economy is being dragged kicking and screaming to where salaries converge closer to actual value faster, rather than being tangentially sorta-kinda arranged in rough proportion to expected value. That's exhilarating and terrifying at the same time.
    - lsc 17y ago
      I was going to become a headhunter or a body shop precisely because I believed that I was significantly better than the market at picking good but cheap people. But then I realised that the headhunter/recruiter job was more about selling (selling your services to the company, that is.) than it was about getting good people. Once they have the contract with the company, any warm body, it seems, will do. Large companies are heavily invested into this 'water loom' model. The problem with the 'end run' of just starting your own company is that you then end up with embedded systems engineers doing things like web applications, because it's easy to do the web application as an independent, while it's harder to properly utilize that Engineer's talent without a large corporate team.
  - mrkurt 17y ago
    That sounds like the very definition of gaining experience to me. :) I'm sure there are exceptions, but on aggregate I'd be shocked if you can find Americans to build something for you as, say, equivalently skilled Romanians. There are millions of reasons you'd elect to pay more for the Americans, but the localized standards of living at a given rate are going to keep Romanians cheaper at the equivalent skill levels. That said, it sounds like you have more experience with this than I do, so this may be that one time in 2010 I'm simply wrong. ;)

by fnid2 17y ago

andreshb 17y ago

You should try outsourcing to Latin America then, responses in realtime during office hours.

fnid2 17y ago
I've worked with some from Mexico and Argentina. Both are good places to look, so yes, that's a good alternative to distant time zones.

mrkurt 17y ago

If the prices are the same, the American probably isn't as skilled/experienced.

lsc 17y ago
have you hired anyone from overseas? have you hired an American for overseas wages? I've done both, and the amount of money a person can charge has a lot less to do with skill and experience than you think. Several people who worked for me for sustenance wages now make more money than I do because other people noticed that they are pretty good. Selling yourself is a skill, and it has very little overlap with the skills required to be a good Engineer.
- patio11 17y ago
  Amen to this comment. I have three engineers who I'm personally awed by. One of them was a graduate student at my university, two of them work for my current employer. You could hire all three for the cost of one definitionally average engineering employee at Google or MS. All three are well-educated, well-credentialed, experienced engineers from two nations that virtually define Rich First World Country. I'd be honestly embarrassed to tell you what I make at the day job. When I told my bosses I was quitting to pursue other opportunities, they tried to convince me to stay, and the insanity that is salary negotiation reared its ugly head: the value of my labor has increased by easily a factor of ten in the last three years, the best offer they could possibly give was +N%. This follows standard economy-wide employment practices where we pretend that almost everyone (with the exception of salesmen, finance professionals, and very few other white-collar jobs) is an 18th century water loom operator and pay them in, essentially, the same matter as we paid 18th century water loom operators. I think one of the major Big Ideas of this century is that the economy is being dragged kicking and screaming to where salaries converge closer to actual value faster, rather than being tangentially sorta-kinda arranged in rough proportion to expected value. That's exhilarating and terrifying at the same time.
  - lsc 17y ago
    I was going to become a headhunter or a body shop precisely because I believed that I was significantly better than the market at picking good but cheap people. But then I realised that the headhunter/recruiter job was more about selling (selling your services to the company, that is.) than it was about getting good people. Once they have the contract with the company, any warm body, it seems, will do. Large companies are heavily invested into this 'water loom' model. The problem with the 'end run' of just starting your own company is that you then end up with embedded systems engineers doing things like web applications, because it's easy to do the web application as an independent, while it's harder to properly utilize that Engineer's talent without a large corporate team.
- mrkurt 17y ago
  That sounds like the very definition of gaining experience to me. :) I'm sure there are exceptions, but on aggregate I'd be shocked if you can find Americans to build something for you as, say, equivalently skilled Romanians. There are millions of reasons you'd elect to pay more for the Americans, but the localized standards of living at a given rate are going to keep Romanians cheaper at the equivalent skill levels. That said, it sounds like you have more experience with this than I do, so this may be that one time in 2010 I'm simply wrong. ;)