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I set up an offshore team of four in India some years back. Two of the developers ended up being lackluster and let go, but two of them continued on as they wer

I set up an offshore team of four in India some years back. Two of the developers ended up being lackluster and let go, but two of them continued on as they were fairly decent. Even so the cultural difference was significant and it was difficult to manage them. I don't think it was their fault, they just had a very different views on what they considered was a completed task, how they went about asking for further requirements, etc. Whilst it was worth having them, there was a surprising and hidden overhead in cost for the cultural impact, as well as timezone issues. Later in my career I worked with a team from Hong Kong as well, the cultural gap was less significant and they were able to work well with the management style given. We still had timezone issues (moreso since I'm from the UK which is further from HK than from India), but because they interpreted tickets in the same way and had similar views on what the definition of done was things were far more harmonious. Communication is a huge factor in remote teams, and whilst there are lots of tools to aid it, communication styles across cultures can be very different which can cause a lot of friction.

whack 10y ago
I'm guessing that none of the workers you're referring to are IIT graduates. I agree that American developers face little competition from the middle/lower end of developers in India. But the top developers in India (eg, the IIT grads and Google-India devs), in terms of raw talent and job performance, would easily out-compete the average American developer, while still being happy with a lower salary. This is where the physical-proximity-perks that American developers currently enjoy, really make a big difference.
- mhotchen 10y ago
  Yeah these definitely weren't top tier developers. Even so I was happy with the quality of the code on the two we retained, it was everything that goes around it that I struggled with. For example they wouldn't ask questions or admit that they're struggling with something. I saw a lot of this in the interviews as well, you would ask a question like "do you know what X is" and they would say yes, but then sit in silence. So you probe "well what is it?" and they would go "I'm not completely sure" or just try to make something up. I definitely agree with you though. We interviewed one person that was exceptionally good: very experienced, good comms, ticked all the boxes. His salary expectation was around a junior dev salary in the UK, which unfortunately was too high for management who had set a budget per developer, rather than thinking it was worth hiring him and one other instead of four lukewarm devs.
- JamesBarney 10y ago
  My understanding though is that if you're restricting yourself to top developers in India you should expect to be paying 40-80k(and rising) assuming you directly hired them. And this doesn't include setting up all of the infrastructure to hire overseas, not to mention the increased risk of operating out of two legal jurisdictions, timezone differences, and culture gaps.
mrfusion 10y ago
What was the cultural issue exactly?
- mhotchen 10y ago
  They wouldn't ask questions or admit that they're struggling with something. I saw a lot of this in the interviews as well, you would ask a question like "do you know what X is" and they would say yes, but then sit in silence. So you probe "well what is it?" and they would go "I'm not completely sure" or just try to make something up. They would sometimes sit for days doing nothing because they didn't understand the ticket. Another was their definition of done. They would finish a ticket and mark it as resolved as soon as the functionality is partially working. I think because QA is enormously cheap in India they were used to handing things off to QA as soon as possible to save their own time. We didn't have a QA department so that was quite problematic. I started having to include all the edge cases I could think of in the ticket. I don't think it's necessarily wrong, it was just different, different levels of politeness and views on managing their time. But it was these differences that made things more difficult for everyone involved than I expected. They probably had a lot of issues with my management style as well, although they were too polite to say anything :)

whack 10y ago

I'm guessing that none of the workers you're referring to are IIT graduates. I agree that American developers face little competition from the middle/lower end of developers in India. But the top developers in India (eg, the IIT grads and Google-India devs), in terms of raw talent and job performance, would easily out-compete the average American developer, while still being happy with a lower salary. This is where the physical-proximity-perks that American developers currently enjoy, really make a big difference.

mhotchen 10y ago
Yeah these definitely weren't top tier developers. Even so I was happy with the quality of the code on the two we retained, it was everything that goes around it that I struggled with. For example they wouldn't ask questions or admit that they're struggling with something. I saw a lot of this in the interviews as well, you would ask a question like "do you know what X is" and they would say yes, but then sit in silence. So you probe "well what is it?" and they would go "I'm not completely sure" or just try to make something up. I definitely agree with you though. We interviewed one person that was exceptionally good: very experienced, good comms, ticked all the boxes. His salary expectation was around a junior dev salary in the UK, which unfortunately was too high for management who had set a budget per developer, rather than thinking it was worth hiring him and one other instead of four lukewarm devs.
JamesBarney 10y ago
My understanding though is that if you're restricting yourself to top developers in India you should expect to be paying 40-80k(and rising) assuming you directly hired them. And this doesn't include setting up all of the infrastructure to hire overseas, not to mention the increased risk of operating out of two legal jurisdictions, timezone differences, and culture gaps.

mrfusion 10y ago

What was the cultural issue exactly?

mhotchen 10y ago
They wouldn't ask questions or admit that they're struggling with something. I saw a lot of this in the interviews as well, you would ask a question like "do you know what X is" and they would say yes, but then sit in silence. So you probe "well what is it?" and they would go "I'm not completely sure" or just try to make something up. They would sometimes sit for days doing nothing because they didn't understand the ticket. Another was their definition of done. They would finish a ticket and mark it as resolved as soon as the functionality is partially working. I think because QA is enormously cheap in India they were used to handing things off to QA as soon as possible to save their own time. We didn't have a QA department so that was quite problematic. I started having to include all the edge cases I could think of in the ticket. I don't think it's necessarily wrong, it was just different, different levels of politeness and views on managing their time. But it was these differences that made things more difficult for everyone involved than I expected. They probably had a lot of issues with my management style as well, although they were too polite to say anything :)