4 ms·

I hired 100+ senior developers at $50-70K per year for a project, mostly from East Europe/Ukraine/Russia. We were like, "Holy ! these people are so cheap. If I

I hired 100+ senior developers at $50-70K per year for a project, mostly from East Europe/Ukraine/Russia. We were like, "Holy ! these people are so cheap. If I hire people with same level of experience locally, I would have to pay 3-5x more on average." Later, my friend took over this team of developers for his startup. What he found is that 30% developers in his team were working for two or more employers. And something like 20% of them outsourced part of the projects to developers in South Asia, security risk. Today, we try to hire onsite as much as possible. It require very high level of trust to hire someone remote.

dsacco 9y ago
> Later, my friend took over this team of developers for his startup. What he found is that 30% developers in his team were working for two or more employers. That sounds like something inherent to the sort of candidates you hired, not remote employment in of itself. I can't imagine a remote employee having enough time to work for two different companies unless they have no requirements for being immediately available at any time (like meetings, or debrief after a deadline).
JustSomeNobody 9y ago
Hmmm... so you don't see it at all as you cheaped out and that cheapness bit you? Edit: I'm not trying to attack you here. Just pointing out an alternative explanation. If you had hired better talent, they would have cost more, but you wouldn't have had them working at several different places.
dep_b 9y ago
> What he found is that 30% developers in his team were working for two or more employers. To have a freelancer to put all his eggs in your basket takes some trust as well. I would actually prefer working for one client but if that client quits then poof everything's gone. > And something like 20% of them outsourced part of the projects to developers in South Asia, security risk. WTF. And no clue about that happening during standups?
urethrafranklin 9y ago
> And something like 20% of them outsourced part of the projects to developers in South Asia, security risk. How do you not notice something like that happening on your end? So many of the problems cited by anti-remote bosses are not problems of remoteness at all. Sound like management was very checked-out.
whipoodle 9y ago
No such thing as a free lunch, my friend.
spraak 9y ago
Don't you see this as a problem of compensation and the level you were hiring at? If you felt like they were cheap, it seems they thought so, too.
marknote 9y ago
Thanks for sharing. But in my opinion, it is more the problem of the management. If the developers can finish the jobs the management assigned to them with quality, why to care how they spend their remaining effort? To make remote working work, a mechanism should be there. This means at least: - Assign reason work load; - Review and evaluate the deliverables;
ilaksh 9y ago
Why do you need more than 100 developers for a project? How much time did you spend finalizing the decision on each of them? Maybe it wasn't quite enough. It would be hard to find one or two really good software engineers that would like to use my particular stack and approach. Also, were they clear that they were supposed to be working for one company instead of doing freelance work? The tough thing about freelance software development is that the pay is often less but the expected output is about the same as a normal employee. But with less pay and no job security, freelance developers may have to take on multiple projects just for practicality sake.

dsacco 9y ago

> Later, my friend took over this team of developers for his startup. What he found is that 30% developers in his team were working for two or more employers. That sounds like something inherent to the sort of candidates you hired, not remote employment in of itself. I can't imagine a remote employee having enough time to work for two different companies unless they have no requirements for being immediately available at any time (like meetings, or debrief after a deadline).

JustSomeNobody 9y ago

Hmmm... so you don't see it at all as you cheaped out and that cheapness bit you? Edit: I'm not trying to attack you here. Just pointing out an alternative explanation. If you had hired better talent, they would have cost more, but you wouldn't have had them working at several different places.

dep_b 9y ago

> What he found is that 30% developers in his team were working for two or more employers. To have a freelancer to put all his eggs in your basket takes some trust as well. I would actually prefer working for one client but if that client quits then poof everything's gone. > And something like 20% of them outsourced part of the projects to developers in South Asia, security risk. WTF. And no clue about that happening during standups?

urethrafranklin 9y ago

> And something like 20% of them outsourced part of the projects to developers in South Asia, security risk. How do you not notice something like that happening on your end? So many of the problems cited by anti-remote bosses are not problems of remoteness at all. Sound like management was very checked-out.

whipoodle 9y ago

No such thing as a free lunch, my friend.

spraak 9y ago

Don't you see this as a problem of compensation and the level you were hiring at? If you felt like they were cheap, it seems they thought so, too.

marknote 9y ago

Thanks for sharing. But in my opinion, it is more the problem of the management. If the developers can finish the jobs the management assigned to them with quality, why to care how they spend their remaining effort? To make remote working work, a mechanism should be there. This means at least: - Assign reason work load; - Review and evaluate the deliverables;

ilaksh 9y ago

Why do you need more than 100 developers for a project? How much time did you spend finalizing the decision on each of them? Maybe it wasn't quite enough. It would be hard to find one or two really good software engineers that would like to use my particular stack and approach. Also, were they clear that they were supposed to be working for one company instead of doing freelance work? The tough thing about freelance software development is that the pay is often less but the expected output is about the same as a normal employee. But with less pay and no job security, freelance developers may have to take on multiple projects just for practicality sake.