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I’ve heard and read so many “here is how my offshoring went wrong” (or even just outsourcing locally), that I am really looking for successful examples and what

I’ve heard and read so many “here is how my offshoring went wrong” (or even just outsourcing locally), that I am really looking for successful examples and what one can learn from them.

giarc 9y ago
I'm currently working with two developers off-shore (through Upwork). I've used off-shore in the past for small jobs, basically to MVP a feature or so. For example, I currently have someone building a small raspberry pi program that takes RFID input, and posts the ID and date to our API. I want to demo this to some clients and if it's well received, we'll build it out fully. I think offshore can be great for small projects like this, I have no experience with larger, longer off shore projects.
wordpressdev 9y ago
I work as offshore / remote consultant with entrepreneurs and small-medium sized companies in the US. Some of these clients are working with me since 5-6 years.
- x0x0 9y ago
  You're not a good example though. You can definitely build a successful relationship with a single dev in India. An easy route is to start on upwork, pay well, churn a bunch of people until you meet someone good, then hire them. The complexity comes when you need a team of people to build more than one person can do.
  - wordpressdev 9y ago
    Building remote teams is tough, agreed. But it can be achieved. Off-shore does not / should not mean cheap labor in some obscure part of the world. There are plenty of examples of companies thriving with remote teams, such as: Buffer: https://buffer.com/about https://buffer.com/about Automattic (parent of WordPress): https://automattic.com/about/ https://automattic.com/about/ By the way, I am in Pakistan, not India :)
    - x0x0 9y ago
      My apologies for assuming. I would say there aren't so many examples of companies with heavily remote workforces thriving. As a founder, this was the subject of a lot of internal debate. I largely came to the same conclusion as a lot of companies: remote slows down execution, and execution is probably the single most important thing for a small company. Also, this article discussed something different than building a remote team, and more in line with what most customers want: hire a mostly pre-made remote team all at once. The desired advantage is less cost savings and more speed. Building a remote team yourself is much more likely to work, but also probably slow enough that it's not worth it. You have to find a remote teach lead + hiring manager, work with him or her enough to trust him or her, and then empower that person to run hiring cycles.
megy 9y ago
We had it work, but out tech lead was onshore, would have daily standups, and would review all there code. The biggest problem we had is that when they had a problem, such as access or a backend system not working, they would not tell us until the standup. They would not email us so we could start working on it 5 hours before the standup.

I’ve heard and read so many “here is how my offshoring went wrong” (or even just outsourcing locally), that I am really looking for successful examples and what one can learn from them.

giarc 9y ago

I'm currently working with two developers off-shore (through Upwork). I've used off-shore in the past for small jobs, basically to MVP a feature or so. For example, I currently have someone building a small raspberry pi program that takes RFID input, and posts the ID and date to our API. I want to demo this to some clients and if it's well received, we'll build it out fully. I think offshore can be great for small projects like this, I have no experience with larger, longer off shore projects.

wordpressdev 9y ago

I work as offshore / remote consultant with entrepreneurs and small-medium sized companies in the US. Some of these clients are working with me since 5-6 years.

x0x0 9y ago
You're not a good example though. You can definitely build a successful relationship with a single dev in India. An easy route is to start on upwork, pay well, churn a bunch of people until you meet someone good, then hire them. The complexity comes when you need a team of people to build more than one person can do.
- wordpressdev 9y ago
  Building remote teams is tough, agreed. But it can be achieved. Off-shore does not / should not mean cheap labor in some obscure part of the world. There are plenty of examples of companies thriving with remote teams, such as: Buffer: https://buffer.com/about https://buffer.com/about Automattic (parent of WordPress): https://automattic.com/about/ https://automattic.com/about/ By the way, I am in Pakistan, not India :)
  - x0x0 9y ago
    My apologies for assuming. I would say there aren't so many examples of companies with heavily remote workforces thriving. As a founder, this was the subject of a lot of internal debate. I largely came to the same conclusion as a lot of companies: remote slows down execution, and execution is probably the single most important thing for a small company. Also, this article discussed something different than building a remote team, and more in line with what most customers want: hire a mostly pre-made remote team all at once. The desired advantage is less cost savings and more speed. Building a remote team yourself is much more likely to work, but also probably slow enough that it's not worth it. You have to find a remote teach lead + hiring manager, work with him or her enough to trust him or her, and then empower that person to run hiring cycles.

megy 9y ago

We had it work, but out tech lead was onshore, would have daily standups, and would review all there code. The biggest problem we had is that when they had a problem, such as access or a backend system not working, they would not tell us until the standup. They would not email us so we could start working on it 5 hours before the standup.