I was burned a few times early on, but now I'm fairly successful with outsourcing. The big stuff: be a coder or have one monitor the project progress, don't tru

I was burned a few times early on, but now I'm fairly successful with outsourcing. The big stuff: be a coder or have one monitor the project progress, don't trust anyone, go hourly on large projects, sample new contractors with limited 1 hour projects, and demand daily commits to a VCS for hired coders. Without an expensive search, you won't be able to pay coders $5/hour and get good results. As another guy said, results from coders and designers in Eastern Bloc countries are typically way better, though the hourly is also higher. I've saved a sizable amount of time and money by not hiring <$10/hour guys. For those with skills that were charging less, there was always a gotcha hiding somewhere. Either they were going to string out the project intentionally, or try to use a crappy code generator program, or just try to game whatever controls had been put in place. It wasn't worth it.