3 ms·
Ask HN: Have you ever outsourced development and if so, how did it go?
While usually not a good long term strategy, outsourcing development overseas can be cheap and smart approach when technology isn't the core of the business.<p>I'd like to hear about your experiences and recommendations of where to look for engineering talent.
- gettinstarted 15y agoOutsourcing development isn't always a bad experience. However, it requires an experienced project manager / system architect leading the outsourced development. From what I heard and personally experienced, it all goes wrong when someone who has an idea, explains it in plain english to their outsourced dev point of contact. The vision is 90% clear and the devs don't know your business as well as you do and they start building. As developers charged with finishing a job within a deadline, they find it more expedient to make seemingly innocuous decisions while coding (as opposed to stopping mid-stream to email you and burn a whole rest of the working day until they get your answer tomorrow). A series of small decisions compound, along with the major decisions they do come to you about, but you lack the technical expertise to make (so you default to their knowledge) and BOOM!.
- veyron 15y agoShort summary [It's too late to write a thorough response]: 1) with any sort of outsourcing solution, you either end up paying too much or having to hand-hold and babysit the development process. both are expensive resource-wise. 2) especially if you arent focused on the technology, the people who actually do the work treat you as nontechnical, and try to screw you over. Worked with an outsourcing firm once, and a person messaged me: "okay 4/11/11 1:03 AM tell me whats issue on XHTML/css which is developed using web2.0 technology 4/11/11 1:03 AM not Table based old technology . 4/11/11 1:04 AM This xhtml/css is very much all search engine friendly as well as Google friendly . 4/11/11 1:04 AM Whats the issue with xhtml/css ? 4/11/11 1:04 AM Please explain so that we can fix issue asap ." now, needless to say I wasnt particularly focused on the development of the website [it was ancillary]. I estimate i spent more time babying the outsourcing team than I would have spent actually getting the site up myself.
- rrhoover 15y agoLol, "using web 2.0 technology". Thanks for the insight. Shady, incompetent firms seem to be a common theme but there has to be at least a few honest, effective resources available.
- veyron 15y agoThere's a good explanation for why they are few and far between, and I'm going to quote The Dark Knight here: "Joker: Like my mother used to tell me - If you're good at something, never do it for free." If they were good, they would charge a lot of money [making them unappealing]. By going with a cheap alternative, you are either going with a new company or with an incompetent group.
- sohailprasad 15y agoOutsourcing generally depends on what project specifically you want to outsource, and the work quality varies immensely. Personally, I've had a reasonable experience dealing with an outsourced logo development project, but a terrible (and relatively expensive) one with an outsourced web development project. I learned the hard way: when you hire an outsourced web developer, you get a web developer (read: they'll make you a webpage), not a designer or product engineer. The key theme is to be involved every step of the way and have a clear idea of what you're looking for.
- abbasmehdi 15y agoI've had great success! Get a referral.
- aonic 15y agoCan you give me one? :)
- abbasmehdi 15y agoDepends what you want done. I know good folks so prices might be in the mid to high range of the typical outsourcing menu. I am not taking a cut, FYI. Put up the project (high level) somewhere and share the link.
- luckystrike 15y ago.. recommendations of where to look for engineering talent. I wrote this comment on the India specific HN version that has some suggestions on how to go about finding a good offshore development firm - http://hackerstreet.in/item?id=1058 http://hackerstreet.in/item?id=1058. It could be of some use to you.
- petervandijck 15y agoI've done it quite a few times. Mostly it went bad. The last one though is going quite well. Why? - very, very clear and limited requirements.