4 ms·

> I think the more likely approach is that companies are going to be more open to remote contracting in places like Eastern Europe, South America, India, and So

by mmarq 5y ago

> I think the more likely approach is that companies are going to be more open to remote contracting in places like Eastern Europe, South America, India, and Southeast Asia. There are a lot of examples of this not working so well in the past, but there were also a lot of examples of WFH not working so well, until there was no choice and companies figured out how to make it work. It’s very hard to hire and coordinate good developers abroad. We have some devs in India and Spain, but some directors spent weeks there talking to consultancies and ensuring they were hiring good candidates. They are cheaper local consultancies, but not much cheaper than local individual contractors. One who plans to hire randos in east Asia and pay them peanuts, should prepare for troubles. Good developers may be a bit cheaper in India than in the UK, but they don’t come for free and they require non-negligible coordination costs.

jacobr1 5y ago
Yep, but there are price points where it starts being worth costs. If you want to hire a team of 10 engineers (mix of junior/mid/senior) at an average FTE cost of $150k and are struggling to do it in the US, and could probably make it happen at $200k - $250k, the looking at hiring 10 engineers in another country for $80-$120k and hiring another 3-4 local engineers/managers at $250k to manage the coordination inefficiencies still probably comes out ahead. You still need to hire (or get a vendor that hires) good developers or you'll be screwed though. I was burnt by some bad Indian outsourcing earlier in my career, but since then have worked with excellent firms from India, Ukraine and Columbia. But we paid top of market (for the foreign market) rates for that value.
- 908B64B197 5y ago
  > You still need to hire (or get a vendor that hires) good developers or you'll be screwed though. And the best have a tendency to... end up in your local talent pool soon enough (jumping to companies serious enough to sponsor them).

by mmarq 5y ago

jacobr1 5y ago

Yep, but there are price points where it starts being worth costs. If you want to hire a team of 10 engineers (mix of junior/mid/senior) at an average FTE cost of $150k and are struggling to do it in the US, and could probably make it happen at $200k - $250k, the looking at hiring 10 engineers in another country for $80-$120k and hiring another 3-4 local engineers/managers at $250k to manage the coordination inefficiencies still probably comes out ahead. You still need to hire (or get a vendor that hires) good developers or you'll be screwed though. I was burnt by some bad Indian outsourcing earlier in my career, but since then have worked with excellent firms from India, Ukraine and Columbia. But we paid top of market (for the foreign market) rates for that value.

908B64B197 5y ago
> You still need to hire (or get a vendor that hires) good developers or you'll be screwed though. And the best have a tendency to... end up in your local talent pool soon enough (jumping to companies serious enough to sponsor them).