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Ask HN: Is every contracted developer over-employed nowadays?
I'm from eastern Europe and everyone I know is working 2-3 hours instead of 8 hours/day even though they are paid for 8 hours, but for multiple companies. If you sum it up on contracts they work 24 hours/day :)
Lots of dev forums talk about this and encourage others do the same, even juniors, just to earn more because their 2 hours or work is better than 8 hours of their colleagues from western countries.
I don't want to judge the morality of doing this, but is this that spread only in this part of the world since the pandemic or everywhere?
- seattle_spring 4y agoThis would explain why the contractors I work with have such awful code and low output.
- ipaddr 4y agoI haven't heard this but wages must be so low it doesn't matter similiar to how Indian firms will over employ and pair developers because they can afford to.
- emteycz 4y agoA nice senior engineer contract pays around $100k over here.
- smt88 4y agoI have noticed this with contractors on Upwork and have unfortunately had to recently start forcing time tracking for the first time. I used to default to trusting people, but I've recently had developers who were billing 50-60 hours after working somewhere near 0. This is unfortunately also pushing me toward daily standups, which I have also avoided my entire career so far. It is unethical, certainly. But it also hurts the honest people who don't do it.
- loxias 4y ago> Upwork Might be your problem. You're not going to find anyone serious there -- you get what you pay for. A site that charges the consultant instead of the client isn't exactly gonna attract even average level talent.
- smt88 4y agoWe pay well above market rate (e.g. $60/hr for a frontend dev in Ukraine), so whatever you're talking about doesn't apply to us. Some people on Upwork are dishonest or unskilled, but some are also excellent. Hiring is hard, regardless of the talent pool. If you have better ideas of where to find contractors, please let me know. I'm always open to finding a better or fairer marker than Upwork.
- xupybd 4y agoHave you tried agencies in countries that have good exchange rates? Small cities in NZ have great people. For example www.triotech.co.nz or nodero.com
- robga 4y ago> countries that have good exchange rates What does this mean? I equate “good exchange rate” with “low exchange commission/fee” and “low volatility”.
- xupybd 4y agoI mean weak dollar. For instance $1USD will get you around $1.5NZD. With the average developer earning a little over $100,000NZD you are looking at around $66,000USD. Much cheaper than many other options. However they're still native English speakers with a very western culture. You're right about volatility too, the NZD doesn't swing too wildly.
- emteycz 4y agoWhy would you accept a job that pays only US$66k if the value of your work is US$100k? Here (central Europe) it's common practice to count your money in EUR or USD even though we're paid in the local currency - especially if the local currency is not pegged to EUR.
- 4y ago
- moneywoes 4y agoWhat time of work are you looking for as in stack, I would be eager to provide value if it is possible ( familiar domain etc)
- muzani 4y agoI don't think time tracking will help. Best case is you find they were lying about the hours and just get more hours in. Worst case is they were truthful and incompetent. Either way, it might be best to just fire anyone who bills you 50 hours and works 0. As a contractor, I'd do the opposite - work 40 hours and bill 30, not including some periods of zoning out. My clients would insist that I round it up, not down. I think you'll find plenty of contractors who suit your more trusting style.
- ZeroGravitas 4y agoDid they get the job done to your satisfaction and budget? If so you might want to just pay them in a way that rewards them for their skill and not their time. Not saying it's easy, but worth thinking about before you start the surveillence.
- smt88 4y agoI used to offer everyone a fixed fee, but no one accepts it anymore for whatever reason. I think other employers abuse it.
- VoodooJuJu 4y agoHave you considered contracting for fixed-price projects rather than time? If you've considered but aren't doing that, why not?
- smt88 4y agoI would prefer to do fixed fee for everything, but contractors don't like it. I see their side of it. The risk is all theirs with fixed fee.
- gdfgjhs 4y ago> start forcing time tracking for the first time Is it just a time sheet/app where developers track their time or is it spyware like Upwork's screen capture tracker? Be wary of any developer who agrees to install spyware. These are either entry level developers or really crappy devs. I have both worked as freelancer and hired freelancers. I find these spywares extremely insulting. We are not high school kids working in fast food joint. We are professionals & business owners. As a freelancer, if a company asked if I would install spyware on my machine, it indicated that it was probably badly run company. If it was optional I would ask how many other devs had the spyware on their machines. If there were more than 1 or 2 devs, it just meant I would be working with bad devs and just declined contracts. Same if it was required. Pretty much all those companies had issues with their devs and had to scrap projects or start over. And when I hired freelancers, if a freelancer indicated they had no problem with spyware, it set off all kinds of red flags. And every single time if I hired such developer, they were horrible and needed a lot of hand holding.
- smt88 4y ago> We are not high school kids working in fast food joint. We are professionals & business owners. Unfortunately my last 5-10 freelancer experiences have been bad. I lost $10k recently by trusting a dev that he was doing the work I paid him to do. I have no other way to verify that someone is dedicated to my work. If anyone refuses the spyware, that's absolutely their right. I don't blame them.
- thorin 4y agoI have worked with many offshore developers as well as private contactors in India, China and Eastern Europe. There are absolutely many cases of people working on multiple things at once (especially in support) when they are supposed to be exclusively working on one thing. It's been very common to see only half of the team actually "working", many times experts have been learning as they go along with less experience than I have in a particular area (I've very much a jack of all trades). However, I've built up many good relationships with excellent and committed staff over the years. If it was my own money, I'd absolutely be wanting to verify that the staff were working the agreed hours and getting stuff done. However in the most part it's not been in my best interest to get involved in those kind of discussions.
- almarklein 4y agoAs a contractor I would never install spyware on my machine for a client. That's not a healthy professional relationship. I do see the problem that some people pretend to be more experienced than they are, or worst case are scamming clients. On the one hand, you could ask a contractor to do a certain (well-specified) piece of work for a fixed price. But it's often hard to define the specifications precisely, especially in software projects. The alternative is charging by the hour. I see this as a journey that the client and contractor take together. You have a certain goal in mind, and the contractor helps you work towards it. You need regular meetings to discuss the progress, obstacles, and together decide on the best way forward. Daily standups could help too, but depending on the complexity of the work, I'd recommend a weekly or biweekly in-depth meeting. Could it be that the experience with scammy contractors is because they are given a task towards an ill-defined goal with too little opportunity to discuss progress?
- moneywoes 4y agoWhere are these contract positions available, asking for friend but seriously I'm about to get laid off would be great if anyone has leads
- loxias 4y agoI think it might depend on if you're entry level or more senior. (just a guess) Though, in my own personal experience, I've observed the exact opposite as you with regards to geography :) I'm from the USA, and am "one of those" who's been writing software their whole life (though I only entered the market around 2001). Over the past 10 years I've had multiple contracts where I billed my client 40hrs a week, though the work only took me perhaps an hour a day, if that. Client's extremely happy, because in his words, my hour of work is more useful than 8 hours of work from a 4 person team from India or China. My guess, knowing nothing about how it's done over there, is that labor costs must be so inexpensive that you can assign 30 people to a 1 person job, and hope that something works? But I'll always be curious. Regarding morality, I don't see how it comes into play! Be honest, be ethical. But your money source is just that -- a money source. Do you think your employer would feel bad about hiring someone similar to you at the same time, so that after a year, they could fire the lower performing one? They wouldn't feel bad at all. At some businesses, this is an established procedure! OP: Don't Feel Bad about working multiple jobs at once. It's not a marriage or a intimate relationship. There's no expectation of exclusivity. As long as you can do well at all your jobs at once, more power to you. Put differently, I think active deception would be immoral. I can't believe it but I heard a story recently about foreign workers taking advantage of remote work/pandemic by running a "bait and switch". One person applies, gets the job, then someone different (and unqualified) actually shows up. _That's_ unethical.
- xwolfi 4y agoI work in Hong Kong with both Chinese and Indians, and the way it works there is that it's like everywhere, not everyone wants to be a developer and those who want don't always know what's happening around them. The difference is they're the first generation to have some sort of access to wealth, and would rather die than be honest and find a little job in a coffee shop since there are no jobs in coffee shop that would pay near the same. So you end up with tons of guys who cannot work in software, who cost nothing like us in salary term but produce near nothing. The ones who survive are either unashamed to ask millions of questions (fair enough after all), who have the political acumen to always walk between the raindrops and manage to fail projects without looking like the culprits or are genuinely good and move asap... to Hong Kong or Singapore, sometimes Tokyo if invaluable. These would never stay underpaid for doing the same job as me, they're not stupid, them.
- soared 4y ago> Lots of dev forums talk about this and encourage others do the same, even juniors, just to earn more because their 2 hours or work is better than 8 hours of their colleagues from western countries. I work for a company's whose headquarters is in Poland and we rely on eastern europeans for a fair amount of work. For context on this statement, we (americans) all believe our 2 hours of work is equivalent to their 8 hours of work. To massively oversimplify, eastern europeans believe american corporate speak and many meetings are a huge waste of time and inefficicent communication. Americans believe eastern europeans miss critical context that leads to work which needs to be redone because its incorrect.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- WalterGR 4y ago> we (americans) all believe our 2 hours of work is equivalent to their 8 hours of work. Well, if OP is correct, then there are two options here. a. Since they're only working 2 hours but billing 8, your 2 hours of work is actually equivalent to their 4 days. b. They aren't taking 3 extra days, your 2 hours is equivalent to their 2 hours, and they're billing you for 8 as a lesson in humility. :)
- xupybd 4y agoNope, I'm doing close to 9 hour days here in NZ. Meetings and other distractions eat into the day but I'm doing lots of work. I'm interested in what's behind the claim that 2 hours work in country y is better than 8 in country x?
- fernirello 4y agoHi, I'm in NZ too--would you be able to recommend places where I can find remote (preferably contract) development work for overseas companies? For what's it worth it'd be data-sciency Python in my case. Thanks
- haik90 4y agoHow they can take multiple jobs at the same time? I mean the real works, for example 4 different people from different company asking for 4 different solution it’ll take some times to process How big is contract works over there, in my place I never heard someone take more than 2 jobs 1 fulltime 1 freelance
- muzani 4y agoTake three jobs. Outsource all three jobs to someone cheaper. That guy outsources it too. Someone down the pipeline is someone like I used to be, getting paid $15k/year, doing $150k projects that took 40 hours to complete.
- durnygbur 4y agoWhen I interview in Poland or Czechia and they brag "it's a project for IBM/Citi/Mercedes/whatever", "the platform allows our client to make transactions worth millions of dollars". All I think is "oh you little greedy incompetent fucker, after this call I'm ghosting you".
- isbvhodnvemrwvn 4y agoI mean what are you expecting when applying to a software house or a staffing agency?
- barrysteve 4y agoConstruction companies did something similar with building new homes. Supply issues came in, prices skyrocketed and it killed a bunch of companies and significantly delayed finishing old contracts. Over subscribing works until it doesn't. Some people are going to get caught out when one job eats their whole day or management wants to cut staff.
- scyzoryk_xyz 4y agoI’m an eastern european and this sounds very much like the typical corner-cutting and cheating that we are taught is something to be worth bragging about. Reminds me of my Polish high school. Not only were people cheating and open about it between each other, teachers were encouraging that if you don’t get caught then it’s not a problem. It’s a feature of our culture that at the end of the day tires everyone out because you have to be on a constant look out for fuck ups.
- galoisgirl 4y agoThe same people also say a university diploma is just a piece of paper. Well, my friend, if you actually study instead of cheating, you can learn tons. :)
- emteycz 4y agoThe meaning is that you can learn to do the job without needing the piece of paper and the loss of sanity and time that goes along with it. There isn't a field where it applies more than in programming.
- galoisgirl 4y agoI know very well what they mean.
- emteycz 4y agoBut others might miss the meaning if they only went with what you wrote.
- galoisgirl 4y agoIn that case, it also means they think degrees are worthless because they assume everyone cheats to get them. I'm not denying you can get equivalent, even better, knowledge and experience otherwise. One of the best devs I know has a degree in philosophy. However, some of us know what we go to school for and we make it worthwile.
- hoseja 4y agoWhat sort of dev forums? I'm woefully underconnected to local discourse...
- jusssi 4y agoAround here, working multiple contracts is effectively prevented by clients sprinkling meetings all over the workday. Attending all of those for multiple clients AND getting your actual work done would be quite impossible. Also, thank you for this. Now I know why out-of-country contractors have such a variable rate of output. Imagine an /s here if you feel it's appropriate, I can't decide.
- 5350-uiop-1130 4y agoI have 15 years of experience as a developer. Is it easy to pivot into contract work? I would love something where I can work 2-3 months then take 1 month off. We were asked to go back into the office and my first day I felt extremely depressed - I never felt like this before and I'm worried about what will happen.
- loxias 4y agoSpeaking from experience, no it's not. At least, the work is easy to pivot into, but finding the work is .... NOT. Once you find a good one though, it's OH so much more rewarding than office work, for some people at least (including me). There's a lot more freedom and flexibility in how you get the work done, less (zero!) politics, and going above and beyond is more appreciated by a client than an employer. (which opens the door to repeat business!) My career has been (to a first approximation) alternating between full time roles at startups and consulting work. When I'm doing consulting work, it's 1-2 months work, 3-5 months off, not the other way around. YMMV, this experience may be specific to my working style, and the sort of projects I do. I like to land a juicy project, work in long intense bursts until it's done, then collect the check (sometimes one halfway through). I've never billed per hour, almost always per-project, but occasionally per-week (for deep pocketed clients). The hard part is finding clients. If anyone figures it out, do let me know. I've used every strategy I can think of and I have yet to find something that reliably works, so you've got to do everything at once. Social connections, "professional networking", email lists, craigslist (in the mid 2000s), Many of the large projects come via "friend of a friend". Word gets to me through a friend that someone's day job involves them doing something I suspect I could improve, I arrange an introduction, and, well, work up the company's food chain, then try to get to yes :) That being said, the most lucrative project yet I found on reddit! 1 month of work, then 6 months off. :) [In that case, the tool I wrote replaced more than 50% of the client's work] Finally, something you might want to consider is working with a contract placing firm. I've never done it myself, but I've gotten close during my most recent employment hunt (which ended days ago). I've talked with several of them, as well as outside recruiters, and if you're interested, I'd be happy to point you towards the people I liked (including the recruiter who landed me my new and awesome full time job, if our skills are similar.) My email addr is in my profile. I've often thought that there's still a missing market to be filled, somewhere where people with different skill sets can form loose associations, and then find opportunities together. "whole is greater than the sum of its parts" &c. The group can then sell to the client.
- mhitza 4y agoI've read one or two similar stories in the past year or so (but subcontracting extra hours), but haven't seen any personal disclosure on HN, for example. I find it hard to believe, but I'm also far detached from large corps nowadays to know what kind of shenanigans can be passed by them. I still very much doubt all of your claims, without some proof. As an Eastern European developer with a sizable network of peers, first time I'm hearing of this as "common practice"
- durnygbur 4y agoPeople just want to get rich quick. "Rich" means 2-3 apartments or constructing own house, 2 cars, exotic holidays, expensive hobby like flying or diving. There is no inter-generation accumulated wealth in post-Communist countries. What you describe is also notorious among medical doctors and is a reason of catastrophic state of healthcare in e.g. Poland. The one outcome is that when you deal with such "professional" you never obtain anything constructive. The "professional" is busy with something else, cuts the corners at takes shortcuts, has to physically go somewhere else. In our society behaving like this are signals of well educated, high status individual, very unfortunately.
- margor 4y agoI think you're generalizing a little bit too much, or just frustrated with how things are where you are, and I share that frustration, however: Healthcare is not any better in different parts of the world (or Europe for that matter). Within countries there are places where healthcare absolutely sucks and there are places where you can get a decent healthcare, even in Poland (you have options for private healthcare for example). As for getting "rich" and inter-generation wealth - we (I'm from Poland too) do certainly have that, although not to the degree that other countries such as US have. Many people I know could afford their first house/flat or mortgage for it only because their parents helped them. Also don't forget that many people got their wealth from communist era, where they had to just wait in the queue to get their flat and then they bought it for a penny after we shifted to capitalism. There are certainly real professionals here in Poland too, but they're just harder to come by. I'd not say it's specific to Poland. If anything, you can just say it's more common than average in other countries, but it's not certainly an exceptional thing here that we lack true professionals. I'm in the same bucket as you're, it's not like the pasture is greener on the other side in many fields. BTW, I've not yet come by anyone whose hobbies were flying or diving, although I admit I might not have met as many people lol.
- durnygbur 4y agoThe only case where significant wealth was inherited are descendants of 90s era "businessmen" and descendants of communist era politicians, security service functionaries, and high level administrative employees. Basically Polish oligarchs. The commie block flat, or flat in newly built fenced "apartment block" is not wealth.
- hansor 4y ago>everyone I know is working 2-3 hours I'm from central Europe as well. You live in bubble. That's it.
- sdevonoes 4y agoWell, almost. On paper I (and my colleagues) work 8h/day. On practice, though, we usually do 4h or 5h top.
- cosmodisk 4y agoWhether it's 500K salaries or overemployment with 5 jobs, it's most likely a bubble. There are absolutely tons of companies out there that have no idea how to manage technical staff,so for anyone who's even remotely competent, it can be the easiest gig in their lives. On the other hand,any half competent shop, whether it's in Poland or Germany, would boot out anyone who'd try to pass off 2h worth of work as a whole day's effort.
- fdgsdfogijq 4y agoNot everything is a bubble.