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Working with a team in India just plain sucks. Here are the top reasons why; - Timezone diff is brutal. I either have to take meetings late at night, or else I’

Working with a team in India just plain sucks. Here are the top reasons why; - Timezone diff is brutal. I either have to take meetings late at night, or else I’m waiting up 24-hours for a response to any requests. The documentation requirements suck. The team would only do what is in the docs and nothing else. I’d end up with wonky solutions and shot code. The inability to deliver bad news. The team would never say no or would not deliver bad news. Issued deadlines were a common occurrence. What I learned is that you get what you pay for. So, I could get smart developers in India if I’m willing to pay more. However, a good dev in India costs the same as a good dev in LATAM. at that point why would I deal with the TZ BS?

BaseballPhysics 3y ago
100% what I was going to say. You nailed it. I'd also add if you're any kind of agile organization, Indian teams are very difficult to make fit. Self-managed teams are extremely difficult to construct due to culture related differences in management and power structure. This exacerbates the timezone issues because you may not be able to rely on local leadership to make good, independent decisions.
bhu1st 3y ago
Many here pointed out time difference is a pain. What can we do to compensate over the effect of time difference? Can having a better communication or async work flow work?
- re-thc 3y ago
  > Can having a better communication or async work flow work? reply Definitely. Problem is forget about timezone or cultural differences. A lot of places complain enough about remote vs in-person. This just makes it 10x harder for those people to adapt.
- sundaeofshock 3y ago
  One caveat here; I work on US West Coast hours. Obviously time-zone issues are not as dramatic for hiring managers in Europe or Australia. Having said that… I used to work with teams in Bangalore and Pune. My nightmare (which I lived too many times) was us finding an issue with the offshore team’s work on Friday morning. When that happened, I knew I wouldn’t see a fix until Tuesday morning at the earliest. There are no async workflows that can fix that problem. Honestly, the best way to deal with time-zone issues is to hire senior folks. You need folks that can operate independently and can solve problems. Folks who can come up with solutions so they can keep working; not people who put down the keyboard for the day when they run into an edge case that’s not defined in the spec. Here’s the thing: senior developers in India are expensive. Add your margin to their salary, and the rate you charge for people is going to come close to what I pay for a developer in LATAM. At that point, I’m better off paying for someone in Brazil (for example) so I don’t have to deal with the async headaches.

BaseballPhysics 3y ago

100% what I was going to say. You nailed it. I'd also add if you're any kind of agile organization, Indian teams are very difficult to make fit. Self-managed teams are extremely difficult to construct due to culture related differences in management and power structure. This exacerbates the timezone issues because you may not be able to rely on local leadership to make good, independent decisions.

bhu1st 3y ago

Many here pointed out time difference is a pain. What can we do to compensate over the effect of time difference? Can having a better communication or async work flow work?

re-thc 3y ago
> Can having a better communication or async work flow work? reply Definitely. Problem is forget about timezone or cultural differences. A lot of places complain enough about remote vs in-person. This just makes it 10x harder for those people to adapt.
sundaeofshock 3y ago
One caveat here; I work on US West Coast hours. Obviously time-zone issues are not as dramatic for hiring managers in Europe or Australia. Having said that… I used to work with teams in Bangalore and Pune. My nightmare (which I lived too many times) was us finding an issue with the offshore team’s work on Friday morning. When that happened, I knew I wouldn’t see a fix until Tuesday morning at the earliest. There are no async workflows that can fix that problem. Honestly, the best way to deal with time-zone issues is to hire senior folks. You need folks that can operate independently and can solve problems. Folks who can come up with solutions so they can keep working; not people who put down the keyboard for the day when they run into an edge case that’s not defined in the spec. Here’s the thing: senior developers in India are expensive. Add your margin to their salary, and the rate you charge for people is going to come close to what I pay for a developer in LATAM. At that point, I’m better off paying for someone in Brazil (for example) so I don’t have to deal with the async headaches.