3 ms·

I'm surprised it was a cost-based decision as Indian-based teams are already on the lower end of that. I believe there was some other kind of added value invol

I'm surprised it was a cost-based decision as Indian-based teams are already on the lower end of that. I believe there was some other kind of added value involved, perhaps they hired a more competent team or with a broader skillset.

SargeDebian 2y ago
> Two months ago, they replaced the Director of Engineering from India with a Vietnamese Director of Engineering, and things started to change By te way, I love the negative comments about the level of English proficiency in the Vietnamese team in a post riddled with mistakes.
- GasTheKayaks88 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - bobosha 2y ago
    > It seems like people of European ethnicities are the only people on earth who don't practice this brazen ethnic nepotism I beg to differ, Eastern European rivalries/grudges are no less: Russian v Ukrainians/Poles, Poles vs Czech and so on...
    - GasTheKayaks88 2y ago
      [flagged]
- jmspring 2y ago
  I've seen this happen. I've also seen where someone hired into a management/planning role with the ability to make offshore decisions can impact things for good or bad. A company I was at long ago, the Director of Engineering insisted on offshoring some non-critical things. It was fine, but it was one of those body shops where you talk to person X and it's likely some complete other group doing the work. The output we were getting out them was so bad and wasting the other engineeers time, we had to push back. The excuses made by the director almost made it look like they were getting kickbacks. Same company, different oursourcing situation - needed some critical low level (assembler) code written. Outsourced to a different region, the developers understood what was needed and turned things around much faster than expected. A small consultancy instead of one of the body shops.
rdtsc 2y ago
There is always someone on the lower end. Interestingly the post mentioned English language as a skill. Wonder how much of a barrier that is for Vietnamese devs?
- bilbo0s 2y ago
  Even if it were, that won’t save you for long. Everyone in Nairobi can speak English. So can everyone in Accra. All the countries in the world are just catching up. The off shoring is just something that occurs naturally as that leveling happens.
- therealdrag0 2y ago
  IME: VN verbal can very widely and can take a while to get used to but text/msg English is close enough to IDC to not matter.
RandomThoughts3 2y ago
From the point of view of someone in Europe who has done a lot of work with Indian teams, I’m not surprised by that. The culture gap with India is huge and difficult to manoeuvre (my own culture and the culture of India are basically on opposite end of the tolerance to conflict scale) and if you work with one of the largest Indian consulting companies you are very likely to end up with very junior developers, high turnover and management which mostly focus on billing you the most they can. Once you factor all that, you quickly come to a point where India doesn’t look that interesting if you don’t want to commit and open a branch there (apparently a game changer). For us, it’s awkwardly placed between countries a bit more expensive but with a far smaller cultural gap and cheaper place where we would encounter similar difficulties.
- moralestapia 2y ago
  My experience as well. Developers from LATAM and South East Asia are much easier to work with.
- pjot 2y ago
  I never really thought about it being a cultural difference in the way US devs and those offshore work in the day to day. But that may explain much of the disconnect. Curious what your experience is like.
  - drewcoo 2y ago
    It's not about offshore work differences. It's about every location you have workers having a different culture. And they don't always mesh well. The constantly smiling Americans will seem like idiots to central Europeans. The Indians who answer yes to every question won't be trusted by the American idiots. And so on.
    - moralestapia 2y ago
      Chill, read the site guidelines [1]. Make @dang's job easier. 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
robjan 2y ago
Salaries in India shot up during COVID. It was a massive pain since the already revolving door service companies started revolving even faster as they struggled to retain talent. I'm not sure what the market is like now though since we too use Vietnam based developers.
- coffeebeqn 2y ago
  It is really annoying when workers get paid slightly more fairly for their output
  - robjan 2y ago
    Nobody said whether that was a problem or not but obviously if you use a vendor and they provide an unstable team, the team is less valuable.

SargeDebian 2y ago

> Two months ago, they replaced the Director of Engineering from India with a Vietnamese Director of Engineering, and things started to change By te way, I love the negative comments about the level of English proficiency in the Vietnamese team in a post riddled with mistakes.

GasTheKayaks88 2y ago
[flagged]
- bobosha 2y ago
  > It seems like people of European ethnicities are the only people on earth who don't practice this brazen ethnic nepotism I beg to differ, Eastern European rivalries/grudges are no less: Russian v Ukrainians/Poles, Poles vs Czech and so on...
  - GasTheKayaks88 2y ago
    [flagged]
jmspring 2y ago
I've seen this happen. I've also seen where someone hired into a management/planning role with the ability to make offshore decisions can impact things for good or bad. A company I was at long ago, the Director of Engineering insisted on offshoring some non-critical things. It was fine, but it was one of those body shops where you talk to person X and it's likely some complete other group doing the work. The output we were getting out them was so bad and wasting the other engineeers time, we had to push back. The excuses made by the director almost made it look like they were getting kickbacks. Same company, different oursourcing situation - needed some critical low level (assembler) code written. Outsourced to a different region, the developers understood what was needed and turned things around much faster than expected. A small consultancy instead of one of the body shops.

rdtsc 2y ago

There is always someone on the lower end. Interestingly the post mentioned English language as a skill. Wonder how much of a barrier that is for Vietnamese devs?

bilbo0s 2y ago
Even if it were, that won’t save you for long. Everyone in Nairobi can speak English. So can everyone in Accra. All the countries in the world are just catching up. The off shoring is just something that occurs naturally as that leveling happens.
therealdrag0 2y ago
IME: VN verbal can very widely and can take a while to get used to but text/msg English is close enough to IDC to not matter.

RandomThoughts3 2y ago

From the point of view of someone in Europe who has done a lot of work with Indian teams, I’m not surprised by that. The culture gap with India is huge and difficult to manoeuvre (my own culture and the culture of India are basically on opposite end of the tolerance to conflict scale) and if you work with one of the largest Indian consulting companies you are very likely to end up with very junior developers, high turnover and management which mostly focus on billing you the most they can. Once you factor all that, you quickly come to a point where India doesn’t look that interesting if you don’t want to commit and open a branch there (apparently a game changer). For us, it’s awkwardly placed between countries a bit more expensive but with a far smaller cultural gap and cheaper place where we would encounter similar difficulties.

moralestapia 2y ago
My experience as well. Developers from LATAM and South East Asia are much easier to work with.
pjot 2y ago
I never really thought about it being a cultural difference in the way US devs and those offshore work in the day to day. But that may explain much of the disconnect. Curious what your experience is like.
- drewcoo 2y ago
  It's not about offshore work differences. It's about every location you have workers having a different culture. And they don't always mesh well. The constantly smiling Americans will seem like idiots to central Europeans. The Indians who answer yes to every question won't be trusted by the American idiots. And so on.
  - moralestapia 2y ago
    Chill, read the site guidelines [1]. Make @dang's job easier. 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

robjan 2y ago

Salaries in India shot up during COVID. It was a massive pain since the already revolving door service companies started revolving even faster as they struggled to retain talent. I'm not sure what the market is like now though since we too use Vietnam based developers.

coffeebeqn 2y ago
It is really annoying when workers get paid slightly more fairly for their output
- robjan 2y ago
  Nobody said whether that was a problem or not but obviously if you use a vendor and they provide an unstable team, the team is less valuable.