Quote:
Originally Posted by Robbie
I know several of the bigger guys in this biz who outsource their programming to India and the Phillipines and keep the guys on staff for $500 a month. Their are some of the best programmers in the world in India for instance. And $9 an hour is good money for them. I know the American programmers on here are going to take offense to that statement...but just ask some of the people who run big affiliate programs and you'll find out that they are not paying big prices...they outsource it and get the best programmers in the world for relatively little money.
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When I used to freelance, I got a LOT of offers of work to fix stuff done improperly by outsourced labor. Just because a particular client thinks they are awesome, does not actually make it true.
I think a lot of people are mislead by outsourced companies or workers, but don't actually know better.
For example, say you require a specific task to be done. You are not a programmer/technical yourself, so you don't actually know what's involved in getting it done. An outsourcing firm quotes you two weeks and three hundred bucks. That sounds good to you, so you go forward with it.
Let's say they DO actually deliver a working product by their deadline and to your specs (many don't). You are happy and think they are an awesome company and use them for future work.
Now let's say someone more technical/experienced analyzed the same task and deduced it would take 4 hours, not two weeks. They would charge you five hundred dollars (say they charge $125/hour).
The first thing to figure out is, if you have this product almost two weeks earlier, what is that worth to you ? If it's worth more than two hundred bucks, using this example, then you lost money.
The other thing, is a lot of outsourced work doesn't follow things like standardization, modularity or scalability. They know clients will usually just take a look at the "front end" of the product and see if it works, or doesn't. Little do those clients know that when they grow to a certain level, the whole product will fall apart. Or, if they wish to add in new features or have other people work on the code, it'll cost them many lost hours in the new worker deciphering the mess of code they made. Especially in languages like PHP, there are thousands of ways to do something to "make it work". Very few coders I've come across actually code something while thinking ahead.
Anyhow, before I continue rambling on, the point I was trying to make is when hearing reviews by non-technical people (such as many company owners), just because they think a company is awesome doesn't make it so
As to outsourcing and particular countries/labor, you can find great programmers in every country of the world (except Costa Rica
) and you can find bad programmers in every country of the world. So by no means is a North American or more expensive programmer better than a cheap Indian/Filipino - you should consider each on a case by case basis.
However, if someone is very cheap and high quality, you shouldn't expect they will be available for very long at all. If they are, something just doesn't add up
