
Why do offshore developers “race ahead”? - GaryARefuge
Nota bene: I swear this question is relevant to startups. I have also been banned from two subreddits for asking it. So I&#x27;m taking out the country in question so as to make the whole thing more palatable.<p>Why do offshore developers &quot;race ahead&quot;? I&#x27;ve never understood this. There must be a sociological reason, right?<p>For example, I ask for a database to be reconfigured to capture two new user data points. Let&#x27;s call them used car price and used car color. Nothing will be pushed to production for several months. The first offshore gets excited about this plain vanilla request and states that we will start capturing these back end data points but that he should hop into the Xcode and start making front end changes now. Then the second offshore gets excited and writes that not only can they do that, but they can improve the signup flow by ditching social login for Twilio login with the additional two attributes of used car price and used car color as personal identifiers in the login process (wtf).<p>I asked for none of this. I made a very simple request (I think). Some days I feel like a comedy routine is going on, other days I feel like I&#x27;m being gaslit. And they&#x27;re not paid an hourly to ask questions, so they&#x27;re not emptying our pockets. But they aren&#x27;t &quot;idea people&quot; so what&#x27;s up with the random ideas? The work when done is competent. But it takes seven hours to explain what should be understood in seven minutes. Is there a ticketing system out there that not only lets you write a clear specification but also forces the recipient to read the spec?<p>One developer I know has theorized it&#x27;s because of how they teach math in $country. The first kid in their class to get the answer right is the winner. If you get called first and are wrong, it&#x27;s no big deal, so there is no disincentive to not rush into a wrong answer or ask the wrong question. Is this true?<p>Am I just taking crazy pills?
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We've banned this account for impersonating someone else. That's not cool
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If you don't want it to be banned, you can email hn@ycombinator.com with a
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mtmail
Put your foot down and explain calmly you'll fire them (discontinue contract)
if they don't deliver work as expected. No point arguing cultural differences
of $country IMHO.

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GaryARefuge
Thank you. Unfortunately, the only thing that works with them is pretty much
what you said. I don't threaten a dissolution of work I threaten to bring in
my own back end expert from a project of 5 years ago. That gets their
attention and they get their shit together for like 4-5 days. I don't mind
paying them for cutting Photoshop files, I just don't understand why they
can't understand specs.

