

Outsourcing on Elance- how to get amazing people for $5 more. - colinplamondon
http://spreadsong.com/hiring_on_elance_how_to_get_amazing_people_for_5_more_than_the_awful_ones

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pier0
If you look to hire coders/designers/writers on freelance marketplaces like
Elance, Rentacoder and Scriptlance, hire those that ask questions.

On any project above $100 you'll receive 20 or more bids, but 90% them will
simply be a price and a list of references. You can be pretty sure most didn't
even read your project description.

The 1 or 2 that ask meaningful questions about the project, no matter how
small it is, are the ones you want to work with.

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krmmalik
I flew out to Pakistan in 2001 on a holiday, and then ended up hiring a
programmer from there. Turned out to be a right royal mess. The quality of
work was poor, and his work ethic wasnt great either. I ended up delivering a
software project to a client, that wasnt really worth what i charged them. I
regret that i charged them what i did, but only later found out how poor it
was under the hood, and had to pay out of my own pocket to get many of the
bugs fixed. THAT was a nasty experience.

Recently, i decided to try it again, as i've been in need of assistance, and
hired an indian firm to do some jQuery work for me. The work was literally 60
to 90mins of work, and required no more than 5mins of explanation, but in the
end they had 3 skype meetings with me, and spent a week designing something
that i hadnt asked for, and then wanted to charge the full time. Again a bad
experience.

BUT, then, i spoke to a contact here in London, who has spent much time out in
India working with ex-Microsoft and IBM employees, and he has learned the
culture and how to manage them. I gave him the work and he got his team over
in India to do it in about 90mins. So i'm now using him as my middle man who
takes the time to understand my requirements and then translates in whatever
way required to his team abroad. Its costing me slightly more as an hourly
rate, but with the time and headache saved, the net cost is actually much much
less. Overall great experience.

Point being. Its not about the geography, or where you outsource to, not even
so much who you outsource to. its HOW you manage.

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wheels
The point that they list as "key", that it's possible for programmers to learn
with just Hindi, but not just Romanian or Hungarian, I suspect is wrong. Using
number of language-specific Wikipedia articles as a proxy for content on the
web, there are:

    
    
      - 158,215 Hungarian articles
      - 141,637 Romanian articles
      - 54,058 Hindi articles
    

Also note that universities use English almost exclusively in India and that
only about 20% of Indians are native Hindi speakers.

I'm not saying that the observation about level of English is wrong, but the
assumptions about the reasons for such are suspect.

~~~
colinplamondon
[author of the post]

Those numbers are mindblowing- is there some kind of India-specific Wikipedia
analogue where articles in Hindi tend to go to?

~~~
wheels
I believe you've just massively overestimated the prevalence of Hindi in
technical discourse and on the web.

I tried to dig up some statistics, but Hindi isn't even prevalent enough to
register in the stats:

[http://www.newmediatrendwatch.com/world-
overview/92-language...](http://www.newmediatrendwatch.com/world-
overview/92-languages-on-the-web)

[http://www.translate-to-success.com/internet-language-
use.ht...](http://www.translate-to-success.com/internet-language-use.html)

~~~
danohuiginn
Wow. That's pretty amazing, given that Hindi is probably the fourth most
widely-spoken language in the world. I would never have imagined it to be used
so little online.

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scorpioxy
I don't know much about Romania, is $25 really a top-tier rate?

From experience, when you talk about top programming talent, the rates between
countries start to converge. So almost everyone at the top demands > $50 an
hour regardless of the geographic location.

Of course working at that rate means that you not only have exceptional
technical skills, but you can communicate well, have a business sense and
actually care about the success of the project and the customer.

I still freelance part time on select projects but my hourly rate is rarely
less than $50/hr and that's only because i do not take on large projects due
to my day time work and business. I also stopped working with customers who
differentiate on price alone.

~~~
SamAtt
The average Romanian programmer makes $646 per month
(<http://www.worldsalaries.org/romania.shtml>) or around $16.65 an hour. I
don't know what experience you could have that tells you prices converge
because that's just not the case (and if it were sites like eLance would have
trouble staying in business).

~~~
scorpioxy
Well, when you talk about working on projects that are not your "run-of-the-
mill php web page" then the rates completely change. Again, that's just been
my experience, so its not necessarily universal.(or I just might have been
lucky)

So for example projects that deal with video streaming and its intricacies,
scaling or optimization, or my personal favourite, maintaining or porting
legacy or broken systems done by programmers that are worth $5/hr.(sorry, i
don't mean to be harsh, but we've all been there)

Typically those kinds of projects are not easy to come by and are not that
many to begin with. They also tend to be awarded to people you've already
worked with or know, not auctioned off on sites like elance.

I've once worked on a video streaming solution that used elements from Red5
and it was known that good Red5 consultants won't talk to you for less than
$100/hr. I was not making anywhere near that of course, but I use it as an
example.

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Sukotto
I would like to hear anecdotal evidence from regulars here who have used
services like eLance. Did it work out for you?

~~~
markkoberlein
I have worked with multiple Indian groups on projects while working full time
at different companies and I also have some experience outsourcing tasks for
my startup through Elance.

Here are my rules with for working with Indian companies:

1\. Never outsource the whole project or even a majority of it. I've seen
companies do this because it's cheaper than hiring a staff of full time in-
house developers. The projects usually fail.

2\. Never ask them to do a task that you wouldn't know how to do yourself. You
should never outsource a key piece of technology just because you don't know
how to do it. You should only outsource something if they will get it done
faster than you can or you want to work on something else. You will still have
to review and test every line of their code to keep the quality up.

3\. Expect communication issues. From my experience, Indian consulting firms
try to communicate the best they can but you do have to stay on top of them.

4\. They are much better at coding than they are at design. I've always been
happy with the code they produce but not with their graphic design abilities.
Never leave the UI design up to them.

I'm a single founder of a startup and the only way that I'm going to get my
product off the ground in 30 to 60 days on a shoe-string budget is to
outsource pieces of it. If you want to keep up with my progress then go to
<http://sqlmover.com> to sign up for the private beta that is going to be
launching next month.

~~~
netcan
Re # 4. My experience is exactly the opposite.

I guess there needs to be a #5 - Outsourcing is a competency in itself and can
be hard. People have different experiences and offer conflicting advice. If
you do it often, you will find ways of doing it better. If you just need to
outsource something once, it may not be worth the learning curve or risk.

------
werk
I found this post disappointingly short on administrative details, unlike Max
Klein's earlier Rentacoder-related post, which is surely the definitive
reference on this subject:

[http://blog.cubeofm.com/the-subtleties-in-outsourcing-
using-...](http://blog.cubeofm.com/the-subtleties-in-outsourcing-using-
rentacode)

~~~
colinplamondon
I've found that the administrative details are pretty minimal when you do your
filtering well- people on Elance are often looking for long-term gigs, 10
hours a week, 5 hours a week, that kind of thing. That incentivizes them to
work with you with an eye to the future, so there aren't as many details to
the day to day.

The trick really is in getting rid of 99% of the applicants, and then paying
well and being nice to the person you choose.

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breck
One thing to also keep in mind: if you're getting too good a deal the worker
probably won't stick with you for long, so make sure you treat the worker well
and pay them what they're worth (or someone else soon will).

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jister
There are other countries which are good resources of competent developers but
not as popular with the two countries mentioned. One example is Philippines.

Philippines is an English speaking country and have excellent developers.
Sadly, a lot of senior developers were pirated by large banks and firms in
Singapore.

The problem is outsourcing individuals/companies often look at price first
rather than the talent of developers -- money matters at the end of the day.

~~~
netcan
Sadly?

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maheshs
One story is not every story. Writer know only know one story about Romanian,
India etc.

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mapleoin
because discrimination based on nationality is a good thing!

