
I am a developer, yet I outsource the development of my startup - dustyreagan
http://aymeric.gaurat.net/2011/i-am-a-developer-yet-i-outsource-the-development-of-my-startup/
======
nlh
I'll share a similar (positive) experience I had a few years ago. I'm not
quite what I'd call a developer, but I'm a company founder who's "code savvy".

I made the decision to outsource the development of a moderately big PHP
project a few years ago -- I went through a LOT of profiles on oDesk and
finally settled on a guy (who billed about $30/hr, which was on the high end
for non-US guys on oDesk). He was _terrific_ -- we were basically on IM with
each other constantly, and he was very open with regular code reviews and
feature checks. He added a ton to the project and it worked out way better
than I could have guessed given the stigma outsourced development has.

The key, I think, was as other folks have pointed out - that I speak the same
technical language and wasn't throwing big meaningless features at the guy ("I
want it just like Facebook, but for pets!!").

My only frustrations were things that, unfortunately, can happen with
outsourced work -- timing. My guy was an A developer, but a B/C time manager.
So the project took about 2x as long as it should have.

But as they say -- quality, price, speed: pick two.

~~~
maratd
> My only frustrations were things that, unfortunately, can happen with
> outsourced work -- timing. My guy was an A developer, but a B/C time
> manager. So the project took about 2x as long as it should have.

So technically, he billed at $60 an hour. And that is _the_ issue with
outsourcing. A local guy in your office might have gotten things done in half
the time and cost you just as much.

There is another issue with _timing_ ... and that's the time zone differences.
There will always be a delay between a request and the work actually starting.
If the time zone difference is large enough, you'll be forced to work by
email. If there's an emergency, well, you get the picture.

~~~
bad_user
I work remotely, and I have to disagree with your points:

    
    
         So technically, he billed at $60 an hour
    

Remote developers often do not have the same benefits as local employees. They
do not have the same protections found in employment contracts, they do not
have healthcare benefits, they must also buy their own hardware and office
equipment and other requirements. Not to mention that if the work is contract-
based, they must also do a little marketing.

Even if your assertion is true, $60 is dirt cheap.

    
    
         A local guy in your office might have gotten things 
         done in half the time and cost you just as much.
    

While it is possible to find local talent, the pool of good developers is
limited, while the demand is really high. Indeed, local talent has the
advantage of being local. However, I would rather work with a remote developer
that can get problems solved, than with a hypothetical good local developer
that I don't have, or with a local developer that creates more problems than
it solves.

    
    
         There will always be a delay between a request and 
         the work actually starting
    

Yes, but in my view, that's a really good thing. As a side effect: (1)
management is forced to cut the crap and make specifications as clear as
possible + (2) it means that I have a lot of time in which I can concentrate
on solving the hard problems, instead of lamenting about the color of a link
or have meetings about the next meetings we'll have.

Even when working with local developers, it's always a good idea to NOT
interrupt the workflow of developers, unless it is an emergency. If you have
to fix the specs, or set out new directions, and you need to do that often,
that means you suck at being a manager. That's why Scrum sprints take 1 or 2
weeks during which the developers manage their own schedule, and if something
happens that changes the priorities / specs, then the sprint must be restarted
(throwing away unfinished stuff, starting from scratch later) ... that's a
little extreme from my point of view, but there are good reasons for why some
people prefer this.

There are also good tools for managing remote developers, tools such as bug
and feature trackers, tools such as Git or ReviewBoard, etc... Really big
open-source projects, such as Linux, scaled like crazy with contributers from
all over the world. So I really can't see your point.

    
    
         If there's an emergency, well, you get the picture.
    

Personally I'm on call 24/7.

~~~
maratd
Remote Worker != Outsourced Worker. I didn't touch on the many reasons why,
but I would certainly entertain the idea of hiring somebody remotely ... but
never remotely on the other side of the planet.

> Even if your assertion is true, $60 is dirt cheap.

60 x 8 x 5 x 52 = 124,800

That's a funny definition of dirt cheap.

> While it is possible to find local talent, the pool of good developers is
> limited

Not in a major city, especially if you know where and how to look.

> Personally I'm on call 24/7.

Except when you're sleeping? And if your time zone = my business hours, that's
a problem.

~~~
geon
>> Personally I'm on call 24/7.

> Except when you're sleeping?

24/7 is by definition when you're sleeping. As in "call me when I'm asleep,
and I'll get up and take care of your emergency".

~~~
Evernoob
No vacations? Family time? Socialising? You never drink? Ever??

~~~
bad_user
I'm the one that made that comment. I do take lots of vacations and have a
really healthy life outside of work. And I sleep well at night too.

But I always have a 3G-enabled phone near me and I always keep a laptop
around. I also have monitoring in place that alerts me in case shit happens
before my managers even notice.

This is not about being available 24/7, but about being available when needed.
That's in case of emergencies, which by definition are exceptional.

Also, if your customers are suffering because of a problem, good customer
service means waking up and fixing the problem at 00:00, regardless of your
location.

------
vibrunazo
I've considered outsourcing part of development before. But always gave up
after thinking how hard would be to find someone who is actually good. And to
be honest, after reading that the author had to first hire two girls just to
look for a developer. It doesn't really gets me any more excited. Just
thinking about all the useful developing time that I'd wasting looking for a
good developer. It just doesn't seem worth it.

The author having found a great guy after 1 week for only $20 sounds to me
like he got lucky. And that's not considering the side tasks he gave to the
developer just to test him. And the other guy he hired before but didn't like.
Summing all that, I'd assume that on average it would take at least two months
just looking for someone good and finally get started working on a real
project.

Does anyone else got similar good experiences like the author and could
confirm that it's actually not that hard? Or did the author just get lucky?

~~~
TheBiv
Howdy, I am a developer (PHP, .Net, Ruby) and I have had similar experiences
as the author, but I think that he should have highlighted the part where he
says "fire fast". That is the best advice that he could ever have given. Let's
face it, the majority of web applications today are not a technical challenge
that have never been solved before.

Your main advantage will be to take the requirement and break it down into its
lowest parts and then hand off those parts to an outsourced developer and if
he/she does not deliver exactly to your spec, then end the relationship.
Period.

There is a certain amount of luck to it, but just as the author suggests, I
recommend first having the developer create a very simple application with
requirements that you define and estimate how long it would have taken you
(probably no more than a 5 hour task) and if he/she can deliver, then you've
got yourself a winner and you can focus on the business and not javascript
errors.

~~~
dmragone
Another key here is breaking down the specs. If you're clear in your
communication, you can get good work. But being 100% clear with exactly what
you want the finished product to look like is critical.

~~~
aymeric
I usually try to draw mockups to describe the work. I have a tabletPC so that
helps. Also, for really technical stuff, I tried to put myself in his shoes
and describe how I would approach the problem.

There is a fine line between clarifying and micromanaging though.

------
mzarate06
_A developer can talk to a developer._

Most of the failed outsource attempts I know of are one way or another due to
non-technical team members attempting to lead technical teams. That a
developer could lead another developer, or team of developers, down the right
path sooner, more efficiently, and for a longer duration, makes perfect sense.
In practice, it's worked brilliantly for the teams I've worked with.

Even still, it takes a special kind of developer to successfully outsource
development work. It's not sufficient to simply push work over a wall and
accept whatever comes back. Things like well defined requirements, frequent
code reviews, detailed mockups, and clearly stated user stories are critical,
b/c when you outsource work, the default regresses from what you'd normally
expect to substandard work.

But, that's not always due to the outsourced team. Often times its on the
hiring party to identify what they need to do better. Great results start with
great teams, and part of being a great team is understanding that
accountability for the overall result flows both ways.

~~~
aymeric
Outsourcing is a learned skill, definitely. I didn't start with outsourcing a
full blown startup project. I started with small admin tasks using a virtual
assistant I'd pay $5 / hour. It helped me understand how to be clearer via
emails, what processes to use to gain visibility on progress without
micromanaging.

Also I am a seasoned traveller and I think it helped me understand cultural
sensitivities. An Eastern European contractor usually behaves differently than
a Filiino or an Indian. They tend to be more direct in their communication
style, to the point of sounding rude sometimes. Once you know that, it is
easier to tolerate it :)

~~~
kika
This rudeness is usually just a result of not being able to adequately
translate from their native language. In Russian for example, many rude words
are not actually rude. But their translation into English are, but many non
natives are not aware of this. Do not tolerate, just ignore :-)

------
sanj
Brilliant.

I did the same thing -- <http://outletmapper.com>

Some learnings:

1\. It really does free up your head to think about harder issues (read:
getting in front of the right market) if you're not distracted by code. For
me, code is "my happy place", so it is too easy to spend too much time there.

2\. I asked hard questions when picking someone to work with. Not just "have
you used MapKit" but "how would you do hit detection inside an arbitrary
polygon efficiently -- on iOS?"

3\. Keep feedback to the right level. Sending back a stack trace and
commenting on an edge condition was fine. Somehow sending back a patch seemed
over the line.

4\. The product will only be as good as your specifications. Get them right.
Build test cases. Build a set of better test cases that you use -- that you
don't share.

5\. Get it right before paying someone. Paper, PPT slides, HTML demos all help
to get the ideas baked before your money is pouring out the door.

6\. If you're in the US, hire US. Why? You can have them sign a contract that
is actually enforceable.

~~~
aymeric
#4

How detailed are your test cases? Do you have a sample document, I am
interested to have a look at it.

#6 If you're in the US, hire US.

Mmm I disagree with this. I think the risk that someone decides to steal your
idea or code and go run their own business are fairly low. I accept to take
this risk to be able to reach developers that I will pay 4 to 5 times less
than the local developers in my country.

~~~
sanj
#4 I created an artificial outlet mall data file with all of my weird edge
cases.

#6 I don't want my job outsourced. That starts at home. More generally, when
I'm in a position to be an employer, I try to be of the sort that I would want
to be employed _by_.

------
dools
This is really similar to the story that Ruben Gamez tells in his mixergy
interview about Bidsketch. He started off building it in Grails (IIRC) but
later switched to outsourcing to a Ruby dev.

He was then able to focus completely on the marketing side of things.

I think that one of the biggest problems that developers have when launching a
business/product is that we know how to code, so we assume we should do
everything.

I see this repeatedly with friends of mine who have an app idea or an idea for
a website that they could get made for a couple of grand but insist they need
to learn to do it themselves even if they're not already app/web developers.

People that can't code lament it - they look for technical co-founders and
whatnot but the stories I hear from non-technical (and technical!) folks who
either choose to (in the case of techies) or are forced to (in the case of
non-techies) outsource development they generally get something released _at
all_ where as many of the technical people that I know personally are
paralysed by the initial time investment required to learn a new technology
and being unable to balance that with their full time job elsewhere.

------
gregcor
Very clever post, but this is little more than very well crafted marketing
material. This IS his marketing effort, and for some reason I'd be surprised
if he didn't use outsourced labor to build his outsourcing site.

He wants this arrangement to be successful, and he's going to blog about its
success whether or not the code is any good at all.

~~~
_delirium
I hadn't seen that initially, but I agree that makes it seem a bit suspicious.
A testimonial to the benefits of outsourcing by someone running an site
advertising "frictionless outsourcing" is not exactly a disinterested
analysis; sort of like a whitepaper on outsourcing from Accenture. Doesn't
mean it's _wrong_ , but does, I agree, mean that he probably intended the
writeup to be positive, even before starting.

~~~
aymeric
What do you think of the founder of Visual Website Optimizer when he writes
awesome articles about A/B testing or from the founder of GitHub when he
writes about how software development is done at GitHub.

The books "Getting Real" from 37Signals and "Crush It" from Gary speaks about
the benefits of educating your customers. I believe it is a great way to
market without feeling like a spammer.

------
alttab
I can see why this wouldn't directly apply to most people:

1) Most bootstrappers don't have the money to pay someone else full time.

2) Most bootstrappers don't have enough experience to know what to build
themselves, much less be able to communicate to someone else to do it.

3) Most developers without years of experience are overconfident in their
ability to communicate and manage people.

Glad it has worked for this guy, though.

~~~
aymeric
1) Yes you are correct, I am lucky that I keep my expenses low and that I can
charge a good rate to my clients. But as it has been pointed out many times,
consulting while bootstrapping is a big distraction. But for me, it is also a
way to socialize and stay sane by reminding me that I am still an able
developer even when my startup is not doing great.

3) Yes, this is something that you learn overtime. Start small, start now :) I
have written this article that presents a way to start outsourcing for a lower
cost than development : [http://47hats.com/2011/07/outsourcing-101-for-
startup-founde...](http://47hats.com/2011/07/outsourcing-101-for-startup-
founders/)

------
dustyreagan
I wonder what the general opinion is on legal protection (such signing a
contractor agreement) when working with someone in another country. I figure
it must be hard to enforce, and you'd mainly be working based on trust. But,
it seems like having some sort of legal agreement in place, regardless of how
difficult it would be to enforce, would be prudent.

Anyone have experience with this?

~~~
vasco
Hey, I've been doing some gigs in oDesk and when you're working on an hourly
billed project it's quite safe. They have a piece of software you install that
randomly takes print screens while you're working, and makes sure you're
active by measuring keystrokes and mouse clicks. You also do daily reports and
so the guy who is paying you basically knows everything that is going on. If
things eventually don't check out they can appeal on the payments based on the
activity and end result, but I have no experience with that.

~~~
prodigal_erik
To me that environment sounds awful. If getting up to think hard about what
I'm developing would tend to get me dismissed from an oDesk project, they're
implicitly selecting for willingness to just sit and type relentlessly even
when that's not in the best interest of the project. It might be appropriate
for data entry, but creative work with complex requirements is not well served
by a WPM metric.

~~~
vasco
You are not paid based on these metrics, they are there so that the employer
can have an idea of what's happening. I'm sure everyone will be very pleased
when you deliver a project update on time even if you record 0 key strokes.

------
Sambdala
For any project that you want to pivot or extend substantially beyond your
first iteration, this seems very risky as you might end up with code that has
bad commenting, indecipherable, or needs to be completely rewritten before you
can either work on it yourself or pass it on to another developer.

I would imagine, in most cases, building the MVP yourself and then bringing in
an Odesk developer to add functionality is likely better in most cases.

~~~
aymeric
Yes, my project was already mature.

But keep in mind that it is very easy to do code reviews nowadays. GitHub or
BitBucket give you a nice interface to follow your developer commits. You can
comment on them early on to educate your developer on your coding standards.

------
danso
Very cool, I appreciated especially the detail that the OP goes into.

I also liked the way he phrased the problem...he isn't outsourcing because he
hates developing, but because he loves it too much. Never thought about it
that way but on reflection, that is why I haven't outsourced the things I like
to do.

~~~
aymeric
You still need to have fun though, don't outsource everything :)

------
xpose2000
Sorry but I disagree with this post completely. In fact, I hate articles like
this.

A real developer who loves his project would never outsource major aspects of
the project. One might outsource the design, only because its incredibly
difficult to create a great UI and have the know-how to code it as well.

One might outsource the slicing of a layout to CSS/HTML or something simple
like that while dealing with IMPORTANT issues such as database architecture,
setting up the server, etc.

To suggest that you want to concentrate on the "business aspect" simply means
that you don't want to do the hard part. By outsourcing, the article states:
"I have more time and I can spend this time for marketing and blogging". ...
Right. Because blogging and marketing is so very tough?

The truth is that you USED to be a developer. It sounds like you've realized
this and outsourced the project to an actual developer. If that's the case
then you've made a wise choice.

In any case, best of luck to you.

Edit: It sounds as though I am belittling other people's jobs on a project.
Sorry, I guess to some degree I am? I agree that I am a bit foolish to say
that. I don't mean to create any type of hostility in this thread. (Regardless
I will keep my full comment here so this thread makes sense.)

My main point is that the author refers to himself as a DEVELOPER. Therefore
it does not make sense to me to outsource his own specialty.

~~~
oz
I'm really wondering if your post is sarcasm. But I'll bite. To wit:

>A real developer who loves his project would never outsource major aspects of
the project.

Excuse me, but that's just the 'No True Scotsman' fallacy. You don't get to
decide what makes someone a 'real developer.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman>

>while dealing with IMPORTANT issues such as database architecture, setting up
the server, etc.

The primary focus of the founder should be to _get paying customers_. These
paying customers could care one iota about Codd's 12 Rules, 3NF, and
Chef/Puppet configuration. If you truly believe that those things are more
important than _getting paying customers_ , then you, my friend, have a hobby,
not a business. The IMPORTANT thing is _"getting them to sign on the line
which is dotted."_ Not mucking about at the CLI.

>To suggest that you want to concentrate on the "business aspect" simply means
that you don't want to do the hard part. By outsourcing, the article states:
"I have more time and I can spend this time for marketing and blogging". ...
Right. Because blogging and marketing is so very tough?

Sigh. The common engineers fallacy of thinking that _creating_ is enough. It
is not. Steve Jobs was a _salesman_. And I can assure you that marketing is
not as simple as throwing up a wordpress blog and a facebook page. It takes
_real_ work. Which I suspect you would know if you'd ever done it.

HN: You don't get rich by agonizing over data structures and algorithms
(unless you're Google). You get rich by leveraging resources so the multiplier
effect works to your advantage. If the most efficient path to getting paying
customers is to outsource, then do so. Kudos to OP.

</rant>

~~~
xpose2000
Excellent viewpoint. The business aspect and getting paying customers is
important. A marketers job is important as well. I don't mean to step on toes.
However, keep in mind that the author of this post refers to himself as a
developer.

It's like Steve Jobs saying he is a great salesman but wants to outsource
selling his vision. It makes no sense to me.

Therefore that is why I wrote what I wrote.

~~~
oz
Thank you. However:

>author of this post refers to himself as a developer.

It _doesn't matter_ what he calls himself. If you can pass FizzBUzz, you're a
developer. Maybe not a John Carmack, but a developer nonetheless.

There is no sacred law written on tablets of stone and handed down from
volcanic mountains that states "Developers who found startups must code or
face eternal damnation." Rather, there is a holy precept that does state "The
founder (whether a dev, UX guy or bizev guy) shall find the most efficient
path to profitability, or be condemned to the lake of failure."

So if a founder is from a UX background, but in his particular context, it is
more efficient (faster to profitability) for him to outsource the UX and read
'MBA for Dummies', I would argue that that is the rational course of action.

Again: Your priorities as a founder are not whatever background you are from.
Your priority (and you must accept it :)) is to become profitable. When that
is achieved, THEN you can go up the Maslow Heirarchy of business-
actualization.

~~~
balloot
Again, you are repeating this idea that all these other non-coding skills can
be mastered on a whim. If you truly need an MBA type doing MBA things for your
company, then you should go get one. Lord knows there's a zillion of them out
there, almost all of which have a better resume than "I read MBA for dummies".

Or to put this differently. If I was working for some larger company as a
developer, and I went to management and said "I have decided that I want to
quit development and work in marketing", they would turn me down. And rightly
so, because A) it would be bad for the company to lose my development skills,
and B) there is no reason to hire me as a marketing person when there's many
more out there far more qualified and experienced in marketing.

So...if this would be quite clearly the correct course of action if I worked
for someone else, why would I not follow the same thought process for my own
company?

~~~
skrish
I disagree. IMHO, there is no better person than the founder to market your
startup passionately.

I am not saying MBA skills are not valuable. But what is more important is
ability to write pithy blogs, write tons of emails to your potential
customers, investors and do lot of other routine activities to keep your
startup afloat. None of this requires MBA as such in the initial days.

Your passion, reading some of the best blogs out there on specific topics is
more than enough provided you take all the advice as just that 'advice' and
tweak it to apply as per your situation & needs.

~~~
aymeric
> IMHO, there is no better person than the founder to market your startup
> passionately.

Exactly my feelings.

------
therandomguy
On the other hand I'm stuck in outsourcing hell with <http://classfrog.com>

It has been close to a year and we are not even close to launch. It would have
taken about 2 weeks for me to do it myself. But I'm in denial.

~~~
ilamont
What are some of the problems you encountered? Why not cut the strings now and
finish it on your own?

------
SudarshanP
This guy is dogfooding outsourcing. He is outsourcing Taskarmy.com which is
related to outsourcing itself. So on the one hand it is an awesome exercise...
On the other, he is saying "nice things" about a concept he needs to "sell".

But as he himself says, certain things are hard to outsource. For Example the
particular blog post itself. Outsourcing the webdesign and the code behind the
site would have been a lot more easier. So in a strange sense, even a skeptic
has to agree with his point... A site like Taskarmy can fail due to bad
technology but will not succeed due to its technical prowess. What he needs to
figure out is how to connect the buyers and the sellers and make them stick
around. All the CRUD that goes into his site will not be the secret sauce. The
only possible real secret sauce is probably a method to connect the buyers and
sellers using an algorithm that beats the competition heads down. In such a
case it makes sense for him to keep the "secret sauce" to himself. Everything
else is a commodity until he becomes a huge player. If one is at twitter
scale, even status messages become "rocket science" and cannot be outsourced.

------
vitomd
I am a freelancer developer . 50% of my work come from social networking
(twitter, IRC, blog). And the other 50% from referals (the client promote my
work with his friends ). So if you want to find a good developer, follow
developers on twitter, follow his blogs, ask questions, research github and
chat with them. I am sure that you will find very good developers.

------
ikonst
I'm surprised nobody yet mentioned this is a trivial case of a developer who
matured enough to be more valuable as a manager. Once you see beyond the odd
difference (it's a startup, and he's supervising a guy in Ukraine), it's all
the same you see in most developers' careers as they progress.

Some developers won't heed the call and prefer to stay "close to the metal"
cause they enjoy it more, and some are genuinely bad at managing. However,
very often an experienced developer will benefit a project much more when he
can afford to look at the grand scheme of things.

------
damian2000
Part of me thinks this guy is a bit of a tight ass for choosing the absolute
cheapest places to outsource, i.e. Philippines* then Ukraine, but then, that's
just how global manufacturers work anyway, and why should coding be any
different.

According to this infographic: [https://www.staff.com/blog/web-developer-
salaries-infographi...](https://www.staff.com/blog/web-developer-salaries-
infographic/) Philippines has the cheapest web developer salary in the world
at an average of US$6874 per year.

~~~
aymeric
Knowing that the talent are equivalent, why would you pay $60/hour when you
can pay $15/hour?

------
mmahemoff
With outsourcing, it helps a lot to break things down into small steps - it
cuts out a lot of the risk upfront if you can build a complete "Hello World"
early on, for example. You'll find out right away if the contractor can
program, deal with version control, build automated processes, etc.

And this is where it helps if the client is a developer. A developer who
understand agile processes should be well placed to break tasks down into
vertical slices in this way.

On a related note, I highly recommend Trello for co-ordinating with remote
workers. I just invite them to a board and send a "welcome" notification to
them from a special "Message Card". They immediately get how the whole thing
works even if they've never seen Trello or Kanban before, and you can spend
most of the time co-ordinating on tasks by messaging on their cards. This is
from my experience with researchers/admins and I'm planning on the same for
working with a developer.

------
jzukoff
I just have to question the quality of the code one risks receiving when
outsourcing; sure you can get lucky and find a great guy but in all likelihood
it would take a few iterations to find someone worthwhile. All the while you'd
be spending time and money finding a developer & losing precious time working
on the product at hand.

~~~
TheBiv
The quality of the code is up to your requirements as a developer. Have the
outsourced developer code exactly to the requirement and accept nothing less.

~~~
jzukoff
sure to a certain extent, but you could have all the requirements in the world
and not have the outsourced developer ever turn in "quality" code, or if
anything take way longer than it should take.

~~~
aymeric
You can regularly do code reviews, and educate the developer to write the code
using your conventions.

------
erichmond
Developers understanding the importance and value of outsourcing development
only benefits the entire startup scene.

------
JVIDEL
Been there, didn't had an awful experience but it wasn't good either, the guy
I worked with was a D time manager but I was able to agree to a fixed fee.

Still, a 2 month project became 6 months of constant delays. Can't say being a
dev helped, in fact I think being a designer or a biz-dev guy would've been
better since we tended to discuss a lot about what to use here and there: the
guy was a better coder but I had more experience, and so while he always went
for the "just works" solution I for obvious reasons tended to go to the
solution that was more future-proof and less of a pain to upgrade.

Non-devs would just say "I want X" and then get _something like X_ , but be ok
with it.

------
zura
>freelancer in a country with lower cost of living

Actually, there are countries with a similar or even a more high cost of
living compared to USA, but people are used to low salaries. This is
especially true for [Eastern] Europe.

------
damian2000
"Being a developer myself it is easy for me to explain what I want to a
developer. We talk the same language."

I've always thought that myself - in terms of outsourcing programming - the
experienced developer can actually make better use of other devs more than
anyone else.

------
pjmlp
Being forced to work on a big consultancy company, specialized in outsourcing,
makes me sad reading this type of blogs.

If you want to outsource development, at least keep it inside your country.

Outsourcing to countries were cheap work and poor working conditions rule,
just leads to exploitation of people. Sadly very few, get to improve their
life conditions.

I for one, wouldn't like to have my company's success tied to such situations.

~~~
trafnar
Do you think these foreign workers would be better off without these
programming jobs available to them?

~~~
pjmlp
I really don't know.

Sure these programming jobs open doors to them, even if they have to work
sometimes 12 hours a day, with no vacations, no available compensations, no
ability to have an union defending them, and earning a lot less than the
companies that explore them should pay as a salary.

On the other hand lots of people are not able to get a job, because they just
work 8h a day, have vacation rights, insurance, and an union that defends
workers from corporation interests. Not to forget what is very important to
business, they cost 5x the "price" of poor workers.

My dream is that the work conditions in poor countries improve to the point
that exploring poor countries workers is no longer viable.

This is the point of view from someone that works in the off-shoring industry.

------
mmahemoff
The title should probably mention this is a 2011 post.

~~~
dustyreagan
Why? The topic isn't time sensitive.

~~~
mmahemoff
It's not especially time-sensitive, but everything is time-sentisitive to some
extent. I think I'm like most people here in assuming by default anything here
has just been posted unless there's a year attached.

