
Outsourcing Startups - hristiank
http://appicurious.com/2011/11/03/outsourcing-startups/
======
snorkel
From my experiences outsourcing saves money but costs velocity. There is much
time spent creating detailed specs, clarifying the specs, reviewing delivered
code then immediately demanding key improvements made to that code, replacing
subpar developers, pinging developers that have gone AWOL, and all of this
happening with the usual timezone delays. Sometimes its faster to write the
code yourself than it is to create painfully clear storyboards, wireframes, or
demand yet another rewrite.

To avoid these hassles you have to spend a little more money to include a
local manager to drive the outsourced team and be responsible for their
delivery.

Honestly I get the sense that people who are happy with outsourced code are
either unusually lucky to have found a highly skilled and responsive
outsource, or more often they just not technical enough to judge the technical
quality or the timeliness of what they are paying for. They are happy with the
shiny car the outsourced team made and they can't realize the engine
compartment is an absolute mess.

~~~
byoung2
_There is much time spent creating detailed specs, clarifying the specs,
reviewing delivered code then immediately demanding key improvements made to
that code, replacing subpar developers_

One could argue that this time would be well-spent even if your development
team is in-house. The convenience of having all of your developers sitting in
one room with you often leads to laziness and sloppy project management. When
the customer service guys can approach an in-house developer immediately with
a bug a customer reported, sometimes the bug gets fixed, committed, and
deployed right away with no documentation. This makes for a great experience
for that customer, and management can pat themselves on the back and call
their team "agile" but imagine the alternative scenario.

Say that customer service rep has to create a detailed bug report with
screenshots and steps to reproduce the error, and in the middle of the night
(because of timezones) your outsourced dev fixes the bug and completes a post-
mortem to close the ticket before committing and deploying. This leads to more
organized processes, better documentation, etc.

~~~
swombat
That's exactly the point snorkel is making. You can get all that
documentation, but that costs velocity.

For an early startup, velocity is way, way, way more important than clear
documentation. When you're sitting with a rapidly shrinking runway and no
viable business model, writing a spec, post-mortem, or documentation for a bug
is a total waste of your precious, limited resources, like doing lunges when
you're running out of air.

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raminf
Just to offer a counter-anecdote, I've personally worked on two mobile
projects that were outsourced overseas and came back completely botched. They
had to be scrapped and started from scratch.

The main issue was communication and being able to have high-bandwidth face-
to-face meetings to clarify what was needed. Extensive use of iChat and Skype
didn't seem to help.

Some apps have detailed specs and a lot of upfront work has been done in
reducing the ambiguities. Those are probably better candidates for
outsourcing. But if the design is fluid and things need to be worked out as-
you-go, that seems to be where outsourced projects go pear-shaped.

I personally think there's enough work to go around all over the world, but
for certain types of apps you need to have someone you can meet and have a
dialog with so you can iterate the design efficiently.

Obviously, each app is different and situations vary so YMMV.

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dmk23
Lower cost is just one part of the equation.

Perhaps the biggest benefit is not having your talent constantly exposed to
being poached in the Silicon Valley.

That is exactly what Mark Zuckerberg was talking about when he said he'd
rather start a company in Boston.

Hide your hackers!

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jweant
Interesting mention of flat tax though...(9-9-9 anyone?) Though not the only
reason for outsourcing talent. What about outsourcing from SV to the mid-west?

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curt
Big fan of using Central and South American developers. You don't have the
time zone issues, their English is usually fantastic, and the cultural
differences are minimally (when compared to places such as India). Used them
all the time when I had my own firm and didn't have time or resources for in-
house development. Also a big fan of the Kiwi's if you have something you can
hand off with a fully defined spec.

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Don_Wallace
It seems that lowering the cost of software development as a key driver of
startup success is being emphasized.

A few things:

One could argue that if the business case for the startup were strong enough,
the cost of development would be almost (within a very wide band) irrelevant
or at least you could more easily justify the expense. An example would be
having already-signed-up beta users and having a mailing list of interested
prospects in hand.

Secondly, does anyone not care about new versions, maintenance and ongoing
support? If you are truly operating a business, then having the ability to
support the product is key. An outsourcer can leave the business or the team
can disband, so you have no control over the institutional knowledge. (The
"outsourcing core competencies" issue.)

Last, the title "outsourcing startups" seems a bit misleading, almost as
though an entire startup can be outsourced like a commodity. We're still
talking about outsourcing the coding.

But maybe the commoditizing of startups is the next natural step in evolution,
if it is not happening already.

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lansing
The author claims that you can hire devs with either ten or 3-5 years of
experience "in a particular area." I've never been to Bulgaria, but I know
it's hard to find folks with ten years of iOS/Android development experience
in California, so this is pretty impressive. Must be a magical country.

~~~
hristiank
The point is you can hire devs with 10 years of experience in varying
programing languages. Maybe I wasn't really clear on that. Also programing for
iPhone is done in objective-c and android devs work with Java. Both of these
have been around long before iOS and Android.

~~~
lansing
To the latter point-- fair enough. There are some significant differences
between Mac and iOS development, for example, but it seems that experienced
Mac devs generally flourish in the iOS world. Are you saying that such people
are readily available in Bulgaria? As in, you are confident that with some
legwork, I could hire a guy with 10 years combined of Mac/iOS programming
experience for 40k? If so, that's very interesting to me (no sarcasm).

Regarding the former, I would be extremely wary of paying a demonstrably
"competent engineer" to do work in a platform they were not already immersed
in. Total years programming, even on seemingly similar platforms, doesn't
translate into ability to deliver a high quality, robust product on the target
platform in a timely manner.

To give a specific example, successful iOS development requires a combination
of UX design intuition and finesse, similar to what you'd need in web
development, along with the memory management and performance tuning skills
more typically seen in the embedded and C++ game development world. The reason
competent iOS devs are expensive in America is because it's hard to find
people with these combined skills, who don't want to just make their own
stuff. There are many examples of lackluster apps in the iTunes Store where
the developers clearly came up short in one of those areas.

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dquigley
Using the word outsourcing I believe biases this conversation in a negative
way. Another way to title this article positively would be, "You can find high
quality programming talent outside the Valley & even the US, which can save
your startup cash". Because if you treated them like any other startup
employee (part of the team), just working from a distance, and not as an
outsourced developer, I think what you are suggesting has a big potential.

To use a headhunter analogy. There is too much hunting in the valley for the
best, so go outside, even outside the US to find great talent affordably.

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pelemele
I came from a very similar environment to the US 10 years ago becuase of non
existing start up scene, inability to brainstorm/exchange tech/business ideas
and do tech socializing in my country of origin (people tend to deal with
different kind of issues there). Everybody around me wanted to become a really
good code monkey focusing on a specific platform ending up doing some
contracting work for big West European businesses as an ultimate goal.

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mklujszo
There's a lot of stories of successful outsourcing dev work being done by US
startups. Eastern europe is actually a very good pick. Some more thoughts on
this: [http://eu.techcrunch.com/2010/11/07/polish-programmers-
are-j...](http://eu.techcrunch.com/2010/11/07/polish-programmers-are-joining-
u-s-startups-but-staying-in-poland/)

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npollock
The hidden cost of outsourcing is the need for increased project management.
Communication issues and cultural differences often lead to poor execution,
and projects that fail to meet expectations. Sure, there's significant savings
on the cost of a developer hour, but your going to spend a lot more time/money
on project management.

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ashrust
I agree with this. We've used a couple of contractors outside of california
but in the US. To avoid the majority of issues raised here, we got a potential
devs to complete a coding task on metered time. While there was a higher
initial cost of hiring we got much better results and are paying well below
valley prices.

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Egregore
I know a successful startup, they had an office in Republic of Moldova, now
all of the devs have moved to US (on H1B) I think this way the firms tried to
retain talents.

Another startup also with developers in Republic of Moldova have been bought
out by Adobe.

In both cases there was a good dev lead in US and most of the developers in
Moldova.

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bomatson
Thanks for the post. A lot of time entrepreneurs get stuck in a mindset that
assumes dev/design must all be within the U.S. Definitely not always true and
most times it depends on the company culture

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bryze
I encourage people to follow this. We need more data on outsourcing
effectiveness. If I were the author, however, I would not use HP as a success
story.

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24pfilms
We have outsouced a massive amount of our art assets for our stealth VW, but
we have kept our dev's close at hand.

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pitdesi
We (<http://feefighters.com>) found our lead designer in Bulgaria. We posted a
project on Crowdspring where we asked for a redesign of TransFS.com. Tisho
(<http://twitter.com/tisho>) did such a good job that we brought him on full-
time.

We don't have any communications/timezone/culture issues at all... he knows
American pop-culture better than most of us do (thank torrents for that I
suppose?), his English is impeccable, and the time zone thing isn't usually an
issue because we all have crazy sleep/work schedules anyway.

On a related note, using 99designs, Crowdspring, Elance, etc are great early
on and then if you find someone you really like, hire them!

That being said, Tisho says that is a pretty idealized picture of Bulgaria...
Folks aren't necessarily as highly experienced & motivated as this would
suggest, and taxes aren't as low as this article suggests either.

~~~
huyegn
We're also looking into getting a designer for our site, I'd be interested in
hearing how you managed the project.

When you started with your designer, how did you convey the type of look and
feel that you wanted to give your business? Did you point them to other
similar looking sites or was he/she the one that pushed forward the final
vision and design (which BTW looks great)?

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recoiledsnake
If you can bridge the time zone, communication and culture gaps, then more
power to you. And I am not saying that sarcastically. Outsourcing might save a
startup enough money to stay afloat long or to make better features to
interest VCs/customers.

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mkramlich
Summary: consider Bulgaria for outsourcing your software development.

As typically happens, no mention of language issues, culture issues, timezone
differences, or what kind of talent level you're getting for your dollar. All
warm bodies are equal myth, etc. In theory, it can work great. Sometimes, it
does. Often it doesn't. Caveat emptor.

