The scum of overseas software outsourcing
Having been in the software outsourcing industry for a few good years, I’ve seen a lot, and honestly I would think twice before I outsource a project to a company that’s located outside of my country.
I used to work with a large number of clients and lately the only type of service I had time to do for most of them was to consult or simply to give my opinion on how the projects they outsourced are going. I must say, if I didn’t have this chance, I would have never seen the ugly, loathsome face of overseas outsourcing.
I can’t name one project that someone outsourced outside the United States that I was impressed with. No doubt, I’m sure there are plenty of good outsourcers in India and Eastern Europe, however finding them is like finding gold, you have to go through a lot of dirt.
If you have a large project, that’s time sensitive and needs to follow certain standards of quality, steer away from outsourcing overseas or you’ll likely end up with a decoy. You usually realize this when the project’s deadline has nearly arrived, at least half of your funds are now in the possession of the outsourcers, and all you have is a halfassed website or application that’s probably not even worth continuing because the code was just put together. I would be a hypocrite to say that it doesn’t happen to me to pass deadlines; however for as long as you are on the right path towards completion and you are being honest to your client there should be no hard feelings.
At first I thought they’re doing this because they’re taking too many projects at a time, but now I believe that this is how they do business - they do a quarter of the work but they get paid at least half.
Aside from no reliability, time zone and communication problems, it’s very difficult to sue them, get your money back and the damages they owe you for lost time.
Think about this the next time you want to trust an overseas outsourcer with your project.
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January 12th, 2007 at 8:58 pm
“However finding them is like finding gold, ”
Well said indeed. You need to verify whether they have a physical address. call them up and talk with them, check whether they have necessary credentials and also verify whether their programmers are certified. For example if you want to outsource a php project, look out for Zend certified php programmers and so on.
We wish you all luck in your journey of outsourcing.