[LRUG] Rails / Web óutsourcing

Thu Nov 6 00:27:39 PST 2014

>
> Third: There is no way to "make them (your developers, or anyone else)
> feel invested". Employing someone as a permanent vs. a contract employee is
> not going to make them feel anything (other than under-valued, possibly),
> certainly not in a startup. Similarly, research has proved the empirical
> knowledge that equity/options/... don't make people feel invested either,
> see Daniel Pink's book "Drive" for more on this. Creating a work-place, a
> team, a culture, where everyone feels part of something more than 'a
> business' is not something that happens overnight, and not something that
> most people can manage. Ask some of the more experienced startup LRUGers if
> you doubt it.

Apologies for the blogspam, but I enjoyed this part of your email so much
that I wrote myself a whole blogpost on a closely related tangent:
http://www.happybearsoftware.com/hiring-and-keeping-developers-for-the-rest-of-us.html

On Tue, Nov 4, 2014 at 6:48 PM, Sleepyfox <sleepyfox at gmail.com> wrote:

> @Matthew makes some good points, most of which I agree with, instead I'd
> like to address some of @Loius' original comments which I feel miss some of
> the subtleties of the issue.
>
> There are many reasons that you might choose to out-source, including but
> not limited to:
>
>    1. You can't find good developers in London
>    2. You can't find cheap developers in London
>
> @Loius mentions the first problem. London isn't alone here, it's hard to
> find good developers anywhere, not because it's hard to find developers
> (anyone can do that) but because it's hard to find *good* ones. There are
> many reasons for this. If you doubt this assertion, I direct you towards
> the flourishing developer recruitment business.
>
> The second is more of an issue: London is expensive, therefore to pay the
> bills a developer has to charge a lot more than they would if they lived in
> a physical location that has a lower cost-of-living. I believe that this is
> actually a more general issue, namely:
>
>    - You can't afford to run a business in London
>
> If you can't afford staff in the location, you need to be running your
> business elsewhere. It really is that simple, software development is no
> different to any other kind of business.
>
> As to @Loius' solutions:
>
>    1. Just hire a dev
>    2. Just hire a lead dev who can hire devs
>    3. "Make them feel invested"
>
> First: hiring developers (good ones) is hard, see above. It takes time and
> money. The penalty for failure can be high, certainly high enough that you
> can easily kill a SME/startup by making a bad hiring choice. Outsourcing
> moves some (but not all) of the risk of this to a third party, that is why
> you pay a premium. The trading of money for risk is a perfectly valid and
> time-honoured business strategy.
>
> Second: hiring someone who is not only a good dev, but also possesses the
> time, project and people-management skills to hire and manage a team of
> good devs is the proverbial purple unicorn. Good luck.
>
> Even if you hit the jackpot and hire a good dev manager who is possessed
> of the ability to hire good devs, getting said good devs to work together
> as a productive team rather than a group of individuals pulling in
> different directions is similarly a non-trivial problem.
>
> Third: There is no way to "make them (your developers, or anyone else)
> feel invested". Employing someone as a permanent vs. a contract employee is
> not going to make them feel anything (other than under-valued, possibly),
> certainly not in a startup. Similarly, research has proved the empirical
> knowledge that equity/options/... don't make people feel invested either,
> see Daniel Pink's book "Drive" for more on this. Creating a work-place, a
> team, a culture, where everyone feels part of something more than 'a
> business' is not something that happens overnight, and not something that
> most people can manage. Ask some of the more experienced startup LRUGers if
> you doubt it.
>
> This set of problems are sufficiently 'wicked' that for many businesses,
> particularly those for whom software is not a core competency, out-sourcing
> is a very reasonable strategy. Paying someone else who has already got a
> team of capable, invested developers who work well together is simply a
> sound business decision to trade money for time and risk.
>
> YMMV
>
> @sleepyfox
> --
> P.S. I must declare my investment - and hence the bias of my opinion - the
> very reason I started a consulting business was to help startups find a
> solution to these non-trivial problems.
>
>
>
> On 3 November 2014 22:55, Matthew O'Riordan <matthew.oriordan at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Hi Louis
>>
>> Thanks for the reply, I had no idea that óutsourcing has become an evil
>> word ;)
>>
>> If we could find an individual who is capable and remote I’d be more than
>> willing to go down that route.  Managing the team is not an issue at all,
>> in fact I’d almost prefer to not have the indirection of project managers
>> if at all possible. Any advice on how to go down that route of finding
>> remote developers on a contract to perm basis?
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Matthew O'Riordan
>>
>> On 1 Nov 2014, at 10:36, Louis Goff-Beardsley <louis at infinitiumglobal.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> Just found this in my Junk mail folder, looks like óutsourcing is a
>> filtered term.
>>
>> Unless the project is too small to bother with, instead of hiring an
>> outsourcing company you can save yourself a ton of money and get quality
>> development done by just hiring remote developers yourself. Outsourcing
>> companies markup on developer time is usually double what they are paying
>> the developers, you can use the same money and hire the developers
>> directly, thus enabling you to hire more senior developers for your money.
>> Alternatively you can hire EU based people that can visit regularly, rather
>> than non-eu based people you’ll never meet IRL.
>>
>> If what you need doing is going to take more than one developer and
>> you’re worried about managing people and that’s why you’re going to an
>> outsourcing company you can get around this by making your first hire an
>> experienced hands-on tech lead who’s well used to managing other remote
>> developers.
>>
>> If its short term, most remote developers are happy with fixed term
>> contracts or ad hoc day-rates, you don’t have to commit to hiring them
>> continuously.
>>
>> If you’re using outsourcing long term (as a solution because you’re
>> struggling to hire in London) you might as well hire remote developers
>> directly and make them feel invested rather than just shipping code for an
>> offshore consultancy.
>>
>> The only drawback is that you’ve got to take ownership of interviewing,
>> but you’d probably have to invest the same effort into vetting outsourcing
>> companies, plus if the first person you hire is good, they’ll handle it for
>> you in the future.
>>
>> Best, Louis.
>>
>> On Thu, Oct 30, 2014 at 11:46 AM, Matthew O'Riordan <
>> matthew.oriordan at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Hi all
>>
>> I have a Rails website we've been developing for some time with a partner
>> in Hong Kong, however they are now unable to finish the project due to
>> their workload.
>>
>> Whilst the distance has not been an issue to date, I think the time zone
>> gap has been a bit problematic. As such, I am now considering using a
>> Ruby/Rails development team / agency somewhere in Europe to both finish and
>> continue to maintain the website.  Clearly there are cost advantages doing
>> this work outside of the UK and I'd like to explore that whilst I still
>> have the time to do so. I have outsourced project work numerous times for
>> other technology stacks and I have had mixed results, with some great
>> successes and some unfortunate Dodos.
>>
>> Have any of you LRUGers worked with any Rails teams outside of the UK and
>> in Europe that you could recommend? To be clear, I am not willing to
>> compromise quality for cost, so am only looking for capable developers.
>>
>> Thanks for any help you can offer.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Matthew
>>
>> http://linkedin.com/in/lemon
>>
>> Sent from my phone
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