[LRUG] Rails / Web óutsourcing

Mon Nov 3 14:50:44 PST 2014

Hi Matthew

We’ve chatted before, good to hear from you.

Largely I agree with what you’re saying, and I certainly do not think a time zone difference is a problem that cannot be overcome.  I fear that perhaps my initial post was misleading, the experience to date has not been bad, it’s been good and we’ve done some great work I am proud of.  However, with a bit of hindsight, experience and reflection, and being put in a position where I now have to find a new partner / partners to work with to complete, maintain and hopefully evolve the web application in the very near future, I wanted to take stock of how things went.  My sense is that the time zone difference introduced obstacles that encouraged us to work less effectively.  As you have said, frequent video chats would probably have solved most of the issues, however because our day was starting when our colleagues in Hong Kong were finishing their day, this just didn’t happen enough.  So if I had to do it again with the same time zone difference I have no doubt it could work.  However, I’d prefer a working relationship that naturally flows for us all, and I think a similar time zone helps when communication for us is so important.

Regards,

Matthew O'Riordan

> On 3 Nov 2014, at 08:26, Matthew Rudy Jacobs <matthewrudyjacobs at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I should probably bite on this too.
> 
> But, unfortunately, I'm going to write a whole essay.
> 
> TLDR; remote working requires clear goals, and you should definitely hire me.
> 
> @essay.start!
> 
> So I've spent most of the past five years living in UTC+8, and have tried working remotely a number of times.
> 
> Sometimes as the sole developer, and other times as a member of a larger team.
> 
> This is "long distance remote working" in both the sense of physical distance and time difference.
> 
> In UTC+8 any sustainable work life balance will probably result in no working overlap with London office hours, and the 12-20 hour flight time + ~£700 flight cost means that frequent visits to the office are undesirable.
> 
> Generally a project goes like this.
> 
> Week 1: very clear goals, lots gets done
> Week 2: nearing completion of goals, push to finish on time
> Week 3: not quite sure what the client wants, but have some ideas myself, get lots done
> Week 4: no idea what the client wants, take the rest of the week off
> Week 5: have a video call, goals become clear again... repeat
> 
> Kicking off a new project the goals are clear, so I can just get on with it.
> 
> But as time goes on my understanding of the project's vision becomes more and more distant.
> 
> The only remedy to this is frequent video chats. But that can be difficult to arrange when you're both busy, and 8 hours apart.
> 
> So here's my remedy to these problems.
> 
> Always deal in small, self contained, closed scope projects.
> 
> They can be;
> 
> Prototypes or new distinct services:
> 
> "Elasticsearch is too slow for our specific use case, let's try building our own timeline filtering data store"
> 
> Distinct new features on an existing system:
> 
> "go add recurring payment integration with X gateway"
> 
> Time boxed, open scope projects:
> 
> "You've got 2 weeks to improve api performance"
> 
> Above all these mini projects require clarity and trust.
> 
> But there's an added complication;
> 
> Teams are made of people.
> 
> distance makes socialising hard, and being the only member of the team who can't come to the pub is annoying and isolating.
> 
> Generally startups who have a lot of remote workers do physical meetups a few times a year.
> 
> That's great, but a few times a year does not make a tightly knitted team.
> 
> It may seem unconstructive, but posting stupid jokes on hipchat actually is a great way to bond.
> 
> Anyway...
> 
> That was very long.
> 
> Time for a walk.
> 
> Oh yeah, and maybe hire me.
> 
> 2014/11/2 上午1:35 於 "Louis Goff-Beardsley" <louis at infinitiumglobal.com <mailto:louis at infinitiumglobal.com>> 寫道：
> 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 <mailto: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 <http://linkedin.com/in/lemon>
> 
> Sent from my phone
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