Hot answers tagged outsourcing
43
Do you need more programmers or do you need a marketing person?
I think you might want to evaluate your priorities. If you are the brains behind the software, perhaps what you need is to target a marketing person(s) who can help you with your product.
Have you considered affiliate networks that sell your software for you? What going to a college and ...
40
First of all, you won't be able to distinguish a great programmer from a good programmer or a good programmer from a lousy programmer until it's too late.
Second, building a dev team (and especially a remote team) won't free up your time unless one of them takes on the lead dev role. Increasing the team size increases all sorts of communication and ...
32
This is coming from a programmer.
Usually great programmers won't work for you unless you're pretty great yourself. And you won't know what "great" is until you're at least good enough to know that most of what you've been writing is total shit - until you've seen the difference between good code and great code.
Beyond that, great programmers, a lot of ...
28
I am from Germany and have worked with several companies from India. In addition, I have some friends who outsourced to Russia. Our experience is all the same: The biggest problem remains the communication. If you want something easy, like a Wordpress template, it might work fine. But if your app is a little complex, you need to write down every little ...
23
Virtuosi Media makes some good points, but there's something worth remembering here -- according to the CIA world factbook, the GNP of Bangladesh is $94.6Bn at the official exchange rate, which is the exchange rate an outsourced worker would hope to get. With a population of about 156m, that's about $600/year GNP/capita, or less than $2 a day. Now, the ...
22
Outsourcing software development can be a positive option but has major downsides. I've been badly burned with outsourced developers so here are 3 lessons that might help you.
First of all, realize that the more valuable the software you want to create, the less likely you are to successfully outsource its development. In other words, if your software might ...
17
I live in Bangladesh. Even I think rates as low as $1 or $2 is way too low. I don't work in outsourcing/freelancing sites myself, but I have friends and colleagues who do that (I also write code for a living, but that's a full time job). The going rate for them (for development work, not data entry) is something around $10-$20 or more - which is still quite ...
14
prepping for downvotes...
I'm sorry, but thats a BAD idea.
You're saying you want to outsource because your new idea is outside your main competency. And I get your reasoning, but it's the reasoning of the inexperienced.
If you want to become a successful business you can either
Embrace the knowledge required to execute this idea, study hard as hell, ...
13
There are three basic rules when deciding if a designer is worth it:
Look at their portfolio.
Look at their portfolio.
Look at their portfolio.
If you would pay their quote for one of their existing designs, then they are worth it.
If their portfolio does not appeal to you, or is not worth what is being asked, then shop around.
Though they may come ...
13
Last time I worked on a project that used an outside design agency, the results were quite good. The one-time costs were high, but not out of line with a fully-loaded employee. To this day (about 4 years later) the site continues to grow using the same basic design.
Some tips:
If I needed design help on a low-budget project, I'd probably outsource to a ...
13
In order to figure out how much it will cost, you need to know how long it will take. The amount of time a software project will take could vary from 1 day to 10 years. Even an iphone app could take that long. To estimate how long it will take, you need to have a clear functional specification. If you expect to go onto oDesk and eLance and say "I have ...
12
I prefer the 'star team' model to the 'team of stars' model. People that are 'Great Programmers' can be hard to find and keep, and may not be that great for your product. Hiring (and keeping) some reliable people you can coach in your style/product/market might be easier. And although employees bring more work and other issues, you can grow your business or ...
12
I do work for a $1B company whose strength and differentiator from competitors is the "source code". In theory, I can copy the source code onto a disk on key and walk away.
Any programmer you'll work with will have the same potential. So? what's the logical solution? be a 1-man company forever?
You may find out that living in fear and suspicion will be ...
11
I'll be the first to post the pessimist reply that the four hour workweek is not a reality if your primary goal is a four hour workweek. I suppose if you follow the exact steps in Tim's book and aim to create a product-based business where everything can be automated, then the 4 hour workweek is possible. But for virtually any other type of startup business, ...
11
Eh, guys before me have brought this up, but you absolutely get what you pay for. If the occasion calls for a designer in the first place, might it be worth the $300 to get some decent talent on the job?
If it's not worth it or not in your budget, you could use free vector graphics and/or do it yourself. All you need is to download some open source software ...
9
Use Google Apps for Business: http://google.com/a
It's inexpensive, scales like crazy, tons of space, and you can use either IMAP or of course the excellent web-based mail system.
As a bonus you also get your own calendar, doc-sharing system, etc., just like Google has anyway. If you don't need all that (I don't), it doesn't matter -- the email alone is ...
9
Phew, that's a hard one. Maybe I'll come back with better ideas later. For now, some initial thoughts:
You have written about this algorithm you have, but not much about your own dreams and desires. What do you want? Maybe your invention can lead to a pile of money, but money alone isn't a good reason for becoming an entrepreneur.
Absolutely keep your ...
9
I've recently brainstormed up an OCR related technology - here are my notes.
Create an API that third party folks can use - A lot of data is currently being captured at the consumer level and used at Evernote. They are still small and growing rapidly - create a model that allows their users to use your algorithm.
Create an iPhone/Android app that can ...
9
In my opinion it would look even more amateur for investors if a startup didnt outsource large parts of its IT infrastructure to someone else. Startups need to focus on their business offering, build their applications, and not worry about server racks for exchange or LAMP blades.
From experience, my wife works for a 3 year old startup that raised 10's of ...
9
I have this question quite a lot, the answer I usually come to is to have an escrow ... this means we place the source code with a third party (lawyer) every release or every 3 months.
If any of the "sunset" conditions are reached (like my company goes out of business, or the relationship breaks down) then the client gets the source code from the lawyer so ...
9
You need to pay the bills and feed your family, so your options are that you take ages working on it part-time, in which case if you are entering a competitive market, then you may be too late.
Another option is that you can try to find VC funding for your idea that will allow you to put full time hours in and get it completed and out the door faster. ...
8
Running a virtual office is not that easy, believe me >_>.
Properly managing a virtual office depends on your scale. For instance, if you're only dealing with a group of two or three, its pretty easy to stay on the same page on a constant or almost basis using simple communication methods like IM, email, whiteboards/screensharing, and voice/video chat. ...
8
We are a very successful Silicon Valley startup and we don't have a single server on our office network. Everything is in the cloud. Gmail and Google Apps, bug tracking, SVN hosting, dev/qa servers, CRM, telecom...everything. The fact is, your secrets probably aren't very valuable and a snapshot of your company is of little use. Companies create value over ...
8
You bring up some very good points about the moral aspects of outsourcing. However, outsourcing doesn't necessarily mean that you need to ignore those aspects. Consider:
You can be flexible with hours. In many cases, it really isn't necessary to have the outsourced workers work the same hours. By having a detailed project description and scope and a few ...
8
The other two answers miss the point that the person being hired is IN THE US.
IANAL, but IMO, these individuals are truly contractors (unless you tell them where and when to be and the hours they must work, aka the IRS regulations regarding contractors and employees) and you're not required to pay them minimum wage, benefits, withhold taxes, etc.
That ...
8
You get what you pay for. In this case, you'll get someone using an automated tool to post spammy links and messages on forums and blogs that aren't moderated well. If that's the image that you want for your business, go for it, but I wouldn't recommend it if you want to have a serious business. It's the digital equivalent to having someone spray paint your ...
8
I've been in your boat: sadly, there's nothing you can do once the money's gone, especially if it's overseas.
Write it off and consider it a lesson-learned. I then came to the conclusion that you can't start an internet business if you don't know how to program. It takes about a year or so of struggling full-time to get up to speed with programming but the ...
7
I don't have a site to point you to, but I do have some advice. If a lot of your tasks are small then consider doing them yourself. The overhead of managing small tasks is high when you compare the amount of time it takes to do the work. You have to issue the instructions, manage the progress, check the work etc and it all takes time. Arguably more time than ...
7
this is Nicole from Rent a Coder.
As many have suggested (thank you all), our service is appropriate for hiring workers for this type of work. I'd like to point out a few differences between our service and services like Elance, oDesk, and Guru however, since those differences could influence the success of an outsourced project.
Selection of workers:
The ...
7
Here are some of the things I tell my web development clients when they need to cut costs:
Use open source wherever possible. There's no reason to pay to develop a login system, search capabilities, common blog features, etc. from scratch when it's already been done and you are free to use what exists. Using open source lets you focus your development ...
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