[thelist] Outsourcing

[Shane Miller]

I have worked with vendors in India off and on for about six years, and
I would generally agree with Peter.  I wouldn't go there.  It's never
really worked out for me, though I've done it sometimes for strategic
reasons when they have turned around and hired me to help consult with
their processes, etc.

If you decide to go the route of hiring programmers in India, I would be
happy to forward to you the contact information of the most reliable
contact I have found there.  He's not a programmer himself but he lived
and worked in Chicago a few years, he has extensive experience working
with and for Americans, he has many resources in India and can help you
get the job done better than anybody else I've found over the years.

That said, I would still suggest you contract the work within North
America.

________________________________

Shane Miller
President
Call Centers 24x7
116 West Eighth Street
Port Angeles, WA 98362
T 360.452.4527 F 360.452.5399
http://www.callcenters24x7.com

Helping Small Businesses Compete Globally 

-----Original Message-----
From: thelist-bounces at lists.evolt.org
[mailto:thelist-bounces at lists.evolt.org] On Behalf Of Peter Brunone
(EasyListBox.com)
Sent: Monday, January 30, 2006 8:07 AM
To: hershelr at netvision.net.il; thelist at lists.evolt.org;
thelist at lists.evolt.org
Subject: Re: [thelist] Outsourcing

If I were you, his savings due to outsourcing would be soaked up by my
exorbitant fee which would be necessary to make it worth my while to
deal with that situation.

But then again I've heard all the bad stories -- seen the results of a
few as well) --and few of the good.  Time zones wouldn't be a problem
for you, but communication... well, that's another story.

Cheers,

Peter

 From: Hershel Robinson hershelr at netvision.net.il

I was approached by a potential client last week. He has a medium sized 
web app which has undergone such patching over the years that he is 
ready for a rebuild from scratch. He is working on the proposal now. His

plan is to outsource the actual programming to cheap programmers in 
India or the former Soviet Union from one of the various websites 
offering such services.

He told me that his research indicates that "if you do your due 
diligence there are some very reliable programmers." He is looking to 
build in PHP/MySQL using an MVC pattern.

He is looking to hire me (or someone like me) to be a technical manager 
to oversee the outsourced programmers and to understand the code and to 
be able to arrange a transfer to a different outsource firm in the 
middle should things go sour and also to be able to work within the code

after the build is done, for further changes etc.

What do people think about his idea of outsourcing? I wonder about the 
quality of the code which will be produced. The quality of the backend 
code, how true it will be to an MVC pattern, the quality of the produced

frontend code, how valid (HTML and CSS) it will be, will it use CSS 
layout or even CSS for appropriate formatting.

Even if we require all these things from the programmers, what will be 
the quality of the code itself and therefore how easy it will be to 
continue to work in it?

I have not given a final answer to this client and were I to present a 
strong case, he might be open to changing his plans. I myself am not 
convinced either way. It could well be that either the code will not be 
bad, or that it won't be really bad, yet it's still worth the savings he

realizes by outsourcing.

Anyone have any experience to share?

Thanks,
Hershel
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