⌛ Gold Discovered in Dumaguete

Pedro and Arie thanks for your very informative posts. I really didn't know about the outsourcing in India, especially what you touched on. Just to let you know, I don't blame the students for their lack of understanding regarding the English language. I blame the teachers and the schools. It is beyond me how they can hold out their greedy hands and take money for "not giving a quality" education. And from what I have learned the schools are always holding out their hands for extra funds throughout the school year. And here is what I really have trouble with. The parents of many of these students do not have much money. They end up doing without, scrape and save for their child's education. Their child graduates, has a great party and starts at Lee Plaza the next day as a clerk. Please tell me what this all about?

This really bothers me allot but on top of this is that most of the Philippinos I have met with regards to my kind of work are very bright. I just wonder how well they could do if they were taught by legitimate teachers and had the opportunity to use a computer in their own home. In my opinion, I would never send my child to a "university" here in the Philippines. I would home school them and have them take various tests at a regular university in Canada for their degrees. In Canada you actually challenge various courses they have by taking a test without having to actually attend a class.

Well that's my 2 cents worth today.

 

re india IT outsourcing
i did one project there and had a few semi outsourced teams from there in IT. if u test properly, u will find appropriate people. the problem is in the presumptions the the purchaser of services makes (e.g. i got some one with a doctorate and 5 years experience for 10% of the manhattan price - wrong u are not making a like for like comparison).

the reason for the quality of indian staff, is that computer degrees attract the best graduates, who have been enticed by the opporturities in IT that provide the best salaries (about 5 times what a doctor makes). education is really pushed there on the top 10%, it is necessary for cast and marriage and all instruction is in english because of the 2000 languages
there are some great programmers there check Online Office, Word Processor, Spreadsheet, Presentation, CRM and more dumdum.com. ibm have moved $5 billion pa of work there in the last few years without much disruption. but good staff are very brand focused and will only join a multi national, which is the exact opposite to the west where great staff will largely follow projects they are interested in, without ever getting loyal to a firm.

here u will get a myriad of people available, but assessment are made on the basis of qualifications not ability. the interviewees tend to be shy, so that is a no starter in evaluation. u have to test and test thoroughly, train lots and include business processes in the training. quality control and detail management always has to be higher in outsourced work, which is extra work for managers, that do not want to do it or can not do it and the problem gets blamed on cultural issues

view recruitment the same as in the west where the average lead time to attract someone in the west in 63-85 days depending on position and u are in no way guaranteed to get quality. do not be in a rush to recruit here, work ethic and aptitude are a much better assessment than, my girlsfriend's sister's friend has a degree

viewing things on a macro level, here is the big fallacy of outsourced work. it is cheap. no it is cheaper, in programming if the company is well run, it is about 53% of western costs to develop a like for like produce, if the company is badly run they will loose everything
with outsourcing if a company decides to let another company manage its business processes, they can get into serious problems, teletech selling telephone plans in australia as an affiliate seller working on pure commission basis is fine, basic customer support fine. but more than that and companies can get themselves into big problems

as a proviso - dumaguete is not the best place to look for trained people. it has the allusion of an educated place with multiple universities but they are trained for export abroad or to the bigger cities
most of the skilled people i have met got there skill somewhere else or are tied to a family business. there are very talented people around with alot of potential but alas most have to leave after the degree

on a personal note franco - u could easily get blog or content work done remotely. then u would have a infinitely larger selection of freelance contractors available, from india or the philippines and u would have employment flexibility. email, skype and publish approval in wordpress is all that is required

 

Great Overview About Outsourcing in India

Barramac thanks for your overview on outsourcing in India. Very informative. I have had so much trouble getting a good programmer in here in the Philippines that I am going to have to get someone from India to do this work. I have tried very hard to have it done here in the Philippines but it is next to impossible. I have found that for the most part programmers here want similar prices to those in the US. And they would rather NOT do a project if they do not get these prices. I have also found that once you pay them up front (never, never do this), they take forever to finish the project. It's too bad really.

At any rate I do have a very good team for SEO. I don't think I could ever get the quality of work in India to compare with my team here in Dumaguete.

Franco:o

 

Outsourced developers certainly need good management. Some of those developers aren't even cheaper than developers you can get in the U.S. as Franko pointed out. Personally, I think it's great they are charging so much because that probably means they have a solid enough client base they can get those rates.

"U.S. rates" can mean many things though. Freelanceswitch did a survey and found the median for web developers is around USD $50 per hour but I know developers who charge twice that or more.

Developers at those higher rates shouldn't really need to be managed though. They should be good enough that they can manage you. In other words, the top tier developers know the game well. They have seen good projects and disastrous projects. They often know when a project is a disaster waiting to heppen before they even make a bid.

Sometimes you get a client which is at that same level as a good developer though. That makes for a good relationship.

Ultimately, rates mean nothing though. I have had to completely redo work done by developers from India whom nearly charge as much as I do. In that case we were just trying to save time rather than money and we didn't even get that accomplished. Most other developers would get started and we would never hear from them again. It's certainly a minefield.