The biggest problem with hiring foreign contractors is not that they're foreign, but that the mindset required to hire them cannot attract good hackers. More specifically, the kind of people who decide to save money on development by hiring offshore contractors are usually the kind of people who think programmers are interchangeable parts and can't tell the difference between a good and bad developer.
But even if you are a hacker yourself and a good judge of programming talent, it's very hard for you to find good people when you are in a different continent. Think about how difficult it is to attract good talent right here in America. Even if you're in an area with a comparatively high concentration of talented programmers (let's say Silicon Valley), you will probably not find the best people by waiting for them to come to you. You have to get into the right circles, or get referrals from people you trust, or go to meetups like Startup School that attract the kind of people you want, etc. etc. Now what if you were thousands of miles away? Would you be able to do any of that? Maybe via websites like this or by collaborating on open source projects, but I doubt that those are the avenues by which companies are hiring foreign contractors.
I know of a few companies with solid offshore development operations that are staffed with very good people. In every single case, there was someone from the company on the ground in that country, finding and hiring people in the same way that the company would do in the states.
"The biggest problem with hiring foreign contractors is not that they're foreign, but that the mindset required to hire them cannot attract good hackers. More specifically, the kind of people who decide to save money on development by hiring offshore contractors are usually the kind of people who think programmers are interchangeable parts and can't tell the difference between a good and bad developer."
As someone who lives and works in Bangalore, India, I can confirm this.
Great programmers in Ruby (or any other language) are just as rare here as anywhere else.
They have a distinct aversion to these "we have done the core work now you clean up / tweak the code at 20$/hr" offers. Someone who is really good at programming can work at google/yahoo/amazon or found a startup. Why should she work at 20 $ / hr for clowns like the author of this post?
"But even if you are a hacker yourself and a good judge of programming talent, it's very hard for you to find good people when you are in a different continent. Think about how difficult it is to attract good talent right here in America. Even if you're in an area with a comparatively high concentration of talented programmers (let's say Silicon Valley), you will probably not find the best people by waiting for them to come to you. You have to get into the right circles, or get referrals from people you trust, or go to meetups like Startup School that attract the kind of people you want, etc. etc. Now what if you were thousands of miles away?"
This is exactly true. The only way to find good hackers in India (or Argentina for that matter) is to know good people on the ground before you start your search. And how many people in the United States are in a position to do that?
Here is a hint for people who insist on hiring offshore resources "blind". Ask for evidence of open source projects or contributions. This immediately eliminates the riffraff who swarm during a boom (and the software industry is booming in Bangalore). Every decent programmer I know in Bangalore has or contributes to an open source project.
Ask to see a blog so you can judge written communication skills. Every good programmer I know has a blog.
Once you've done all this, make sure you have interesting work to offer. When you outsource garbage work you get roaches. Why are you surprised at this?
I've heard that India is not really low cost anymore. Also, IT industry has been booming for years in India. I wonder if there is a "next cheap" country coming up that will catch the next outsourcing wave.
A few years ago I worked with developers from eastern Europe, and they were very capable for 1/3 or 1/4 of the price.
"I've heard that India is not really low cost anymore."
This is not completely true. If you are trying to outsource to companies, sure it is getting more expensive all the time. They have to pay legions of useless managers / "process control" (think ISO 9000) people from the money the programmers earn.
If you have interesting work, you can get good programmers at 25-50 $/hr. You could get work done on a fixed fee basis as well (which is what I would reccomend). 10 - 20 k$ would get you a lot of code (assuming you found good people in the first place).
A lot of people would like to work from home on decent projects vs being at the mercy of the outsourcing companies where you have little control over what technology/projects you work on. The sheer size of the country's outsourcing industry obscures the fact that there are a lot of good programmers who would want to work on more flexible terms, especially for startups. In that sense, India is still very much unexplored territory.
I think there are plenty of programmers in America that are this incompetent.
Also, he writes "all things being equal, a guy with a CS degree, C++ experience, and a year with Ruby on Rails who's asking $20 an hour is going to be more appealing than a guy with the same background asking $60 an hour."
$20/hour for someone who claims to know Rails and C++? This has to be too good to be true, because anyone with a clue would want about 10x that.
All in all, I see where the author is coming from... but I don't think his unqualified assertions are correct.
The assumption is qualified by the preface "all things being equal." However, the post confuses me. His story quite clearly demonstrates that all other things are _not_ equal, and that "a CS degree, C++ experience, and a year with Ruby on Rails who's asking $20 an hour" is not enough evidence to determine whether someone is competent or not.
He also gives an example of a test of competency that seems to work quite well for his purposes.
The thing that confuses me about the story is that instead of writing a blog post explaining that you need to pay more attention to tests and less to paper qualifications, he seems to be lamenting the fact that the qualifications do not mean what he thinks they mean.
He tosses out the "all other things being equal" phrase rather carelessly, IMO. I think he would be well-advised to spend a lot more time with the idea that all other things are rarely equal when it comes to hiring programmers.
Anyone with a clue who claims to know Rails and C++ would want about 200$/hour?...
On an unrelated note, I find it funny how the french equivalent of "I see where the author is coming from" is "Je vois où l'auteur veut en venir" ("I see where the author wants to go"). Come from, go to...
?!... french is actually my first language. I understand what you're saying, but I seriously always pictured "en venir à" as going to somewhere from the perspective of the person that's moving, never as someone coming from somewhere from the perspective of the... goal? This is confusing...
edit: I think I understand why I picture them as opposite idioms: "I see where you're coming from" seems to refer to the past, like for example if you ask someone from where he's (litterally) coming from (ex: what country?), you're asking where he was before. Whereas "je vois où tu veux en venir" seems to refer to the future, you're talking about where he wants to be... See what I'm saying?
Bien sûr. Je suis australienne moi-même, mais j'habite à paris depuis 5 ans... Je viens de "Googler" 'en venir à', et pour chaque résultat sur la première page, il y a une phrase en anglais qui correspond utilisant 'come'.
Si je traduisait ton expression 'je vois où tu veux en venir', je le traduirais par 'I see where you are going', ce qui n'est pas du tout pareil à 'I see where you are coming from'. En fait, pour moi, la bonne traduction de 'I see where you are coming from' est plutôt 'je vois ce que tu veux dire', où un truc du genre...
Mais bravo quand même. Dans mon premier post j'avais oublié l'expression 'en venir' (sans le 'à'), où effectivement la traduction de 'venir' est 'to go'.
Oh, I just realised that I didn't explain the most important thing - the difference between 'I see where you are coming from' and ' I see where you are going'.
The first is more of an acknowledgement that I have understood the premises that your argument is based on. I may use this expression to indicate that I now agree with you, having understood your premises, or it may indicate that I am going to argue against your premises - 'I see where you are coming from, but your premise that we are losing market share as a result of the project is false - statistics show...)
The second (I see where you are going) is more a way of saying that I have understood the base of your argument, and I know what the conclusion is going to be. Typically people use this to cut someone off before that person arrives at their (now redundant) conclusion.
My apologies to everyone else for spamming the list with this finer point of language, but as someone living in a country where my native language isn't spoken, I often wish that people would help clear up my misconceptions, so I'm doing the same thing for someone else.
What's missing from this rant is evidence. The author comes accross one incompetent programmer from Argentina and then goes off to state that Asians and Argentin[i?]ans have the wrong mindset to be a developer?
It may be true that $20 an hour programmers from Argentina can afford to be sloppy since they are, after all, dirt cheap, but I would've liked to see some more examples.
In my personal experience, I haven't come across a non-US trained programmer who lives up to my expectations.
One thing that I see frequently and deeply disturbs me is a trait I've seen among nearly all of the SE Asian and Indian developers I've met: they won't think for themselves.
I don't mean that they can't solve problems. No, they can eventually produce something that fits the bill most of the time. Rather, there is a deep-rooted cultural mindset that is dead-set against exploratory learning. It's a respect thing. Knowledge is considered something that is passed down to you from someone who is elder/wiser.
Americans, on the other hand, are very much geared towards asking questions and exploring them on their own. For example: an American student might not think twice about questioning what a teacher in school is saying. For an Indian student that is absolutely out of the question.
Maybe? Dunno? Just a thought.
P.S. This also explains "plz send me the codes" syndrome, where people flood a message board or blog with a similar plea and their email address.
What sample size of non-US trained programmers have you worked with?
I've worked with many from all parts of the world, including many SE Asian/Indian devs. And I can't think of one who I would qualify as 'not thinking for themselves'.
Of course, I wouldn't generalize this to all s/w devs from these countries, but I'd be willing to bet that the proportions are similar to devs from other countries.
Disclosure: I'm a 'non-US trained' programmer, having graduated from a Canadian university.
You get what you pay for. If he would probably be paying market rate and not 1/3 of the market rate, he would probably have better applications. Good people simply won't apply at a lousy 20$ a hour.
But even if you are a hacker yourself and a good judge of programming talent, it's very hard for you to find good people when you are in a different continent. Think about how difficult it is to attract good talent right here in America. Even if you're in an area with a comparatively high concentration of talented programmers (let's say Silicon Valley), you will probably not find the best people by waiting for them to come to you. You have to get into the right circles, or get referrals from people you trust, or go to meetups like Startup School that attract the kind of people you want, etc. etc. Now what if you were thousands of miles away? Would you be able to do any of that? Maybe via websites like this or by collaborating on open source projects, but I doubt that those are the avenues by which companies are hiring foreign contractors.
I know of a few companies with solid offshore development operations that are staffed with very good people. In every single case, there was someone from the company on the ground in that country, finding and hiring people in the same way that the company would do in the states.