Marketing & SEO Discussion List - LED Digest

Dear Adam and other LED readers,

I am working my way through "The World is Flat" by Friedman. It would appear that those of us who do not adjust to and embrace outsourcing a certain amount of work to highly skilled but cheaper labor in countries like India and China will fade away like dinosaurs. Unless we bill our work at 20¢ on the dollar, we will be undercut on pricing. At the moment, he suggests, that is restricted to the programming and engineering rather than the creative / design / branding aspect of most work but in time these countries will eat away at even that.

Just how much this affects the single web designer wearing many hats has yet to be addressed. I have many more pages to work through, but in today's rapidly changing world where even your tax accountant may well be outsourcing your tax returns to India to focus on your investment portfolio instead, this is the looming reality.

So how do we stay in business? How do we compete with highly competent programmers who can live in India on $100 a day? How do we make use of this resource on a smaller scale than giants like AT&T and the like? How do we even figure out who to outsource to? Hardly a question of sending for the Calcutta yellow pages or answering spam from such countries touting cheap programming.

Some Indian programmers and entrepreneurs have contributed to this Digest in the past as have others from many countries all with something interesting to contribute. We are now global without a doubt. So where does this leave the little guy?

Has anyone of you outsourced any part or all of your projects to Indian, Chinese or companies from other parts of the world who can do the job for less? What have been your experiences? How have communications worked or not worked?

We know the technology of communications allows the transportation of digital files seamlessly even allows someone at a computer half way around the world to log in and do their work on our own computers, but the communications of ideas and concepts that have cultural and ethnic differences even if a common language is spoken are not always so successful. If good experiences, how did you find the companies involved?

While language can be an issue, I have found the English spoken by those educated in English as a second tongue frequently far more perfect in the language than the slang that passes for English in my home town here in California even if spoken with an accent. And as for politeness, no comparison. But who to pick and for what part of a project?

Big companies will always be able to connect with the top people in other countries. But for us small sole proprietors or even small shops, where do we go? All and any input would be welcome.

Peter D'Aprix - Visual Communications

peterdaprix.com

Rather than looking at overseas vendors as a threat to your creative business, why not consider it an opportunity. You have the same access to these companies as the end-user.

I know many domestic graphic designers that will post jobs on Elance.com or Guru.com and award the job to a company in India, China, Belarus, or another country, and present the work to their clients as a finished product. There is plenty of margin left to make a healthy profit from this arrangement.

If you are a one-man shop this is an easy way to leverage the growth of your business without hiring additional staff. I know this isn't the most popular opinion among domestic designers or other creative type companies, however, I would rather ride the wave than get buried buy it.

We have outsourced 8 different projects in the last 4 months and have been very happy with all aspects of the process. Both Elance and Guru offer the ability to post your payment in an escrow account that allows you to release funds to the vendor only when the work is done to your satisfaction. They both offer private project message boards and job summary pages that allow easy communication and management of all of your projects.

Chuck Hiatt

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I can only speak to my personal experiences and am anxious to hear others. For the last 2 years, we have been involved with off shore outsourcing to India, Canada and Argentina. I, personally, have not been very impressed with the results.

If you can be very precise and nail down your projects with specific and detailed documentation and requirements. You can usually get fairly good results. However, I have not had good results where business processes and / or practices are involved.

I.E. if you have a few static pages that you want created and you document precisely what you want; probably won't have any problem. If you are looking for something like a shopping cart that is very dynamic and interactive, you could have a problem.

Language barrier has also been a problem. Even though English is spoken by both parties, sometimes the meaning of the words can get in the way. What may be assumed in the US, may not be assumed in Asia for example.

Mark Roberts

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Written by Michael Linehan
February 8, 2006

A friend of mine is a headhunter in the tech sector.  She was telling me that many Silicon Valley companies are starting to get a bit disappointed with outsourcing overseas.  Yes, the up-front cost was cheaper, but often quality that was a little under par plus the distance logistics have led to higher maintenance costs.

(Well, where have we seen that before? How many times is the cheap price not, in fact, the best price?)

With the kind of troubleshooting and consulting that may be desirable, some companies are swinging back to seeing the value in having people a short drive or a 1-2 hour flight away.

Michael Linehan

Marketing Alchemy

We have done a couple of different projects with overseas programmers with decent success, HOWEVER, the language barrier is frustrating on larger projects. We found ourselves typing two page email messages and continually asking ourselves if we should phrase something differently so that it might be understood.

In yesterdays paper I was introduced to yackpack.com which might eliminate some of the hassles of these lengthy emails. Think email, but with voice.

We've used a local programmer for recent projects and while he is 300% more expensive, working with him is much easier.

In a nutshell, we've outsourced overseas and plan to do it again, but recently we've enjoyed clear communications with our local programmer.

Gordon Moe, Co-Owner

ebirdseed.com

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Written by Robert Bass
February 10, 2006

> We have done a couple of different projects

> with overseas programmers... however, the

> language barrier is frustrating on larger projects.

> We found ourselves typing two page email messages...

    - Gordon Moe

It is no surprise to me that it takes you two pages of emails to explain to a foreigner what you want when a single sentence will do the trick with an American programmer.

For my money I would never outsource software design and I will tell you why. I speak five languages fluently and I have a working knowledge of six more. I can tell you now that the way we say things in English is totally different in concept and structure than the way things are said, and viewed, in other languages. Some of the simplest phrases we utter everyday, when translated into a foreign language, make absolutely no sense to the native speakers of those languages. This is due to extreme differences in culture and how they see the world as opposed to how we see the world.

Foreign programmers do not speak English as well as we do no matter how long they are speaking it, yet they must learn programming in our language because all software design programs are done in English. Software languages often follow obtuse routes to achieve results, the logic of which is difficult enough for native English speakers to follow but almost impossible for foreigners to follow.

I spent a year in China teaching C++ to college students.  Although C++ is a fairly straight forward programming language if you are fluent in English, it becomes ridiculous to the Chinese due to the language / culture barriers. Out of 35 students only 7 actually passed the course and the headmaster told me that this was a wonderful record as usually in a class of 35 only one or two will get a passing grade.

The problem easily traced to the fact that simple two word programming statements become whole sentences when translated into Chinese and they had extreme difficulty grasping the meanings. For instance, the common C++ command, "Do While.." becomes "When you are doing this do that at the same time" in Chinese. There is no other way to translate it, you can see where the confusion would set in. Multiply that times a thousand other commands and it boggles the mind.

If you pay three times the rate for a local programmer as an overseas programmer but you have to spend hours in emails back and forth trying to get your ideas across in a way they will understand, where is the economy? I write my own code for my website but on occasion have had some coding done on the outside, I am glad to pay whatever the local rate is and have the job done in a matter of hours rather than weeks. In the overall of it, it comes out a lot cheaper in both terms of money and aggravation.

What is that saying? "Penny wise and pound foolish".

Robert Bass, Webmaster

jewelex.com

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Written by David Swiggum
February 10, 2006

Well, I have outsourced myself.  I mean physically. Long time webmaster and SEO in Northern California, now living on the island of Leyte, Philippines 100 yards from a black sand beach. A little tricky setting up microwave broadband, designed my own bamboo tower (had to get above the jungle canopy), and linked with a local university for access.

But the lifestyle is fantastic. A former one man operation, I am slowly educating future employees, very eager to learn. So, in the next couple of years I hope to offer an American supervised outsourcing asset, no language barrior involved.

It has been quite the experience. From an LED'er since issue 113, Mambuhay (similar to Aloha) from Caridad, Leyte, Philippines!

David Swiggum

equiview.com

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Written by C. Currey
February 13, 2006

Outsourcing - do not believe the hype

I have been working with offshore programmers mainly from India for almost 10 years and I can tell you that IMO any 'savings' are short term for the bean-counters' reports and not the final bottom line. While pleasant and courteous in general the results from the programmers are not high. Typically the face contacts are experienced, good and well-versed, but from there it goes downhill hard and fast.

The total ROI (return on investment) IMO is not worth it.  E.g. there is a very definite language barrier, a very definite cultural difference, the programmers that one gets who actually do the coding are not that experienced nor good, the code that I have seen is quick and dirty, the code is practically devoid of in-line comments, the design has had to be done to such fine detail one may as well have had the designer do the coding themselves, the normal frustration of long distance and different time zones loses much in the final product, the costs of manager travel, extra hours and phone costs were tracked elsewhere although they are the costs of offshoring.

Just to give you one simple example, I have seen a project where the colleagues offshore QA'd everything as complete and good.  However, it turned out that because of legal requirements 'real' signatures from someone in person were necessary so all the QA had to be redone onshore.  The bean-counters charged all QA costs including those done offshore to onshore costs.

I have worked as a programmer in many different countries and on multiple projects with offshore programmers both in the U.S. and elsewhere.  IMO it is a bad deal for all involved, including the offshores who are good, but get paid low wages.  The only beneficiaries that I see are the large corporations who are still living off experienced programmers to manage and mentor the offshores, but that will start changing as these programmers either retire or move to other professions because of wage dumping.

Regards,

C. Currey

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Written by Peter D'Aprix
February 13, 2006

> I spent a year in China teaching C++ to college

> students. Although C++ is a fairly straight forward

> programming language if you are fluent in English,

> it becomes ridiculous to the Chinese due to the

> language / culture barriers.

    - Robert Bass

Dear Adam

Having revisited this thread (for which I am most grateful for the input to date and I believe it has been a topic in the past) I would like to inject a bit more at this point.

Robert Bass has introduced a fascinating poste which is way over my head as I am not a programmer. I passed it on to my brother in Australia who has also used programmers from various countries and was interested in his comments and thought perhaps those readers of LED who understand this higher level of programming conversation might agree or take issue with. As follows:

From Michael D'Aprix:

"I am not convinced that Robert Bass is entirely correct in his position.  If what he says was true, then all science and engineering would face the same problem. I have worked with many developers from many nations and some of the neatest, fastest and cleanest code emanated from developers for whom English was most definitely their 2nd language.

"There are some very specific constructural methods for documenting requirements in Object Oriented languages know as "Use Cases" that use a very specific set of terms known as UML (unified modeling language)... all of which is purpose-built to overcome the ambiguities of using conversational language to describe a requirement... which is always fraught with miscommunication. (google the "agile manifesto" and follow the theme from there)

"The norm when teaching advanced languages like C++ commands such as "do while" is to translate back to earlier generation languages such as Cobol, Fortran, Basic or even Assembler (for the true purists!) to explain their meaning in much more specific engineering terms... not plain English which tends to confuse the issue badly.

"From what he says in his poste, I suspect Robert may be a better linguist than he is a programmer but perhaps he did not want to overburden the poste with too large a development of the theme which could become an overly large one if fully explored."

We have certainly heard success stories over the last few days with outsourcing and the recounting of problems involved as well. Communicating certainly seems to be at the heart of outsourcing problems so far rather than programming competence. Knowing the slang that we Americans often use in place of the English language, I wonder how much of the problem lies at our own doorsteps. I hope we can hear more experiences from other countries including programmers in India and China.

Peter D'Aprix

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Hi Currey,

Your comments are quite interesting. My comments are given below:

> I have been working with offshore programmers

> mainly from India for almost 10 years... IMO any

> 'savings' are short term... While pleasant and courteous

> in general the results from the programmers are

> not high. Typically the face contacts are experienced,

> good and well-versed, but from there it goes

> downhill hard and fast.

I am from Mumbai, India and I have been designing and developing web sites for 8 years now. And please let me tell you there are some extremely talented developers here. The issues you are having is because you may have been impressed by the servicing guy of company X, without actually knowing how sound their infrastructure is.

My Uncle -- who has a company in USA -- outsourced his web site to some company here in Mumbai. I came to know about it only 2 months after the work had begun and my uncle was really struggling with this guy. So I got involved and streamlined the process flows cause all their processes were a mess and I had to teach the company quite a bit.

The guy who dealt with my uncle was well educated etc, but his entire setup looked shady as he never let me visit him at his office. If my uncle had only come to me in the first place, he would have saved a lot of headache.

The conclusion being that there are lot of web guys out here in India. You just need to find the ones who fits your requirement well. Safest way would be to work with people who are recommended to you by friends, family and collegues.

> The total ROI... IMO is not worth it... the programmers...

> are not that experienced nor good, the code that I have

> seen is quick and dirty, the code is practically devoid

> of in-line comments,

We have companies in USA and China coming to us not because we are cheaper, but because we can give them an output that is world class. We are competitive in our costs, but that is only secondary to them.

Hope my inputs were of some use.

Warm Regards,

Sunil Bahl

sunmatrix.com

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Having worked as Director of International Business Development for a Russian offshore software development firm, and having offshore-outsourced over 20 of my own personal projects, I think I can share some experiences to this discussion...

In a nutshell, offshore outsourcing represents an opportunity rather than a threat. It allows you to offload work you don't want or have time to do yourself -- while at the same time giving you access to skills and resources you may otherwise not have or could otherwise not afford.

Just because a programmer lives in India, or Serbia or Pakistan or Russia DOES NOT mean that they are any less skilled, less talented or deliver lower quality work -- what it DOES mean is that they DON'T NEED to earn $75K per year just to pay basic living expenses or have a new SUV in the driveway.

If you do your 'due dilligence', and factor in the variables such as time zones and communications issues -- there is absolutely no reason that you cannot have the results you desire AND pay less than you would at home. It's also up to you to properly MANAGE the project. I don't know why it happens, but many people expect to give a specification and have the finished software delivered months later with no intervening communication. This strategy makes no more sense than if the developer were sitting next to you.

In terms of quality, some list members may have had bad experiences, but overall, in MY experience, the quality of the 'average' reputable mid- to large- offshore outsourcing development center can exceed that of comparable US-based firms. Want examples -- just check the statistics for the numbers and levels of ISO and CMM certifications for Indian vs. American-based companies -- you may be surprised just how far ahead they are.

For myself, I am currently using of the best .NET developers in Russia to do some small projects for me -- and can have this resource for $15 to $20 per hour. I give him the specification, access to the server, and off he goes and the job is done fast and exceptionally well. Think about it: How much per hour would the top US-based .NET developer cost you? My developer doesn't have a beach house in California, an SUV or even a $1,000 pair of roller blades -- but what he DOES have is the ability to solve problems with the kind of creativity and initiative you'd be hard pressed to find anywhere.

Marty R. Milette

Hi All,

We have had several bad experiences with contracts outsourced to India and have now ceased to use programmers based in India, they just do not deliver cohesively, the main issue is the language barrier and time cycle.

Don’t get me wrong I cannot speak a word of Indian and the grasp of the English language by Indian guys puts me to shame, I also accept that there are some good programmers over there. But its one thing being able to talk English and another to fully interpret its complex structure. Database programming is only as good as the communication and when problems start to occur it is this lack of understanding that has forced us to move programming in-house again.

There are short term gains on pricing but that is the only motive to source the contracts to India as there are also talented developers on our doorsteps, the real problems are when projects run overtime due to bugging issues, that is when the communication problems start and the short term price gain becomes medium term disaster.

Furthermore, It is difficult to get resolution on a delivery issue when the other party is in India, there are many issues we have had whereby the time difference prevents cohesive day to day or hour by hour comms and when things get really stressed this alone is enough to say… Nope in future I need to be sitting with the guy as we sort these issues.

Bring it in house or outsource to reputable programmers who can communicate on all levels and have accountability in UK or US law.

Regards

Shaun Parker, Technical Director | SEO Specialist

hp-internet.com

Dear LEDers,

The theme started here and lately by Thomas L. Friedman [cited by Peter D'Aprix] is of great interest to me as a co-owner of an offshore development center. I've been in this business for more than 8 years and hope I have something to share with you.

As far as I can judge from the previous posts, on average the offshore centers’ reputation is not that pleasant. Language barriers, the time zone difference and inadequate quality of work are said not to be worth it at all. However, through all the posts I can clearly see the problem zone with your outsourcing experience. It lies in the fact that most of sole proprietors and small shops are outsourcing to persons, single guys sitting somewhere in nowhere. Indeed, this is a highly risky type of outsourcing and you may have the same difficulties with the local guys. There are dozens of similar stories I hear every year from our clients:  "our local developer is no longer with us, the job is unfinished and we can't reach him / her. Please help". So, it's no surprise why the result of such offshore outsourcing turns wasting money and time and appears total frustration.

I dare say you won't have any major problems if you're working with a company, preferably a team of 30-40 people staffed with not only programmers but with Sales, Project Managers, Customer Care Managers, Architects, and good higher managers like CTO, Chief Development and others, including CEO.

So, if the business processes in an offshore company are set up to comply with the most modern requirements, if you are able to change developers and project managers in your offshore team, if you have your own account manager and directly contact with the higher manager, then your risks are zero-like.

Communication is definitely the key crucial component of outsourcing. Though it is true for any other business affairs, I don't think you can expect offshore people to speak fluent native English. However, they have to be quick with response, they have to "hear" everything you said, not simply listen, they should be willing to work around time barriers to accommodate the customer, and they have to use technology to overcome distance such as Instant Messenger, Online Meetings, Shared Workspaces, etc.

As you may have noted, the 30-40 people company described above has quite a good administration staff to handle and supervise development processes. And the top positions in this company should be occupied by pretty good experts. It implies years of efforts put into the company by its owners, and even in China, India or Russia (where we are from) good people deserve to earn relatively good money. That is why a really serious, solid offshore company has to charge good rates. Speaking about figures, I would say you never get a good quality service for less than $10/hour in offshore; and you will probably get average quality for $10-15/hour. Top level companies charge $15-22 an hour. In most cases, and this is how we work, this rate includes Project Management, Customer Care, and supervising by top managers personnel.

These rates still give you a good margin to leave on, and they are several times lower than those of local companies. But, again, you can't expect good quality of services from people who work for food.

Apparently, the main challenge in offshore outsourcing is to find a reliable and reputable company with a proven track of records. You can find them even at Elance and Guru.com - just check out their ratings, review their references and speak to their referees, see their works, talk to several people in a candidate company, and you find a good partner for your business. As a quick test question you may ask if they are willing to invite you to their office. Good companies will be happy to do it. One-man shops won't.

Besides Elance and Guru, I could recommend you oDesk and eWork marketplaces as more serious sites. At eWork, they "certify" outsourcing companies by doing the above verification for you. Moreover, it costs several thousand dollars to become an eWork provider, which sets up a barrier to tirekickers. oDesk is probably a good place for small businesses as there you have direct control over single developers. oDesk provides all-in-one software to manage your virtual teams, including web cams, Skype phoning and screen capture tools so that you can see what they're doing.

In any case, working with companies rather than single programmers will save you a lot of time and nerves. It would be more expensive but you pay for the quality outsourcing, certified and tested by years and hundreds of customers.

Whenever it's an offshore development company, not just a few engineers working from home, it represents a real business for their owners. The owners have long-term plans, they obey the common business rules and ethics, and they do care about their reputation. Thus, working with companies you can require customer-centered and result-oriented approach from them.

IMO this is a global picture of offshore outsourcing. You have a choice. Just make it right!

Andrey Chashkov, VP Marketing

hirerussians.com