A few years ago I did a gig in Manila working with a team that was building an application for a German company. It was a disaster but then, I generally don't get called into these situations unless it is a disaster. I have to say that I didn't get Philippino english until 6 weeks after I arrived. I knew what they were saying and they knew what I was saying but it was really 6 weeks before I understood what they were saying and how they understood what I was saying. And, 6 weeks wasn't bad because there was another American who had been there for 6 months and he still hadn't worked out the gap. There was a German that I was working with and it took him more than 8 months to work out the gap in understanding. A British manager had it sorted in about 3 weeks but to those that weren't onsite.. I don't they even had a clue w.r.t the communication gap that existed. Lets not talk about the problems crossing time zone caused. Needless to say, the project first got pulled back into Germany and then was canceled.
Ok, so that was a one off. Given a project where communication was less of a problem, dealing with timezones requires a sacrifice that most people are just not willing to make. I've been involved with a number of engagements were teams were spread across time zones. The ones that worked where the ones where people made extra-ordinary sacrifices. So, it can work, you just have to know what you're getting yourself into so that you understand what is needed and can commit to delivering on that commitment. Regards, Kirk On Oct 17, 2011, at 11:15 PM, phil swenson wrote: > I've never seen hiring people in other countries to work as remote members of > a team work well. Add in time zone differences, language barriers, crappy > phone systems, and your result is not nearly as good as a local team. > Feedback cycles can span days instead of minutes or hours. > > sounds like management views developers as commodities: 4x developers = 4x > work. Is there an MBA involved in this idea?? ;) > > This all being said.... there might be projects that work ok in this > structure. If you can tightly define what you want (like having them build > plugin adapters to a framework), it might work ok. > > > > On Mon, Oct 17, 2011 at 2:28 AM, [email protected] <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi all. > > I work for a company with a small team off 6 developers. It looks like > in the not to distant future we will have a lot more work to do than > we can handle with such a small staff. Our management want to hire > developers in another country to either assist us off-site, or fly > them over to work with us. This is because we can get 3-5 developers > there for the price off one locally. > > I am wondering if others have had experience with hiring people in a > different country with cheaper labor to support in development. Our > opinion is that we will produce better results by hiring great > developers locally than going to a different country to hire. Maybe I > don't have an open enough mind about this, or maybe management is all > wrong in thinking that a developer is a developer, and we just need to > find the great ones in a different country at a lower price. > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "The Java Posse" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en. > > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "The Java Posse" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.
