Well, Jonathan,
I am the one that sometimes receives this outsourcing projects. Since I live in Brazil, I can charge lower than americans and till today my clients are happy, there are some delayied projects but that's because I'll never ship something that I do not fully trust (I am a debuggin freak, I must be sure my code never blows).
As for the timezone problem, well, I wake up at 14:00 PM and go to sleep about 6:00 AM, yes, changing day for the night, but that way its easier to keep contact with overseas contracts and also I am accostumed to be up late for I used to work on the very-late-shift of our county television.
The biggest trick is for me is to be known that I am available to be outsourced and that my work is good. People often thinks that because we live in a 3rd world country we will deliver crap software, well, thats not true, some will of course, but I am one that need to look back with pride. I was wondering about passing sometime in the US or London, my english is not very bad and I could keep working on my projects, just couple months, if I ever do that, will hiring me still be labeled outsourcing? :D
I do think most of the outsourcing projects are going towards india, don't know how well this projects are doing, there are many cultural differences between india and the US, you all should outsource more to Brazil, we have similar cultures and are near. (Yes, Free Publicity)
Since we're in this topic, sometimes "smart" contractors appear and they try to pay you very badly, they think that since you're in Brazil, you're worth nothing. Once a guy tried to hire me to create simple inventory management software for his business (a company that distribute beverages, don't know how you call those things), he wanted to pay me 750 Reals, this is our money, this amount to more or less 250 USD... for two weeks work!!!! If I sell sandwiches at the beach I'd earn more than that, and he kept saying that it was a fair price...
So if there's someone here on the list that's like me and sometimes work for overseas companies, beware not to be fooled, this happens all the time (like let me see your code, then I pay you...)
cheers andre
PS: There's no cultural shock in hiring me, I like guinness, the liverpool, hamburgers, know at least 12 types of cheese and can speak up to four consectuvie consonants (that should please americans, english, irish, germans and french people on the list)
On Jan 27, 2005, at 3:59 PM, Lynch, Jonathan wrote:
I just read a few articles on this...
How do you guys who make your living as freelance programmers deal with
this problem? If a company in a third world country can charge a sixth
of the price that a company in a developed country can charge - then how
do you guys ever manage to find clients?
I can see how it would work if the required programming also requires on-site work - but I cannot see how it would work outside of that.
Just wondering,
Jonathan _______________________________________________ use-revolution mailing list [email protected] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
-- Andre Alves Garzia 2004 Soap Dog Studios - BRAZIL http://studio.soapdog.org
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