Will Britain really leave EU?

TrickyTree83

Filo25 wrote: »

Unfortunately the same where I work really, increasing amounts of Tech Dev work likely to be outsourced.

Our company has experienced that.

We outsourced some of our development to Bulgarians.

It came back utter utter trash, building web front end hooked into a MySQL DB that looks like Access 97, with a MySQL DB designed by someone who has no idea about database design. No indexes, no foreign keys, the collation sequences in Swedish (couldn't believe that beauty).

At the end of the day you get what you pay for. In my particular niche there's plenty of foreign nationals who speak English who can do the job, but they don't do it well because they just don't understand.

Herzlos

Alas that's always the way of outsourcing. But it's so much cheaper at source...

TrickyTree83

Herzlos wrote: »

Most software jobs are being outsourced to India or China, which is going to be at least as bad with Brexit. At least currently we can hire Europeans to work in the UK, without freedom of movement the only options may be to outsource to Europe or further.

Completely disagree with this.

If you're trying to re-invent the wheel, as most management types appear to want to do, and you need to do it cheaply then yes. This will be an option. But if you want good quality, well tested, written for a use case and delivering on that use case we've found you cannot beat domestic developers.

Solution - don't outsource to these locations. It may cost you less but there's a reason for that. Given my experience I'd trade 5 international dev's for one domestic, or even native dev.

I'd probably caveat this with, if you're outsourcing greenfield it'll usually be a disaster and cost you a lot more to put right. If you're outsourcing something like a bolt-on for a flavour of Dynamics CRM for example, go for it, the outsourced dev can probably google what they should be doing. Then you just need to hope they've understood your requirements.

So the example I gave previously of outsourcing to Bulgarians meant that the Business Intelligence solution they bolted on was only able to output data from static reports, in Excel 95!! It almost looks like they plagiarised it rather than developed it, and if they did develop it what the hell are they doing working on technology that's 20 years old?! Management paid for this and crowed about it until we actually got to look at it and gave them a costing to hook it into our existing systems. That was less than 12 months ago, now we're looking replacing all of it because it's so god awful.

AnotherJoe

gadgetmind wrote: »

£25k for a graduate with the relevant skills is *very* low. We typically offer £30k and get turned down about 50% of the time.

Then IMO either you aren't offering enough or there is something else wrong with your company (or the way it's represented at interview) because by the time you are confident enough to make an offer you should be getting a far higher acceptance rate than just half.

By your own admission if £25k is very low then £30k is surely even at best only average amd probably low and why offer low to average if you want the best ?

Herzlos

I agree entirely that you'll get better quality if you hire 1st world developers, but you are looking at it from a developer POV and a customer POV. If it works *right now*, and meets any performance criteria, they don't care how it's done, just that it is.

We've outsourced software a few times and it's largely been a disaster, but every few years we try again.

TrickyTree83

Herzlos wrote: »

I agree entirely that you'll get better quality if you hire 1st world developers, but you are looking at it from a developer POV and a customer POV. If it works *right now*, and meets any performance criteria, they don't care how it's done, just that it is.

We've outsourced software a few times and it's largely been a disaster, but every few years we try again.

You'd think they'd be getting feedback on the projects that suggests they're not quite getting it right but every time I've come across outsourced projects they're abject horrors which end up needing to be fixed. There doesn't appear to be any honesty about what went well and what went wrong.

I agree with you in that "it works right now" therefore it's ok. Then additional requirements come along 6 - 12 months later which means it's wholly inadequate. Or it works right now, if we do some manual work in Excel silo's alongside it, then the data isn't visible to the rest of the business, and in my line of work (BI) that's an absolute waste of time and you might as well have created forms in Sharepoint. We generally find this when management and users get together and outsource without involving their resident experts. They end up digging themselves into a hole that we then need to dig them out of.

gadgetmind

AnotherJoe wrote: »

Then IMO either you aren't offering enough or there is something else wrong with your company (or the way it's represented at interview) because by the time you are confident enough to make an offer you should be getting a far higher acceptance rate than just half.

Everyone we interview is good so they are all going through the process at several companies. We discuss things openly with people and ask them to share what does/doesn't appeal about our offer. Getting people 50% of the time when they they're getting 4-5 offers from top companies is pretty good.

At interview, we let them speak privately with some of our graduates who are 2-3 years in, if that's something they want to do. Feedback is that this tilts things in our direction, which is nice to know!

By your own admission if £25k is very low then £30k is surely even at best only average amd probably low and why offer low to average if you want the best ?

Our graduates get bi-annual pay reviews for the first three years so where they go after that £30k is very much down to them. They also get good mentoring, which is something they value.

Of course, if you're more successful at hiring UK STEM graduates then I'm always happy to pick up tips.

gadgetmind

Herzlos wrote: »

you'll get better quality if you hire 1st world developers

There are smart people all over the world. Education, training and ethos obviously varies, but the variation is wider within the UK than it is between similar groups in different countries.

We've outsourced software a few times and it's largely been a disaster, but every few years we try again.

My own team is spread across four continents, and we have a few subcontractors and outsourcing companies in the mix from time to time. As with everything (and particularly subcontract manufacturing!) it's all down to having your own quality control in there.

TrickyTree83

If you can't find the skills required in the country then that's absolutely a good reason to look abroad. Outsourcing to the cheapest bidder is asking for a re-work backlash or heavy investment in project oversight.

Perhaps my experience of outsourcing isn't the best to draw from, our company has since ditched all outsourced development and now employs 20+ devs in the logistics industry.

Herzlos

gadgetmind wrote: »

There are smart people all over the world. Education, training and ethos obviously varies, but the variation is wider within the UK than it is between similar groups in different countries.

Definitely, though I think a huge part of the issue is in culture. The UK is hugely culturally different from India or China, which makes a lot of the outsourcing harder to do.

My own team is spread across four continents, and we have a few subcontractors and outsourcing companies in the mix from time to time. As with everything (and particularly subcontract manufacturing!) it's all down to having your own quality control in there.

Ditto. The issue we had from outsourcing was mostly in the amount of work it cost/saved. We'd almost always spend roughly as much time managing them than they were meant to save. Using in-house developers from the same areas yields much better results.