has outsourcing web dev to cheaper countries caused job losses in EU & Ireland?

regi3457

Hi all

I am thinking of starting a career in web design & development but I was dissappointed when someone told me that nowadays nobody really pays for these services in Ireland or at east not as much as before and that most work is outsourced to cheap countries in Asia. Is this really true? If it is how do you guys feel about it and do you still do well in this career here locally?

And alsooooo, please don't try and deter me just because you don't want the competition once I graduate haha

Speedwell

We just tried to get a developer from India and had the worst time reading CVs, getting in touch with the people, interviewing, dealing with availability issues, and (since we found one we thought would do) making sure we are understood and that we understand them. The first one we tried flaked out on us, and the second one didn't have the skills he claimed on the CV. The third one, the one we think will do, clearly thinks we're know-nothings who need our hands held... to be fair that is not all that far from being true on this project. It is exhausting.

Dave0JV

As someone who works in web design and development in Ireland I can tell you there are still loads of these jobs going in Ireland and I can confirm companies definitely do still pay well for them. You just have to keep and eye on where's hiring.

armabelle

Just recently outsourcedmy project to india. Couldnt find a reason to pay someone in ireland 4 x the price of what some developers were charging me there. Feel terrible because i really wish i could have stayed local.

JackHeuston

I currently work as a full stack web developer. I think it's easy for companies to outsource small projects like a standard website or blog. If you specialise a little bit in complex web services, you'll have less competition from cheaper countries.

So far I haven't heard of successful stories about outsourcing in this field, but I have a very small network so take this with a grain of salt.

A friend of mine is trying to start a website+app and his dev team is in Ukraine. It sure is cheap, but it's almost 6 months they are working on it and they encounter problems, misunderstandings, poor quality of the work all the time. He also needs to travel regularly to Ukraine to see them and make sure they are actually spending time on his project, etc...

Same with the company I work for. They tried to look for someone to "help me" on the job. I found myself having to spend days to teach people how our framework worked (and also basic web development logic) without success. Even dealing with consulting companies in Ireland that promise to find you cheap foreign developers didn't bring them anywhere, most of the times they were asking for money in advance to give a mediocre job in return and disappear.

Who's going to stick around a company for years, holding precious know-how, being reasonably dedicated to the company's goal? Certainly not a random guy who's seeing their employer via Skype, when the connection is good.

Just see your profession as if you're an artisan. If you don't find anyone to employ you, you can always do something on your own.

Btw I'm a EU national, but my salary is in line with other Irish web developers, it's not that they hired me because I'm foreign and expect less money, so the same should work for you too.

Graham

Dave0JV wrote: »

As someone who works in web design and development in Ireland I can tell you there are still loads of these jobs going in Ireland and I can confirm companies definitely do still pay well for them.

+1

There's plenty of demand for developers of all flavours including web dev.

listermint

Out of various projects in out sourcing. Very few of them have been full success stories.

Any serious development companys will not outsource this work to India as frankly speaking its a mugs game unless you have a PM that has 'all' the boxes ticked and is quite literally all over the project.

From experience there is very little room for free thought from developers over there. It is delivered sometimes with scant logic applied to the end user or the the efficiency of the code under the hood.


Smaller companies may get small packages delivered on a budget at this end of the market but tbh that is about it.

There is plenty of jobs in Ireland and i would not let out sourcing remove you from getting into an exciting and constantly evolving career path

techdiver

listermint wrote: »

Out of various projects in out sourcing. Very few of them have been full success stories.

Any serious development companys will not outsource this work to India as frankly speaking its a mugs game unless you have a PM that has 'all' the boxes ticked and is quite literally all over the project.

From experience there is very little room for free thought from developers over there. It is delivered sometimes with scant logic applied to the end user or the the efficiency of the code under the hood.


Smaller companies may get small packages delivered on a budget at this end of the market but tbh that is about it.

There is plenty of jobs in Ireland and i would not let out sourcing remove you from getting into an exciting and constantly evolving career path

100% this.

Having worked with teams in India on a couple of occasions, this is what stands out the most. Apart from not being up to the task, they cannot think for themselves when it comes to technical tasks and require an obscene amount of hand holding.

regi3457

armabelle wrote: »

Just recently outsourcedmy project to india. Couldnt find a reason to pay someone in ireland 4 x the price of what some developers were charging me there. Feel terrible because i really wish i could have stayed local.

You see now this is what worries me. Who would pay 4 X the price. I mean, you probably get a market for clients who want to work face to face or have someone come over and deal locally but this would be a very niche market and one which 100% of the Irish web development workforce will be competing for. I don't know....

StupidLikeAFox

armabelle wrote: »

Just recently outsourcedmy project to india. Couldnt find a reason to pay someone in ireland 4 x the price of what some developers were charging me there. Feel terrible because i really wish i could have stayed local.

As the saying goes, "if you think hiring the professional is expensive, wait until you hire the amateur"

regi3457

JackHeuston wrote: »

I currently work as a full stack web developer. I think it's easy for companies to outsource small projects like a standard website or blog. If you specialise a little bit in complex web services, you'll have less competition from cheaper countries.

So far I haven't heard of successful stories about outsourcing in this field, but I have a very small network so take this with a grain of salt.

A friend of mine is trying to start a website+app and his dev team is in Ukraine. It sure is cheap, but it's almost 6 months they are working on it and they encounter problems, misunderstandings, poor quality of the work all the time. He also needs to travel regularly to Ukraine to see them and make sure they are actually spending time on his project, etc...

Same with the company I work for. They tried to look for someone to "help me" on the job. I found myself having to spend days to teach people how our framework worked (and also basic web development logic) without success. Even dealing with consulting companies in Ireland that promise to find you cheap foreign developers didn't bring them anywhere, most of the times they were asking for money in advance to give a mediocre job in return and disappear.

Who's going to stick around a company for years, holding precious know-how, being reasonably dedicated to the company's goal? Certainly not a random guy who's seeing their employer via Skype, when the connection is good.

Just see your profession as if you're an artisan. If you don't find anyone to employ you, you can always do something on your own.

Btw I'm a EU national, but my salary is in line with other Irish web developers, it's not that they hired me because I'm foreign and expect less money, so the same should work for you too.

but if the story really was like that then why do the statistics say something else? I did some researching online and the facts are shocking. From the 1st world countries, an overwhelming chunk of work is outsourced fto India and other parts of Asia nowdays.... Especially in design and web development. Just google it and you will see. If it was a failure then surely it would be in decline? Surely that chunk of work that went off shore would have found its way back home upon discovering that it just wasn't working out?

Graham

regi3457 wrote: »

but this would be a very niche market and one which 100% of the Irish web development workforce will be competing for.

It wouldn't.

You don't want the ultra-low budget/pocket-money work, let it go offshore. Half the time it comes back on-shore with a realistic budget or it gets dropped never to be mentioned again.

regi3457

StupidLikeAFox wrote: »

As the saying goes, "if you think hiring the professional is expensive, wait until you hire the amateur"

Why would someone who is in India be an amateur just because he is in India. Do you think yourself better just because you live in europe? If you consider your statement you will see it is not very fair to say that. People there may work 3 times as hard to succeed because they don't have it easy .Not as easy as we do in Ireland or any other western EU country.

regi3457

Graham wrote: »

+1

There's plenty of demand for developers of all flavours including web dev.

well this is great news but do you ever personally feel like the chunk of work may be diminishing? do you think people in Ireland do outsource?

Graham

regi3457 wrote: »

Why would someone who is in India be an amateur just because he is in India. Do you think yourself better just because you live in europe? If you consider your statement you will see it is not very fair to say that. People there may work 3 times as hard to succeed because they don't have it easy .Not as easy as we do in Ireland or any other western EU country.

The decent Indian off-shoring companies can command daily rates that come within 20 - 30% of Irish rates. In general, if you're paying a quarter of the Irish rates there's fairly good odds you're not dealing with one of the professional outfits.

regi3457

Graham wrote: »

The decent Indian off-shoring companies can command daily rates that come within 20 - 30% of Irish rates. In general, if you're paying a quarter of the Irish rates there's fairly good odds you're not dealing with one of the professional outfits.

So you are saying that because they only charge 25% of what irish developers charge, they can't be very good?

Graham

regi3457 wrote: »

So you are saying that because they only charge 25% of what irish developers charge, they can't be very good?

I'm saying it's less likely that they'll be any good. Why, because if they were the professional end of the market they would be charging 75 - 80% of Irish rates.

Put it another way, if you were offered a job at $4/hour or $20/hour, which would you choose?

Graham

regi3457 wrote: »

well this is great news but do you ever personally feel like the chunk of work may be diminishing?

Not really.

regi3457 wrote: »

do you think people in Ireland do outsource?

Yes, in fact I have an outsourced project of my own running at the moment. That's a decision thats not entirely financial either, the availability of skilled resources plays a big part too.

regi3457

Graham wrote: »

I'm saying it's less likely that they'll be any good. Why, because if they were the professional end of the market they would be charging 75 - 80% of Irish rates.

Put it another way, if you were offered a job at $4/hour or $20/hour, which would you choose?

do you know what the difference in cost of living in Ireland and India is? do you know how much people get paid in India? Nobody earns 70% of what and Irish person earns. Even in Spain people don't earn that much. If somebody charges 25% in India it would be a lot of money for them.

regi3457

interesting article

http://www.mcwade.com/DesignTalk/2011/06/has-your-design-job-gone-overseas/

Graham

regi3457 wrote: »

If somebody charges 25% in India it would be a lot of money for them.

What's your point, 75% would be a lot more.

StupidLikeAFox

regi3457 wrote: »

Why would someone who is in India be an amateur just because he is in India. Do you think yourself better just because you live in europe? If you consider your statement you will see it is not very fair to say that. People there may work 3 times as hard to succeed because they don't have it easy .Not as easy as we do in Ireland or any other western EU country.

I think you missed the point of what I was saying. I was answering the question above which was "why would anybody pay 4 x more for a service thats based in Ireland". That quote wasn't a swipe at anybody, it basically means "paying more for a professional service and job done right will cost less in the long run than employing a cowboy (or Indian )who will make a balls of it"

Of course you are right, the Indian guys could be great. They could also be crap. That is a risk you take and one you may be willing to take for the knockdown price. It could pay off in spades if you get the right guy, but you just don't know. However, if you pay the extra for a professional Irish outfit you can suss them out beforehand, meet them, call them, you are not dealing with time-differences, there is less chance of them disappearing/cutting contact overnight, can potentially see their other work and talk to previous customers etc. Some of this you can do to an extent with offshore people, but you have to agree that the due diligence is a lot easier if you are dealing with a local bunch

TL;DR The option is pay the money for the established professionals in Ireland, or take a punt on the Indian guys and hope they turn out to be professionals also.

armabelle

StupidLikeAFox wrote: »

I think you missed the point of what I was saying. I was answering the question above which was "why would anybody pay 4 x more for a service thats based in Ireland". That quote wasn't a swipe at anybody, it basically means "paying more for a professional service and job done right will cost less in the long run than employing a cowboy (or Indian )who will make a balls of it"

Of course you are right, the Indian guys could be great. They could also be crap. That is a risk you take and one you may be willing to take for the knockdown price. It could pay off in spades if you get the right guy, but you just don't know. However, if you pay the extra for a professional Irish outfit you can suss them out beforehand, meet them, call them, you are not dealing with time-differences, there is less chance of them disappearing/cutting contact overnight, can potentially see their other work and talk to previous customers etc. Some of this you can do to an extent with offshore people, but you have to agree that the due diligence is a lot easier if you are dealing with a local bunch

TL;DR The option is pay the money for the established professionals in Ireland, or take a punt on the Indian guys and hope they turn out to be professionals also.

In all fairness, you could have any number of the same issues working local.

regi3457

Graham wrote: »

What's your point, 75% would be a lot more.

so why don't you charge 75% more for your service than another bloke?

StupidLikeAFox

armabelle wrote: »

In all fairness, you could have any number of the same issues working local.

Of course, but the due diligence is a lot easier if you are dealing with a local bunch

Eugene Norman

listermint wrote: »

Out of various projects in out sourcing. Very few of them have been full success stories.

Any serious development companys will not outsource this work to India as frankly speaking its a mugs game unless you have a PM that has 'all' the boxes ticked and is quite literally all over the project.

From experience there is very little room for free thought from developers over there. It is delivered sometimes with scant logic applied to the end user or the the efficiency of the code under the hood.


Smaller companies may get small packages delivered on a budget at this end of the market but tbh that is about it.

There is plenty of jobs in Ireland and i would not let out sourcing remove you from getting into an exciting and constantly evolving career path

We have Indian programmers as full time employees. Mostly good but we did interview them. If you outsource you have no idea who you get.

Eugene Norman

regi3457 wrote: »

do you know what the difference in cost of living in Ireland and India is? do you know how much people get paid in India? Nobody earns 70% of what and Irish person earns. Even in Spain people don't earn that much. If somebody charges 25% in India it would be a lot of money for them.

Indian salaries aren't that low. When you pay for outsourcing you pay a company in general (except for those hire a programmer websites but that is bottom of the barrel) so add in profit and management costs.

In any case you seem to have your mind made up already.

Graham

regi3457 wrote: »

so why don't you charge 75% more for your service than another bloke?

You are of course assuming that I don't. Feel free to read my previous posts where I suggest you never ever try to compete with offshore competitors on price. The same principle can also be applied to local competition.

regi3457

Eugene Norman wrote: »

We have Indian programmers as full time employees. Mostly good but we did interview them. If you outsource you have no idea who you get.

But isn't it the same for local developer / designers. I mean you see someones portfolio and you either hire them or not but you don't really know what you will get even the guy lives around the corner. I don't see how local safeguards you in anyway. Please explain?

regi3457

Graham wrote: »

You are of course assuming that I don't. Feel free to read my previous posts where I suggest you never ever try to compete with offshore competitors on price. The same principle can also be applied to local competition.

I am not assuming that you don't. I know you don't because economics works that way. You wouldn't survive charging 75% more than your competitors offering what you are offering. Be honest here?

Lets say you are a 5 star developer. The best in your field. Your counterpart in India will charge much less than you even though you have equal expertise and can provide the same quality of work. Why will he charge less? Because he is in India not in Ireland paying Irish rent and eating Irish food at Irish prices. And don't kid yourself that this Indian counterpart does exist. He does what you do at a fraction of the cost. So why wouldn't your clients hire him?

please dont take me the wrong way, I am simply challenging you to tell me for the sake of good discussion. Hope you are ok with that

regi3457

Eugene Norman wrote: »

Indian salaries aren't that low. When you pay for outsourcing you pay a company in general (except for those hire a programmer websites but that is bottom of the barrel) so add in profit and management costs.

In any case you seem to have your mind made up already.

Compared to Irish salaries they are pretty low. I think if you go to rural india you would find many people who would do anything to earn 10euro an hour. I think this would be at least a third of what a programmer would charge here per hour? Or less? I don't know but I am guessing here.

yes there

techdiver wrote:

Having worked with teams in India on a couple of occasions, this is what stands out the most. Apart from not being up to the task, they cannot think for themselves when it comes to technical tasks and require an obscene amount of hand holding.

This is my experience. I have met one out of many who I would consider can code at an ok level and even at that it could be refactored many times to what we consider clean.

Hand holding is an understatement. Its come to the stage that when we write user guides for things like installing etc we have to put in the exact command as all they do is copy and paste and do not think for themselves. A classic recent example of this is they were trying to share a dir that didnt exist and wondering why it wasnt working. The is serious incompetence. Their handy for maintenance but nothing else.

And the most of them I have encountered are lazy.

Graham

regi3457 wrote: »

I am not assuming that you don't. I know you don't because economics works that way. You wouldn't survive charging 75% more than your competitors offering what you are offering. Be honest here?

Lets say you are a 5 star developer. The best in your field. Your counterpart in India will charge much less than you even though you have equal expertise and can provide the same quality of work. Why will he charge less? Because he is in India not in Ireland paying Irish rent and eating Irish food at Irish prices. And don't kid yourself that this Indian counterpart does exist. He does what you do at a fraction of the cost. So why wouldn't your clients hire him?

please dont take me the wrong way, I am simply challenging you to tell me for the sake of good discussion. Hope you are ok with that

I can tell you almost all of your assumptions in this post are incorrect. If you have managed to convince yourself that the only way to compete is on price, you're in for a very long and low paid career.

beauf

regi3457 wrote: »

Compared to Irish salaries they are pretty low. I think if you go to rural india you would find many people who would do anything to earn 10euro an hour. I think this would be at least a third of what a programmer would charge here per hour? Or less? I don't know but I am guessing here.

Theres always some one cheaper. Indeed lots of people do web work for free to build a portfolio. Then they wonder why they find it hard to get a decent salary.

You create work that impresses people enough to hire you over the next guy. Doesn't matter where they are. The work has to be good enough that people are willing to pay you a decent wage. If they aren't you'll make more money doing something else.

draiochtanois

This post has been deleted.

Hollister11

I'm just finishing up second year in compute science. I plan to do my work experience year with a web development firm. Do you think web development is a good career prospect, or should I focus on software development.

BrokenArrows

Yes of course it affects Ireland and every other country in the world.

But you could say the same for any other product you see on the shelves that are not made in Ireland. The reason they are not made in Ireland is because its cheaper to do it somewhere else.

There is obvious trade offs with dealing with outsourced work.

My company currently has plans to hire 300 developers in India. They are currently up to about 50.

They didnt try and do this remotely. They sent some of their senior guys to india for a few months to get their senior staff hired. Once their senior management was hired and up to speed they started bringing on the standard engineers.

I suppose its a bit different than just hiring one or two guys for a single project.

EDIT:

From what ive heard about the above plan is that even though they are very confident in the skill of the people, communication is a different story.
I heard a funny story about a conference call between the senior management in india, some of the indian developers, a few american developers and a few english management. One of the project managers was just listening in on the call just to keep in the loop. The PM basically said it was 2 hours of misunderstandings and people repeating themselves.

the_syco

regi3457 wrote: »

I am not assuming that you don't. I know you don't because economics works that way. You wouldn't survive charging 75% more than your competitors offering what you are offering. Be honest here?

His portfolio shows clients that he can do a good job on time.

Also, if the 5 star programmer in India is only charging 25% of the price of a western programmer, it's because he isn't a 5 star programmer, knows it, but also knows that you only care about the cost, so already knows you're his next client.

If someone abroad does it for cheap, and you need something updated, or a part fixed, best of luck. Also, you'll have to check the wording is all correct. Their english is usually good, but their grammar can be dire.

=-=

For the people who have outsourced to India; how do you find the comments in the code from India compares to Ireland?

regi3457

Graham wrote: »

I can tell you almost all of your assumptions in this post are incorrect. If you have managed to convince yourself that the only way to compete is on price, you're in for a very long and low paid career.

Where have I convinced myself of that?

Graham

regi3457 wrote: »

Where have I convinced myself of that?

As you're considering a career as a developer here's an introduction to conditional statements:

An if statement is a conditional statement that, if proved true.....

Graham wrote: »

If you have managed to convince yourself that the only way to compete is on price, you're in for a very long and low paid career.

I thought it was funny anyway. :pac:

Eugene Norman

regi3457 wrote: »

But isn't it the same for local developer / designers. I mean you see someones portfolio and you either hire them or not but you don't really know what you will get even the guy lives around the corner. I don't see how local safeguards you in anyway. Please explain?

We *interview* them. I said you don't know what you get with outsourcing but we interviewed our Indian employees. Using the same tests and questions we do over here.

By and large (with some exceptions) most outsourcing doesn't involve interviews. You hire a company and they assign work. Or you find a guy on the Internet and hope for the best.

Eugene Norman

draiochtanois wrote: »

The 5 star developer in Indian isn't going to work for 25%, he will pitch it at 80%

If he is a 5 star developer he is also smart and he is going to maximise the return on the commodity that is constrained for him ie his time.

Or he's working for Google India. Etc. Or moved to Silicon Valley. In the west plenty of top level devs will contract for big money, but contracting to be a cheap outsourced option as an Indian isn't financially stable.

I don't get the op. He clearly has decided that he can't compete with India. He's not listening to counter arguments. So I don't think he should do web development.

regi3457

the_syco wrote: »

His portfolio shows clients that he can do a good job on time.

Also, if the 5 star programmer in India is only charging 25% of the price of a western programmer, it's because he isn't a 5 star programmer, knows it, but also knows that you only care about the cost, so already knows you're his next client.

If someone abroad does it for cheap, and you need something updated, or a part fixed, best of luck. Also, you'll have to check the wording is all correct. Their english is usually good, but their grammar can be dire.

=-=

For the people who have outsourced to India; how do you find the comments in the code from India compares to Ireland?

This is not true. The cost of living in any country is what influences market rates and prices of services. If someone in India charged what you charge they would not have work from other wealthier countries because people outsource to those countries to lower cost, obviously. You agree with me on that at least right? The fact that your skills are outsourced to India and not to switzerland should prove this. I know you want to believe that you get paid more in Ireland because you are better at your job because this puts your mind at ease that you have security somehow but to me it seems that the factors about why it may or may not be better to work locally have to do with other things mentioned in this thread and not how capable an Indian person may be at developing a website. Due diligence definitely sounds right and communication & language barriers, work ethic even perhaps, time zone differences, holiday differences.

armabelle

yes there wrote: »

This is my experience. I have met one out of many who I would consider can code at an ok level and even at that it could be refactored many times to what we consider clean.

So Irish are just better than Indians is what you are saying?

mickoneill31

I don't work in the Web Dev field but I have worked for companies that have used people in India in a follow the sun role. Their wages are not 25% of what I get. More like 60% or 70%. We couldn't get cheaper and get the job done.
So not really development related but it's techy and Indian related.

beauf

armabelle wrote: »

So Irish are just better than Indians is what you are saying?

No hes saying that his experience. There could be a reason for that, perhaps the people who recruited to a much salary resulted in getting a lower standard.

regi3457 wrote: »

This is not true. The cost of living in any country is what influences market rates and prices of services. ...

You've convinced yourself its all about price. Despite people with obvious experience telling you otherwise.

So here you have a perfect of example of people speaking the same language not understanding each other.

Graham

Very odd thread altogether.

The OP pops up to ask a question about something he has no experience of then proceeds to tell everyone their experience is wrong.

regi3457

Graham wrote: »

Very odd thread altogether.

The OP pops up to ask a question about something he has no experience of then proceeds to tell everyone their experience is wrong.

The thread asks a specific question. Has outsourcing taken away work from you? It has morphed into something else where a lot of your ego is concerned. Lets not argue about it. I accept your answer that you feel that it hasn't. Believe me that I would hate work being lost to people here because I have friends who are designers and developers. Funny thing is that they are the ones that told me about this and they have been doing it for 15 years. When I read about it, seems the news articles seem to correlate with what they said. You however don't and that is great! Keep up the good work because you are obviously much luckier (or just better?) than many of the rest.

regi3457

draiochtanois wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

Where do you get this 80%? Look, I think that part of what outsourcing has offered the western world is price. If this worker offered 5 star development at 80% I just don't know if he would get the business. There has to be incentive for westerners to take their work offshore and I don't know if 20% is enough. Perhaps you are right though. I may as well pull numbers and percentages out my behind because I have no idea. But I am thinking, if I would hire someone in India, I would expect more than 20% off. But on the other hand maybe that is a lot of money on bigger projects.

regi3457

BrokenArrows wrote: »

Yes of course it affects Ireland and every other country in the world.

But you could say the same for any other product you see on the shelves that are not made in Ireland. The reason they are not made in Ireland is because its cheaper to do it somewhere else.

There is obvious trade offs with dealing with outsourced work.

My company currently has plans to hire 300 developers in India. They are currently up to about 50.

They didnt try and do this remotely. They sent some of their senior guys to india for a few months to get their senior staff hired. Once their senior management was hired and up to speed they started bringing on the standard engineers.

I suppose its a bit different than just hiring one or two guys for a single project.

EDIT:

From what ive heard about the above plan is that even though they are very confident in the skill of the people, communication is a different story.
I heard a funny story about a conference call between the senior management in india, some of the indian developers, a few american developers and a few english management. One of the project managers was just listening in on the call just to keep in the loop. The PM basically said it was 2 hours of misunderstandings and people repeating themselves.

I really found your post to be great and unbiased. I can understand how communication can be a drawback. It would be great to have statistics to see how much of this work is actually outsourced so people could know if they have a career to look forward to or not.

Graham

regi3457 wrote: »

When I read about it, seems the news articles seem to correlate with what they said.

Confirmation bias: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias