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

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

jmcc

regi3457 wrote: »

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?

Can you be more precise with the phrase "web design & development"? For some, Web Design is more for the front end (templates, the design) with a little bit of messing about with small databases. Development may include e-commerce and apps. However that's probably all at the level of those Multimedia degrees that seem to be quite popular. Now when you get to serious backend development with large databases having to run a large site, then it is a step above ordinary web development and into the area of database architecture, SQL, frameworks and programming. (This is more Computer Science/Engineering with at least five years of industry experience at that level rather than being a newly minted graduate.)

A lot of the stuff that seems to be outsourced is in the lower end of the skills market. Those running projects at the higher end tend to be reluctant to outsource because the costs saved, if any, may outweighed by the risks.

The development of the tiny website section of the business (<10 pages) where the website is hardly ever updated from one year to the next and runs on Wordpress or Joomla is vulnerable to being outsourced but without any service/maintenance contracts, these sites generally run the risk of getting cracked due to outdated plugins and coding mistakes.

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

There's approximately 360K domains on Irish web hosters. Of those, there are approximately 5K new domain names each month (others having dropped or been deleted). Of those approximately 30% will have developed (and this can vary considerably) websites. Most domain names that are registered will never be developed with working websites. Development rates in Ireland are actually quite good and the market is growing. It is a highly competitive market and most Irish web developers now offer full packages that include the site development, maintenance and some element of search engine optimisation and marketing. Before you start worrying about your potential work being outsourced, you need to figure out what your potential job will be and the skillset you will need to compete with existing Irish web developers.

Regards...jmcc

regi3457

beauf wrote: »

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.



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

Not if that "lower" salary was in India. What doesn't come down to price in this world?

jmcc

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 odd thing is that there's been no attempt to quantify the Irish market for web development or even what it means.

Regards...jmcc

regi3457

Graham wrote: »

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

Yes thanks, I would have included it in my earlier post too

Graham

regi3457 wrote: »

What doesn't come down to price in this world?

Price is only one of the factors people use when making purchasing decisions of any kind. If that were not the case Penneys would be the only clothes retailer and Aldi/Lidl the only supermarkets.

The 'secret' is not to try and compete at the budget end of the market where price is the major consideration and very high volumes are required to make a profit. In the web development world, the budget end of the market is relatively low skilled basic website/template assembly.

beauf

regi3457 wrote: »

...I may as well pull numbers and percentages out my behind because I have no idea. But I am thinking...

You're over thinking it.

Get 10 web developers in a room. They will have different salaries. Often because they have better business acumen than the others, and/or are better at it.

Its not as simple as I know X I live in Y pay me Z.

14ned

regi3457 wrote: »

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?

I can't say anything about web design, as that's not my field.

In top end C++ dev, as a remote working contractor I'm always competing against everyone else on the planet, most of whom are charging far less than I. What I can tell you is this: at the top end in terms of engineering quality and experience, it truly is a global market - everybody charges about the same irrespective of physical location, with usually a small (< 10%) discount for non native English speakers. That gives a huge advantage to those living in very low cost locations, but that's capitalism for you.

I would add there is not as much a cost advantage as you might think in developing countries. Security is a big problem in some of them, having fancy top end computers means having to secure them and stress about getting robbed or mugged. Good health care tends to be expensive, and if you're in a fix price gouging/bribery/shakedowns tend to happen. Travel to conferences and to go on site is vastly easier from a developed country. Schools are vastly better. All that adds up to unforeseen costs i.e. increased risk, increased overheads, and that means your costs rise.

Western nations are still fairly competitive in living costs once you include reduced risk if you live in the cheapest parts: rural midlands of Ireland in particular are not half bad, as is the mid-west of the United States. Taxes are much higher here, but you get vastly better schools, health care, roads, functioning insurance system etc. I think it's a reasonable tradeoff, and we are not that disadvantaged to developing world competition at the top end. Put another way, many of the top end engineers I know don't stay in their origin country for any longer than they can afford it, they move as soon as they can to somewhere more stable. That speaks volumes.

But all that is at the top end where networks of contacts are all important, and price is maybe the fourth or fifth most important consideration for customers. I always walk away from any customer who thinks price the most important factor, I'm not the consultant for them. I would imagine it's no different for web design - top end stuff like Plone CMS deployments is going to be price insensitive. Bottom end stuff like static HTML deployments will always be a race to the bottom in price.

Niall

armabelle

regi3457 wrote: »

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.

I have been getting quotes for my project this past week and ended up choosing an Indian team. I have worked before with developers in the phillapines as well and they did great work but yes communication was tricky. So far my new project is 90% of the way done and in half the time that was agreed. The prices I received in general were form about 40% to 60% of what prices are here in Ireland. I found Irish prices for my project to be ridiculously high. At the end of the day, a Dubliner has to live in one of the most expensive cities in the world and pay a ludicrous amount of rent. He will need much more money to stay alive and he will need to bill his clients about 200% - 250% more than international developers that quoted me. This makes sense from economic perspectives. If my project caves in at the last moment, will come back and let you all know but so far everything is tip top.

Thought I would share that.

Buford T Justice

armabelle wrote: »

I have been getting quotes for my project this past week and ended up choosing an Indian team. I have worked before with developers in the phillapines as well and they did great work but yes communication was tricky. So far my new project is 90% of the way done and in half the time that was agreed. The prices I received in general were form about 40% to 60% of what prices are here in Ireland. I found Irish prices for my project to be ridiculously high. At the end of the day, a Dubliner has to live in one of the most expensive cities in the world and pay a ludicrous amount of rent. He will need much more money to stay alive and he will need to bill his clients about 200% - 250% more than international developers that quoted me. This makes sense from economic perspectives. If my project caves in at the last moment, will come back and let you all know but so far everything is tip top.

Thought I would share that.

I'd be interested to know how the remaining 10% completion goes.

Aswerty

armabelle wrote: »

I have been getting quotes for my project this past week and ended up choosing an Indian team. I have worked before with developers in the phillapines as well and they did great work but yes communication was tricky. So far my new project is 90% of the way done and in half the time that was agreed. The prices I received in general were form about 40% to 60% of what prices are here in Ireland. I found Irish prices for my project to be ridiculously high. At the end of the day, a Dubliner has to live in one of the most expensive cities in the world and pay a ludicrous amount of rent. He will need much more money to stay alive and he will need to bill his clients about 200% - 250% more than international developers that quoted me. This makes sense from economic perspectives. If my project caves in at the last moment, will come back and let you all know but so far everything is tip top.

Thought I would share that.

I think a lot of stories regarding off-shoring are very anecdotal. So you'll have one person with a project that goes well (like you). And then you'll get someone who says never again, after going through a messy project.

I guess for a lot of people it's just a case of how risk averse they are. For example there's pretty much no legal recourse when it comes to an off-shore project, but there is in Ireland. If things start going wrong you can't just rock up to somebody's office if they're off-shore. Also you said communication was tricky - for some people that would be a big issue. For example if you had to email or call in the evenings/nights that would mean you couldn't keep normal office hours. So if you're off-shoring and you're hoping to get salaried employees to manage it - you've already got a problem. If your self-employed or starting a new venture this obviously isn't a big deal.

All said and done, there's plenty of projects that are well suited to being off-shored. I think people just want to point out that while the off-shore market swallows up some of the work in the web development field. It's not going to swallow the whole market since there is numerous reasons why someone might choose to go with more expensive options.

For me, as a developer, I think if I decided to have a new project/venture done by a freelancer or firm I'd probably go off-shore. But if I had a business where the cost of the project was budgeted I'd try work with companies within my local network since the risk wouldn't be worth the opportunity cost of a failed project.