If you have not read Shampa’s post below I encourage all of you to read it.\u00a0 I would like to point out a few newish developments on the software side.\u00a0 First of all my information on outsourcing prices is from about two years ago.\u00a0 As most of you know the dollar has taken a significant plunge since then so outsourcing would have gotten even more expensive in terms of dollars.\u00a0 When I had to calculate the cost of an engineer outsouced from India vs. one onsite in the U.S two years ago the cost ratio was about two outsourced engineers for the price of an onsite after the real middlemen costs were taken into account.\u00a0 From a project management standpoint I knew from experience that except for well defined and stable pieces of the project I might be better off with onsite engineer productivity due to ease of communication.\u00a0 That being said it was always easier to get approval for offsite engineers because of the perception that outsourcing was “the no brainer way to go” given the exchange rates.<\/p>\n
Now I am with a small game company startup and the equations are changing rapidly again for onsite vs. offsite.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A serious hobbyist programmer will typically leave an offshored engineer from now “traditional” powerhouses of India or China in the dust in terms of knowlege or productivity.\u00a0 After all the hobbyists have been doing it since they could press a button on a Nintendo and they are doing it because they really like it.\u00a0 Therefore one has to consider hiring this talent pool professionally and contractually when possible and they can be anywhere in the world with the typical hotbeds being Europe (especially Finland) Canada and the US.\u00a0 Currently, gasp, the exchange rate favors the U.S.\u00a0\u00a0 One should also look at internships at local colleges too.\u00a0\u00a0 Once upon a time, before everybody became convinced India and China would do everything for us,\u00a0 cultivating local college talent was considered a smart idea.\u00a0 Maybe it’s time to consider it again.\u00a0 It’s also time to consider that say, hiring someone from Finland or Eastern Europe or Brazil or Japan and using all the internet tools to keep in touch may be the right thing to do depending on the talent and interest.\u00a0\u00a0 The time when we could press “that was easy” decision and offshore to India or China because the exhange rate forgave everything may be approaching a close.\u00a0 For new technologies that don’t depend on an existing factory infrastructure I suggest giving the whole world a look, and especially your backyard.\u00a0 You might be surprised.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If you have not read Shampa’s post below I encourage all of you to read it.\u00a0 I would like to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,7,10,6],"tags":[268,39,41,221,236,146,207,101,46],"class_list":["post-985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-leadership","category-goals","category-cost","category-communications","tag-agile-leadership","tag-best-practices","tag-building-executive-support","tag-cross-cultural-teams","tag-cross-functional-teams","tag-engineering-management","tag-organizational-maturity","tag-project-management-from-a-distance","tag-teamwork"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/985","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=985"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/985\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13974,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/985\/revisions\/13974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}