<story><title>Being “rockstars”: when software was a talents/creatives industry</title><url>https://morepablo.com/2023/06/creatives-industries.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tecleandor</author><text>Question in good faith, from a non native English speaker...&lt;p&gt;What would be the difference between offshore and hiring internationally?</text></item><item><author>treeman79</author><text>20 years in industry.  Typical Offshore people have almost always been a waste of time and just slowed down getting anything useful done.&lt;p&gt;Now, I’ve also hired internationally from all over world and that has usually been fine.</text></item><item><author>rqtwteye</author><text>I struggle with that all the time. We have a lot of offshore people and I am pretty sure that 3 experienced people could take on a project that requires 50 offshore people and get it done in less time at higher quality.</text></item><item><author>suzzer99</author><text>We had a huge project with about 20 devs that went on for a year and a half. We brought in a bunch of consultants. The leads basically spent all day herding cats, and all night coding. We all agreed we probably could have done it in half the time with just the 5 leads.</text></item><item><author>dagss</author><text>In my career I have seen almost identical systems being built by a) 6 developers in a startup in 1 year b) 100+ developers in a big company with a much much larger budget in 2 years.&lt;p&gt;Almost the same specs, but the one in the startup had better scalability and fewer serious bugs...&lt;p&gt;So, spend 10-50x less and get higher quality?&lt;p&gt;Worst is I now consider case b) quite lean and efficient compared to what I see tech consultancies doing towards public sector, banks, etc...&lt;p&gt;--
My point being: There definitely IS a room for &amp;quot;rockstars&amp;quot; (don&amp;#x27;t like that term, but interpret this as developers competent enough to carry a lot of weight on their own and work in a smaller company) to deliver a lot of value.&lt;p&gt;The problem with the model is the lack of predictability (what if the few developers you trust don&amp;#x27;t deliver), the bus factor if one of the few devs quits, etc&lt;p&gt;In a sense inefficiency is a goal, because otherwise you loose redundancy. It costs a lot to hire 100 to produce the output of 10, but much lower risk.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Kamq</author><text>Offshore generally means you&amp;#x27;re trying to slash costs. Say, hiring $10&amp;#x2F;day devs from India. Now, there are great devs in India, but they don&amp;#x27;t work for $10&amp;#x2F;day.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s the same term that was used for transitioning textile and other factory work to third world sweatshops.&lt;p&gt;Hiring internationally is just that. You might get someone for a bit cheaper (somewhere in the neighborhood of 20ish percent), but that&amp;#x27;s usually in exchange for the extra hassle of managing a remote team and dealing with timezone issues. You don&amp;#x27;t usually crank through these people every quarter, they&amp;#x27;re hired for the longterm (or, as longterm as anyone in a software job is hired for).</text></comment>
<story><title>Being “rockstars”: when software was a talents/creatives industry</title><url>https://morepablo.com/2023/06/creatives-industries.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tecleandor</author><text>Question in good faith, from a non native English speaker...&lt;p&gt;What would be the difference between offshore and hiring internationally?</text></item><item><author>treeman79</author><text>20 years in industry.  Typical Offshore people have almost always been a waste of time and just slowed down getting anything useful done.&lt;p&gt;Now, I’ve also hired internationally from all over world and that has usually been fine.</text></item><item><author>rqtwteye</author><text>I struggle with that all the time. We have a lot of offshore people and I am pretty sure that 3 experienced people could take on a project that requires 50 offshore people and get it done in less time at higher quality.</text></item><item><author>suzzer99</author><text>We had a huge project with about 20 devs that went on for a year and a half. We brought in a bunch of consultants. The leads basically spent all day herding cats, and all night coding. We all agreed we probably could have done it in half the time with just the 5 leads.</text></item><item><author>dagss</author><text>In my career I have seen almost identical systems being built by a) 6 developers in a startup in 1 year b) 100+ developers in a big company with a much much larger budget in 2 years.&lt;p&gt;Almost the same specs, but the one in the startup had better scalability and fewer serious bugs...&lt;p&gt;So, spend 10-50x less and get higher quality?&lt;p&gt;Worst is I now consider case b) quite lean and efficient compared to what I see tech consultancies doing towards public sector, banks, etc...&lt;p&gt;--
My point being: There definitely IS a room for &amp;quot;rockstars&amp;quot; (don&amp;#x27;t like that term, but interpret this as developers competent enough to carry a lot of weight on their own and work in a smaller company) to deliver a lot of value.&lt;p&gt;The problem with the model is the lack of predictability (what if the few developers you trust don&amp;#x27;t deliver), the bus factor if one of the few devs quits, etc&lt;p&gt;In a sense inefficiency is a goal, because otherwise you loose redundancy. It costs a lot to hire 100 to produce the output of 10, but much lower risk.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>sdiupIGPWEfh</author><text>To me, &amp;quot;offshore&amp;quot; means acquiring developers from international shops that bid for US contracts, whereas hiring internationally just means hiring outside the country on an individual basis.&lt;p&gt;Speaking very broadly here, my impression is that those offshore development shops bidding for US contracts often don&amp;#x27;t have the greatest working conditions. Those talented enough to know their worth and find better options will do so if the opportunity presents itself, which could mean either applying for international positions on their own or immigrating to where the jobs are. Thus there&amp;#x27;s an outflow of talent away from those offshore companies.</text></comment>