Category Archives: Offshore Vendor Selection

Finding VAs just got easier

Activities that call for out-tasking, ad-hoc outsourcing or “outsourcing your life” inevitably bring us to a not so easy to resolve dilemma – where and how to find a decent virtual assistant (VA). In some cases we can engage resources from oDesk or elance, in some cases we need to find an established VA company. And like with most of vendor selection challenges choosing VA vendor is a task not for the faint of heart. Sheer number of resources that fall into VA category makes proper selection a seemingly daunting task. For example, a search for “virtual assistant” brings 29K entries on oDesk and 19K on eLance.

Interestingly enough an approach here could be using another layer of outsourcing – getting an assistant who can find an assistant… And as luck may have it a few days ago I run into someone who offers exactly that kind of services – Nick Loper, the founder of Virtual Assistant Assistant, the leading directory and customer review database on personal and small business outsourcing companies. Nick also wrote a book “Virtual Assistant Assistant: The Ultimate Guide to Finding, Hiring, and Working with Virtual Assistants” that is now available on Amazon and published a white paper that discusses the current state of the personal outsourcing landscape. Here is a summary in his own words:

It looks at some of the macro trends impacting the industry, including large scale geographic shifts in supply, and the growing confusion over what exactly is a “virtual assistant.”

The study also addresses the demand side of the equation with an analysis of proprietary never-before-released survey data from prospective outsourcing clients. This includes information on desired work functions, anticipated workloads, preferred working relationships, and more.

As demand for outsourcing services has increased, so has interest from venture capitalists. A number of high profile companies and startups have raised funds to grow their business.

Finally, the paper looks at some of the demographic data on website visitors seeking out information on virtual assistants.

Outsourcing service providers may be able to use this data to better cater their offerings to meet the demands of the market.

VA market is going to grow considerably and selecting companies that can match your specific needs would become increasingly different. In that light services like VAA could be extremely helpful. I hope Nick continues growing his business…

“Outsource it!” is now in beta

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A couple days ago my first full size book went into beta and is now available at the publisher website – http://pragprog.com/book/nkout/outsource-it. I feel very happy and relieved that the book is finally out, writing it was far more challenging than I’ve ever anticipated. At the same time I feel happy and proud, proud to be one of the authors of the pragmatic bookshelf, the group of technology writers that earned respect across very broad and demanding technical audience.

It will take a little while before the book hits the shelves of Amazon and other bookstores, but you don’t have to wait and get your e-copy of it today. While the book is in beta your comments and suggestions would be taken quite seriously and could result in changes and additions to the content, hopefully making the book even better. I am not sure how long the beta would take but hopefully much less than it took me to get here –

Roughly two and a half years ago I came up what seemed a great idea at the time – compile my blog material into an easy to read eBook. In a couple months I produced the first volume that was dedicated to making decisions on whether and how to outsource. In a short order I received substantial feedback that made it apparent that just recompiling the blog and doing surface level clean up won’t add too much value, and probably was not worth the effort. Continue reading →

Outsourcing Associations

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Finding outsourcing vendors is not a trivial task sometimes because it’s just too many to chose from, sometimes because you just cannot find any that fit a particular criteria. Over the years I found that generating a list of prospective vendors can often be done with a help of organization that unite offshore vendors in some manner. As it turned out it’s not easy to find these organizations is not to easy as well, so I started a list that should be of help. So far the list is not to big and I was only able to find 20 some organizations, I hope that with your help the list will grow fast.

The list below includes top 5 associations based on Alexa Global rating. Click here for the full list sorted by Name, here for the list sorted by Alexa Global, and here for the list sorted by Alexa US. If you know of a site, directory or service with is worth including please comment on the page and I include in the list, feel free also email me at krym2000-po @ yahoo . com as well.

Name	PR	Alexa Global	Alexa US	Description
The International Association of Outsourcing Professionals (IAOP)	5	313,474	168,529	The International Association of Outsourcing Professionals (IAOP) is the global, standard-setting organization and advocate for the outsourcing profession. They claim to be the leading professional association for organizations and individuals involved in changing the world of business through outsourcing, offshoring, and shared services with a global community of more than 110,000 members and affiliates worldwide.
The Outsourcing Institute (IO)	5	423,525	246,289	Founded in 1993, the Outsourcing Institute (OI) claims to be the world’s biggest and most trafficked neutral professional association dedicated exclusively to outsourcing with a network of more than 70,000 professionals worldwide including qualified outsourcing buyers. Their specialties include: outsourcing, sourcing, thought leadership, state of the industry, marketing, promotions, RFP, vendor selection, relationship management and governance.
National Outsourcing Association (NOA)	5	893,216	27,276	Founded in 1987, the National Outsourcing Association (NOA) is the UK’s only nonprofit outsourcing trade association and claims to be the centre of excellence in outsourcing. Their services are focused on delivering education, excellence and collaboration and they are involved in all areas of outsourcing, including ITO, BPO and KPO.
Russian Software Developers Association (RUSSOFT)	5	902,435	55,451	Established in 1999, RUSSOFT Association is a nationwide association of the technically competent software developing companies from Russia and Belarus. It aims to represent Russian software development companies on the global market, to develop marketing and PR activities of its members, and to promote their interests in their countries’ governments.
Sourcing Interests Group (SIG)	4	1,010,363	271,503	Sourcing Interests Group (SIG) is a membership-driven organization comprised of sourcing and outsourcing professionals. They claim be acknowledged by many as a world leader in providing an ongoing forum and services to assist companies in strategy development, the improvement of goods and services sourcing, and the implementation and management of corporate services through outsourcing, offshoring, insourcing and shared services.

Top ten mistakes in selecting an outsourcing firm

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A few days ago James McGovern, an Enterprise Architect from HP, asked a question on LinkedIn What are the top ten mistakes a CIO makes in selecting an outsourcing fir? Needless to say that this is not a new question and many people have answered it over the last decade (see for example “Outsourcing: 10 Crippling Mistakes IT Departments Make.” yet it set off a discussion with more than 30 people pitching in. There is no surprise here, outsourcing remains an integral part of most IT organization and many mistakes are made in every step and in every aspect of its utilization.

The thought of joining the discussion on LinkedIn naturally crossed my mind, but I realized that my contribution would be better if I put together a summary / highlight some of the most significant points brought in by others (and maybe add a few of my own) and do it here, in my blog, where this discussion naturally belongs. Also I noticed that many answers on LinkedIn went far beyond selecting the vendor and concentrated on mistakes people make when executing the contract /engagement. Great info, just not relevant to the question. Anyway, here is my list of top mistakes I’ve seen CIOs and other technology executives make when selecting an outsourcing vendor –

1) Outsourcing for the sake of outsourcing. The most significant mistake is using outsourcing to solve problems that could be addressed with other often more effective tools and measures. Outsourcing is a powerful tool, but it has its place and its drawbacks. Used without appropriate knowledge it can misfire and create a lot of collateral damage. Before you even consider selecting vendors you need to define goals and objectives you are trying to accomplish by outsourcing and only then turn to selecting companies that can support your objectives.

2) Ignoring basic rules. I covered these rules in an old post, take a look, and remember ignoring these rules is akin to ignoring gravity ;)

3) Inadequate process. Vendor selection can be a complex multi-step process or just a short project posting on a freelancing marketplace. Appropriate process must fit the task at hand, organizational culture, and available funds. Needless to say winging it or building a rocket launcher to kill a woodpecker will get you nowhere. Part of the process is defining selection criteria, see some ideas in this post.

4) Wrong focus. It’s all too often organizations take a myopic view on outsourcing and focus solely on the cost saving it can provide. Big mistake. First, outsourcing doesn’t guarantee savings, more so, it takes money to save money so chances are you will need to increase your burn rate before you can decrease it. In vendor selection excessive focus on $$$ is likely to drive you towards wrong vendor, proverbial “you get what you’ve paid for”.

5) Lack of commitment. Organizational commitment, executive sponsorship, team buy-in are key components of any initiative. Lack of commitment to selected vendor, or insufficient buy-in by stakeholders is a disaster waiting to happen. The worst case of lack of commitment is a “hands-off vendor selection” where is the team / person in charge of selection is merely involved in the process (see this for the difference between “involved” and “committed” :))

6) Technical (skills / experience / background) mismatch. The best cook on the planet is not necessarily the best pilot. Same goes for vendors – some companies are great for ERP implementations, some for iPhone development. So, back to the first point – match vendor technical capabilities to the task (objectives) at hand, and don’t expect one-fit-all providers to be the best (or any good) at the same time. And if you have complex initiative, consider multisourcing, supposedly not putting all eggs in one basket has its benefits

7) Personality mismatch. In the key to success of personal relationships is often a personality match. Same goes for vendor selection. This topic is complex and a voodoo of sorts, never the less it’s extremely important. In my book (due for publishing sometime late this year) I plan to cover this topic in more details. Fill out this form if interested, I will be happy to let you know when the book is ready.

8) Master / servant mindset. Selecting a vendor is selecting a partner, not a disposable pen. Whether it’s abusive RFP process or ruthless negotiations treating vendors poorly is likely to setup the relation for failure in the long run.

9) Lack of transparency. Many organizations hide their intentions from vendor, often to gain an upper hand in negotiations. Funny enough, this approach is unlikely to provide any advantages in the negotiations and instead is likely to mislead vendors and/or the vendor selection team. The more clarity is given to prospective vendors the higher the chances of find that illusive Mr. Right.

10) And last but not least, not talking with me. Just Kidding, at least partially. The point I decided to save for last is simple – read up, learn about vendor selection process, reach out to friends who’s done it, hire outsourcing advisor. Jumping into vendor selection process without appropriate knowledge / experience / background is the biggest mistake of it all.

List of Outsourcing Advisors

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After my post on outsourcing governance I received a few emails raising the topic of outsourcing advisory. And that prompted me to do a bit of a deeper dive into the world of corporate matchmaking / marriage counseling – helping companies to find offshore vendors and later on help them with governance and management of the engagement.

This field remains huge and profitable and more so, seems to be growing in leaps and bounds. According to one of the leaders in outsourcing governance, KPMG, 70% of outsourcing users want better governance. That’s not surprising since there many compelling reasons to engage advisors throughout the full lifecycle of outsourcing. The main being obvious – as I often say, outsourcing is a powerful tool but it a complex one and without proper knowledge using of it could be self- destructive; having someone with in-depth knowledge of the tool will spare you some injuries. If you are looking for me reasons consider taking a look at this article.

While doing my micro research I stumbled upon somewhat unexpected problem – I could not find a comprehensive source of companies that provide outsourcing advisory services. After googeling for a couple hours I figured out that a better tool here would be oDesk :) I pinged one of my VAs and she put together a list for me in just a couple days.

Please see below the top ten Outsourcing Advisors from the list based on Alexa rating (probably not the best way to rate them though), in addition you can find more comprehensive list sorted by Name, Alexa Global, and Alexa US.

Hopefully you find it helpful, as usual feel free to suggest new entries, or comment on existing ones.

Name	PR	Alexa Global	Alexa US	Description
IBM Global Services	8	446	608	IBM Global Services claims to be the world’s largest business and technology services provider. It has over 190,000 workers across more than 160 countries. IBM Global Services started in the spring of 1991, with the aim towards helping companies manage their IT operations and resources. Global Services has two major divisions: Global Business Services (GBS) and Global Technology Services (GTS). IBM Global Business Services (GBS) is the professional services arm of Global Services, including management consulting, systems integration, and application management services while IBM Global Technology Services (GTS) primarily reflects infrastructure services. It includes outsourcing services, Integrated Technology Services, and Maintenance.
Deloitte	8	6,851	4,965	“Deloitte” is the brand under which tens of thousands of dedicated professionals in independent firms throughout the world collaborate to provide audit, consulting, financial advisory, risk management and tax services to selected clients.
Gartner	7	8,659	5,056	Gartner, Inc. (NYSE: IT) claims to tbe world’s leading information technology research and advisory company. They deliver the technology-related insight necessary for their clients to make the right decisions, every day -from CIOs and senior IT leaders in corporations and government agencies, to business leaders in high-tech and telecom enterprises and professional services firms, to technology investors.
PwC	8	10,816	8,629	PwC firms help organisations and individuals create the value they’re looking for. We’re a network of firms in 158 countries with close to 169,000 people who are committed to delivering quality in assurance, tax and advisory services. “PwC” is the brand under which member firms of PricewaterhouseCoopers International Limited (PwCIL) operate and provide services. Together, these firms form the PwC network. Each firm in the network is a separate legal entity and does not act as agent of PwCIL or any other member firm. PwCIL does not provide any services to clients. PwCIL is not responsible or liable for the acts or omissions of any of its member firms nor can it control the exercise of their professional judgment or bind them in any way.
Ernst & Young	8	13,374	8,634	Ernst & Young is a global leader in assurance, tax, transaction and advisory services. Worldwide, their 152,000 people are united by their shared values and an unwavering commitment to quality. They make a difference by helping their people, their clients and their wider communities achieve their potential.
Capgemini	7	16,622	4,942	A global leader in consulting, technology, outsourcing, and local professional services.
McKinsey & Company	7	17,418	15,185	McKinsey & Company, Inc. is a global management consulting firm that focuses on solving issues of concern to senior management. McKinsey serves as an adviser to many businesses, governments, and institutions.
KPMG	7	18,567	13,291	KPMG operates as an international network of member firms offering audit, tax and advisory services. We work closely with our clients, helping them to mitigate risks and grasp opportunities.
Boston Consultant Group (BCG)	7	37,830	23,291	BCG is a global management consulting firm and claims to be the world’s leading advisor on business strategy. They partner with clients from the private, public, and not-for-profit sectors in all regions to identify their highest-value opportunities, address their most critical challenges, and transform their enterprises.
Bain & Company	7	40,359	28,581	Bain & Company is a global management consulting firm headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts. Bain is considered one of the most prestigious consulting firms in the world, with 47 offices in 30 countries and over 5,500 professionals on staff globally.

PO Trip Adviser: China

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And now a brief list of travel tips for one of my favorite destinations – China, the country that changes with amazing speed right before our eyes.

If there is anything that I regret about traveling to China it is not spending enough time there, not meeting enough people, and not seeing enough places.

I remember sitting on the Great Wall looking at the hills that look exactly like those on ancient paintings and thinking that for many Americans visiting China could be experience equal to visiting a different world, another planet… Well, that’s also changing rapidly.

A Visa is easy to get, but it may take a few weeks so allocate sufficient time. Also make sure that you have the travel plan worked out before you apply for Visa as you may need several entry authorizations as cities such as Shenzhen require special handling.

The most difficult aspect of traveling to China is language, very few people speak any English and you won’t find too many signs in English either. As a result public transportation even inner country air travel becomes challenging.

China is a reasonably safe country, and when it comes to main outsourcing destinations within country is very safe.

With petty crime on a raise you should be aware of environment and follow common sense practices such as not carrying large amount of money, protect your passport and valuables, etc.

The police in China are generally very friendly, though they speak very little English except in Beijing, Shanghai or Shenzhen, where some police can generally speak simple fluent English. If you are lost then ask for directions as they will usually be happy to help.

Stay in 4-5 star hotels remains relatively affordable. That will also ensure English speaking staff, access to tours, restaurants, etc.

Driving in China is somewhat strange experience – on one hand I was surprised with how closely some laws are followed, e.g. the speed limit – most of the cars travel ~5 mph below it. On the other hand I saw a lot of erratic moves and turns that were not aggressive just plain dangerous.

Sightseeing in China can be easily arranged with the help of the vendor or hotel staff. Keep in mind that most of professional tour guides are in cohorts with retailers specializing with ripping off tourists selling you “traditional” china, tea, souvenirs, etc. at 3-5 times the price you can get them elsewhere.

Eat only in good restaurants or at your hotel. Avoid eating buffet meals, even in high-end places. Not only drink bottled water, but also brush your teeth with it. Most of hotels provide bottled water for free. In restaurants I recommend boiled water / hot tea.

PO Trip Adviser: India

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Continuing with a line of travel guides I turn to the most common outsourcing destination – India. There are a plenty of outstanding travel guides for India, so if you are planning to combine business and pleasure, and see places such as the Agra, Rajasthan, and Kerala make sure you study them before you depart. Keep in mind though that most of the most interesting places will take dedicated and possibly considerable time, for example while Taj Mahal is fairly close to Delhi / Noida the trip there is going to take you at least a day.

For those of us who are limited to strictly business, here are a few tips to consider:

A Visa is easy to get, but it may take a few weeks so allocate sufficient time.

Safety of travel in India is not what it used to be just a few years ago, yet large outsourcing cities remain quite safe for majority of business travelers.

Shop around for tickets and ask frequent India travelers for advice. Chances are you can find something 30% less than standard internet rates using Indian travel consolidators.

Chances are you will arrive in India around midnight. I typically go straight to a hotel right near the airport and start my business day the next morning.

Stay in nice hotels, 4-5 stars. They are relatively affordable and the high quality service will help you to retain the energy you most certainly need.

Ask the vendor to arrange all your travel and have a car with a chauffer. Don’t even think about driving in India. The traffic and road system is not for the faint of heart plus they drive on the wrong side of the road!

Petty corruption is widespread in India, from expediting you through airport customs to dealing with government agencies and employees can involve bribing or “tipping” as it is often referred to. My advice it to stay away from it.

Make sure you have your personal belongings partitioned among suite cases and carry on. Lost luggage is a fairly common event. Use solid suitcases as mishandling is also common at airports.

Don’t wander off the beaten track, don’t encourage beggars, don’t visit shady places, don’t leave your valuables unattended, don’t put your wallet in your back pocket, use licensed guides in sightseeing – basically use common sense!

Eat only in good restaurants or at your hotel. Avoid eating buffet meals, even in high-end places. Not only drink bottled water, but also brush your teeth with it.

PO Trip Adviser: Russia

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While working on a outsourcing destinations chapter for my book I realized that tips for travel in many countries could be helpful to those not accustomed to traveling to third world countries and other outsourcing destinations. Of course there are plenty of books, websites and forums covering travel to any place in the world. I am not planning on competing with them in any way, my goal is create a simple list of items to keep in mind when visiting a vendor far away from your home becomes necessary. I am planning to put a couple posts covering few countries that I have a fortune to spend time in and let me start with the one that I lived in for 30 years…

So, here we go – a few tips on traveling to Russia – one of the top Eastern European outsourcing destinations:

Visas are required and getting one can be a tricky process. Make sure you allocate at least one month for processing the paperwork.

Unfortunately terrorism and street crime are a part of daily lives in many parts of the Russia. Still, on a relative scale, Russia, and especially the tier-one cities, are safe and great places to visit.

Shop around for tickets. If you know any Russians who stay connected to their motherland, ask them for help. There are many Russian travel agencies that can find great deals on tickets.

Staying in nice hotels can be price prohibitive, particularly in tier-one cities. Ask your vendor for help with travel arrangements.

You can rent a car and drive in Russia. Be prepared for a manual stick shift and very aggressive driving styles. You may face very serious traffic and won’t see any signs in English, so finding your way can be a challenge.

Ask your vendor to arrange sightseeing for you. Due to large distances and complexities in city navigation, you would be much better off on a guided tour. And I assure you Russian cities and their suburbs have a lot to offer a curious visitor such as architecture, landscape and even shopping.

Ask your vendor for recommendation when it comes to restaurants. Nowadays, especially the big cities, offer a great variety of styles and cuisines but the cost can be astronomical. Just like many other destinations, not only drink bottled water but also brush your teeth with it.

Prices are generally quoted in rubles. Currency can be freely converted at banks, hotels or kiosks specifically for tourists.

If you have any suggestions, ideas or tips on travel to Russia please comment or email me, I’ll be happy to update the list.

Search for SWAT

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There is famous French expression cherche la femme (find the woman) implying that behind a cause of almost any event there is a woman (well, in its most common meaning the phrase has negative and sexist connotation). Cherche La SWAT or “Search for SWAT” is an approach I have been using and recommend others to use when selecting an IT service partner, offshore vendors included. I honestly believe that behind almost any success in our industry there is a SWAT team…

A couple days ago I had a pleasure of meeting with two guys who’s been running their local technology shop for quite some time now. Both were top notch developers who’ve been in the industry probably at least as long as I, maybe longer. A bowl of outstanding Pho in a greasy spoon Vietnamese restaurant, college campus attire, and potential partnership created special ambiance that is particular conducive for nerd bonding.

After quick introduction and buzz word exchange we realized that we were only a degree apart and for awhile were working for startups that we fiercely competing with each other. We laughed through tears talking about how a company with 2 developers and 12 marketers and no product can put out of business a superb product with 12 talented engineers and 1 marketer behind it and then after sharing similar stories about dot com bust and being screwed by VC and CEOs we finally dove into discussion of technical capabilities of the firm my hosts were representing.

It is amazing how quickly these two guys who are as remote to sales and marketing as naïveté to Capitol Hill were able to give me a sense of comfort in their services and products. I guess many sales guys can take a few tips from these nerds. Well, faking competence takes a lot of competence and thus no need for faking ;)

Probably the main reason for such instant connection was a common mind set and similar language even though spoken with very different accents. What was the most important is that these guys had very similar pitch to what I have been using when promoting my services for very long time. These two guys were representing a SWAT team – Specialists With Advanced Tools.

There are many SWAT team out there, yet they are a tiny minority in the vast pool of IT resources. There are a few things that are common between SWAT teams, in particular they

are typically comprised of top notch professionals with substantial experience or/and IQ off the charts;
are typically specialized shops with individual contributors not making claims outside of their domain;
often are small in size and tightly knit teams, many of their members have history of working together possibly in some other firm(s).

SWAT team pitch is typically around results, quality, and productivity. In development arenas they tend to offer veni, vidi, vici model – pragmatic approach to delivering the product and no concern for recurring tasks, when it comes to providing ongoing services they are typically very pragmatic and process oriented. They do not tend to dazzle you with marketing materials and prefer to quickly cut to the chase. If they want to show off anything than it’s typically their weapons – advanced tools – for example a development framework they developed and refined over the years.

Besides obvious benefits of SWAT teams (efficiency, reliability, focus, etc.) there are a few exceptionally important aspects that set SWAT teams apart from a majority of service providers including most prominent companies. To some degree you can call those aspects “advanced tools” as well:

Established network of technology leaders and individual contributors of all ranks.
Time and scale proven technologies, solutions, libraries, patterns, and reusable components.
Best of breed technology tools as well as process, policies, and methodologies.
Established relationships with software and hardware vendors.
Established partnerships with consulting organizations and offshore providers.

I hope by now I made it obvious that SWAT teams are the teams to find and work with. The trick is the “find” part since there are not that many of them and plus there are plenty of imposters. To a large degree that is very much like for employees – “looking for people is very much like digging for gold, you literally need to go through tons of dirt, but you are looking for gold, not for dirt.”

Top Emerging Companies in India IT-BPO

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Finding a provider in India could be very challenging process. Sheer number of providers combined with high percentage of body-shops with prevalent mediocre resources, ongoing changes in the industry, recent scandals, cutthroat competition exacerbated by industry decline make up for a daunting process. The process becomes especially complex if you target a small to midsized vendors. Analysts reports are not likely to offer tremendous help here as they often stay with top tier vendors. Naturally you want to seek help from industry organizations, and when it comes to India you can not ignore NASSCOM with its 1200+ members. Recently one of the NASSCOM initiatives yielded a list which you might want to consider: NASSCOM announces the Top 15 – “Exciting Emerging companies to Work for”- 2008. The list offers 15 companies that came from a list of ~400 companies. Rather exclusive group I would say. To my great surprise I actually knew two of the 15 names:

While the focus of the survey was to identify the best small and medium sized IT-BPO companies to work for, it serves as a great list of the best small and medium sized IT-BPO companies to deal with as there is typically very strong correlation between those two.

oDesk Freelancer Stats and Mashups

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A few posts ago I mentioned a report covering some insights on international freelancing community that was made available by oDesk. Sine then I had a chance to take a deeper look at oConomy and found information there even more interesting and insightful. oDesk did a great job on presenting freelancer statistics in chats and Google mashups.

Of course when it comes to picking an offshoring destination freelancing data needs to be taken with a grain of salt. In particular a freelancer’s rate is a product of many criteria and only portion of those are locale-dependant. Freelancing through aggregators / monster boards like oDesk is still in its early stage, over time the rates and other stats will have a greater degree of correlation to local salaries, availability, etc. However, even today, these figures provide an interesting reference in terms of understanding the local dynamics. Let’s take for example geo distribution for Russia vs. population and rank for top 10 cities on oDesk list:

oDesk Rank	City	Number of Providers	Average Charge Rate	Average User Score	Population	Rank
1	Moscow	486	$19.39	4.21	10,470,318	1
2	Omsk	444	$16.12	4.28	1,134,016	7
3	Taganrog	207	$15.82	4.28	281,947	66
4	Saint Petersburg	200	$17.76	3.69	4,661,219	2
5	Novosibirsk	121	$16.75	4.34	1,425,508	3
6	Tomsk	98	$15.83	3.99	487,838	34
7	Rostov-on-Don	69	$15.28	4.15	1,068,267	10
8	Nizhniy Novgorod	44	$15.11	3.28	1,311,252	4
9	Smolensk	34	$14.24	3.54	325,137	56
10	Irkutsk	32	$24.13	4.62	593,604	24

As you can see the figures are somewhat counterintuitive. Take for example Taganrog a small city in the same region as Rostov-on-Don which is roughly 3 times bigger and considerably richer as well, yet freelancer community is 6 times the size of Rostov-on-Don’s. Taganrog is even ahead of Russia’s second largest city Saint Petersburg. Most likely these figures confirm that freelancing community’s embrace of oDesk services is in its humble beginnings and that more business will flow to companies like oDesk, Guru, eLance and others.

I hope oDesk keeps oConomy live and updated with the latest info, it would be also great to see their competitors to follow in suite.

Researching Offshore Rates

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Questions about offshore rates in different geographies, for different positions and roles come all too often. I covered a few aspects of this subject in my earlier posts, for example Offshore Developer Rates and Negotiating a Fair Rate. One of the points made in these posts was that the rate is just a contributing factor to the bottom line – the Total Cost of Outsourcing. Nevertheless, the rate is important and getting information about what’s fair for a specific position, geography, region, etc. could be extremely valuable, especially during the initial stage of the vendor selection.

Getting ballpark figures for the rates is very simple; all you need to do is just ask. The trick is to understand trends and the negotiation space. For example when a few weeks ago a mid-sized nearshore provider suggested that their standard billing rate is 35-40 USD for QA engineer and 40-50 USD for Java Developer I knew that I am talking with someone with a lots of guts or sense of humor.

In a large degree rates are marked up wages. The mark up includes many elements such as employee benefits, operations overhead, sales and marketing overhead, G&A, and so on plus expected margin. When dealing with large providers (public companies) many essential facts and ratios could be found in financial docs that are open to general public. Small vendors can be better at some cost cutting techniques but they loose on the “economy of scale” so the chances are the key ratios would be similar. In that light the question of fair rates comes down to salaries and expected margins.

When you negotiating with an offshore vendor the margins are the negotiation space; they can not typically fall below minimally expected and of course never cut into salary. That’s unless the vendor operates under famous model “we lose money on every deal but we make up in volume”.

Consider an example: you pick a couple vendors that appear to be fairly similar in most aspects; one of them has ODC based in Shanghai and anther in Shenzhen. Both vendors offer you the same rates. Which of them is more likely to offer steeper discounts? As you can imagine knowing that salary a developer can expect in Shanghai is ~15% higher than in Shenzhen would be helpful.

To determine the salary that an average vendor needs to pay to its employees you would need to go through some research. The figures change constantly, substantially and depend on many parameters – local economic situation, dollar exchange rate and specific location being the most important.

The best thing is if you can get your hands on a credible research, those could be rather expensive though. If that is price prohibitive you should talk with your omnipotent friend Google. It is amazing how much info you can find. For example just look at this jewel – Salary Trends in China Present New Business Opportunities. Barak Paztal, the author of the post used one of the best ways of discovering current salary and salary trends – he went through backdoor of popular job board to present data which is priceless for those planning to outsource or build their own shops in China. For example did you know that “General trends show that over the last 12 months salaries have been decreasing in China. The average decline from an annual salary of $5,344 hovers at 11%, or $4,977.” BTW, that’s about 7 times lower than in the USA. Or look at that:

“Software engineers in China regularly earn 44% more than the average. They will earn an annual salary of $7,200, while in Beijing they can expect to earn an additional 30% or $9,360. Companies seeking to hire software engineers can save up to 40% of salary costs by hiring in cities like Dalian, the software outsourcing center of China where the average salary is $7,056 or Jinan, with 5M people and few hours by train from Beijing with an average salary of $5,760. Office space in these areas can also help to dramatically reduce costs, in particular now that they have reached peak levels, as demonstrated in Beijing following the Olympics.”

When looking for just ballpark assessment you can do away without the access to backdoor of the job boards. Just browsing through sufficient number of job ads will give you a great preview. Another simple way to get high level salary info is through rates available on freelancer sites such as elance.com, odesk.com or guru.com.

Once again since the goal here is not competitive intelligence but trends analysis the ballpark estimates would do just fine.

Top India Cities for IT Outsourcing

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I just stumbled upon an interesting post – The Top Ten Cities for Outsourcing in India. Bala, a Software Programmer working in Chennai, India refers to several major studies by big name industry analysts that produced the top 10 list. India has 35 major cities, not all of them are good offshore outsourcing hubs, for example India’s financial capital Mumbai is not one of those.

The list includes top 10 outsourcing destination in the following order: Chennai, Hyderabad, Bangalore, National Capital Region (NCR) includes Delhi and its surrounding suburbs, Pune, twin cities Chandigarh and Mohali, Kolkata, Mysore, Thiruvananthapuram and Coimbatore.

Pros and Cons of Outsourcing to Brazil

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A couple months ago I was talking with Alexandre, a project / account manager from a mid-sized service provider based out of Campinas, an industrial city North of Sao Paulo, Brazil. Alexandre’s team did a great job on one of my past projects and we continue to stay in touch after the engagement ended. The question of Pros and Cons of Brazil outsourcing inevitably came up and I committed to writing this post after some follow with my network and learning a bit more about the destination.

Brazil, the first country in the famous BRIC acronym is not one of the first names that come to mind when you consider IT offshoring destinations. I am sure that overtime that will change and Brazil will gain a permanent spot on the list of top players in technology outsourcing. You would probably agree with me if you look just at the list of Pros of that destination; the Cons may affect your opinion but won’t dramatically change it.

Let’s start with Gartner rating for Brazil which I agree to some degree:

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English Skills. English is a very popular skill and not hard to find with technical professionals in Brazil. However, it’s no match to what you find in India. As a matter of fact when you focus on technical skills sooner or later you will find yourself compromising on English fluency.

Government Support. Very interesting topic. According to my connections in Brazil government is unusually supportive in developing IT outsourcing however results of it remain to be seen.

Infrastructure. Unless you partner with a very small provider located in a remote province city you will find infrastructure that meets reasonable expectations. In my / my network experience telecom and other aspects of the infrastructure are excellent.

Labor Pool / Access to Resources. Brazil employs one of the largest IT communities in the world. The IT work force is large and experienced. This is also a highly educated professional work force as Brazilian universities are fairly competitive to get into and rather inexpensive to stay in. Of course in sheer numbers Brazil falls far behind India and China. Finding top-notch technical resources in Brazil is not easy like everywhere else in the world, yet is possible, even when it comes to cutting edge technologies and methodologies.

Educational System. I can not completely agree with Gartner here, while education system in Brazil is not as stellar as in Argentina or Canada when considered from IT stand point it’s at least at par with Chile and Mexico. In my experience the quality of recent grads with CS degrees is very good and that’s rates high on my book.

Cost. Pure comparison of the rates with India or China puts Brazil in serious disadvantage. Based on a limited sampling of rates I had access to it is 30-80% higher than rates for comparable resources in India. The difference could be even higher if you try to take into consideration the tier of the city and vendor. On the other hand, as I mentioned numerous times, rate is only a guideline to cost, the total cost of outsourcing has a considerably lower difference.

Operating Environment. Air travel to Brazil is convenient and affordable. Sao Paulo is a 10 hour direct flight from Atlanta, GA. Small time difference and thus no jetlag make a huge difference in overall comfort of travel. Finding excellent and fairly affordable hotels, restaurants and other creature comforts is easy. With a little support from your vendor chances are you will stay in safe areas and won’t need to deal with crime which is unfortunately a serious issue in the country. Getting things done requires understanding of the system and is manageable. One of the big Pros of the country that came up many times in my discussions was absence of natural disasters

Nearshore advantage. When it come to US based customers Brazil offers nearshore model which is an advantage of high caliber especially for agile projects. Time difference, travel ease, low cultural barriers, etc. institute a huge Pro for Brazil which offsets its high rates to a large degree.

Cultural Compatibility. In my experience as well as according to everyone I checked with cultural differences are very easy to deal with. As a matter of fact when I asked around within my network I heard more about cultural similarities rather than differences. Of course the differences are there and they can not be ignored, here are just a few to consider:

First and foremost language issues makes a huge imprint on communications, watch out for idiomatic expressions and professional lingo.

Work / life balance. While many of guys in my Brazilian teams worked crazy hours the attitude towards work / career / life balance was quite different, and that is particular notable if there is a beach nearby.

In my experience working with Brazilian teams as I noticed that it developers very long time before they could to offer their opinion or disagree with USA team members. That was quite different from Indian “never say no”, it appeared more like fascination with US tech workforce and overly humble judgment of own abilities. Very similar sentiment came from my network as well.

Facts and technical quality of the solutions carried less weight with Brazilian team than perceived “authority” of individual. There was also much higher level of sensitivity towards “people feelings” than the one you would typically observe in the states; sometimes to determent of the project.

And, in my opinion, common for the entire region tendency to put very high emphasis on theory and academic values versus pragmatic business decisions.

Resource Quality / Technical Capability. IT outsourcing in Brazil doesn’t seem to be in the same cut-throat competition with other IT employers as in India. It seems that Brazil is still in a stage when working for outsourcing company considered prestigious and highly desired job. In that light getting your hands on top notch resources is still possible.

Turnover Ratio. Turnover ratio claimed by the vendors is low and that has been my experience as well. My limited scope survey gave very positive results with average about 13%. The attrition was also of general nature mainly family issues or education. Not too much of job hopping or inter-company transfers.

There is one more issue worth mentioning – finding vendors in Brazil is not as easy as it should be. Hopefully the latest efforts of several outsourcing vendors combined with the government support give us a solid provider directory which will help us in finding those perfect matches made in IT heaven. But for now consider these links as the humble beginnings – www.softex.br, www.brazil-it.com, www.actminds.com, and www.brasscom.org.br.

oDesk: Freelancing Destinations

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Very interesting statistics made available by oDesk, a freelancing marketplace that now tops 150,000 individuals worldwide in over 100 countries. Freelancing geography as seen from oDesk perspective appears quite different from what we see in trends on geography of regular IT outsourcing, for example US freelancers offer strong competition and reasonable costs. The list of top freelancer countries also includes Canada, Russia and Ukraine rather than China and Brazil.

CANADA
Total Number of Providers: 3,581
Average Hourly Rate Charge: $19.60
Average Feedback Score: 4.32 (out of 5.00)

INDIA
Total Number of Providers: 27,454
Average Hourly Rate Charge: $12.52
Average Feedback Score: 4.01 (out of 5.00)

PAKISTAN
Total Number of Providers: 5,960
Average Hourly Rate Charge: $11.13
Average Feedback Score: 4.36 (out of 5.00)

PHILIPPINES
Total Number of Providers: 17,213
Average Hourly Rate Charge: $6.33
Average Feedback Score: 4.30 (out of 5.00)

RUSSIA
Total Number of Providers: 2,721
Average Hourly Rate Charge: $16.86
Average Feedback Score: 4.31 (out of 5.00)

UKRAINE
Total Number of Providers: 2,929
Average Hourly Rate Charge: $15.96
Average Feedback Score: 4.36 (out of 5.00)

USA
Total Number of Providers: 52,637
Average Hourly Rate Charge: $18.32
Average Feedback Score: 4.40 (out of 5.00)

Mumbai Sad Nomination

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An interesting and very important aspect of selecting an outsourcing destination is the location safety. And it is quite different from what it used to be just a few years ago. The recent terror in Mumbai brought a lot of attention to the subject and put Mumbai in the top ten riskiest places. Here is a how the list looks today:

The Most Dangerous Ten

1. Jerusalem (Israel)
2. Mumbai (India)
3. Rio de Janeiro/ Sao Paulo (Brazil)
4. Manila/Cebu/Makati (Philippines)
5. Delhi/ Noida/ Gurgaon (India)
6. Kingston (Jamaica)
7. Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia)
8. Johannesburg (South Africa)
9. Bangkok (Thailand)
10. Bogota (Colombia)

The Safest Ten

1. Singapore
2. Dublin (Ireland)
3. Santiago (Chile)
4. Krakow/Warsaw (Poland)
5. Toronto (Canada)
6. Prague/Brno (Czech Republic)
7. Budapest (Hungary)
8. Monterrey (Mexico)
9. Beijing (China)
10. Cairo (Egypt)

See more in Mumbai named second most dangerous outsourcing location by Matthew Scott

Gartner’s Top 30

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Selecting offshore destination just got easier – Gartner has its new list now. While I am often skeptical about info you can get from Gartner reports, in particular in its application to small to medium sized businesses, I believe in its value as long as it’s taken with a grain of salt. “Determining the country or countries that are best placed to host offshore IT operations is a daunting task for many organizations, according to Gartner, Inc. This year, Gartner has assessed the suitability of 72 countries as offshore locations, and has announced its ‘Top 30’*. The analysis showed that the dynamic nature of the market has seen a number of countries position themselves as credible alternatives to the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China)…“

“In 2008, Gartner’s top 30 locations for offshore services, by region, were:

Americas: Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Mexico and Panama

Asia/Pacific: Australia, China, India, Malaysia, New Zealand, Pakistan, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam

Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA): the Czech Republic, Egypt, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Morocco, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, South Africa, Spain and Ukraine

Although only seven countries from the Americas appeared in the final list of 30, these countries are becoming an attractive proposition for the largest buying market for offshore services – the US. “

See more on Gartner Identifies Top 30 Countries for Offshore Services in 2008.
Also see good insight in NetworkWorld reaction By John Ribeiro India’s competitors catching up as outsourcing hotspots.

Offshore Interviews: Personality Aspect

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There are several common misconceptions about interviewing for “personality” with the offshore resources:

It’s irrelevant. These are not employees I am hiring, why would I care about their personality?

It’s the same as with local resources: what’s good for the home team is good for the offshore.

I let my gut decide or I am good at reading people and I do not need any help here.

Let me start with debunking those myths:

The first one is the easiest. Of course it’s relevant; just think about how much damage a QA engineer without attention to details can do, or how much “value” a Project Manager with no appreciation for authority and processes would bring to a project.

Why isn’t it the same in that case? In some aspects it is, for example for your staff QA engineer you would be interested in someone who has great attention to details, eye for imperfections, appreciates structure and processes, doesn’t mind repetitive work, etc. All these personality traits would be great assets for your offshore QA engineer as well. The difference comes with dynamics of the employment arrangement.

Generally you can not count on keeping offshore resources on your project over two years, after that they are likely to move on; as a matter of fact for the purposes of personality casting you would be looking for just one year in offshore case; hopefully you have a better longevity with local resources, let’s say 3 years. Over that period of time some personality traits will play a role that are not as important when it comes to one year. For example you are looking at résumé of someone who changed his job once a year; that might be a showstopper for staff position but could OK for offshore resources. What about their ambitions, desire to learn new technologies, track record of continuing education, etc. Many aspects of personality become irrelevant when you are looking for offshore resources or turn to opposite.

Another important aspect of personality interviews is the team diversity. I am not talking about race, religion, etc. instead it’s a diversity of the team. I believe in diversity of personality and when building local teams I prefer to have a well balanced but diverse team. For example you need people with “big picture” view as well as “detail” view; you need process fanatics and “break all the rules” mentality. When properly cast and well balanced diverse teams perform much better than homogeneous organizations. Of course casting is a key here, e.g. you do not need a social butterfly to work nightshift processing firewall logs. When it comes to offshore team diversity could mean unnecessary complexity and unpredictability.

One more important consideration in that regard is the fact that careers of offshore resources are not in your hands. In that light again many aspects of personality become irrelevant when you are looking for offshore resources or turn to opposite.

Now, on “I let my gut decide” topic. That’s a common approach to personality interviewing not only in offshore but for staff position all across the industry. I know that some managers are just darn good at reading people and even they make mistakes. I consider myself above average in that skill, mainly because I invested great deal of effort and education in it, and yet I make mistakes, sometimes serious ones. If your gut (intuition) can pinpoint attention to details, ability to strive under pressure, appreciation for processes, impeccable integrity… or an another side dishonesty, habitual irresponsibility, lack of work ethics… well, you probably are working as FBI profiler or psychic reader :) Intuition is important and you should listen to it, no doubts about it. You just should not rely on it or just only on it when selecting members of the team, especially when working remotely, over a phone, and across the cultural differences.

Now, a really hard question: how to define personality match while interviewing offshore developers? Personality interviews are tough to begin with, offshore exacerbate the complexity of the task. The approach I typically use includes several steps:

Simplify an ideal personality profile. For example for Black Box Tester I’d be looking only for several personality traits absence of which would be a show stopper: attention to detail, ability to handle stress, and respect for the structure / process.

Communicate the desired profile to my vendor with a hope that the screening catches at least obvious mismatch cases.

Prepare a few open-ended questions that cater to discovery of those specific traits. For example, “Based on your prior experience please describe a situation when you ability to handle stress helped deliver on engagement objectives”.

Take the answers for the face value. If the candidate can fake the answer hopefully they can fake the personality trait till the time the move on to a different project.

I usually have a few questions ready but do not necessary ask them all. Sometimes the candidate would fail a few ones just because those are unusual questions, not something they have been condition to hear. But if they can’t learn the drill after I’ve asked them a few questions, it’s not the person I’m interest in hiring anyway.

Offshore Interviews: Basics

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There are plenty of books, articles and various materials on the Net pertaining to technical interviewing. There are several substantial differences that need to be accounted for when dealing with offshore resources. The first one is a mindset.

Many people who outsource large scope IT initiatives outsource interviewing as well. They see sourcing (finding, interviewing, negotiating, etc.) activities as responsibility of vendor. In addition many vendors not only prefer but insist on keeping that activity internal to the vendor.

Depending on the scope of outsourcing initiative and your own bandwidth you my elect outsource the sourcing completely or to some degree. In my opinion that is the area where you need to stay involved. Quality of the resources is one of the highest risks for offshore outsourcing, and one of the factors that affects total cost of outsourcing at a very high degree. You should only outsource it if you believe that the vendor can do a very good job in sourcing, and how can you get there? – only by interviewing their resources. So interviewing is unavoidable, at least during the vendor selection process.

More so when you move into the first stage of engagement and your vendor puts together a team, how can you control the process and ensure that the team has quality resources? Amid of engagement when inevitable turnover kicks in how can you control that the quality of the resources is not going down? The uninspected deteriorates. [Dwight David Eisenhower] Only by getting involved in the interviewing.

I believe in the following interviewing schema:

Vendor selection stage. Interview a fair sampling of resources that are “softly” committed to the engagement. The size of the sampling depends on the size of the engagement and your bandwidth. The goal of this interview process is not to pick members for the team, it is to form your opinion of the vendor capability to build a team.

Kick off / Team Building stage. Interview all/subset of the team for the engagement. The scope of the interview depends on the size of the team and your bandwidth. For small teams, say under 20 people, “all” is the goal. For mid sized and large teams the leaders of the team and other key members must be interviewed. A fair sampling of the rest of the team must be interviewed as well.

On-going engagement. Interview replacements for all key team members. Do a spot-check interview for new members.

And for now just a few tips on interviewing process:

During Vendor Selection stage I typically use speed-dating style interviewing with individual interviews limited to 30 minutes covering ~20 people a day. It is important to have at least two people involved in the interview process working together, one of the main reason for that is a continues feedback and support they can provide to each other to stay on the top of the process and increase quality of discovery.

Interviews during the Kick off / Team Building stage and ongoing engagement should be substantially more involved, especially for the key members. That typically means multiple people involved in the interview on your side, several dimension of interviewing, e.g. technical, personality fit, etc. The investment in the interview process has a very high return, however it still need to be weighed against the contract terms and the scope of engagement.

The investment in interviewing process should be proportional to the expected value of the resources, e.g. technical lead for the project vs. black box tester. The process of selecting key members of the team deserves as much vigor and attention as if you are selecting full time employees. On a typical s/w development engagement the key members of the team include project manager, tech lead, QA lead, business analysts, and some senior engineering contributors.

The process of a full scale interview is similar to one for fulltime employees. It is easier to some degree as many non-technical issues, e.g. salary, do not need to be covered. It has its own challenges though, for example obvious issues of remote interviewing. I will cover interviewing in a separate post.

Pros & Cons of Outsourcing to Latin America

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Latin America offers one of the best options for nearshore outsourcing for the USA and Canada. It also offers great resources for Spanish localization projects getting increasing important in the states. Latin America offers a large spectrum of options roughly corresponding to the countries in the region covering almost entire alphabet from Argentina to Venezuela. Each country has its own specifics and its own set of Pros and Cons; the differences between countries could be dramatic, compare for example political climate in Mexico and Venezuela. There are still enough commonalities to considering covering of Pros and Cons for the entire region.

Infrastructure. The quality of infrastructure varies greatly from country to country but it’s quickly catching up to the required standards across the region. In countries leading of LA outsourcing – Argentina, Brazil and Mexico the infrastructure is likely to meet or even exceed your expectations, but even in countries far behind the quality is still acceptable. I was surprised how solid the infrastructure was in Chile or some cities in Bolivia. One thing is extremely important – the high quality infrastructure could be found mainly and sometime only in industrial areas of these countries. It is not at all as pervasive as it is in the USA. You must validate infrastructure sufficiency before moving forward with the vendor. The simplest way to do it at superficial level is to request a video interview over Skype.

Operating Environment. Flying to Sao Pao and getting to your vendors’ HQ is Campinas takes a while but small time difference makes it much easier to deal with than while travel to China or India. Working in many of the LA countries would not be extremely complex, challenging or dangerous. You have to know where to go and where not to but chances are you will be safe and can get your job done. Chances are your vendor operates from some of the country’s most industrially advanced area with decent standards of living and acceptable infrastructure. Of course language and cultural differences can create some challenges typically easily dealt with considering general hospitality of the region and with a little help from the vendor. All that ease falls of the cliff as you step out beyond the borders of the industrial areas. Destitution of the rural areas for most of LA countries is truly disturbing; my honest advice – leave these areas to National Geographic and Peace Core…

Skills Availability. Skill availability for high tech occupations depends on specific country / city. In general it could be characterized as medium to low. Generally you can build a small team of Java or .NET developers in somewhat reasonable timeframe, but size of the talent pool is microscopic when compared with India and China. The quality of the pool helps to some degree make up for its size, but only to some degree. In my experience putting together an 8 member team of high quality Java developers / QA engineers took over 4 months. I have to say that my quality requirements were very high and I was looking for somewhat unusual set of specifics. When you are after more run of the mill skill set you probably would have easier time. Legacy technology skills and enterprise applications skills are even less common.

English Skills. Not as good as you’d expect… and why would you even expect? I worked with many countries in the region and in each of them I met engineers who spoke English better than I, but in general you have to be prepared for language barriers or for substantially impaired hiring if you make fluent language skills a mandatory requirement. Written communications appear to be in better shape across the board; however, they still cause a drop in productivity for many of the team members.

Cultural Compatibility. I find cultural differences with LA workforce some of the easiest to bridge. That could be me personally as there are a plenty of differences to be notes. A few most important areas that I have observed while working on technology projects:

Developers on LA teams took very long time before they could to offer their opinion or disagree with USA team members.

Facts and technical quality of solutions carried less weight with LA team when it came to conflict with personnel influence. For example a less efficient solution was accepted just because it had a lot of hours invested by the team members. To appease someone / protect their feelings was enough of a motivation in making core technical decisions.

A very high emphasis on theory and academic values versus pragmatic business decisions.

Take a look at Cross-Cultural Communication Between Latin American and U.S. Managers for a good list of the most significant differences.

Rates. LA offers great variety of rates that depends on the country from relatively high in Argentina and Brazil to moderate in Chile, Bolivia, and Uruguay. While the rates by themselves tend to be on a high side they are fairly attractive when taken into consideration with “the entire package” that includes short / no time difference.

Resource Turnover. LA countries offer better turnover rates than many of other regions. At the same time turnover on some of my / my friends’ projects outsourced to LA showed fairly high ratio. That seemed to be related more to a specific company rather than the region.

Resource Quality / Technical Capability. Quality of resources varies greatly from a country to country, from a city to city, and specifically from a provider to provider. However, in general technical capabilities of the resources are quite impressive / above average. I was able to find people with in-depth understanding of cutting edge technologies and with proven experience of working with fairly recent methodologies in many countries across the region. There is also no shortage of resources when it comes to mainstream skills such as Java / .NET / C/C++. Legacy technology skills and enterprise applications skills are less common though.

Of course one of the most significant Pros of the region it’s nearshore advantage, mostly linked to little / no time difference. The impact of it is difficult to overestimate – small time difference, similar holiday structure and bridgeable language differences makes working with teams in LA a great experience.

Pragmatic Outsourcing

Tips, tricks and traps of IT offshore outsourcing

Category Archives: Offshore Vendor Selection

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oDesk Freelancer Stats and Mashups

Researching Offshore Rates

Top India Cities for IT Outsourcing

Pros and Cons of Outsourcing to Brazil

oDesk: Freelancing Destinations

Mumbai Sad Nomination

Gartner’s Top 30

Offshore Interviews: Personality Aspect

Offshore Interviews: Basics

Pros & Cons of Outsourcing to Latin America

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