Sunday
Mar022008
Distributed (Offshore) Software Development Ain't Easy...
March 2, 2008
I've been bitten by the offshore attrition bug. I was eating breakfast yesterday morning when my partner in Islamabad called saying that one of our top employees is leaving. I couldn't believe it because he was really one of our star developers; hard working, detail-oriented, and sincere. I knew him personally and thought that we had good rapport. Apparently, he has his own entrepreneurial aspirations and an opportunity presented itself to him. I don't know the details, but I think he had a friend somewhere that was going to point some projects his way.
The thought of making a counter-offer didn't make sense, even if we could afford to match what he would be making. What can you do when your top employee wants to start a venture of his own? The only thing I could do is support his decision. Like I said, he's a great guy and he's extremely committed, so I know he's going to do well.
This isn't the first time we've had an employee tell us he wanted to start his own company. Unfortunately, he accidentally contacted one of our former clients with work that we had done, making for a very awkward conversation. In the end, we realized it was a mistake and everything is ok know. But again, what do you do when your employees want to start branching off on their own?
With sites like oDesk, Elance, and RentaCoder, anyone with a computer and reasonably stable internet connection can be an entrepreneur. Our response has been simple... "It ain't easy". If an employee comes and tells us that they want to start their own business, we don't stop them. We wish them the best, and if they're good, we tell them that they'll always be welcome if they choose to come back. From personal experience, you can't negotiate with someone's entrepreneurial inclinations. The best you can do is to support their decision; only time will tell if they will succeed or unceremoniously fizzle out. Although sites like those mentioned above make it easy to find random project-based work, you get caught in a jam if you try bidding for more lucrative work that requires more than one programmer. I mean you can accept small web applications that take no more than one developer to build, but if you start bidding for larger, more complex projects, you have to start looking for developers to help you, and that's when it gets ugly. And this is the point where offshore projects start to fail. Hiring a freelance software developer for a small project is easy, but finding someone to manage a team of developers on a very demanding project is not.
The catch-22 that these developers get caught in is that the larger projects demand tight cost and quality control, not to mention continuous communication. Anyone that's managed distributed software development teams knows that failure takes place at the project management level, not at the coding level. There's a great article in the WSJ's Business Technology blog about IT project failure. If 35% of IT projects fail, what's the percentage of offshore projects that fail? Having worked on two failing projects myself, I'm now painfully aware of the factors that led to failure. Specifically, consulting projects where you're working with a non-technical end user can be a nightmare.
Solo freelance is ok, hiring good developers is paramount if you want to branch out and start a real company. Sometimes people think that running a business is easy. I for one will tell you, offshore software development ain't easy. Buyers who are looking to pinch pennies, and vendors who underestimate the complexity of offshore development are a bad, bad combination.
The thought of making a counter-offer didn't make sense, even if we could afford to match what he would be making. What can you do when your top employee wants to start a venture of his own? The only thing I could do is support his decision. Like I said, he's a great guy and he's extremely committed, so I know he's going to do well.
This isn't the first time we've had an employee tell us he wanted to start his own company. Unfortunately, he accidentally contacted one of our former clients with work that we had done, making for a very awkward conversation. In the end, we realized it was a mistake and everything is ok know. But again, what do you do when your employees want to start branching off on their own?
With sites like oDesk, Elance, and RentaCoder, anyone with a computer and reasonably stable internet connection can be an entrepreneur. Our response has been simple... "It ain't easy". If an employee comes and tells us that they want to start their own business, we don't stop them. We wish them the best, and if they're good, we tell them that they'll always be welcome if they choose to come back. From personal experience, you can't negotiate with someone's entrepreneurial inclinations. The best you can do is to support their decision; only time will tell if they will succeed or unceremoniously fizzle out. Although sites like those mentioned above make it easy to find random project-based work, you get caught in a jam if you try bidding for more lucrative work that requires more than one programmer. I mean you can accept small web applications that take no more than one developer to build, but if you start bidding for larger, more complex projects, you have to start looking for developers to help you, and that's when it gets ugly. And this is the point where offshore projects start to fail. Hiring a freelance software developer for a small project is easy, but finding someone to manage a team of developers on a very demanding project is not.
The catch-22 that these developers get caught in is that the larger projects demand tight cost and quality control, not to mention continuous communication. Anyone that's managed distributed software development teams knows that failure takes place at the project management level, not at the coding level. There's a great article in the WSJ's Business Technology blog about IT project failure. If 35% of IT projects fail, what's the percentage of offshore projects that fail? Having worked on two failing projects myself, I'm now painfully aware of the factors that led to failure. Specifically, consulting projects where you're working with a non-technical end user can be a nightmare.
Solo freelance is ok, hiring good developers is paramount if you want to branch out and start a real company. Sometimes people think that running a business is easy. I for one will tell you, offshore software development ain't easy. Buyers who are looking to pinch pennies, and vendors who underestimate the complexity of offshore development are a bad, bad combination.
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