Would you hire an offshore dev team managed by a US Team Lead?
Companies are often hesitant to work with offshore dev teams due to challenges associated with language barriers, communication issues, trust, and quality. I'm wondering whether those concerns would be alleviated if a native English speaker (such as myself) with a strong resume and 15 years of experience here in the US were to move overseas and build/manage the team. I'm capable of finding and hiring quality developers, managing a team, hitting deadlines, handling communications, and ensuring that the team produces quality work. Would that be enough to convince US-based companies to give it a chance, or are there other challenges I'm missing? In other words, could I sell a company on giving my team a chance by selling them on my own resume and experience? This is obviously theoretical at this point, but it's been on my mind for several years, and I'm considering taking the leap. Given the shortage of quality developers here and the lower rates abroad, it seems like there would be financial benefits to working with an offshore team if those challenges were addressed. I'm wondering if the US Team Lead abroad concept would solve the trust issue.
it depends, you may not save enough money and you may get a lot of delay due to timezone difference
I would likely be looking at Eastern Europe due to the strong English and computer science backgrounds in that area. It's a 6-9 hour time difference which is about 3 hours less than India. I've spoken with some friends who work there, and the going rate there appears to provide enough margin to handle business costs.
You might be disappointed. There is a reason we don't see many great products outside of US. Individual excellence and team output can be drastically different. This is one of the reasons Japanese were so great in 60-90s. Individually, they look incompetent but team output is amazing. Think of opposite for the other countries. There is a reason developing countries are not producing competitive products/services despite lower salary.
There are established companies already doing this. English is not the challenge, but the culture, process, collaboration style, approaches are. That can only come from experiences here ( US) and then embedding it overseas
I think if it's a run the business situation, production support, etc it's totally fine. Change the business scenarios should be done in house or at the minimum with an onshore partner
The day-to-day tactical stuff will be a challenge. I.e. debug of issues will be a pain with a dev team over seas... and every request will take at least a day
Fair point. If the time difference is the biggest factor, I wonder if there's good talent in Central / South America where the approach may work better.
Thats very controversial topic you picked my friend.. The same reason why people have an issue with programs like H1b. When folks think that foreigner taking away their job coz someone like you think of financial benefits. Now coming to point. Yes it will be financially advantageous not only that you can get quality developer but the respect and power may make you a very different person.. I dont think language will be a challenge if you think of country like India where people are well versed but once you been there you lifestyle wont be same.. but youll get used to coz there will be someone like you already there.. Will it fill the gap. Ofcourse but dont get used to it... Convincing corporates depends on yourself but dont think it will be that hard considering these countries have already proven to be advantageous