Since Friedman’s The World is Flat started landing in the hands of would be agencies, the industry of website cooking has been faced with an interesting dilemma. Don’t get me wrong, like most self starters I’m an ardent capitalist but the competition provided by India produces more challenges then benefits. If you are considering the move of your resources or contracting freelancers abroad, I urge you to think twice. Not only will you end up spending more then you are saving to salvage a failing project, the end result will always, ALWAYS be below par.
Why you may ask? Development is not a menial task, that’s why. You can’t farm something that should involve a significant understanding for the product being developed and the environment it is being pushed to. Starting from the top with creative and concept development, all the way down to the method involved to program the countless details.
I thought this was a lesson we all learned, it keeps being rehashed but here I am today seeing the same patterns repeat. Projects handled by people that should know better, sending their labor to Eastern Europe. Even worse still Elance, scriptlance and all those other useless services, cluttered with hundreds of projects touting absurdly low budgets, insanely high expectations being met with hundreds more bids by armies of drone programmers. Programmers dialed in to churn out fast, cheap and buggy software by the cart loads.
Where does that leave those of us that do it for real? Well with the decline of the economy its left many of increasingly more dire. Fortunately anyone that doesn’t know the rap will learn a harsh lesson soon and the rest don’t have the money to pull it off for real, anyways. So why am I writing about it? Why should I care? Frankly its that smaller percent that should know better, that really think they are saving anything at all by scimping on one of the most vital aspects of their app. Why would some do that and I be so opposed? What is my difference in mentality?
Original software. For every twitter there are 30 twitterdees. For every facebook a dozen Faceshmooks. Rehashing old ideas certainly has a market but if any longevity is to exist in your application, any new niche or spin, you would be insane to outsource it. Copyright infringement on your code, by your developer, being one of the least of your issues, the code will suck anyways.
A good developer works closely with creatives to provide a seamless integration, we already know (or so I hope) that Indian creative blows chunks but somehow we think the coding will use all the best practice we don’t want to even think about. Well, it won’t. American programmers with solid porftolios will save you money because your app costs something in real terms having nothing to do with the artificially low hourly rate of the guy who will be figuring it out as he goes. So you might as well hire an alpaca, they are much cuter.
