richard81

True, but having high-end developers in-house is both handy, and good for the economy!

And as biased and prejudiced as this may sound, I've found that workers from India and China often have "shake-and-bake" qualifications.... can you imagine how frustrating it is to work with someone who apparently has a Masters in IT yet doesn't understand that "var1 = textfiedl1 + textfield2" is NOT something I want to see in proper VB.Net code? Nevermind that I swear I heard him utter "wow, that's genius" when I cobbled together a session-based auth script.... ugh.

Like I said above, outsourcing basic, labour-intensive stuff is OK as long as you can verify qualifications and get plenty of references. Personally, I would never, ever outsource anything mission-critical or "high-end" as I'd be more than a little afraid of having IP compromised (not to mention security).

All that aside, one golden rule I swear by is:

Real-world experience is more important than qualifications.

Always.

I do not care if you have a Masters degree in Information Superhighway Architecture Specialization and Awesomeness. If you have 3+ years of experience and can exhibit resourcefulness, experience and intelligence, I will hire you over Mr PhD/Masters/B.IT/B.EComm/Fresh-out-of-college.

Maybe slightly off-topic but pursuant to the whole "verify your resource first" mantra.

The two week test is a great idea..... I wish the founder of THIS company had thought of that, as I'm sure he'd rather pay for a two-week project and find out that the resource was a poor one, rather than find that out when there's a few months of dev work to be paid for!

I totally agree on the co-founder front..... having just one good coder in-house is better than having a half-dozen off-shore who have no clue what they're doing (IMO).

Data entry is a good one as it's time consuming... .time = money and India = low cost so the math is easy on that one!

Copywriting as well, but like gommm said, test your prospective resource first.... a watertight grasp on English is essential if you're planning on having an offshore resource write copy for your site/marketing material/etc.

BE CAREFUL.

Speaking from personal experience, hiring a bunch of coders in India can either be a fantastic investment and cheap way of getting a prototype done...

...or a minefield of poor communication, miscommunication, a LACK of communication, total misinterpretation of spec, and dog-ugly code.... don't even ask about database structure (or lack thereof).

The startup I've been working for over the past 12 months had one such development team do a prototype, and the next 3 months was a nightmare of bug fixes and code rewrites.

So if there's one thing I can emphasise if you're thinking of engaging an offshore development team.... get references. LOTS of references, and make sure they check out!