Re:The subtleties in outsourcing using RentACoder
by pvg on Saturday March 13, 2010 @10:48PM
(#1190220)
The difference between Northern Michigan and Southern California or New York is substantially larger than the difference between Poland and Romania or Ukraine.
We can go into an endless rabbit hole about which difference is bigger, on which parameters. Northern Michigan and Southern California operate on a substantially similar and similarly enforced set of laws. This is not the case for Poland, Romania or Ukraine.
The difference between Northern Michigan and Southern California or New York is substantially larger than the difference between Poland and Romania or Ukraine.
The biggest difference between those countries and the US can be summed up in one word: market.
They simply have a very limited local market for these skills, but plenty of people there have some skills and are prepared to work very hard to get more. Their cost of living can - at least in the former eastblock - easily approach the cost of living in the US. Plenty of ex eastblock countries are now using the Euro, either for their day-to-day transactions or already for their debt, even though they still have a national currency (because the Euro is more stable, banks like to borrow money in Euros to individuals that get paid in a local currency, very risky but many banks got burned badly during hyperinflation at the end of the 80's).
We agree on the contract bit, I think.
The contract situation is something that is not so important when using systems like rent-a-coder, you're not going to use it to write the gut of an ATM or a mission critical piece of software for a financial institution or a health care provider.
Rent-a-coder is primarily intended for relatively short running simple projects that you want to get done on a minimal budget.
The whole idea of relying on such cheap labour for something that you put a very high value on (high enough to go to court over) is counter to the intended purpose of the service.