undefined | Better HN

0 pointsmikekchar7y ago0 comments

To be fair, the OP was referring to all large outsourcing companies. There are a lot of outsourcing companies that charge well over the rate for a full time hire (they don't necessarily pay their employees that, but...) I worked briefly for one such "body shop" and I found that the company billed my time at a rate of about twice what they paid me. As far as I can tell, it tends to slot in between a full time employee and an independent consultant/contractor in terms of price.

Why do companies pay this premium? For one, it may be because they have a budget for a "6 month project" (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) but not for a full time hire. Sometimes it's because they think that they'll be able to pick and choose the best developers from inside a large organisation (and sometimes it works out that way... almost never, but sometimes...) But really it's just a matter of being naive, I think.

The company I used to work for (as an independent contractor... ahem...) went through a phase where the CEO was absolutely convinced that it didn't pay to hire developers -- they were a PITA (always demanding weird things, never showing up before 10:30 am, never dressing properly for work, etc, etc). They always wanted raises and you have to track progress and negotiate with them on price every year. You have to pay benefits and if a person is on disability on maternity, you've got to do something about it. You constantly need to be reviewing CVs, interviewing and hiring. If you get someone really bad, you can't actually reasonably fire them for a long time. Etc, etc, etc. So he tried a few experiments with hiring from outsourcing companies (all of which were charging considerably more than any of us were getting paid, I will add)... and it wasn't a disaster, but it wasn't really any better. But the cherry on the cake was, as soon as the project was done, they fled and no amount of pleading could get those developers back again (as you can imagine). So the CEO realised that having a crack development team was definitely worth the effort and the company really transformed as a result.

However, a lot of companies are still stuck in the mindset where it's best to have as few full time developers as possible.

0 comments

7 comments · 2 top-level

peteradio7y ago· 3 in thread

Sorry I'm dense but what is the 6 month contract wink wink nudge nudge?

blihp7y ago

It's a 6 month engagement that renews in perpetuity. Mainly as a way to avoid having employer obligations.

C1sc0cat7y ago

Also known as a Permalancer - who can also massively increase their take home pay and reduce their tax.

protomyth7y ago

After the Microsoft lawsuit, those perpetual renewals pretty much dried up. Any company that still does it is taking a risk.

2 more replies

pm907y ago· 2 in thread

Programming is still a very complex craft and requires sensible people with reasonable skill levels to implement reliable systems. This seems to be totally ignored by most non-tech American companies who treat Software much the same way as, say, buying a phone service. There are a lot of American businesses that are suffering because of this and its sad but I'm not sure how they can be convinced that having good programmers who are compensated reasonably well is such an important thing to have.

Maybe I'm saying this from the perspective of a programmer and not a business owner, IDK. Cloud stuff seems promising: a nice way to deliver turnkey solutions instead of custom crap that needs an outsourced body shop to maintain.

mikekcharOP7y ago

I think a lot of it is that companies don't see software as something you need to sustain. They see it as a tool that helps them with the rest of their business. It makes sense to them to go out an buy that tool. For example, if you are a brewery and you need kegs, you go out and buy kegs. You don't hire a whole bunch of coopers and devote a fair percentage of your business building barrels. That's seen as an old fashioned, wasteful way to do business. Unless software is your actual product, why do you have a team building it? You might even buy custom built kegs, but once you have them, you don't need a team building kegs -- you just need to hire someone occasionally to replace old ones.

I think from that perspective it makes total sense. Unfortunately, software is an embodiment of your business requirements and that you business requirements will probably be changing from day to day. Once you realise that, you can see that you need a team to be constantly changing the software.

In bonsai (trees in pots) there is a saying that a bonsai is only "finished" when it is dead -- because it keeps growing and changing. You can never say, "I'm done" because tomorrow the tree is different. I think this is also true of software: it's only "done" when nobody is using it any more (or, I suppose, when it's so unimportant that nobody cares that it isn't correct).

I think until we get the singularity, we will always need "programmers" -- people who translate the business requirements into something that the computer can act on. In fact, it's mostly thinking about the requirements that is important. The actual encoding of the computer instructions is (hopefully!) not that difficult.

pts_7y ago

> In fact, it's mostly thinking about the requirements that is important. The actual encoding of the computer instructions is (hopefully!) not that difficult.

Jesus please don't draw conclusions about things you have no idea about. Would you say that designing and developing machines that replace humans bit by bit is not difficult (hopefully!).

1 more reply

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse