Re: OT: Re: Outsourcing & copyrights

This WebDNA talk-list message is from

2005

It keeps the original formatting. numero = 61969
interpreted = N
texte = > I'm curious too because while I hear a lot about outsourcing, I also > hear that there can be problems.My goal is to avoid as many of the potential problems in outsourcing as possible. For example, you seldom find an American who is an expert programmer with a decade of experience behind him and who is also willing to move to a foreign country and manage his own outsourcing business personally. But that's what I'm doing, and it helps you by eliminating any problems you might have in dealing with foreigners both verbally and in writing (language barriers) and also also in terms of performance and liability (legal issues). Plus I know webdna better than most ... :)> How do you ensure that client data and proprietary code is protected > when you work on it ...If you're ever going to hire anyone to do your programming for you, you're going to have to trust them with some things. I don't hire people I wouldn't trust myself, but I take other precautions to avoid these and similar issues whenever possible. But the bottom line is that you cannot do business anywhere in the world unless you're willing to trust someone.> How do you ensure that you and/or your programmers don't try to cut > me out?I've been in this business for a decade already so by now you can probably see that I'm in it for the long haul. I'm taking a new approach since I moved to the Philippines, that's all. Yet in all this time, no one has ever accused me of "cutting them out" because I never have and I never will. Of course there's no way for you to know this for sure, so if you don't think you can trust me then I'm not sure what I can possibly do to convince you otherwise.As far as my programmers cutting you out, they will never deal directly with you or your clients anyways, so how could they? My responsibility here is to stay "in-between" you and my programmers and do all the communications with you. And I will tell you honestly that one of the reasons I do this is so YOU do not steal my programmers from me!If you steal my programmers from me by hiring them directly yourself, it will take me a lot of money and another 6-12 months of time before I have a new guy trained sufficiently to replace the programmer you stole from me. So the way I look at it, I need to stay in between you and my programmers to prevent you from stealing them and destroying MY business!In other words you're not the only one with something to lose here -- not by a long shot. And it's a good thing for both of us that you will never deal with my programmers directly. Instead you will always communicate with me, as this tends to keep us both honest.> I'm not terribly worried about this because some of it can be worked > around by sharing on limited bits of code, using dummy data for > development, working piecemeal, but all of these things increase the > burden of outsourcing.Yes this increases the burden of outsourcing -- but by how much? Maybe a few hours per project? If I'm charging you $10 an hour but you're paying yourself or other programmers $35, does the little bit of added work you described here cost you anywhere near the savings you get from using my service? I don't think so. In fact it is a minimal added expense, and probably adds up to only a few hours per project, if that.I can see that using an outsourcing service might encourage you to do some things you would not do if you were the only person in your business, but if you have ANY employees now and you're not taking the same precautions, you're opening yourself up to the same problem right now. Of course you "trust" your own employees because you know them, right? Well this is why people get taken advantage of ... because they trust some people that they should not.Of course if a job is big enough I can put two or more programmers on it to split up the tasks, then I can have my project manager assemble everything at the end of the job. My project manager is a guy I have every reason to trust, because he is also my business partner in a dive shop and another venture, and all his income comes from me. The bottom line is that he has a hell of a lot more to lose than his project manager position if he screws me over -- like ALL his income and maybe his freedom too if he goes to jail -- and therefore he won't try anything unethical with me.> So how is the balance struck for limiting risk while using cheap labor?It's up to you to balance your concerns for limiting risk vs. cheap labor. All I can do is my best to show you that I understand your concerns and I'm dealing with then as effectively as anyone possibly could.> Is there a code and money escrow service to resolve some of these > "trust" issues?I don't know but I have never used one. I think one of those outsourcing portal sites like scriptlance (there's about 100 of these sites listed at codelane.com) requires escrow, but I've gotten two PHP clients who used to use an escrow until they abandoned it, and now they hire me by paying in advance like everyone else -- and they are very happy working with me this way, I might add.My clients pay in advance, usually by wiring funds to my US bank account. They don't usually pay for the whole project in advance but they can if they want. Once they pay something I open their client account, then we work off the client's prepaid balance at $10 per hour. We put our results online on a webdna server so they can check our progress every day, and they can download the raw webdna templates and database files via FTP any time they feel like it.If a time comes that a client's prepaid client account runs out of money, we stop working until he makes another prepayment. If the client prepays too much for the job we will refund the overpayment at the end of the job -- unless he want us to keep the remaining money in his account so we can immediately do future work for him without waiting for a new deposit.If at any time the client decides to have us stop working, whether the project is done or not, we stop immediately -- and we immediately refund the client's account balance.> What sort of reputation do you have at stake? Do you have impeccable > client references?In my personal consulting work over most of the past decade my clients have given me great reviews. But if you're asking about the reputation of my programmers since I started this business in the Philippines, the few webdna clients we have worked for are happy with our work -- but there simply are not that many of them yet.Sincerely,Kenneth Gromewww.kengrome.com-------------------------------------------------------------This message is sent to you because you are subscribed to the mailing list .To unsubscribe, E-mail to: To switch to the DIGEST mode, E-mail to Web Archive of this list is at: http://webdna.smithmicro.com/ Associated Messages, from the most recent to the oldest:

OT: Outsourcing Question ( Dylan Wood 2004)

> I'm curious too because while I hear a lot about outsourcing, I also > hear that there can be problems.My goal is to avoid as many of the potential problems in outsourcing as possible. For example, you seldom find an American who is an expert programmer with a decade of experience behind him and who is also willing to move to a foreign country and manage his own outsourcing business personally. But that's what I'm doing, and it helps you by eliminating any problems you might have in dealing with foreigners both verbally and in writing (language barriers) and also also in terms of performance and liability (legal issues). Plus I know webdna better than most ... :)> How do you ensure that client data and proprietary code is protected > when you work on it ...If you're ever going to hire anyone to do your programming for you, you're going to have to trust them with some things. I don't hire people I wouldn't trust myself, but I take other precautions to avoid these and similar issues whenever possible. But the bottom line is that you cannot do business anywhere in the world unless you're willing to trust someone.> How do you ensure that you and/or your programmers don't try to cut > me out?I've been in this business for a decade already so by now you can probably see that I'm in it for the long haul. I'm taking a new approach since I moved to the Philippines, that's all. Yet in all this time, no one has ever accused me of "cutting them out" because I never have and I never will. Of course there's no way for you to know this for sure, so if you don't think you can trust me then I'm not sure what I can possibly do to convince you otherwise.As far as my programmers cutting you out, they will never deal directly with you or your clients anyways, so how could they? My responsibility here is to stay "in-between" you and my programmers and do all the communications with you. And I will tell you honestly that one of the reasons I do this is so YOU do not steal my programmers from me!If you steal my programmers from me by hiring them directly yourself, it will take me a lot of money and another 6-12 months of time before I have a new guy trained sufficiently to replace the programmer you stole from me. So the way I look at it, I need to stay in between you and my programmers to prevent you from stealing them and destroying MY business!In other words you're not the only one with something to lose here -- not by a long shot. And it's a good thing for both of us that you will never deal with my programmers directly. Instead you will always communicate with me, as this tends to keep us both honest.> I'm not terribly worried about this because some of it can be worked > around by sharing on limited bits of code, using dummy data for > development, working piecemeal, but all of these things increase the > burden of outsourcing.Yes this increases the burden of outsourcing -- but by how much? Maybe a few hours per project? If I'm charging you $10 an hour but you're paying yourself or other programmers $35, does the little bit of added work you described here cost you anywhere near the savings you get from using my service? I don't think so. In fact it is a minimal added expense, and probably adds up to only a few hours per project, if that.I can see that using an outsourcing service might encourage you to do some things you would not do if you were the only person in your business, but if you have ANY employees now and you're not taking the same precautions, you're opening yourself up to the same problem right now. Of course you "trust" your own employees because you know them, right? Well this is why people get taken advantage of ... because they trust some people that they should not.Of course if a job is big enough I can put two or more programmers on it to split up the tasks, then I can have my project manager assemble everything at the end of the job. My project manager is a guy I have every reason to trust, because he is also my business partner in a dive shop and another venture, and all his income comes from me. The bottom line is that he has a hell of a lot more to lose than his project manager position if he screws me over -- like ALL his income and maybe his freedom too if he goes to jail -- and therefore he won't try anything unethical with me.> So how is the balance struck for limiting risk while using cheap labor?It's up to you to balance your concerns for limiting risk vs. cheap labor. All I can do is my best to show you that I understand your concerns and I'm dealing with then as effectively as anyone possibly could.> Is there a code and money escrow service to resolve some of these > "trust" issues?I don't know but I have never used one. I think one of those outsourcing portal sites like scriptlance (there's about 100 of these sites listed at codelane.com) requires escrow, but I've gotten two PHP clients who used to use an escrow until they abandoned it, and now they hire me by paying in advance like everyone else -- and they are very happy working with me this way, I might add.My clients pay in advance, usually by wiring funds to my US bank account. They don't usually pay for the whole project in advance but they can if they want. Once they pay something I open their client account, then we work off the client's prepaid balance at $10 per hour. We put our results online on a webdna server so they can check our progress every day, and they can download the raw webdna templates and database files via FTP any time they feel like it.If a time comes that a client's prepaid client account runs out of money, we stop working until he makes another prepayment. If the client prepays too much for the job we will refund the overpayment at the end of the job -- unless he want us to keep the remaining money in his account so we can immediately do future work for him without waiting for a new deposit.If at any time the client decides to have us stop working, whether the project is done or not, we stop immediately -- and we immediately refund the client's account balance.> What sort of reputation do you have at stake? Do you have impeccable > client references?In my personal consulting work over most of the past decade my clients have given me great reviews. But if you're asking about the reputation of my programmers since I started this business in the Philippines, the few webdna clients we have worked for are happy with our work -- but there simply are not that many of them yet.Sincerely,Kenneth Gromewww.kengrome.com-------------------------------------------------------------This message is sent to you because you are subscribed to the mailing list .To unsubscribe, E-mail to: To switch to the DIGEST mode, E-mail to Web Archive of this list is at: http://webdna.smithmicro.com/ Kenneth Grome

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Re: OT: Re: Outsourcing & copyrights

2005

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