[breadloaf]

Well that really depends. I was outsourcing to India when it was still cheap. I probably did something wrong, but I provided definition of the project, set of unit tests and access to git repository so they can upload the result. I got completely useless trash code, incoherent excuses and wasted time.

I paid the company for their "work" and never considered outsourcing again. Sometimes cheap means horrendously expensive.

[bilekas]

This might get a bad rep but I've had this experience too. It's not a blanket statement though. Outsourcing is fine but you definitely have need to do your homework. That's why you see a few of the outsourcing companies being bought over by their employers, because they're good.

Out of curiosity and related to another HN topic, have you ever hired freelancers directly?

[breadloaf]

I tried to on the Upwork. But it is really hit or miss there.

1. I got hardware electric engineer to help me with a design of PCB. Guy was worth every cent.

2. Got embedded developer on separate project. Guy pretended that he can do a lot. I tried to explain to him, that I need a USB CDC device driver in MCU which has USB PHY and I want Windows to recognize and use usbser.sys (generic COM driver) or something similar. He told me that he understand what he is doing, I sent him the dev kit and then he ghosted me and I have ended up doing it myself with TinyUSB.

So as I said, really hit and miss on Upwork. Some people are writing lofty skillset so they can get more per hour and then failing miserably.

[ido]

You have to know people personally or have contacts to people who do to reliably get the good ones, I would never rely on outsourcing websites like Upwork for exactly the reason you stated.

[Aeolun]

In that case, I’d like to chime in and say that I have the opposite (or at least better) experience. Our contractors in India are fairly decent. We sometimes hire them directly from the company that sources them to us.

[mlboss]

Any developer charging $3k will not be good. And even then you need to pay lot of attention on how they are doing.

[benhurmarcel]

You can get very good quality work from India. You won't get it by sending a "fire-and-forget" file to some cheap consulting company.

[sumedh]

How did you select the outsourcing company?

[breadloaf]

7 years ago, I don't really remember anymore.