Because this is your business you try and make the best choices for it; from where to locate your office and what internet providers best suites you company’s needs to what’s the best animal to use as your companies mascot (If you have one). With all your smart business decisions, you weighed all the options with their risks and benefits first. So this same smart decision making should be utilized when hiring the best contractors for your needs.
So you decided you want to hire a contractor; the next choice is whether to stick to one from the onshore (local country) or offshore. If you go simple by the amount of money you pay offshore vs onshore developers then your choice is simple. When in In reality there is actually allot to consider when choosing to hire a onshore vs offshore contractor.
First let’s get this out of the way; An experienced contractor is good at what they do. This is regardless if they live in the US, UK, India, China, or the Middle East. While some regards to understanding and time zones will be addressed below, where any of us live doesn’t make us any better or any worst at what we do.
The Pros & Cons: Hiring Offshore vs Onshore (local country)
The Offshore Contractor
PROS:
• You most likely would pay 20% or less to an offshore contractor (there may be additional costs assisted with using an offshore contractor charged by the outsourcing company that represents them)
• There is also a large offshore contractor workforce, to put to work right away on a project or product.
CONS:
• Some projects may take a bit longer to complete, especially when it being created through collaboration with your in-house team, requires constant changes through development & testing, and may potential knock an agile sprint and it’s milestones out of synch.
• If your company becomes interested in hiring the offshore contractor it may expensive to do so, from assisting with international relocation, to sponsoring and obtaining visas for them, plus any fees you may have to pay to hire the contractor away from their outsourcing firm.
• Offshore large time zone differences such as 12 hours may be a real issue, especially when needing to contact your contractor right away. This may also make collaboration more difficult.
The Onshore Contractor:
PROS
• Hiring an onshore contractor would offer a better guarantee to sharing the same cultural traditions. This comes in handy when building or testing products that are related to your country’s culture, lifestyle or fashions.
• Being within the same country; an onshore contractor would only be at most couple hours ahead or behind, making it easier for them to adapt to your companies timezone to allow for better communication, training and collaboration.
• Easier and less expensive for the onshore contractor to commute or fly to your offices to meet with your in-house team
• If your company decides to hiring the onshore contractor, it would less expensive to do so, including any assistance with relocation within the country.
• Their is a large onshore contractor workforce out there, much of which is made up of veteran developers and technologist who may of been outsourced or downsized by age or companies being bought and sold.
CONS:
• You will probably pay more for onshore contractor, though this rate would vary greatly by the type of pay format being used (hourly, per project or project milestones)
. — Don’t believe the hype: Many web articles posted by outsourcing companies and advocates had quoted onshore contractors asking for giant rates of pay from 150 to 350 an hour, that crazy. If any contractor was paid even half of that an hour, no one would ever not be a contractor.
• When working on smaller projects, a onshore contractor may be servicing several companies and projects (depending on what you contract them to do). They may not get back to you very quickly. Average of a few hours to a day. Though again depends upon your agreement.
• On the flip side if you are hiring them for a full time or large scale project, you will more then likely have a dedicated on-call or availability schedule based on your companies schedule and needs.
Both
. — Language miscommunication may be more possible with offshore contractors, but that not a guarantee, any more then it not happening with an onshore contractor. In a world where may people in an office or team are probably from other countries, its more then likely that miscommunication won’t be an issue and should only be considered on case by case basis.
. — Personally I worked with teams from India, Germany, China, New York and California and never had an issue communicating with any of team members.
Bottom-line: When hiring people to build your small projects and large scale products, their are many developers to choose from. It’s important to research all your options beyond just the cost and make the best educated decision for your company and your needs.
If you need something build now quick and inexpensive, offshore may for you. (Just keep an eye out at any hidden costs)
If your looking to build a relationship contractor, someone that may mess well with your team, or use contract jobs to help you find the top talent to join your team more permanently . Then an onshore contractor may fit your needs.
Sometimes the best you can do is hire both offshore and onshore contractor to fit all your needs or compliment your new startup or brick-in-mortar to technology company.
