Outsourcing as a career opportunity: if you are hired so that others can hire you

I am working as a QA Engineer at my second-in-a-row outsourcing company. Before, despite unskilled labour, I worked in the implementation department of a product company and in fintech. My hypothesis is that outsourcing is shrouded in a veil of speculation and fear, besides its actual positives and negatives, which are also not always specific to that business model alone. The statistics collected mainly within the professional community QA Sisters, as well as my colleagues and friends, confirmed the hypothesis. Therefore, in my article, I tried to address more systematically what QA work looks like in an outsourcing company.

There’s an opinion that there are three characteristics:

1. friendly team
2. interesting tasks
3. comfortable salary

And that a satisfying job requires at least two of them. Of course, I don’t fully agree with this and wish everyone to have at least three.

In total, I interviewed about 24 people (QA, one SDET and devlead) with relevant experience ranging from 1.5 months to 12 years and responded myself as well. For sure, I won’t deny the negative experience of the interviewees or ‘work with objections’, but let’s see if it overlaps or at least compensates for a positive one.

concerns

come true

The most common fear of instability, even if the hiring company itself is satisfying, has turned out to be realistic. Overtimes relate as I see it, to careless employers in general, not to outsourcing companies only.

sometimes come true

A widespread but not well-founded expectation is the fear of non-involvement. In fact, the respondent who named this fear was perfectly integrated into the team with 50/50 of contracted and staff people, so I would not say that such a problem can be counted on with a high probability.

not typical

Difficulties with further employment are, as far as I’m concerned, caused by the whole market tightening within the time when you were working for the previous company. Interviewers can also be affected by prejudice against outsourcers, which can be born from any other factors like age or hair color, too. Also, all the outsourcing companies I was interviewed with (Customertimes as well) included insurance and devices in the contract. Unlawful firing, unfortunately, is likely in any company unless a corresponding contract is presented. I would not say that outsourcing companies are noticed in this at an outstanding level. What about language speaking? For the local market, A1 English should be enough; for the international market, B2.

n/a

Workers may also face labour alienation, just like in XIX (but only I described this issue within this survey, so I didn’t include this in some other block).

expectations

Only one positive expectation from working in an outsourcing company was named, which gives me faith that my research may not be in vain.

negative experience

uncertainty

“I asked for any project but the bank. Was offered a collector’s project. Agreed to the bank.”

Respondent 1

A little ahead of events, the opportunity to change the project or career track at will is often presented as a plus of working in outsource-companies, but in reality, this process can be delayed for a long time: either there is no project for the request, or the customer is not ready to give up on you, or there is no replacement for you, or they hold on to the employee as a sub-specialist.

However, such political issues look like a manager’s job: how to negotiate so that only a customer loses a valuable employee, and not both a customer and a company, in case the person does not want to work in their role anymore and is ready for a new one. In a functional team, there should be no irreplaceable people. Therefore, if an employee excels at a project that is of little interest to them, they have a greater chance of being allocated or approved to a large, well-funded and significant company project.

Also, if you are, for example, on the bench and don’t pass interviews for projects for some time, you may be fired.

opacity

Employees may not know their real value because the outsourcer may sell them for a higher rate than they are assessed internally. This difference is explained by the fact that the business takes on the costs of hiring, training, and developing employees and earns money, as well as the fact that customers do not always really need a person of their requested grade. But personally, it doesn’t sound convincing enough to me why this isn’t a downside of outsourcing. Because then there is nothing stopping any company from hiding their level of income from the product and drawing employees a lower salary to keep the business in a more favourable situation. At the same time, the employee’s stress and responsibility for imposed expectations increases, which doesn’t pay off for them in any way.

So, it may turn out that all or most of the team is not really fully competent, which affects the quality of the features produced, the number of bugs, the iterations to reopen them, and the development time.

Different contracts of related teams, even if they are working on the same product, can cause difficulties in identifying and fixing critical bugs or in the efficiency of integration testing because the expertise needed may be on the side of one team that is not paid to apply it in certain conditions, for example, in a production environment. Some customer requirements, such as reducing the work time of part of the team due to cost savings, may also lead to inefficiencies and delays.

customer related

Because something is not meant for the customer’s ears and because of their adamant ‘you must do it this way, not otherwise’, you get misunderstandings: the average employee communicates with the customer often through the bottleneck of analytics and manager, and thus requirements and statuses can be updated and delivered late. But such a buffer between the customer and the worker can be a plus: negative information is less likely to reach the regular QA, and useful one may already be processed and well-structured.

bureaucracy

One respondent suggested that ‘meeting within a meeting and meeting about meeting after meeting’ is not exclusively an outsourcing problem and that he didn’t see a dependency between inefficiencies and internal problems from the type of company.

Nevertheless, the accesses are reset with each new project. Moreover, large outsourcers build complex processes designed to control raises: track employee performance by metrics, a manager gets their own manager. Some people quit, wait for a while, and come back to simply pass the interview for a higher position rather than trying to do it through the processes within the company.

On some projects, there may be an interview with the customer, but employees are usually prepared for it.

VS Staff/Product/Market

“The whole team, except the outsource QA, were at the corporate party. Our outsourcer took us to their corporate parties in another city with people we didn’t know.”

Respondent 2

A viewpoint was shared that you could find a lot of money in outsourcing only either in large companies in high positions or if you’re a founder of a good outsourcing company, and that you have to ask for a raise otherwise there is a high probability that it would not happen itself. At the same time, it seems that the salary cap in outsourcing is high and that a situation in which the salary is below the state is almost guaranteed in Russia in particular.

Contractors are less listened to than people on staff. In my experience, when my team came to work in the morning, we found out that all our tasks had already been tested on irrelevant environments, moved and reopened/closed by the in-house team from our American customer. Our words weighed much less than theirs, so I was forced to create a spreadsheet showing the real status of the sprint so that we could visualise it somehow.

Finally, the last pyramid of pitfalls for today:

general problems

The first issue here is overtimes, not always paid and not always paid x2. This implies an uneven, often exorbitant workload, a general relentless rush and unrealistic deadlines as the customer is not immersed in the processes. It was noted that the PM is influential here: depending on their performance things are less or more likely to ‘burn’.

An outsourcer often plans its resources based on expected projects and customers who may not cooperate. The end of a project in a product is more likely to result in layoffs, while an outsourcer can keep its employees on the bench with full pay for six months to a year if they are considered promising or projects are expected to come up. In addition, overhiring may be useful for interns, who can be recruited without experience or education on a prospect and quickly incorporated into projects.

There are outsourcers who have already demonstrated a high level of proficiency, and there are those who are only striving to achieve this status. The latter, of course, are at greater risk. The story is similar to the product: if there is only one client/buyer and they suddenly refuse the services, the consequences will be equivalent.

positive experience

‘‘Of course, there are diversions too…’’

G. Ivanov

Despite all of the above, a fair number of people have been working in outsourcing for all or most of their lives, consciously choosing them and continue to do so without any regrets. Let’s see how you can make such a circumstance as outsourcing employment work for you.

flexibility

It seems useful for a first job to try new things without committing to just one area. Due to many different projects you can choose what you like, especially if you have little or narrow experience. Often, outsourcing companies also have their own product projects.

For example, one of the interviewees has done load, web and mobile testing in ~15 different projects within 2.5 years and made a lot of useful acquaintances and friends. I worked on about 5 projects in the same period of time. Thanks to this abundance of opportunities, you can learn and practice, work with all kinds of teams by diverse processes and stacks from different countries, and collaborate with many businesses. And all this within the same company, without adding new lines to your CV. These can be big projects of large corporations dream projects, like medical projects abroad with good pay. Such diverse experience and the ability to adapt quickly often leads to rapid growth, which is good for your career. Another factor is the number and qualification of people you meet. If you switch projects, you will also meet new colleagues with different experience and expertise from your own. If you work in an office, you can also network with the specialists you need over a cup of coffee in the kitchen.

Outsource specific also assumes a higher chance of getting involved in product development from scratch — not counting startups, where the risks seem to be higher.

growth

An outsourcing company is motivated to train employees in order to sell them at a higher price, so good training systems, mentoring programs, knowledge bases, internal courses where students can be taught, and corporate English are common in such companies. This factor also looks attractive for a first job since outsourcers are often willing to hire people with little or no experience, and in large ones, software production is streamlined. In addition to a buffer from being laid off, the bench can also be a period where there is a lot of time to learn. Also, growth can be not only vertical but, if necessary, horizontal: from QA to PM or from back to front. Even stress can be used as a trigger to develop soft skills that help you adapt. Besides, corporate ethics, meetups, brands and conferences are also inherent in successful product companies: they may also have a blog, host or participate in conferences. So, it’s not to say that these are all hallmarks of only outsourcing companies. Rather, it’s more about the fact that they are not lacking in such opportunities either.

In order to be sure to take full advantage of all the possibilities of self-improvement of outsourcing, it is recommended to change the project as soon as you feel that everything is already clear and mundane on the current one. Perfect if the stack and processes will be as different as possible from the current one, so as not to drag the same routine to another way.

The bureaucracy that has been blamed before can also lead to transparent processes to which you can contribute. This means clear areas of responsibility, a well-established corporate culture, a low risk of someone being rude without consequences, and the possibility of getting feedback or giving it if you are concerned about something or, conversely, appreciate it.

Indexing once a year, paid bench, and large compensation for middle+ and seniors on expensive projects are usually practised.

Participation in hiring, of course, it is fair to say, is offered not only in outsourcing. More specific is the practice when the customer can hire an outsourced employee because they already know the product. However, there are agreements that no more than N people per year should be engaged in this way, as well as non-compete agreements. However, relocation for a project is a realistic scenario.

Finally,

more general and rare cases.

For example, the respondent’s project leaving to another company, working on several projects at the same time and shortening the testing time at the customer’s request were met with support from the hiring company.

How to protect yourself knowing risk areas

We are very lucky here: we don’t have to go and check on our own whether everything will explode or not. We can refer to the already existing negative experience of our colleagues and think about how we can enter the same river differently: in coral slippers, with sunscreen, and a wetsuit on. As we have already found out, instead of the river ahead of us may also quicksand be expected, and the compass here is your right question at the interview stage. Clarifications made in time will help to make an informed decision.

It’s important to figure out if:

• the company provides physical devices and, if so, whether they are encrypted
• you’re hired by a customer’s team, or custom development awaits you — where the vendor’s employees work on a turnkey basis in their own team under the direction of their manager. Unfortunately, even if, during the recruitment process, you are supposed to work in a contracting company, there is no 100% guarantee that this will actually happen — the project can be cancelled at any time.

It makes sense to ask what level of freedom, including decision-making and scheduling, is accepted in the company. Also, what compromises the company is willing to make to satisfy difficult customers?

On the funding of your future project depends:

• if overtimes, if any, will be paid
• quality of the project, code and processes
• qualification of colleagues
• budget for learning, certifications, corporate events, team buildings, raises, equipment
• probability of layoffs
• support
• salary.

Find out what the company means by bench: whether it is working on an internal project, free time, time that can be devoted to self-development, or how long an employee can expect to be on a bench without being fired.

In order to assess the reliability of the outsourcing company, you can also explore the site for well-known and large customers: this increases the likelihood that you are facing a worthy employer. Asking about a personal impression of the company seems to me to be a good practice that will tell a more focused story about the hiring party, as the answer may not be prepared and selling but more personal, and you won’t need to make a wild guess.

You can find the full list of questions here in my personal work blog!

Taking into account all of the above

It seems that if you ask people about their QA experience in general, there will be only a few differences. Maybe it doesn’t matter whether the company is outsourcing, green or red. I’ve come to the conclusion that the key determinant of job satisfaction is the leaders and teams that make being at a company better or worse. If given the choice of going to a good product or a questionable outsourcing company with bad reviews, of course, it makes sense to go to the good product one. But if you don’t, for example, leave your annoying product company for an outsourcing company that may be better, just because you saw the word ‘outsourcing’, then I would recommend reconsidering the decision.

An orchestra sounds because of the people playing the instruments. We can always find ourselves in a situation where we have to make the decision that this is our last concert here. It is important to know when it is time to hold over the flute and move on, taking with us the experience that remains with us.

Let’s choose (even if that choice is again in favour of one you’ve already made) a direction that leads us to new opportunities and a decent life, in spite of any challenges we may encounter along the way. Ultimately, our careers are defined and built by our efforts alone, and we have the right to strive for the best possible outcome for us in any field.