Hire Offshore Developers: The Smartest Maneuver You’ve Made for Your Startup

For Budget Efficiency

In most cases, a tech startup stumbles on financial challenges, as a matter of fact. They have to bear operation and infrastructure costs, such as office space, equipment, licenses, and heaps more, and staff their projects with the associated personnel in the meantime. And that is not a small amount, especially for the early-stage IT companies or those whose initial capital is limited at present. Each individual expense can cause the overall development cost to break the bank and take a toll on the company’s potential as well as crush the anticipated profits.

One of the heaviest spending is on the developers’ salaries. Software engineers, especially the qualified ones, can require a hefty payroll. Additionally, the total cost spent on building a software development team will definitely stretch a startup’s budget to the point of no return or even worse.

That’s why owners and founders are better off choosing offshore development teams and personnel than risking their all for an internal core team. The point is that remote developers offer almost the same level of expertise and experience in exchange for a fraction of the cost much lower than onshore or nearshore workers. With this strategy, small companies can do more with less investment and let go of the fear of high-cost overruns.

For Top Talent

Most young and new companies are stuck in the dilemma of being short on manpower but unable to afford the local top tech talent, so the only way out is to step out of the border and get into the global talent pool for a chance.

When you contract a remote team, you can connect with the best offshore developers that are not available in most startup hubs and bring them together in one place under your roof. These are talented developers who are well-versed in technical domains, rich in experience and trained to deliver quality, swift solutions in a truly professional manner.

For Efficient Expansion

Startup companies are set to move forward and thrive in one way or another. In the less ideal scenario, their businesses need to ramp down their operations promptly so as not to lose too much. Whether it is to expand or shrink the in-house development team, it costs more time, effort, and money to turn the wheel. You have to hire and fire, train newcomers, restructure the existing team, handle other labor-intensive tasks, and repeat.

This is the fact of scalability limitation, which rarely happens if you enlist an offshore software development team. Outsourcing developers gives you the means to scale up or down your technical team almost at any time without breaking a sweat. In the offshoring model, you can augment your team with extra hands when the project scope spikes and eliminate those extra resources when the peak period is passed. There is no long-term commitment; startups can have a flexible and adjustable team size in line with their budget and development needs.

Furthermore, hiring offshore developers offers an extra layer of versatility that enables business owners to save not only money but also time and effort when they do not have to go through the entire hiring process and handle protocols and paperwork. Instead, a reliable offshore development company will assume all the hassles and do the recruitment for you while you concentrate on your core business values.

For Diversity & Innovation

For many startups, what they need is not only resources but also diverse ideas and perspectives to ignite the innovation engine. To this end, offshore developers and software development outsourcing services can do more than a favor - providing an extensive scope of thinking and bringing about new insights into the development table.

With different cultural backgrounds, diverse expertise, and varied experiences under their belts, software developers from offshore locations can enrich the progress and development cycle with new points of view and open your mindsets, thereby generating unique ideas that can be valuable to your products. In addition, outsourced developers are trained on cutting-edge development trends, technologies, and tools. They can mentor your teams to stay current and ahead of the curve.

For Productivity

As you outsource software development to an offshore team or employ developers to join your team on a project, you can accelerate your product’s time-to-market. This is because you have an experienced team of skilled developers and service providers who are committed to quality and work according to your schedule. Developers from offshore centers are also less exposed to distractions as they are usually focused on a single project or assignment at a given moment. Therefore, they can stay productive and devotedly persevere until the task and the job are completed.

Communication Breakdowns

Oftentimes, communication from a distance poses a great challenge that not only startups but also medium or large companies must learn to deal with when they hire offshore developers. Understandably, the lack of direct interaction is troublesome. It can be difficult to relay specific, detailed information over a computer. Without the ability to convey the same amount of information accurately as you would in person or on-site, misunderstandings and confusion are likely to occur.

Fortunately, this is a particularly common yet resolvable problem thanks to technological advancement. Each offshore development center (ODC) is well-furnished with the necessary tools to ensure smooth communication. Video conference, email, and team chat solutions that allow for sharing documents, audio/video recordings, and live streaming are just some of the technological aids you can use to bridge the gap in offshore outsourcing.

Time-zone Differences

Aside from geographical distance, the disparity in time zones between one place and another is a hurdle. The offshore team works on a different schedule than their client, so it can result in late responses, conflictual overlapping, and expectational delays.

However, that is actually an issue from the past. Many business owners leverage the differences in the timeframe to boost productivity. In what ways? You can have your project run by the offshore team even when the local team is out of working hours. And you will receive the ready-made solutions when your in-house team is back on duty. In a manner like this, startups can accelerate the development process and turn the weak point into an advantage.

For those who still view the time-zone issues as a threat to your progress and productivity, there is a way. Startup founders can opt for offshore services located within one or two time zones close to yours. As such, it is more likely that the offshore team and the founder will fall within similar time belts so that both can be able to effectively communicate about the deadlines, progress, and other matters.

Cultural & Linguistic Clashes

Of course, disagreement in terms of cultures and languages is an inevitable roadblocker when you have to collaborate with professionals from offshore countries. The discrepancy at this point might lead to misunderstanding and misalignment of business goals between counterparts or, worse, serious conflict.

Language barriers are a bit easier to deal with than cultural shock. English is a globally speaking language, so you can pick vendors and personnel with a good command of English. They might not have native-level proficiency, but they can still comprehend the instructions and communicate effectively to get tasks done. On the other hand, cultural differences are harder to tackle. You should seek out different approaches to bridge this gap. Starting with choosing the destination that is most compatible with your culture and quickly introducing key cultural norms in the onboarding process can be a good start to make everything smoother.

Vendor Management Issues

This even seems not to be a problem until you step into the actual scene, especially when you work with multiple service companies at the same time. The difficulty can be doubled as you cannot meet or work with them face-to-face. It all turns out to be an absolute mess if you do not plan on how to manage vendors properly. Hence, having a good project management tool and practices to monitor their performance and measure the quality of their work. By all means, vendor management is essential in software development outsourcing, so don’t be negligent.

Outsource to a Third-party Vendor

The safest way to employ high-quality offshore developers is through a reputable outsourcing company. Why is that? The service providers specialize in screening and vetting the best developers, and they have their own local networks of tech talent ready to sort out and provide per client’s requests shortly. In a brief manner, you can skip all the nitty-gritty details of recruitment and operation processes. You can be certain that all the talent sent to your project is of top-notch quality.

It is a smart move cutting your through the chase with one condition – you must go with the right outsourcing partner. The definition of a correct choice of service provider can vary by project and requirement, but the ultimate goal stays the same. Especially in the present-day software development industry, service providers are vast in number, yet none of them are equal in quality, not to mention that there are numerous options for offshore outsourcing countries. Thus, it is a daunting task to find out which one is the best partner, yet not impossible as long as you follow this guide.

Of course, you can go on hiring remote developers on your own; however, being accompanied by an expert always alleviates the complexity. And that is why many businesses opt for outsourcing.

Hire Through Freelancing Platforms

Outsourcing developers through service vendors is ideal, yet not the only way. Currently, there is a heap of freelancing platforms where startups can directly connect and work with developers from all corners of the world.

Upwork and Fiverr, for example. Founders can post their jobs on freelance sites and wait for candidates to submit their profiles for consideration. With this approach, you can take the initiative to pick and choose remote developers at their disposal and compare the prices easily. Compared to outsourcing, freelancers do have a downside in terms of quality. There is no guarantee for that from either the platforms or the individual developers.

By quality, we are mentioning two aspects – the quality of work and the competencies of an offshore developer. As for the first one, you have to rely on your own judgment and skills to assess. Whereas with the second one, it is quite tricky as you cannot always ensure whether or not the candidates are qualified enough if only based on their proven track record of previous clients and interviewing.

What is more, the turnover rate is usually higher in this case due to the lack of dedication and sense of responsibility. Perhaps you can get better salary rates when hiring freelancers, yet you might end up with novices or developers who are not so familiar with your products or technologies. Eventually, the cost of hiring can be much higher over time if you have to keep replacing them.

Moreover, direct recruitment via freelancing channels consumes more of your time than you think. You will have to go all the way through the screening and assessment procedure just to acquire one new hire, as you do with your in-house staff.