[consulting] JOB: Contract Drupal developer for motorcycle community site

[Alex Urevick-Ackelsberg]

Randall-

> You would not find a professional developer working for $5/hour here in
> the US - but I imagine my Vietnamese pal gets to pick his projects with
> the ability to underbid nearly everybody else while still supporting a
> superior standard of living.

What I am saying is that you shouldn't find a "professional" Drupal
developer in Vietnam working for $5/hr, so long as they have the language
and digital barriers taken care of. Now, my definition of a "professional"
Drupal developer may be different from yours, as I would say that it means
contributing often and for a good amount of time to Drupal.org (i.e. peer
reviewed), showing a commitment to Drupal coding standards (as well as other
applicable standards), keeping to a schedule, delivering what you say you
will, etc. If your friend meets these criteria then I'll happily pay him 5x
what he's currently making, and I'm sure others might "outbid" me. Are you
suggesting that getting paid 5x more wouldn't make his standard of living
"more superior"?

> So if he or Gloscon in India can deliver good work at competitive rates
> - more power to them!

That's still a big "if" to me. Though I have no specific info about either
Gloscon or your friend, I have seen nothing approaching "good work" from
off-shored, super low costing, development. That's not saying it doesn't
exist, and I'm definitely not an impartial 3rd party here (we only see
off-shored work when it's a disaster, not when it works well), but I'd be
surprised to see it at a such a rate.

> I actually forwarded the motorcycle community site job to a pal who
> needs to develop a broader portfolio - sometimes people have reasons
> beyond money to work on projects

That's a different argument, and totally understandable.

> I recently consulted my way out of a job, when I advised that most of my
> client's goals can be achieved with Drupal Commons out of the box, they
> axed me after a week to finish the project with their dedicated offshore
> team I was hired to manage (God help them!)

Well, when they come back with a totally hacked up site, you can charge them
double your normal rate to fix the off-shore hackfest.

--
Alex Urevick-Ackelsberg
Partner | CEO
Zivtech, LLC
alex at zivtech.com
office: (215) 922-2692
cell: (215) 866-8956
twitter: AlexU_A


On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 12:34 AM, netsperience <rgoya at netsperience.org>
wrote:
>
> > I can't believe that any drupal expert would work for $5/hr. If
> > they're contributing quality code (and thus regular internet access)
> > then it doesn't matter where they are, they can get paid 10x that.
> Alex,
>
> You would not find a professional developer working for $5/hour here in
> the US - but I imagine my Vietnamese pal gets to pick his projects with
> the ability to underbid nearly everybody else while still supporting a
> superior standard of living. There may be social or cultural reasons for
> him not exceeding the standard by much, I don't know. Long ago I stopped
> trying to compete on international job markets like Guru.com because I
> was unwilling to lower my rates to compete.
>
> So if he or Gloscon in India can deliver good work at competitive rates
> - more power to them! I think there is enough Drupal work to go around,
> with many clients in the US and EU still preferring to work with someone
> local at local rates.
>
> I actually forwarded the motorcycle community site job to a pal who
> needs to develop a broader portfolio - sometimes people have reasons
> beyond money to work on projects. I volunteer my services for several
> projects each year, just because I can make a difference for causes and
> communities that I care about, and who could not afford to pay me.
>
> FWIW my experiences so far with offshore Drupal devs has been
> disappointing. Even the ones who can talk the talk still do things
> "wrong" - but perhaps less "wrong" than I observed two years ago when I
> began testing the waters of offshore team management. I am in the
> process of developing a plan with a solid .NET and Flash dev company in
> India I have worked with successfully for a couple of years, to get $.5M
> (a lot of rupees) to train and manage a team of developers. I talked to
> some Angels who sneered that building a company that generates rapidly
> growing profits is a "lifestyle choice" without an exit plan for them -
> so we are going after some local (Indian) funding.
>
> I recently consulted my way out of a job, when I advised that most of my
> client's goals can be achieved with Drupal Commons out of the box, they
> axed me after a week to finish the project with their dedicated offshore
> team I was hired to manage (God help them!)
>
> Randall Goya (decibel.places) http://netsperience.org
>
> _______________________________________________
> consulting mailing list
> consulting at drupal.org
> http://lists.drupal.org/mailman/listinfo/consulting
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