Love them or hate them, outsourcers are everywhere. In this episode of Talking Shop, I talk a little bit about my own experiences with using outsourcers and also ask you to share your thoughts and experiences with them. Check out the video and then share your thoughts and experiences in the comment section below.
Talking Shop Episode 7 - Outsourcing from Danny Outlaw on Vimeo.
I have had both awesome and terrible experiences when it comes to using outsourcers to help me with work and projects. The ones that worked out well I actually still work with on a regular basis. The ones who were terrible made me want to shoot myself in the head.
What are your experiences with using outsourcers? Good stories…bad stories…..shot yourself in the head stories?
What are your thoughts on using outsourcers?
7 Comments
I think anyone that’s gone down the outsourcing route will have come across some tensions.
I used one of the cheap offshore freelance finding services once to get some PHP modifications to a well-known open source shopping cart, mainly so I could work on other things and get the job done faster. I didn’t go with the cheapest quote, even offering them a bonus if they came back with a solid solution within the time the quoted. After they made unbelievable excuses over and over again on delivery and stopped answering calls I gave up 3 months over schedule for maybe 12 hours of work. Never again!
As a freelancer / contractor myself its hard to know how to stand away from the people who bring down the service style. The lack of accountability seems to make some people feel like they can ditch on a project mid-way with no consequences.
It is stories and outsourcers like that aid in giving outsourcing a bad name. I have had my fare share of experience similar to yours.
All can say, is when you do find a good outsourcer, it can make all the difference.
I think everyone who outsourced work once in a while gained some positive and some negative experiences.
It all depends on the outsourcer(s) you are working with. I think the method you described in the video to actually find someone by looking at their past work or find someone by looking at work you like is the best.
I really tend to send the jobs to people I have worked with directly, I have been through several bad experiences working with outsourced developers and designers. I think that the communication element is always the main issue, you mention an experience that went really well for you and I think that is rare but awesome. If I have to farm out work I usually only hand it off to people that I know really well or have worked with previously because of our relational background and my familiarity with their style and work ethic.
Nice blog BTW.
Z
Hey great video, nice design.Keep it up
Hey I read your post about the outsourcing and I found it interesting. Do you know that Infosys BPO has revealed on Tuesday that the company has signed a five-year contract with T-Mobile UK. Infosys BPO is a business process outsourcing arm of Infosys Technologies.
I outsource every once in awhile, but I haven’t significantly enough to really get the catch of it in terms of finding great work at a right price. Hopefully I can find better solutions in the future. Most of my work has come from the U.S., or at least primarily English speaking world because I usually outsource writing work. I might try cheaper alternatives in the future for more research-based projects though, too.
My worst outsourcer was a freelance “tutorial writer” I hired. He ended up being some very young high schooler (he failed to mention his inexperience when applying), and when he wrote the tutorial it was a complete mess. Short, uninteresting — didn’t cover a whole lot. Throughout the process, he argued with me throughout the entire thing when I suggested additions, and in the end I just wasted $50. He then continued to email me about 3 times a day with new tutorial suggestions, each email saying, “Your not responding to my emails!” There was, of course, no way I was going to spend any more money on that quality.
Although I viewed the previous outsourcers “portfolio”, I think I’ll try your method in the future of finding the work I like first, then going from there.
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