PHP@INDIA ?
Did you ever wonder if these Millions of Indian developer we often read about are capabale of doing good in PHP? I did. And I tried.
Back in my past (*cough* - hitting 40 soon…) I’ve outsourced parts of my jobs to many countries, starting with a company in Prague/Czech Republic together with my friend Matthew, and moving later on to lithuania where I still run (together with my mate wolfgang) a development office with a total of 60 developers, coding for various projects like swoodoo or oxid.
During these nearly 25 years I did work for sure in a few projects where coding was outsourced to india. My experience in the past was not really good. The classical project in india was:
- huge
- really huge
- f.. huge
did I mention huge?
Why is that so? Well - the average indian developer is (was!) teached to work as some sort of coding-ant. Don’t think, just do what you gotta do (futurama). Thus this ended in a culture where you need to write a very detailed spec ( thousands of pages) and hand this over to your “ant” farm where 500-1000 developers code what you told them todo. Still you need to check personally the quality as (in the past!) the indian culture does not support being honest in case of problems as this is considered rude. Ah - being rude… tell me.. the ones out there who had the pleasure… to meet me in person know that I am a really honest person thus it is very easy that myself is been taken as rude….
So this was the past - 12 years ago. In 2008 I’ve started a second try - and guess what ? It worked! After investigating the right partner via my personal network I’ve started to work with Anantara. A small company, with very bright minds in management, reliable and trustworthy. Nothing what you can expect anywhere on the planet.
Anantara was working in the usual areas - Java and .NET but not very much in PHP. So I helped them a bit to kickstart a fresh PHP team - and they kept their promises and delivered a good working team. To my pleasure they realized that the PHP area is a very interesting market to them, so they decided to put a lot of energy in this area - sic! Times are really changing, especially now when we talk about the crisis - it matters what you pay for your software, and PHP is simply a lot of cheaper (aka faster) developed compared to .NET and java.
Don’t get me wrong - outsourcing is always difficult and by far less efficient compared to in-house developers. You always have to bridge a cultural/business gap which is most likely there. You can’t expect that some people anywhere on the planet earth understand your business needs without teaching them thoroughly.
But - in the past I had much worse experiences - and now I’ve really enjoyed to work with Anantara the last year. Our project stopped now, as it ended succesfully, but I am definitly looking forward to work with these guys in future again. From a PHP skill level I would estimate that there is average know how - which is better than many code I’ve seen in the last years developed in germany. Needless to say that they do agile development - what else…;)
So - if you are interested in contacting them or you do have any other question concerning outsourcing - feel free to contact me. I’ve decided to support Anantara a bit as I really do like them - and no - I am not paid, nor am I a shareholder there. Most likely they will pay me a beer (or two…) 
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9 Responses to “PHP@INDIA ?”
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I am myself from Lithuania, Vilnius. Nice to find out who is behind this office in Kaunas, Lithuania
Always wondered because i saw a lot of people from that office are zend certified engineers. That’s impressive.
I would like to ask how much cheaper it is to outsource to India for example than to Lithuania?
Žilvinas,
why not joining the crew there ?
drop me a mail if you are interested.
Talking about the price - good developers are nowhere cheap - also not in india. I would say you save 20% that’s all - but the most interesting thing about india is, that it’s scalable. In .lt it is difficult to increase a team of 10 let’s say to 20 people - in india - no problem
How do I contact you? :). I’ve struggled terribly to find a good team in India. Sadly, I am an Indian living in the states, but no contacts back home to do the networking bit.
I seriously hope that you get taxed off your ass for sending anything to India.
The poster who made this statement doesn’t explain to you that India-based workers can only speak about 60% english.
he doesn’t explain that these same developers use BEGINNER LEVEL coding techniques that render your site open to almost the most grade-school level of attacks.
he doesn’t explain to you that these same developers don’t give a damn about you, or your project.
he doesn’t explain to you that their answers to questions are from monitors on their screen, and should you have an advanced-level technical question they are NOT going to be able to answer for you.
And he also didn’t explain that you GET what you PAY for. You pay for garbage in India, expect garbage as a product. You pay good in America for a product, expect the best as a product.
Simple stuff really.
[...] night I’ve received an interesting comment on my PHP@INDIA posting. After reading I’ve decided that this deserves a posting to answer it [...]
(totally offtopic, sorry about that)
@AMERICAN DEVELOPER
you sure have helped to enforce the established stereotype about Americans the rest of the world has (to that stereotype American one would at this moment say “Yes, the ‘rest of the world’ part is real and does exists”).
India was under British government for a long time and you generally shouldn’t have trouble finding someone who speaks English. [1]
The notion that the OP is somehow stealing jobs from Americans because he’s outsourcing to India is in direct opposition with capitalism “laws” and the global market USA (and it’s economy) was in the past thriving on and became the world’s #1 power. Now it suddenly doesn’t count because you’re on the shorter end of the stick?
As an example, take USA auto industry. It hasn’t rolled (pun intended) with the rest of the world and now it’s wheels are falling off. Sticking your head in the sand and yelling “It’s not happening” doesn’t really stop anything from happening, it just makes you even more unprepared for it as you don’t even see it coming. As any rehab should teach you, the first step is to admit you have a problem. Trying to blame someone to be a “real American” and leave the jobs in America is like finding the nearest sandbox.
And finally, if you’ve gotten this far in reading this, it means my English is more than 60% and my firm is a possible outsourcing target. Greetings from Croatia.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_English-speaking_population
FWIW - thanks for posting this
I don’t want to make this a troll board, so I’ll make my last point.
#1) You are wrong, it is NOT in direct violation with capitalism “laws” as you say. That’s a made up declaration on your part to justify your own statement. make accurate statements, not made up ideas.
#2) India will never be a #1 power. The country is growing increasingly unstable with all your wars. Who wants to visit a team in India were you constantly have to be looking over your shoulder for a bomber?
#3) Major corporations used you guys because they just assumed that developers were developers. They just assumed that any developer should know what they are doing or else why call them developers? But as you and I know, assuming does nothing but make an ass out of u and me. The fact is, the majority of code I’ve ever seen come out of india looks like it was written by a beginner. And that’s because that’s what the companies there are banking on. They know that a demand is there for companies to pay $4 / hour, so they will pick anyone they can off the street, train them for a day or 2, and then tell that company “We have 100 developers waiting to work!”, when in fact, they don’t have a single worth developer.
And finally, as for the “english”, writing english (which you can take days to perfect) versus speaking english on the fly (which you cannot) are 2 totally different things. But nice try.
PHP@India…
In the last months people kept addressing me with ideas to outsource bigger projects to low-wage countries like india or china. I used to work with people from india during the good old new economy times and have made funny experiences. But this was …