Hacker News Reader

Comment by d0lph | Hacker News Reader

Offshore developed code is not usually the same quality. Not that we all deserve huge salaries, but code quality important.

View on HN

Let's ignore the fact that this may or may not be true (offshore code quality is bad) and just assume it's true...

Why is offshore-developed code not the same quality? What is it about living (growing up?) in the US that has developers producing higher-quality code?

I highly suspect that it's merely selection bias. US companies outsource offshore to save money and when your goal is to save money you've already decided that "the best" isn't really what you're going for. So the code we--as US-based developers--see from offshore development often looks like barely-working garbage.

Yet if we look at open source code written by offshore developers it's often of high quality (i.e. higher quality than the crap we see in the world of Enterprise software). Why doesn't it match our experiences with commercial software development?

It probably has a lot to do with incentives. Open source software is often developed for pleasure or as a learning experience whereas US companies outsourcing software development aren't exactly "driving excellence."

I would imagine among most companies the cheapest option is not the one they go with. It's not a new business concept, cheapest thing is not usually what you want.

I would also be curious what the relative salaries are, e.g. food and shelter are usually much cheaper in foreign countries.

"Offshore developed code is not usually the same quality."

American exceptionalism and absolutely wrong.

I speak primarily from experience.

Anecdotes are not data.

To be honest I thought it was common knowledge, but I assume there exists no such study of code quality between countries.

As an "offshore developer", I have worked on multiple US projects with low quality code written by US developers.

Should I assume that American code is usually low quality?

> Should I assume that American code is usually low quality?

Yes. It usually is.

You could quite simply expand this to The vast majority of code is of very low quality

Not at all denying the existence of low quality programmers in the US, but generally it seems like there is a focus on quality that does not exist for the majority of offshore developers, just about churning out code as fast as possible.

Does this focus exist for the majority of US developers or is it about churning out code as fast as possible?

You can also hire the better part of offshore developers if you'll pay just a bit closer to US rates. I saw the situation "$15/h developer failed everything, help us $35/h developer!" quite a lot in Russian-speaking freelance communities.

I feel like I miss a part the meaning of "offshore" here, and I suspect it's more cultural than a linguistic problem. I mean, technically, German or Japanese developers working for US companies are "offshore" too, but I don't believe you're accusing them of "churning code without regard to code quality"?

Oh, and also, both the previous paragraph and your comments in the thread are (edited:)nationalist[1]. Not that it's not fun to use stereotypes and a few anecdotes to form an opinion, so don't mind me, just noting.

[1] Not sure if it's the correct word, I mean discrimination by ethnicity and nationality.

It is not, shockingly, racism does need to involve race.

Nor do I think my nation is the greatest, and all the others suck. So I don't think it counts as nationalism.

Yeah, sorry, I'm not actually well versed in these matters (of discrimination, never needed to be), I couldn't find the correct word.

Anyway, you do attribute certain characteristics to members of whole nations without any kind of proof (beyond what "everybody [in the field] knows"). I believe you shouldn't, and that it doesn't matter if the characteristics are positive or negative.

In reality, there are both good and bad programmers everywhere. That you ended up working with the bad - or maybe ill-incentivized due to some circumstances - programmers from here or there does not mean that there are no good programmers there or businesses that care for quality. It just means you didn't meet them.

> Yeah, sorry, I'm not actually well versed in these matters ...

Perhaps you should not be accusing others then if you aren't even certain what you're accusing them of.

> Anyway, you do attribute certain characteristics to members of whole nations without any kind of proof

Homogeneous groups of people often share similar attributes, I don't see what is incorrect or wrong about that.

You are correct though, I do not have proof, but it is something that I hear from and discuss with colleagues, as well as have observed myself.

> Perhaps you should not be accusing others

I said I'm sorry, and I edited the comment. This is, however, a detail - that you are unjustly discriminating, only on a basis other than race, I stand by.

> Homogeneous groups of people

Assuming homogeneity of any group of people is almost certainly wrong.

Why don't you substitute "black" or "Hispanic" or "Jewish" for "offshore" in your arguments and see what happens? Would you be able to leisurely write that, in your opinion, "black programmers are sloppy and only churn code as quickly as possible"?

this is not true. perhaps just bad luck. i've worked with developers in other countries that are at least as good as any american developers i've worked with.

Are you including Canada in "offshore"? Europe?

That is implied, from the comment you replied to. You may need to rephrase.

The majority of offshore developers I have worked with have been from South America, India, and Eastern Europe.

Outsourcing creates all sorts of new project planning and communication challenges that most companies are not accustomed to managing. Add in significant timezone offsets, language and cultural barriers, lower communication fidelity and often a tinge of resentment and you've got a recipe for low quality if the project is completed at all.

I don't think this has to be American to be true.

I think, for many of us, our only experience with offshore code is with the bottom dollar coding sweatshops, which are universally shitty.

I have no idea what % of offshore code work that represents compared to just a regular consulting firm that happens to be located overseas, or a branch office of a company located in another country.

Offshore developed code, when created using a similar process and for similar cost to US developed code, is usually of comparable quality.

You can get ridiculously poor quality of code by paying bottom dollar and failing to properly communicate with your developers, no matter what country those developers happen to be situated in.

I don't think that the code created for example at Google Warsaw is worse than code created at Google Mountain View (you can even check yourself, people in Warsaw work on Kubernetes, which is open source). And yet, the Warsaw salary is maybe 30-50% of the salary in MV.

Great example, very representative. Largest global tech company vs. your average offshore developer.

I don't know the situation in other countries, but in Poland Google's approach is rather typical. American corporations typically just set up an office here instead of buying services from some shady local offshore company. I don't see much of the latter around (and incidentally, the big ones are American as well - IBM, Accenture etc.)

But wouldn't you live a whole lot better in Warsaw on 50% than in Mountain View on 100% of that relatively high Google salary?

Depends on your living situation. If you want a house in the suburbs with not terrible commute, it's going to cost you $200-400k in Warsaw vs probably three times as much in SV? This (and higher taxes in the US) can probably consume a lot of the salary difference. But, on the other hand, if you're ok with living in a small studio, you're going to make bank in SV.

Depends on what do you mean "live better". iPads, cars, plane tickets, electronics and other luxuries aren't cheaper in Poland than they are in US. You might "live better", but you also might never be able to visit Hawaii or drive a Tesla.

By live better parent commenter almost certainly meant make more money.

Even if luxuries are not cheaper, food, shelter, healthcare etc. are, freeing up more monies.

>Offshore developed code is not usually the same quality. Not that we all deserve huge salaries, but code quality important.

Cheap offshore developed code is usually not the same quality. Pay people the same and it's amazing what you'll get.

Are offshore developers not being payed competitively to their local rates?

I assure you there's plenty of native code that is the same quality.

I write a lot of it professionally.

Quality declines as the gap between customer and devs increases.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com