As tech businesses grow they face a dilemma about how to grow their development teams.
Clearly, one option is to expand the existing team. For businesses based in London or any other capital city, this option is not an easy one. Finding people with the right aptitude, skills and experience, at a price you are willing to pay, is hard within a competitive labour marketplace. Sometimes, even the offer of attractive option packages doesn’t sway the best to join as they are often under offer with 2 or more potential businesses, all vying for that talent to join them.
Another option is to create a remote office in the country, let’s say in Wales or somewhere similar. While the costs of offices and salary expectations are lower, finding the quality of people you need can be a challenge, along with significant management time overhead.
A third option is outsourcing, parcelling off work packages to offshore (in India or similar), nearshore (in Eastern Europe) or onshore development houses. My experience is that while the relationship often begins well, the service quality deteriorates as their best people who you get at the beginning, move off to other assignments, leaving you with junior resource. Deadlines are often missed and there are always questions about IP leakage.
Another route is to set up your own facilities in either India or Eastern Europe. While you might foresee being easily able to source good people at a reasonable cost, if you do not know the country or the city you are setting up in, it is hard to attract talented developers if they do not know you and you have no employer reputation. Local labour and real estate laws can also be complex, demanding additional management time and focus that come with your own operation. Only in my experience, for the very committed.
My favoured option (and I have to admit to being biased), is to combine the two options above, setting up in Eastern Europe, but ‘owning’ the resource, within a local entity, sometimes known as the ‘dedicated team nearshore model’. This works best with a provider who are focused solely on this type of co-located working, providing you with a low-risk, reasonable-cost, low-fuss, and high-value solution to your development resourcing needs. You get control of your own resources who can integrate and supplement your home team resource, security around your intellectual property, and real flexibility. The best of all worlds!
Rob Wirszycz, Chairman of Questers
As well as being Chairman of Questers, I also work as a chairman, advisor and mentor to start-ups, scale-ups and ‘mature’ technology businesses. The blogs below are personal views based on my experiences. If you would like to comment on any of the content, please email at [email protected].