State of the Market

[willendure]

I did something at Lloyd's through Wipro in 2009. The mickey mouse Wipro managers would routinely forget paperwork in meeting rooms. They were charging:

540 daily for onshore contractors
440 daily for onshore Wipro employees (who received 140 + expenses)
240 daily for offshore Wipro employees (who received 80)

Ok, so by those figures I estimate our offshore team is costing about double what a smaller UK team would cost, and that I estimate would get the work done at least twice as fast, and to a higher quality, and just be a lot easier to communicate and work with. Thats maybe 4x the value for money.

[hungry_hog]

I did something at Lloyd's through Wipro in 2009. The mickey mouse Wipro managers would routinely forget paperwork in meeting rooms. They were charging:

540 daily for onshore contractors
440 daily for onshore Wipro employees (who received 140 + expenses)
240 daily for offshore Wipro employees (who received 80)

Haha I was there too. The glory days.
We also worked with wipro, the phrase chocolate teapot was used a lot!

[GJABS]

There were some comments on here a month or so age, saying that the IT job market is much better in Europe than it is in the UK. Well I've seen evidence of this this week.

Last week I went to a conference in London, and got talking to a software vendor guy (a small company in Eastern Europe). I asked him whether he was hiring, and he said he was looking for C# developers. I said my main skillset is SQL coding, but that 8 years ago in my own time I had written from scratch a stock trading app in C#.
To my slight surprise he said he was interested, and scheduled an interview.

I had the interview over Zoom this morning. But it became clear in that my knowledge of C# was at "beginner" level, covering only a small subset of the available commands (although I had got it working trading with real money back in 2017). But even despite this I had a sense that he was still considering progressing the application.

I decided at that point that I probably wasn't the best person, so turned it down. I asked him why he didn't look for someone with lots of existing C# experience. He replied that there was a shortage of workers in his area. Also that he had tried outsourcing to India, but that he had experienced a lot of fraud during the interviews - literally a second person on the other side using chatgpt in real time to get the answers to his interview questions during the interview.

The role is fully remote. It is a contract, but with the intention of it being ongoing for "years". Of course there are no legal employment rights etc. I have no idea on rate, but I don't think it is great, being Eastern Europe.

Therefore I'm passing the role on to you guys if any of you are interested. If you have decent C# experience and are looking for a long-term remote contract, send me a message on here, and I can pass on your CV to him etc.

[eek]

I decided at that point that I probably wasn't the best person, so turned it down. I asked him why he didn't look for someone with lots of existing C# experience. He replied that there was a shortage of workers in his area. Also that he had tried outsourcing to India, but that he had experienced a lot of fraud during the interviews - literally a second person on the other side using chatgpt in real time to get the answers to his interview questions during the interview.

I'm bring an outsourced project to a successful conclusion and it's required a lot of handling of crap Indian workers employed by the end client who are beyond useless.

The entertaining bit is that phase 2 (which I've designed) is very different from phase 1 which is a complete mess because the incompetent were able to do things because the end customer knew no different.

[SchumiStars]

There were some comments on here a month or so age, saying that the IT job market is much better in Europe than it is in the UK. Well I've seen evidence of this this week.

Last week I went to a conference in London, and got talking to a software vendor guy (a small company in Eastern Europe). I asked him whether he was hiring, and he said he was looking for C# developers. I said my main skillset is SQL coding, but that 8 years ago in my own time I had written from scratch a stock trading app in C#.
To my slight surprise he said he was interested, and scheduled an interview.

I had the interview over Zoom this morning. But it became clear in that my knowledge of C# was at "beginner" level, covering only a small subset of the available commands (although I had got it working trading with real money back in 2017). But even despite this I had a sense that he was still considering progressing the application.

I decided at that point that I probably wasn't the best person, so turned it down. I asked him why he didn't look for someone with lots of existing C# experience. He replied that there was a shortage of workers in his area. Also that he had tried outsourcing to India, but that he had experienced a lot of fraud during the interviews - literally a second person on the other side using chatgpt in real time to get the answers to his interview questions during the interview.

The role is fully remote. It is a contract, but with the intention of it being ongoing for "years". Of course there are no legal employment rights etc. I have no idea on rate, but I don't think it is great, being Eastern Europe.

Therefore I'm passing the role on to you guys if any of you are interested. If you have decent C# experience and are looking for a long-term remote contract, send me a message on here, and I can pass on your CV to him etc.

PM sent.

[Dorkeaux]

Ok, so by those figures I estimate our offshore team is costing about double what a smaller UK team would cost, and that I estimate would get the work done at least twice as fast, and to a higher quality, and just be a lot easier to communicate and work with. Thats maybe 4x the value for money.

Like many here, I have also experienced the Indian consultancies at close range.
Some teams supplied from them are opportunistic and terrible.

Does anyone mean to say they haven't experienced the same thing from the UK-based consultancies?

On an individual level, some of the smartest and most productive consultants I've met are Indian. Also Eastern European, Pakistani, Nigerian, Columbian and Scottish.

I'm not sure the British stack up to be more effective, in my experience.

[Cookielove]

I'm bring an outsourced project to a successful conclusion and it's required a lot of handling of crap Indian workers employed by the end client who are beyond useless.

The entertaining bit is that phase 2 (which I've designed) is very different from phase 1 which is a complete mess because the incompetent were able to do things because the end customer knew no different.

This has been my experience eek on the two occasions trying to work with Indian workers they were utterly crap and nothing was done properly or on time...it was a waste of money and effort...useless!

[sadkingbilly]

On an individual level, some of the smartest and most productive consultants I've met are Indian. Also Eastern European, Pakistani, Nigerian, Columbian and Scottish.

I'm not sure the British stack up to be more effective, in my experience.

I think you'll find the Scots are British still (how long for, who knows).

[herman_g]

Like many here, I have also experienced the Indian consultancies at close range.
Some teams supplied from them are opportunistic and terrible.

My experience with Indian teams at Lloyd's was the work got done by local contractors. The onsite Indians spent most of their time out front smoking and talking on their company-supplied mobile phones. During implementation, they were browsing the food delivery websites deciding what they were going to order next. Completely useless. I see those same guys on Linkedin working in the US as PM's and Product Owners now.

They did have personality, however - the only reason they were placed onsite.

The offshore teams only did simple changes and they worked together as teams to perform each task.

On an individual level, some of the smartest and most productive consultants I've met are Indian. Also Eastern European, Pakistani, Nigerian, Columbian and Scottish.

Pakistanis I've worked with have been quite good. Eastern Europeans have always been exceptional despite their unorthodox approach.

[oliverson]

My experience with Indian teams at Lloyd's was the work got done by local contractors. The onsite Indians spent most of their time out front smoking and talking on their company-supplied mobile phones. During implementation, they were browsing the food delivery websites deciding what they were going to order next. Completely useless. I see those same guys on Linkein working in the US as PM's and Product Owners now.

They did have personality, however - the only reason they were placed onsite.

The offshore teams only did simple changes and they worked together as teams to perform each task.



Pakistanis I've worked with have been quite good. Eastern Europeans have always been exceptional despite their unorthodox approach.

I could have written this!!

Very similar experience.

The only bit I'd add is being wary of joining a team with multiple Eastern Europeans. I once worked on such a team with 3 Poles and they were forever talking their native tongue despite being in a UK office!