Lots of dev forums talk about this and encourage others do the same, even juniors, just to earn more because their 2 hours or work is better than 8 hours of their colleagues from western countries.
I don't want to judge the morality of doing this, but is this that spread only in this part of the world since the pandemic or everywhere?
I work for a company's whose headquarters is in Poland and we rely on eastern europeans for a fair amount of work. For context on this statement, we (americans) all believe our 2 hours of work is equivalent to their 8 hours of work.
To massively oversimplify, eastern europeans believe american corporate speak and many meetings are a huge waste of time and inefficicent communication. Americans believe eastern europeans miss critical context that leads to work which needs to be redone because its incorrect.
Well, if OP is correct, then there are two options here.
a. Since they're only working 2 hours but billing 8, your 2 hours of work is actually equivalent to their 4 days.
b. They aren't taking 3 extra days, your 2 hours is equivalent to their 2 hours, and they're billing you for 8 as a lesson in humility.
:)
Reminds me of my Polish high school. Not only were people cheating and open about it between each other, teachers were encouraging that if you don’t get caught then it’s not a problem.
It’s a feature of our culture that at the end of the day tires everyone out because you have to be on a constant look out for fuck ups.
While I still hold the above to be true in a broad sense, I wouldn't want anyone coming away with a negative take. From my own personal experience we have countless extremely skilled developers in our part of the world and I have not witnessed this sort of cheating.
Well, my friend, if you actually study instead of cheating, you can learn tons. :)
I'm not denying you can get equivalent, even better, knowledge and experience otherwise. One of the best devs I know has a degree in philosophy. However, some of us know what we go to school for and we make it worthwile.
Sure, it's no 100% guarantee, but it should at least mean you're familiar with the domain enough to find the answers you need.
You said yourself it entails loss of sanity and time - agreed, completing one shows discipline, character, time management skills and enough sanity that you can afford to lose some. Again, it doesn't mean people without a degree don't have these things (self-education can require some of them even more), but that's one way to demonstrate them.
Finally, there's different degrees, mines are from MIMUW so they do prove quite a lot.
This is unfortunately also pushing me toward daily standups, which I have also avoided my entire career so far.
It is unethical, certainly. But it also hurts the honest people who don't do it.
Might be your problem. You're not going to find anyone serious there -- you get what you pay for. A site that charges the consultant instead of the client isn't exactly gonna attract even average level talent.
Some people on Upwork are dishonest or unskilled, but some are also excellent. Hiring is hard, regardless of the talent pool.
If you have better ideas of where to find contractors, please let me know. I'm always open to finding a better or fairer marker than Upwork.
Have you considered hiring actual employees locally rather than remote, unseen contractors?
The contractors are remote, but I do see them on video. I'm also remote and unseen, as I've worked remotely my entire career.
There is not too much competition for talent. The crap is easy to weed out; most people who are bad have 100 ‘expert skills’ on their profile. So skipping those (which, unfortunately, means that you mostly end up without anyone from Asia) already cleans up nicely. Secondly, remove all the ones that have open jobs at that moment. Then remove low ratings. Now you have a few left to have chat and figure out if they are lying or not. And then you just pick the best one (technically but also if you click with them) that’s left.
Small cities in NZ have great people. For example www.triotech.co.nz or nodero.com
What does this mean? I equate “good exchange rate” with “low exchange commission/fee” and “low volatility”.
You're right about volatility too, the NZD doesn't swing too wildly.
Because in some countries, you can live like a king on $66k and you'll always have contracts. And anyway, no one gets paid based on the "value of their work". That's how services businesses are profitable at all -- the employees generate more value than they're paid.
My standard of living is pretty good too.
So all contractors that are not on that platform are 10x developers?/s
Sweeping generalizations are always easy to make, but if talent assessment would be easy nobody would have problem hiring, in general, and that's not what I'm seeing.
Is it just a time sheet/app where developers track their time or is it spyware like Upwork's screen capture tracker?
Be wary of any developer who agrees to install spyware. These are either entry level developers or really crappy devs.
I have both worked as freelancer and hired freelancers. I find these spywares extremely insulting. We are not high school kids working in fast food joint. We are professionals & business owners.
As a freelancer, if a company asked if I would install spyware on my machine, it indicated that it was probably badly run company. If it was optional I would ask how many other devs had the spyware on their machines. If there were more than 1 or 2 devs, it just meant I would be working with bad devs and just declined contracts. Same if it was required. Pretty much all those companies had issues with their devs and had to scrap projects or start over.
And when I hired freelancers, if a freelancer indicated they had no problem with spyware, it set off all kinds of red flags. And every single time if I hired such developer, they were horrible and needed a lot of hand holding.
Unfortunately my last 5-10 freelancer experiences have been bad. I lost $10k recently by trusting a dev that he was doing the work I paid him to do.
I have no other way to verify that someone is dedicated to my work.
If anyone refuses the spyware, that's absolutely their right. I don't blame them.
Either way, it might be best to just fire anyone who bills you 50 hours and works 0. As a contractor, I'd do the opposite - work 40 hours and bill 30, not including some periods of zoning out. My clients would insist that I round it up, not down.
I think you'll find plenty of contractors who suit your more trusting style.
I do see the problem that some people pretend to be more experienced than they are, or worst case are scamming clients.
On the one hand, you could ask a contractor to do a certain (well-specified) piece of work for a fixed price. But it's often hard to define the specifications precisely, especially in software projects.
The alternative is charging by the hour. I see this as a journey that the client and contractor take together. You have a certain goal in mind, and the contractor helps you work towards it. You need regular meetings to discuss the progress, obstacles, and together decide on the best way forward. Daily standups could help too, but depending on the complexity of the work, I'd recommend a weekly or biweekly in-depth meeting.
Could it be that the experience with scammy contractors is because they are given a task towards an ill-defined goal with too little opportunity to discuss progress?
Not saying it's easy, but worth thinking about before you start the surveillence.
I see their side of it. The risk is all theirs with fixed fee.
I find it hard to believe, but I'm also far detached from large corps nowadays to know what kind of shenanigans can be passed by them.
I still very much doubt all of your claims, without some proof. As an Eastern European developer with a sizable network of peers, first time I'm hearing of this as "common practice"
I'm interested in what's behind the claim that 2 hours work in country y is better than 8 in country x?
Though, in my own personal experience, I've observed the exact opposite as you with regards to geography :)
I'm from the USA, and am "one of those" who's been writing software their whole life (though I only entered the market around 2001).
Over the past 10 years I've had multiple contracts where I billed my client 40hrs a week, though the work only took me perhaps an hour a day, if that. Client's extremely happy, because in his words, my hour of work is more useful than 8 hours of work from a 4 person team from India or China.
My guess, knowing nothing about how it's done over there, is that labor costs must be so inexpensive that you can assign 30 people to a 1 person job, and hope that something works? But I'll always be curious.
Regarding morality, I don't see how it comes into play! Be honest, be ethical. But your money source is just that -- a money source.
Do you think your employer would feel bad about hiring someone similar to you at the same time, so that after a year, they could fire the lower performing one? They wouldn't feel bad at all. At some businesses, this is an established procedure!
OP: Don't Feel Bad about working multiple jobs at once. It's not a marriage or a intimate relationship. There's no expectation of exclusivity. As long as you can do well at all your jobs at once, more power to you.
Put differently, I think active deception would be immoral. I can't believe it but I heard a story recently about foreign workers taking advantage of remote work/pandemic by running a "bait and switch". One person applies, gets the job, then someone different (and unqualified) actually shows up. _That's_ unethical.
So you end up with tons of guys who cannot work in software, who cost nothing like us in salary term but produce near nothing. The ones who survive are either unashamed to ask millions of questions (fair enough after all), who have the political acumen to always walk between the raindrops and manage to fail projects without looking like the culprits or are genuinely good and move asap... to Hong Kong or Singapore, sometimes Tokyo if invaluable. These would never stay underpaid for doing the same job as me, they're not stupid, them.
I'm from central Europe as well.
You live in bubble. That's it.
Over subscribing works until it doesn't. Some people are going to get caught out when one job eats their whole day or management wants to cut staff.
Also, thank you for this. Now I know why out-of-country contractors have such a variable rate of output.
Imagine an /s here if you feel it's appropriate, I can't decide.
I would love something where I can work 2-3 months then take 1 month off. We were asked to go back into the office and my first day I felt extremely depressed - I never felt like this before and I'm worried about what will happen.
Once you find a good one though, it's OH so much more rewarding than office work, for some people at least (including me). There's a lot more freedom and flexibility in how you get the work done, less (zero!) politics, and going above and beyond is more appreciated by a client than an employer. (which opens the door to repeat business!)
My career has been (to a first approximation) alternating between full time roles at startups and consulting work. When I'm doing consulting work, it's 1-2 months work, 3-5 months off, not the other way around. YMMV, this experience may be specific to my working style, and the sort of projects I do. I like to land a juicy project, work in long intense bursts until it's done, then collect the check (sometimes one halfway through). I've never billed per hour, almost always per-project, but occasionally per-week (for deep pocketed clients).
The hard part is finding clients. If anyone figures it out, do let me know.
I've used every strategy I can think of and I have yet to find something that reliably works, so you've got to do everything at once. Social connections, "professional networking", email lists, craigslist (in the mid 2000s), Many of the large projects come via "friend of a friend". Word gets to me through a friend that someone's day job involves them doing something I suspect I could improve, I arrange an introduction, and, well, work up the company's food chain, then try to get to yes :) That being said, the most lucrative project yet I found on reddit! 1 month of work, then 6 months off. :) [In that case, the tool I wrote replaced more than 50% of the client's work]
Finally, something you might want to consider is working with a contract placing firm. I've never done it myself, but I've gotten close during my most recent employment hunt (which ended days ago). I've talked with several of them, as well as outside recruiters, and if you're interested, I'd be happy to point you towards the people I liked (including the recruiter who landed me my new and awesome full time job, if our skills are similar.)
My email addr is in my profile.
I've often thought that there's still a missing market to be filled, somewhere where people with different skill sets can form loose associations, and then find opportunities together. "whole is greater than the sum of its parts" &c. The group can then sell to the client.
I mean the real works, for example 4 different people from different company asking for 4 different solution it’ll take some times to process
How big is contract works over there, in my place I never heard someone take more than 2 jobs 1 fulltime 1 freelance
There's no way to black list bad candidates. If they interview well (or the guy they hire interviews well) they'll get the job. Coast the contract for 3 months, collect the pay check then move on.
Healthcare is not any better in different parts of the world (or Europe for that matter). Within countries there are places where healthcare absolutely sucks and there are places where you can get a decent healthcare, even in Poland (you have options for private healthcare for example).
As for getting "rich" and inter-generation wealth - we (I'm from Poland too) do certainly have that, although not to the degree that other countries such as US have. Many people I know could afford their first house/flat or mortgage for it only because their parents helped them. Also don't forget that many people got their wealth from communist era, where they had to just wait in the queue to get their flat and then they bought it for a penny after we shifted to capitalism.
There are certainly real professionals here in Poland too, but they're just harder to come by. I'd not say it's specific to Poland. If anything, you can just say it's more common than average in other countries, but it's not certainly an exceptional thing here that we lack true professionals.
I'm in the same bucket as you're, it's not like the pasture is greener on the other side in many fields.
BTW, I've not yet come by anyone whose hobbies were flying or diving, although I admit I might not have met as many people lol.
Actually, what do you consider wealth?