Outsourcing Forums

Supply & demand comes at all levels, even when you start out. You might have a great new way to go about sometime, underestimate the return you get from your customers and realize you are heading underwater pretty quick unless you can keep up. It happens to the best of us. ;)

It certainly does give you a different perspective, I'm sure. For the best tip I can give you when outsourcing, make sure you are as detailed and clear as possible when creating your brief for potential workers. I have people tell me all the time that most people aren't as detailed as I am and that they appreciate it as they know exactly what I want.

I mainly outsource but sometimes I feel like I should charge my freelancers for testing their work. Recently I outsourced a small piece of software and I went all out on the project description, designed a user interface and made a video explaining it all in great detail. I hired a guy who had all the .NET credentials you would expect and 5 years experience in the field. I then spent two weeks uninstalling and installing revisions because he still couldn't get it right. I found myself explaining my project description all over again, insane!!

It has not put me off outsourcing off course but I do realize that when getting software made off one person, you cant garauntee he or she is a good tester, QA, software architect, and all the things needed for such a project, not that mine needed all that, it just need someone who could code that understood the concept. Every time I tested it I wanted to charge him for my time.