5 Advantages and Challenges of Hiring Remote Developers

Sidharth Jain
7 min readMar 21, 2020

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The increasing cases of Coronavirus in every country have made governments worldwide to shut down cities and towns. IT organizations are preparing more of their workforce to work from home as COVID-19 is spreading exponentially in countries like the USA and UK. Several companies including Cargill, EY, Apple, Amazon, have curtailed all the essential business travel. IT companies in Tier-1 cities around the globe are following work from guidance to prevent the spread of disease.

To prevent Corona from hindering their product development, companies are going remote. And, this has given a more boost to already trending remote working. More and more employees are working in remote positions for full-time. Companies are also embracing this new work culture, increasingly using flexible work options to entice employees.

But, the question here is what the solution is if you want all your remote developers to work together at the same time to avoid communication issues. This is difficult to achieve if you are hiring your Python Developer from India and Quality Analysts from some other part of the world. To make sure your team has a clear understanding of the project and working in sync, it is better to outsource your web development requirement to the offshore development team.

Should I outsource my development or hire in-house developers, this has been an old and global faced by startups and big businesses globally. Here, we are bringing you reasons why it is better to work with a software house located remotely.

1. Cost Savings:

Whether it is nearshoring or hiring developers offshore, every type of outsourcing is financially attractive. In a recent survey, it has been found that business which outsources development experience cost-cutting of approximately 20%. It is because of the different labor costs in different countries.

When you decide to hire in-house developers, you have to handle acquisition and retaining costs as well. In the end, they can always quit, and you have to start the whole process again from hiring to training the persona about undergoing projects.

Savings are not only limited to labor costs in each country but by hiring a remote development team, you can also save the expenses related to the whole recruitment process and hardware that he would need to perform his work.

2. Significant Time Savings:

By hiring remote developers, you can save your crucial time and focus on the core of your business. What’s more, you would need not spend this time worrying about the project and take some appropriate steps of course. To make sure that your cooperation with the outsourcing partner is effective it is important that you should mutually agree on:

  • The methodology of the work
  • The overall flow of the work and external tools that would be used for communication
  • Project timeline
  • Project milestones

Hiring remote developers gives you time to meet other deadlines on which you need to juggle. By outsourcing, you would not need to bounce between the tasks and bend your schedule to fit into short timeframes.

Moreover, partnering with offshore software development means you don’t have to invest time in training the in-house developers. If you lack expertise in a particular domain, hire an outsourcing team that can quickly deliver you the product. This is the reason why world-known companies such as Google go this route to cope up with their tasks

3. Developers’ Personal Development:

When it comes to hiring in-house developers, you have to take care of the personal growth of web development. And, again this will lead to an increase in your budget. Developers in remote software houses have to remain up-to-date.

Your offshore development company will invest in conferences, workshops, courses and books to keep the developers and project managers aligned with the latest technology.

4. Shared Working Hours:

The time difference is another advantage of outsourcing your software development project. It is actually a blessing for businesses as it lets your team available for the clients for maximum hours of the day. While your in-house employees are in their deep slumber, developers across the ocean can ensure an uninterrupted workflow.

India is the only nation in the world with a single time zone over the entire country. Also, India shares a friendly time difference between all the major countries of the world. The country is 3 and half hours ahead of Europe, 9 and half hours ahead of the USA. Also, the country shares quite a good time zone with Singapore and Australia as the former one is 2 hours and 30 minutes ahead of India, and the latter one is 4 hours 30 minutes ahead of IST.

The advantageous time zone of the country let development companies in India provide clients with round the clock support.

5. Access to Global Talent:

Outsourcing allows businesses to reach professionals that are in a short supply of projects. When hiring an outsourcing agency, you get access to a wide number of experienced developers.

Here experience means not only the seniority level or how much knowledge programmers hold of coding. The experience here also means how people work together, manage the project and contribute to the success of the project.

Outsourcing can fit into any phase of the project and in this way, you will get all the required resources for the project such as developers, project manager, UI/UX designer, content writer, marketing specialists, all in one place. Building this type of team online would consume a lot of time.

Apart from this, there are also other benefits of hiring remote developers such as better risk management, staffing flexibility and more.The importance of choosing the right remote developers cannot be overstated. Working with well-regarded and experienced software outsourcing company has helped many companies to expand beyond their initial startup stage. However, to make sure that you are building a team that helps you to grow, rather than wreaking havoc, it is important to know what are the common problems associated with outsourcing as well as their solutions.

Here are the 5 most common outsourcing problems, along with the solutions:

1. Quality of Service:

Most of the business fear of quality services while hiring remote developers in another part of the world. This can be manifested in the coding abilities, quality of outsourced talent or the final product itself. Inexperienced outsourcing companies focus on savings at the cost of hiring the most qualified engineers. These newbie programmers often make silly mistakes that hinder the overall performance of the software.

Solution: Performing adequate due diligence before signing a contract with an outsourcing firm can make you prevent such issues. Any potential vendor should be thoroughly researched and you can also go through the work they have delivered earlier.

2. Cost Overruns:

Handing off-key development responsibilities to the novice team can lead to cost overruns, along with other problems. The inexpensive hourly rate that is appealing might exceed your budget if developers are taking too long to complete ordinary tasks.

Solution: The easiest way to avoid cost overruns is to work with a well-respected outsourcing firm that is known for providing quality services. They can bring in experienced managers to help you with the planning process. The company that already has developers working as a remote team can deliver your services in a stipulated period of time.

3. Mismatched Expectations:

It can be frustrating to spend your time and money and get the unsatisfying final product. Unclear goals and lack of understanding of the process can make outsourcing partners believe that they have grasped the client’s ideas, even if they have a different interpretation of the project.

Solution: The way to avoid mismatch expectations is to insist on clear and regular communication from the beginning of the process. Go for the company that is over-communicating and putting on a lot of questions to be on the same page as you. Also, it is better to set key milestones throughout the project to solicit feedback.

4. Communication:

The language barrier is one of the common challenges that are associated with hiring a software outsourcing service. The hurdle in communication can lead to a decrease in product quality, misaligned expectations and frustration from both sides.

Solution: There are several ways to avoid this problem. You can consider setting up your remote development team in south-east Asian countries like India where the workforce is educated as well as possess the required English skills to communicate flawlessly with the client.

5. Time Zone Issues:

Time zone is also one of the major concerns that the company faces while setting up a remote development team. A huge difference in time zone can lead to communication issues and you have might have to sacrifice your sleep to learn the current status of the project.

Solution: To avoid time zone related issues, consider hiring the remote developers in a country with a favorable time zone. Setting up a development team in India is one of the widely preferred as India is the country with a single time zone all over the country. Also, as mentioned above, India has a favorable time zone, which overlaps with the working hours of many other countries like the USA, Canada, Australia, the UK and other Asian regions.

In addition to this, there are tech companies in India that handle client queries 24*7. The project managers working with the tech companies in India assist the client and provide project updates round the clock.

Conclusion

Working with the remote team online is not much different than working with a team in person. Follow the work procedures that you have decided and show enthusiasm for the progress of development. Try to remain genuinely involved with your team and create goals to make sure everything is going according to the plan. The overall success of the project will depend upon the response you provide to your team.

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Sidharth Jain
Sidharth Jain

Written by Sidharth Jain

Founder @ Graffersid.com | Building Website & Mobile Apps | Trusted by funded Startups | Awarded Best UX Design Team & Rising Star 2018

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