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0 pointscsomar4y ago0 comments

While simple CRUD apps are not technically challenging; the hard part of doing these is figuring out the specs and communicating with the client. I can see how this can go wrong with offshore clients (time difference, cultural difference, language difference, only remote). There could be a market for local agencies outsourcing tech work (and even that has to be done carefully). But clients directly outsourcing to off-shore agencies, that spell trouble.

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reaperducer4y ago

A company I worked for struggled for years trying to find the right CRUD system.

Off-the-shelf packages didn't work right because they couldn't be tailored to the existing workflow, and couldn't be integrated into other systems. Three attempts at offshoring all failed because of culture and communication differences.

In the end, it was done in-house. It took longer, but the application is exactly what was required, and new features can be added in days or weeks, not months or quarters. Last I heard, almost everyone was happy with the home-grown solution.

CRUD can be simple. But CRUD can also be hard. Anyone who thinks that they can spin up a generic CRUD and solve any problem is someone who doesn't really understand what the problem is.

no_wizard4y ago

That is not what I mean. I am talking about well…when they are generic applications that don’t require bespoke work to be done. Maybe HN is the wrong crowd for this as I think most of us work in more specialized capacity. There is a lot of software out there however being written that is say, wiring power BI applications with predefined requirements, or collecting information via surveys that need to be tied to a CMS. Stuff I’ve seen work pretty well when contracted assuming the person overseeing the venture was competent of course.

I’d say anything core to a business in terms of how it functions is not ripe for outsourcing, and anyone doing this is going to feel a lot of pain

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