How offshoring works without conflict

Instead of frantically searching for skilled workers at home to, say, further develop their own web shop, more and more companies are hiring freelancers from abroad. That, however, carries real potential for conflict. Shopmacher Managing Director Manuel Ludvigsen-Diekmann and Lars Jankowfsky, founder of GRADION (formerly NFQ Asia), know which factors are important for successful collaboration.

Germany is short of around 109,000 IT experts, according to the latest analysis by the industry association Bitkom. And the majority of German companies expect the IT skills shortage to intensify further in the future. IT outsourcing can help fill personnel gaps in IT. More and more companies are not only looking for freelancers in Germany, but deliberately recruiting their programmers in countries like Lithuania, India, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia or, at least until early March, in Ukraine and Russia as well.

But the collaboration does not always deliver what was agreed in the preliminary talks about off- or nearshoring. Disappointment quickly grows, and not only on the client side, but also among the contractors. Yet many problems are the consequence of a mental divide. Anyone who does not see the developers in other parts of the world as members of their own team, but as second-class developers who handle the boring jobs their own developers have no interest in, should not be surprised when "those people" no longer show up for work the next day or become less motivated from one day to the next. Because true to the motto of the "Town Musicians of Bremen", "you can always find something better than death", any developer anywhere in the world can be working in a new job the very next day.

A relevant change in the company that offshoring inevitably brings, but that the existing team does not always accept right away, is the fact that English becomes the official language from then on. Only when all communication is consistently switched to English can you avoid a two-tier society and ensure that the offshoring colleagues do not just receive selected information, but can take part in the full flow of information.

Ultimately, offshoring projects sometimes fail because of false assumptions. "Developers in offshoring are cheaper to hire than here at home" is one of them. Depending on the company's location, this can be true or false. On average, you should budget around 7,000 euros per month for a senior developer in Vietnam. In big cities like Berlin or Munich, companies will probably smile wearily at these figures. In more rural areas, on the other hand, the local wage level is likely to be similar. Beyond that, companies should not expect to find developers abroad who have experience with local software tools like Shopware 6, Spryker or commercetools. Even with outsourced staff, you have to invest in training, a 15 percent churn rate included.

A more sustainable approach is to think in terms of availability rather than money. The biggest advantage offshoring offers is not lower hourly rates, but available developers.