Stephan Schwab

Now that’s interesting news:

Network World in Indian CIOs have to offshore work, says Gartner – Network World:
Indian CIOs will have to consider outsourcing offshore, because of the shortage of IT skills in the country, and inadequate services standards of local service providers, according to research firm Gartner Inc.

People who really know what they are doing are rare to find. In the IT industry good skills are not easy to obtain. A good developer or SysAdmin needs to live the job and not just do the job, because he needs money to feed himself and his family. The ever evolving technology demands that one is passionate about the topic and willing to learn constantly. Just performing a certain set of tasks over and over again will cause falling behind and in the end become useless.

Fostering good skills in its people is as well a responsibility of the company. For example in my own company I follow a bit the ancient pattern of apprentice, journeyman and master. The education kids receive in the local Universities here in Panama is not bad, but they lack guidance and practice. So I give them a chance and over the course of a few weeks I decide whether they are made of the right stuff or not. Once I found one who is, I put the new apprentice to work on real tasks that contribute to a real project and after a year he should have gained enough knowledge to solve some tasks on his own. Currently I have Fidel, who has been doing Java development since 1.5 years, and Enrique who is about to graduate from UTP. Currently Fidel, my “journeyman”, helps me teaching Enrique and I expect Enrique to do the same in one or two years. It takes time, but I feel it’s the only way for a company to grow in a sane way and have skilled people who can actually satisfy clients. Of course sometimes one can find a guy who has learned everything on his own, but I consider counting on that or hoping for the rare find a bad idea.

Wired Magazine in The Micro-Multinational:
Venture capitalists now routinely demand that the companies they finance outsource what labor they can. Yogen Dalal, a partner at Mayfield, says more than half the companies he funds have offshore workers. The Valley even has a name for these startups: micro-multinationals.

That’s some very interesting idea. Further down in the article it says:

The president and chief executive of Solidcore, Rosen Sharma, is an unapologetic fan of outsourcing. “We were a micro-multinational from day one. It didn’t mean I hired fewer people in the US,” he says. “It meant that I could hire more people in sales and marketing, because I didn’t have to concentrate on building R&D in America.”

So, if you are a startup company working on some consumer oriented project or other project where you would like to do more in marketing and sales, you might want to consider outsourcing to a place nearby and within your timezone. My company Caimito Technologies operates out of an office in Panama (2.5 hours south of Miami; next to the famous Panama Canal) and we might be able help to you with your development efforts.

Since moving to Panama City, Panama (the country in Central America where the Panama Canal is located, not the city in Florida), last year I’ve been involved in the project of a local client and started my own in March. Both experiences have given me a lot of insight what you can do in Panama. I may even do an educated guess about the possibilities in other Latin American countries based on my recent experience and what I know from previous travels throughout the region and conversations with people from those other countries (mainly Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Colombia).

Further I’ve been participating as a speaker and attendee local events like the Geek Fest Panama or UXcamp.

While I made my experience with Panamanian developers as part of my work for a local client and came to the conclusion that there are indeed smart brains in Panama capable of developing software using current Java technologies, I can now talk about how well an agile process works by telling the story of the development of our product Savila. There is a lot of talk going on about how to outsource development, whether outsourcing works or creates more hassle than it’s worth or how to do “agile” with a distributed team or one that is in another country or culture.

So my question is whether companies or user groups would be interested in hearing more about these topics. Please feel free to leave a comment or email me.