What You Should Know Before You Offshore Your Startup's Engineering Team Offshoring engineering teams can be a huge asset for your startup, but it comes with a sea of entirely new challenges

By Yarden Tadmor

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Shutterstock

"Everything now, everything fast" is the way of a startup. It's a race against competitors, what's still interesting and getting users to care. Offshoring engineering teams has become a popular solution for large corporations as well as startups -- it's an easy, cost-efficient way to get things done, right? Not so fast! Offshoring engineering teams can be a huge asset for your startup, but it comes with a sea of entirely new challenges.

As someone who's done it, here's what you should be prepared for before you jump overseas:

Determine a single source of truth.

This is a catchier way of saying "you're going to need a reliable way to manage software development." Before you even think about building anything, you need a project management and software development tool that will work for you and your team. For us, our "single source of truth," is Jira, a software development and project management tool. Having a single source of truth also means there's accountability. You'll probably cringe at saying "The date says due here and it's not done," but likely as a project manager you will.

Related: 6 Things You Must Do to Effectively Manage Remote Workers

With a team that's not in the same physical office, it's even more important to manage communication, projects and owners; luckily messaging tools like Slack, hangouts, Skype and join.me make it very easy to communicate in real time, regardless of the location. Clear communication and met deadlines are especially crucial at a startup, where it's always a race against the clock.

Expect a language barrier.

If you're considering offshoring some or all of your engineering team, a new language often comes with the territory. Does this mean you should power up Duolingo? Not necessarily, but you will want to make sure there's someone in your overseas office that is proficient in both english and the local language. This person also needs to be in a manager role; otherwise, it will be more than code that's lost in translation. I'm working with a Ukrainian development team right now, in addition to our U.S. engineering team -- am I going to learn Ukrainian overnight? No, but I'm very grateful for the engineering team lead over there who translates (I think) most of what I'm saying.

Related: 3 Ways to Engage Offsite Employees in Your Culture

You need a trusty counterpart.

How you build the team in an offshore office depends on your needs and intentions with this office. You can either focus on building an autonomous team or set up auxiliary development offshore. If you decide to focus on developing an autonomous team, you'll need to hire the right senior person up front and then grow a team of more junior engineers. This senior person needs to be your trusty counterpart. Look to hire a self-starter, who has the right instincts to make decisions. You'll want to empower the engineering team abroad, just like you would if they were in the same office, to make things happen. Someone who needs approval from you for every small change will not be an effective use of their or your time, especially with a time difference.

Related: How to Know When to Bring Software Development In-House

It's not as cost-effective as you think.

Sure on a spreadsheet it might look like you'll be able to save money by offshoring your team, but there are non-monetary costs that definitely add up. You trade leaning over to tell the engineer next to you for the 100th time to "please stop blasting bassnectar!" with sending gifs on Slack, which always run the risk of not getting the intended reaction. Additionally, if you want a team that really works together, you'll need face time with both, meaning your overseas team should definitely meet with the U.S. team and your executive team should get used to cashing in some airline miles. Without meeting face-to-face at least once, you lose the ability to ensure the intangible "vibe" is right.

If you're thinking about using an overseas team for engineering at a startup, what you need to remember is that this team is simply your team in a different location. Treat them like you would if they were in the office, make sure there's an easy way to communicate and schedule frequent trips to the other location or bring them to HQ. Between real-time messaging tools, high-speed wireless available in most countries and mobile tools, it's easy to bridge the physical distance, language and cultural barrier. Integration makes everything happen!

Wavy Line
Yarden Tadmor

Founder and CEO of Switch

Yarden Tadmor is the founder and CEO of Switch, a job matching app that instantly connects employers and job seekers available on iOS and Android. He has nearly two decades of experience helping to launch and build a variety of technology startups, including CRO  at Taboola and VP at Quigo (acquired by AOL). Most recently, he held the role of chief revenue officer at Convert Media and Taboola. He received a BA from Israel’s Tel Aviv University.

Editor's Pick

She's Been Coding Since Age 7 and Presented Her Life-Saving App to Tim Cook Last Year. Now 17, She's on Track to Solve Even Bigger Problems.
Lock
I Helped Grow 4 Unicorns Over 10 Years That Generated $18 Billion in Online Revenues. Here's What I've Learned.
Lock
Want to Break Bad Habits and Supercharge Your Business? Use This Technique.
Lock
Don't Have Any Clients But Need Customer Testimonials? Follow These 3 Tricks To Boost Your Rep.
Why Are Some Wines More Expensive Than Others? A Top Winemaker Gives a Full-Bodied Explanation.

Related Topics

Business News

Apple Just Unveiled Its VR Headset. What You Need to Know.

The Vision Pro is Apple's first major product launch since AirPods.

Growing a Business

The Best Way to Run a Business Meeting

All too often, meetings run longer than they should and fail to keep attendees engaged. Here's how to run a meeting the right way.

Fundraising

Working Remote? These Are the Biggest Dos and Don'ts of Video Conferencing

As more and more businesses go remote, these are ways to be more effective and efficient on conference calls.

Marketing

5 Things You Can Do Now to Improve Email Marketing

Abide by these simple tricks to help your campaigns gain more visibility and generate revenue in the process.

Science & Technology

'We Were Sucked In': How to Protect Yourself from Deepfake Phone Scams.

Phone fraudsters are using AI to clone the voices of loved or trusted people to rip them off. Here's how to detect if the phone is real or robot.