Category: Discipline

Hiring internally or outsourcing your software project is on the minds of businesses everywhere. Now, as the world prepares for tighter budgets and narrow margins, weighing the costs and benefits of outsourced teams is ever more important.

I’ve laid out a cost comparison for hiring a U.S.-based software developer versus a counterpart abroad. Long story short, it’s up to 63% cheaper to outsource a software developer compared to hiring one in-house in the United States. Taking all the costs of software development into account — not just salaries — the costs can get very expensive, very quickly.

The total cost of hiring an employee consists of many parts. In this article, I tried to display the most complete picture of the factors that affect the price of hiring an employee and in the end compare it with prices of outsourcing services using the example of Espeo Software. All the figures I use are related to the U.S. market.

1. Best-paying cities for software developers

Salaries for software developers vary regionally in the U.S. and the highest-paid places center around Silicon Valley in California. Many of the largest employers have headquarters there and recruit developers from across the country and the world. This, of course, inflates the cost to recruit nationally. 

American newspaper U.S. News and World Report listed the top cities for software developers by average annual salary for 2018. San Francisco, California comes out on top with Seattle, Washington close behind. The national average salary for software developers is around $103,000 annually.

Time and time again companies have trusted us as a software development provider. Read more about some of our projects and find out why.

2. How much does a software developer make?

If we break this down further, Americans work an average of around 1,800 hours per year according to a Pew analysis of Labor Department data. That puts hourly rates for software developers in the United States at $71 an hour. For a senior development role, that increases to $81 an hour

This initially sounded a bit low to me so I decided to double-check the figures I found. I asked our U.S. Director, Andrew Phipps, about his opinion. He estimates that the hourly rate for a senior developer especially with specific and in-demand qualifications such as blockchain development skills should be at least $150 and as much as $225 per hour. What the Pew data fails to show is the cost of  specialist knowledge that’s scarce in the U.S. A more realistic annual salary is upwards of $270,000.

These labor costs can quickly get ahead of you as the competitive market dictates the price to hire internally. Salaries alone are not the only costs, however. Sourcing and recruiting also factor in.

3. External recruiting agency

If you have a small company with fewer than 40 people on board it makes more sense to use the services of external recruiting agencies. They usually take between 15-30% success fee of an employee’s annual pay. Let’s take the average 20%.

Let’s make further calculations.

• Software engineer — 130,000 / 100 x 20% = $26,000
• Senior software engineer — 148,000 / 100 x 20% = $29,600
• Specialist senior developer — 271,650 / 100 x 20% = $54,330

4. Internal hiring team

If you want to avoid an external recruitment agency, you can hire in-house recruiters instead. The average salary of the HR specialist with all bonuses and commissions is around $70,000 per year.

The mean number of job placements per recruiter is 40. The median number of placements per recruiter is 20. Let’s use 30 placements per year for our calculations.

However, the cost of the time stays the same. The average acceptance rate  for candidate offers is 89%. 30 / 100 * 89% = 26.7

Let’s keep our model simple and say that the HR specialist is busy only with recruiting. So the cost of the time spent on one hire = $70,000 / 26.7 = $2,621. The average cost of publishing the post on job boards is $400.

You should remember that it will be visible for 3-4 months. If you total the cost of time plus the cost to place an add on a job board, it adds up to $3,000 per placement.

5. Extra costs of internal hiring

In a Harris survey by Glassdoor, the employer branding cost varied by company size, averaging $129,000. It grows exponentially by company size. Companies with fewer than 500 employees spent $6,300, Companies with 500-3499 spent $81,400 and those with more than 3500 employees spent a whopping $335,900 on average to hire internal teams. Recruiting technology costs:

In addition to time and salary per HR specialist, they also need to use tools to work and track their results. Here are some of the more common tools HR teams use and how those costs add up. 

• Video interviewing tools like HireVue and SparkHire. + $3,000 / year
• Coding assessment tools like Codility and HackerRank. + $6,000 / year
• Blind hiring software like GapJumpers. + $1800 / year
• Background check services software like Checkr. + $348 / year
• Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) like Workable. + $4,000 / year

Remember that your HR specialists also need to be hired, onboarded, and trained. They also use office space and supplies.

6. Costs after the developer accepts the offer

According to a benchmark report from SHRM, the minimum cost of training is an average cost-per-hire of $4,125. But the cost of onboarding a new worker also includes some other factors, such as:

The hours managers spend onboarding new workers plus productivity loss minus the average cost: $10,000 per employee

• Paper, printing, and office supplies: between $922 and $1,106 per year
• Training: $1,252 per employee on average per year
• Tools and software: $1,200-100k on average
• New office equipment: about $1800 per developer
• Office space: $6,000 per person per year

Together with the developer’s salary:

• Software engineer – 130,000 + 19,245 = $149,245
• Senior software engineer – 148,000 + 19,245 = $167,245
• Realistic senior developer – 271,650 + 19,245 = $290,895

With 14 years on the market, we have gained valuable expertise in various areas. Read more about what we excel at.

7. Cost of hiring a bad developer

 Taking into account all the costs above, you may still choose someone who’s not a good fit for your team. I’ll get right to the point. The total cost of “bad hire” is upwards of $480,000 according to devskiller.com. 

Assuming a bad hire’s 8-week tenure:

• Cost of hiring (recruitment, onboarding) $39,486.50
• Compensation (cost to employer) $23,311.48
• Cost of maintenance (office, office supplies) $1,218.46
• Productivity loss $23,311.39
• Disruption $398,043.46

8. Outsourcing costs example of Espeo Software

You pay 60$ per hour on a time and material model

• It’s the same rate for junior, mid and senior.
• The more developers you take, the less you pay.
• Usually, it takes less than two weeks to start the project.
• You have the flexibility to change the number of developers the project needs.
• If you don’t like how an exact developer is working, we replace him or her at no cost
• If the dev who worked on your project is leaving our team, we replace him with no costs
• You don’t need to care about extra costs, like equipment, tools, training etc.
• We provide agile project managers.

Let’s calculate the annual salary.

$60 x 1,811 hours = $108,660 

• ($108,660 / $149,245 x 100) – 100 = 28% cheaper than hiring software engineers in the U.S.
• ($108,660 / $167,245 x 100) – 100 = 36% cheaper than hiring  senior software engineers in the U.S.
• ($108,660 / $290,895 x 100) – 100 = 63% cheaper than hiring a realistic senior developer in the U.S.

9. Final thoughts on the cost of in-house development vs. software development outsourcing

With all the costs involved in hiring in-house software developers, this model may not be right for every company. As we enter a period of uncertainty, having fixed costs such as in house developers is a risk many CEOs are not willing to take on. Outsourcing meanwhile, offers a more cost-effective way to create and launch your software development project. 

Carefully consider all the costs involved before you hire in-house and weigh the benefits of software outsourcing. I hope my calculations shine some light on the world of software development and make a case for why you should think about hiring an external team.

Ready to start a project with us? Send us a message and we’ll come back to you shortly.

See also:

• To avert a service outage crisis — prepare, prepare, prepare
• Essential remote working tips for the home office blues
• The case for effective IT outsourcing
• Good reasons not to skimp on QA testing
• Outsourcing your online payment gateway project: What skills to look out for when building your remote team

The world has changed a lot in 2020, and many businesses have been forced to go remote. This situation wasn’t temporary. In fact, as many as 74% of businesses predicted in 2020 that they will transition their on-site employees into remote positions even after the pandemic is over, and we can still see that most companies continue to work in the remote model.

There are many benefits of having a remote workforce, but also a lot of challenges – such as project management. Handling your team in the office when everyone is in the same building is one thing, but keeping everything together when each team member works remotely is another.

In this article, I’ll highlight the main project management challenges facing remote teams, and also offer a few strategies that show you how to overcome them.

Top project management problems

People problems caused by poor communication

Communication among team members is a challenge faced by all remote teams around the world. Because good communication is paramount to the success of any business, it’s really important that you find ways of overcoming this hurdle.

The challenges lie largely with the fact that your team may have different preferences for communicating now that they’re remote, as well as the fact that some of them may become more inaccessible.

This can lead to a slowdown in overall performance, as well as a feeling of disconnect. It can also lead to misunderstandings. According to a recently conducted survey, the biggest project management challenge falls under people problems.

Communication among team members is a challenge faced by all remote teams around the world. Because good communication is paramount to the success of any business, it’s really important that you find ways of overcoming this hurdle.

The challenges lie largely with the fact that your team may have different preferences for communicating now that they’re remote, as well as the fact that some of them may become more inaccessible.

This can lead to a slowdown in overall performance, as well as a feeling of disconnect. It can also lead to misunderstandings. According to a recently conducted survey, the biggest project management challenge falls under people problems.

With 14 years on the market, we have gained valuable expertise in various areas. Read more about what we excel at.

The most important thing you should do is provide your remote team with effective communication tools. There are different types of tools you can use for different needs. For example, you could build a customized chat app, which is ideal for real-time messaging and chatting about a project. 

Slack, on the other hand, maybe better for sharing files, group chats, as well as video calls. It also lets your team send GIFs, which can be great for informal discussions about your projects. 

As well as establishing communication channels, you could also schedule frequent ‘catch-ups’. This helps your team to stay connected, it gives them a voice and it can encourage them to share their ideas with the group.

Identify the most important tasks and avoid the worst pitfalls when starting a new digital project with our handy checklist:

Lack of performance tracking

Now that your team is working remotely, it can be a lot harder to track their performance. Poor performance tracking can cause delays if all you’re seeing is a team member’s finished work. Deadlines may be missed, and the finished work may not be of an acceptable standard.

It’s a tough situation because micromanagement is not only a poor solution, it’s also impractical with remote teams.

The best way to hold your remote team accountable and boost performance tracking is to first implement frequent performance discussions. These will give you the chance to chat with team members 1:1 to find out where they are in a project. You can also ask them about any challenges they’re currently facing, and what you can do to help.

You can also use tools to help you monitor your team’s productivity. Performance tracking tools include HiveDesk, which comes with a useful random screen sampling feature, and TSheets, which gives your remote workforce a variety of ways to clock in and out. Therefore, there can be no shirking.

Dealing with time zone differences

Now that your team is remote, it may be tempting to hire additional team members that are located overseas. This can improve the caliber of your employees because it means you’ve got more candidates to choose from, but it also means you’ll have to wrestle with time zone differences.

Time differences can cause major delays in projects. For example, if one team member needs something from another team member before they can move forward with a task, but the other team member has just gone to bed, there will be a lengthy delay.

The easiest way to fix this problem is to simply ask your team members to be more flexible with their working schedules. However, this may not always be possible. In that event, you can use scheduling tools, such as, Calendly, to make sure that work is assigned and delivered at times that suit everyone.

When it comes to things like team meetings, you will need to ask your team for feedback in regards to what times suit everyone. If there is no way that you can agree on a time, the next best thing to do is to record your team meetings. This way, anyone who misses the live meeting won’t miss out completely.

Procrastination

One of the problems faced by remote teams is the temptation to procrastinate. While studies have shown that working remotely can boost productivity, we need to offset this with the fact that there may be team members who put work off until the last minute simply because they’re not in an office environment. As a result, your projects can slow down.

A solution is to educate your team members on the need to create a daily plan. As well as a written plan, you can break all tasks down into smaller ones on your project management tools, so that your team doesn’t become overwhelmed. Other things you could do is remind your team that they don’t need to always aim for perfection. You could utilize a work management tool like Asana that will give their day some much-needed structure and framework.

Top project management problems – conclusion

Good project management is central to the success of your remote team. Use the tips in this article to get to grips with the way your team communicates and performs. Make sure to use tools where possible to help you along the way, and don’t underestimate the importance of talking to each team member one-to-one as often as possible.

Kick off your digital project on the right foot with our checklist

The “Project Management Checklist: Before you start” is our guarantee that the project will be kicked off in the best way possible, and no important issue will be omitted. The list has been divided into several fields, though there is a chronological feel to it as well, the sequence is not necessarily set in stone. You can download it here.

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Author Bio

Michelle Deery is a content writer with over eight years of experience. She specializes in writing content for SaaS companies. The words she writes convert readers into paying customers. Learn more at michelledeery.com and connect with her on Twitter @MichWriting.