Venilina

I only employed a Russian programmer once. Unfortunately the language issue became very difficult. I think my experience was not typical- in UT I can see that many Russian programmers are highly educated and often have a better understanding of English Grammar than their English-First-Language counterparts!

I also have experience of using contract programming from India. Companies like Microsoft seem to do very well with this, but again we had bad experiences. I think there are important cultural differences, things we thought were "obvious" were not obvious. E.g. relationships between Doctors and Patients seem to be different in different cultures.

Both these experiences were a while ago- > 7 years. Obviously things have continued to improve since then, there are now specialist companies who take on contract work, but prices are also rising and the cost advantage is not as great as it was.

If I were to try again I'd be very careful to prepare extremely exact specifications. I'd insist on SDL (Software Development Lifecycle) participation.

One other issue: using contract development means the Intellectual Property and know-how is carried away by the contractor and lost to the company. For important IP or work that provides competitive advantage, better to employ people IMHO.

Regards

JR