In response to a job ad I posted somewhere: craigslist, drupal groups, devbistro, etc:
Would you consider a Drupal Services firm to work with you as a Drupal Development Partner / Advisor to participate and oversee if all the Drupal standards and best practices are followed? We are a Canadian Corporation specializing in Drupal Development. We are located in close proximity of beautiful city of Vancouver on the West Coast.
My Initial Response:
I would consider it, but I'd have to know more about your operations. Word to the wise though... I'm not Canadian, but I lived there long enough to know that outside of Quebec, English is their native language. So, when making audacious claims about yourself in the header, you should know how to use articles, as in "We Are the World's Leading Drupal Development Firm. However, since I have some experience working with Indian companies (I just got back from Bangalore two months ago), I'll let you slide because I know how hungry you guys are for well paid work. Tell me what kind of deal you can offer and perhaps we can iron out a deal for you to some development on one of my sites. Go fix the grammar in your header and get back to me. ALEX
Their Response:
Fixed. Thanks for bringing the error to my attention. Well, I believe with 30 employees focused on Drupal Services we are the world's largest Drupal Services firm. In terms of Size, I know yahoo has about 47 employees working in Drupal but they do work internally. Our standard Drupal development rates are US $125/hr. I understand that you are looking for a long term relationship. If you have 300+ hours of work over 12 months, I can offer you a rate of $90/hr. We do have much of the development happening in India and we do have expertise to build anything in Drupal. We do have Sales and some Technical Support in Vancouver. Is it okay if I have our Sales Director Len contact you later today?
My Second Response:
I'm sure you're a busy guy... so why don't you just take a load off for a minute... sit back and relax - let old Alex tell you about his thoughts on the matter... but first a story. One day I went to visit a development firm in Boulder, CO that had contacted me in regards to a fitness website I've been working on for the last few months. I arrived at their office and found the five employees (all young white guys) sitting inside a room not much larger than an American prison cell. They had chairs but no desks, a printer on the floor, and a white board on the wall. We talked in their hovel and they too gave me an hourly estimate upwards of $100/hr. They were nice and I'm sure they needed the money just as bad as anyone else. Still, when I left I had to ask a few questions I thought were pertinent to putting the situation in professional context. Did they have higher degrees? Did they pass any kind of state/national credentialing examination? I couldn't help but thinking that if they were going to attempt to charge like lawyers, couldn't they at least offer clients a nice leather chair to sit in while they were being pitched?
Now, having been to a lot of places and talked to a lot of people (both generally and specifically related to IT), I must say I wasn't completely surprised. On the other hand, when things like this no longer surprise a man like me anymore, remind someone to slap me. Maybe I should reread The World is Flat or similar treatises on the crazy new globalized economy, it might better help me deal with the shock that "the market" has brought upon me again. However, I must say, your case surprises me to an even greater degree. If I am wise enough to take the discount plan you offer, my initial estimate comes in at just under thirty thousand dollars. Just take a moment with me to think about what one could buy with that sum. Just imagine... I'll let you come up with the examples on your own, from whatever buying power your money has in whatever part of the wold from which you hail. Can you believe that I spend less than one third that amount every year on my personal expenses? Now, lets imagine what it might build in the world of websites. I hear all these wonderfully inspiring stories about these ten thousand dollar startups that manage to achieve a liquidity event in under a year that yields hundreds of times their initial investment. I'm guessing clients with this kind of mentality are the ones firms like yours bank on... and rightfully so.
However, your work presents a number of stunning caveats that I'd be loathe to overlook. One, you mostly employ Indians in India to do this work, correct? I have a pretty good idea how much Indians get paid because I used to employ them. It wasn't that much dough when I was there, not even in Bangles, the high flying IT capital. What kind of rates are you giving them - ten dollars an hour? If it is more, you should advertise that fact because it could be represent a great marketing angle... call it "development for development". I hope (as most good people do) that their incomes really will lift that country out of poverty, because then potential customers might feel that this deal you propose is truly a "good" one. However, that whole "Canadian company" thing pretty much shoots that idea in the foot. Still, if registering a company in Canada and hiring a sales guy (Len) locally in Vancouver makes you Canadian, that seems like a pretty good deal. It would be a better one if you could get him to write the copy on your site though... it would only cost a few hundred dollars... in fact, I'll do it for free just to help make you guys look a little more "consistent" and polished. And you Canucks say Americans wouldn't do anything to help their northern neighbors, ha!
Now, on the more serious technical end, I must note that your work involves an open source content management system that was designed explicitly to help the little people put together websites with nice functionality. It's base code is one of the easiest programming languages in the world, widely used and especially well documented. I could get scratch PHP work done for far less than it's lego-cousin Drupal. How crazy is that? But it got popular... and people started making module customizations and betraying the feel good nature of project by not open sourcing them back to the community. And so your sub-niche industry was born - open source as a business model. The demand for Drupal grew because people got used to it, but didn't know how to modify it in little ways they desperately needed... it's sort of sinister really. Sometimes people hire out just because the feature creep has gotten so bad that they can't decide which module combination to choose. So, now the demand for drupalistas exceeds the supply... so people in the subcontinent started training up on it. I hoped this would bring the cost back down to Earth, but alas, they morphed into Canadians and moved to that country's most expensive city (well maybe Banff costs more) with its much higher standard of living and attendant costs. And then they quickly matched their price to meet the market. Now not only will I still never get to sit in a cushy leather chair, I'll never even meet them.
Well, that's my rant... now it's a blog... and you've been quite instrumental in making it happen.. I think it's a healthy critique, but maybe its just a waste of time - railing against reality. Sure, it took me an hour to write, but I thoroughly enjoyed the process. Perhaps this is why I have so much trouble getting things done. Then again, what's the rush? I'm still waiting to meet a skilled guy who can help me get my projects done at reasonable cost. I'm all about good deals that produce good relationships and good ideas. I increasingly think I couldn't do a social venture with contractors. I need people whose first priority isn't money, who are notoriously hard to find. Now, no one said trying to find these people was going to be easy, but its been harder than I anticipated. Well, at least I feel noble in the quest. As my friend Manju once told me, "Why do you think trying to make something happen will make it happen?" There's some truth to be found in that idea. Wow, that's great, John Mayer's "Waiting on the World to Change" just started playing in my head. Oh Alex, you self-martyring fool, I love you.
PS. This helped me get some of my thoughts out about my recruiting woes. Email prompts always seem to do the trick, so I need more people writing to me! Finally, I want to mention one big cultural difference I have experienced. In the East, when you call someone out, even if it isn't true, they feel they've lost face and you mostly never hear from them again. In the West, the same action can make them people at both you and the situation at hand in a whole new light. I have learned my most important lessons by being called out when I was doing wrong or didn't know what I was talking about. Sure, sometimes when I'm wrong I get embarrassed, feel guilty, or will have someone give me a beating. Still, whether I'm right or wrong in my thoughts/feelings, I'll learn something by sticking my neck out. Despite its many flaws, I find that aspect of Western culture to be truly admirable.
The Response:
Wow! - I read through your post enjoyed reading your view. I also think what is the price point for Drupal Services. We could also have done PHP, mySQL and any work that is out there for $5/hr and then work crazy hours and struggle to keep employees.
It would be ideal if
a) You can have constant workflow without sales team
b) You don't have to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars on all sorts of insurances and taxes in running a business
c) If all your employees have same degree of productivity and skillset and can not be lured in higher paying offers or gigs
d) If your clients don't expect results yesterday and can define exact requirements
e) If every hour spent can truely be accounted and billed for.
f) If besides the billing, there was no costs towards admin personnel, HR, equipments, Office expenses, etc
g) If resources who are engineers and experts would understand the social aspects and work for less and take less salaries.
h) If clients can not bring in every day small changes and even if they bring in pay for all communication, adjustment times
i) If resource utilization can be 100% towards billable work.
If all the above is true, then the rates would be very low. Its costly to do business in North America for sure and it would be totally out of context for me to manage such a big team here but it is equally challenging to do the same in India. Its still the Drupal Services business that brings in the revenue for us and other companies like ours in this business. Individuals and very small start-ups can offer you a good rate. The flip side is continuity with individual or small company - they may just build something and leave or build it not following standards. Or you can hire someone in house and get work done - would he have all required skills?
Agreed Drupal is like lego and its just putting things togather but that gets you only 95% if you really know what exactly you want from day 1 ( 99% don't ). Small companies get frustrated a) because they can't educate the customer because they might not have right experience and b) because they can't estimate right as they don't have historical numbers to prove. Agreed that there is a shortage of Drupal resources and more so of resources who have got the right experience and expertise to help the clients to make a product that works and not just a Drupal site out there.
My Concluding Statements:
Nice comeback... I know your business a bit and I can understand its challenges. However, when organizational costs impede productivity to the point where lots of people are priced out of the market, it might be time to reorganize. Bigger companies are supposed to be more efficient because of scale and skill diversity, but sometimes they aren't. Moreover, corporate organization (and its internal discords) often makes for unhappy employees who are always looking for greener pastures... or more likely, just want to move up the food chain so that they don't have to get shit on so much anymore. It's a vicious cycle - one I'd rather avoid. Good luck in your work. I wish you all the best. ALEX
