Post: #1

Has anyone else seen this? Clients that I have that I would consider 'top of their game' software developers seem to be using people in brazil, argentina, columbia now vs. the more middle of the pack guys that are doing the old odesk, SE asia and indian sub contractors. This is all in software/tech fields.

The south american's have a much better grasp on english and responsiveness to problems from what I've seen, though cost is a bit more. One is even considering setting up a permanent shop in Argentina.

Post: #2

I've seen this. The devs get decent pay for their countries (Arg, Ecua, etc.), and the clients here pay market rate.

So far all of these devs I've seen are solid devs and thinkers, and are cognizant of the business objectives that fuel the development. They ask good questions, which is quite important for devs. These folks seem to really think long-term, in direct contrast to typical EE or Asian cheapo outsourcers who are guided by "push out any code that will get the next check sooner, regardless of quality or technical debt".

* technical debt refers to the increasing time/complexity/cost of standard tasks within a project, accrued over time as devs contribute code that works now but is sloppy. basically the code equivalent of sweeping problems under the rug and using duct tape: eventually tasks that should be simple become horrific because the whole system becomes fragile. the problem perpetuates because business stakeholders hate the idea of refactoring code: "wait so you want to take a month and clean the code, with an end result of having all of the same features and nothing visibly improved?"