Offshore, nearshore or onshore: what the delivery location changes, and what it doesn't

The hourly rate for a senior engineer varies by a factor of four or five between delivery locations, and that number dominates most buyers' thinking. It shouldn't. The rate is the price of the hour; what you need to know is the price of the outcome, and that depends on a handful of other things the location changes.

The overlap

Working hours that overlap with yours are the biggest predictor of how a distributed project feels. India to the US East Coast gives you two or three hours of overlap if both sides stretch; India to the UK gives you a working morning; Latin America to the US gives you the whole day. Overlap matters less for well-specified work and more for anything exploratory, which is why offshore suits maintenance and platform work and nearshore suits product development.

Turnover

Engineers in the largest offshore hubs change jobs more often than engineers in smaller markets, because they can. On a dedicated team that means onboarding replacements every year or two; on a project it means the person who wrote the design may not be there for the build. Ask every vendor, in every location, for their turnover on client work, and put replacement and overlap terms in the contract.

Data and regulation

Where the people sit decides where the data can go. Health data, payment data and anything covered by a government contract often can't leave the country or the region, and a vendor's willingness to sign a data processing agreement doesn't change the law. Settle this before you compare prices: a location you can't use is not cheaper.

What doesn't change

The quality of the vendor's engineering practice, which varies more within a location than between them. The need for someone on your side who reviews the work weekly. The cost of a badly written brief, which every location will build faithfully. A well-run team in Pune beats a badly run one in Austin, and the reverse is just as true.

On Scopelyst

Every vendor profile shows the head office and delivery locations on a map, with the country flagged wherever it appears, and the directory filters by country. The Knowledge hub's guide to delivery locations goes deeper on the regional hubs and what each is known for.